On the marriage of RPG's and shooters

Cliff Bleszinski recently posed the question “The future of shooters is RPG’s, what is the future of RPG’s?” via twitter. It got me thinking, as do most things he says. My quick response was that RPG’s will coexist with shooters, that there won’t be an RPG as we know it now ten years down the road. I think I’d like to rescind that statement as I may not have thought it completely through.

RPG’s as we know them now will exist ten years down the road. I can’t say there won’t be a day when they cease to exist, but for the foreseeable future they’re here to stay. Having said that I think they’ll go through some changes. I think a lot of them will start to incorporate more co-op options as the online space continues to grow and increase in popularity. Gamers have spoken and we want co-op, even in our 50+ hour RPG’s. Hopefully the upcoming Hunted: Demons Forge can fuse the two in such a way that gamers rejoice and developers learn a valuable lesson.

The question as it was asked was "The future of Shooters is RPG's" but shooters with RPG elements have been around for a while. More and more games incorporate elements more commonly found in RPG’s. Off the top of my head, Bioshock stands out as a great example. Even games like Madden are becoming increasingly more like RPG’s and less like football sims with the ability to level up and manage teams in far greater detail than they were 10 years ago. The best example may be Call of Duty with the inclusion of perks and weapon loadouts. The multiplayer is, in the strictest sense of the word, an RPG. You grind to gain levels and unlocks. It’s genius and as sales figures can attest, extremely popular.

So my final answer? We’ll see the marriage of RPG’s and shooters come to a head. I think games like Mass Effect and its sequel go a long way in showing how well the two can exist as one. It isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely a stepping stone in the right direction. At the same time RPG purists won’t be left by the wayside. They’ll have their fill, but maybe not as often as they’d like.

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Chase Koeneke

January 09, 2011

I think that marriage is already pretty well established. Games like Borderlands, Fallout 3 and the ones you mention prove that. The next few years are really going to be about refining that experience. I'm really excited to see what they come up with.

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Corey Williams

Borderlands and Fallout 3 escaped me as I wrote this, and are really good examples. I hope Mass Effect 3 expands and evolves the marriage even further. It seems a lot of people on the internet are afraid that Skyrim won't deliver. I think it's one of the last remaining franchises that has a chance at remaining mostly RPG.

Alex R. Cronk-Young

January 10, 2011

I think RPG elements help a lot of genres that might otherwise seem a little lacking, but RPGs themselves are kind of a thing of my past. I have an immense amount of nostalgia for them, but as an adult I no longer find the time to play them. I think the future of the genre really lies in western RPGs like Mass Effect and Fallout, and the more traditional JRPG style is only around still because of people with fond memories of killing time after school by grinding out a bunch of levels. It might only be able to survive in the portable realm because if a big-budget powerhouse series like Final Fantasy can't make as much of a profit as the next Shooter does every other week than no one can.

January 11, 2011

To be fair, Final Fantasy has kind of lost it's way. I haven't ever played a FF game, but I hear from series fans all the time that recent releases just aren't what they used to be. I fear that if Skyrim fails to appease people then the traditional RPG as we know it may have trouble staying relevant.

Well, I think Alex is on to something when he says that it will live on in the portable world. Games like Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Dragon Quest 9 and Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light prove that there's still a big market for these games on the handhelds. And with their turn-based nature, they're perfect for the pint-sized systems. I don't see JRPG's going away completely anytime soon.