Video Game Discussion: The Ideal RPG.

So with Fallout 4 on the horizon (C'mon, a website and Bethesda's Twitter officially mentioning a surprise in two days.) I'd like to talk to you about ar-pee-jhees. Now the RPG is a very shy and often misunderstood genre of videogame. Next to the standard FPS and Action-Adventure, the RPG sits at the bottom of the stairwell next to RTS games that are literally hanging on to the corroding staircase by their fingertips and screaming.

90% of the people reading this do not know what RTS stands for. That is a statistical fact.

So the RPG can be defined by three single points.

Point One: Emphasis on Character Customization. (Aesthetic or otherwise.)
Point Two: Strong Exploration/Story Building/Non-Linear path progression.
Point Three: Experience Points/Levels/Abilities.

This is barebones. If you have those in a game, your game is a sandbox game.
But let's take it a step forward for the clandestine among my readers. Here are three MORE points that will help distinguish an even more devout RPG game.

Point Four: Character Customization that affects abilities/combat skills.
Point Five: Unlimited exploration through the use of random/procedural generation.
Point Six: Levels outside of Levels/Player experience/Custom abilities.

This is an RPG.

At its heart, RPG's offer freedom. Point four is a continuation of point one. Point five is a continuation of point two and point six is a continuation of point three.

Above is the classic RPG, Dwarf Fortress. Or to give it its full name: 

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress

Not the best name anyone's ever come up with.

If you look at this image and go "That's not an RPG! That's a bunch of pixels! Skyrim is an RPG! RPG's are new things that have only been around since 2011! Charlie has no idea what he's talking about!" then please click the little white "x" in the top corner of your screen.  I do not need such tainted site traffic such as yourself.

Dwarf Fortress has

-Permadeath.

-Procedurally generated universes, text and characters.

Now let's talk about subsections of RPG's.

Roguelikes: Roguelikes are tricksy mistresses. They offer procedural or random levels and often if you die then you have to start the entire game all over again. It's massive in Japan and remains in relative obscurity in every other market. Well, sort of. You may not know it, but you see hallmarks of roguelikes everywhere. For example:

Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Which I think, before you get incredibly angry at me, is more of an RPG than Skyrim.

Borderlands has:

-Exploration

- Levels/Abilties/Levels outside of Levels

I should explain Levels outside of Levels. In Borderlands 2 there's something called a "Badass Rank" and you get Badass Points if you do certain things like "Kill 100 Bandits" or "Open 1000 boxes" or "Look through 10 telescopes" and the list is endless. When you get a certain amount of points, you get a token that you can use to upgrade your stats by a small amount. Because the number of points you need to get a token increases and the skill increase becomes smaller as you continue to play, you have a "Levels outside of levels system." which is just a regular leveling system. But upgraded so it's technically unlimited.

Now I may as well talk about "Player Experience" whilst I'm here.

Player experience is something different to experience points (Exp/Levelling/Upgrades) which set it apart.

In Borderlands 2, Corrosive weapons melt armoured enemies and machines, electric weapons bring down enemies or machines with shields and fire weapons bring down enemies with health. The game has pre-requisites and YOU, the player, have to learn them. 

If you think you've never played anything like this before, then think about Pokemon. Grass, Fire, Water? Same thing. Same ballgame. Randomised wild Pokemon encounters too. You can nickname Pokemon and are encouraged to play with them in some form. Pokemon is technically an RPG.

So that's Roguelikes. 

Next we have MMORPG's or MUD which we won;t waste time on. Christ, I spent half my teenage life on Warcraft. Tactical Role-Playing games or RTS's (Real-Time Strategy) Games which include Civilisation, The Sims, Simcity and perhaps League Of Legends/DOTA 2

Action/Shooter RPG's which include Zelda, Final Fantasy, Diablo and all point and clicks and games like Half-Minute Hero.

The difference is that these RPG's are prone to include:

Choices and Consequences: Fable and Elder Scrolls.

RTS Elements. Sometimes the two go hand in hand.

A story involving mythos, end-of-the-world, save the princess etc.

I've just realised that Super Mario is umbrella'ed under RPG. What is life.

So those are all types of different RPG's.

The most RPGest RPG will have the following six points. If it has the next three, it is the god of the RPG's.

Point Seven: TOTAL character customisation.

Point Eight: ENDLESS exploration.

Point Nine: UNLIMITED player development.

So the final RPG will just kind of be a reflection of life. It must have total character customisation that has no definitive character end, endless exploration using more than procedural/random scripts and somehow add in extra landmass and new art assets on request and unlimited levelling, which I suppose Borderlands 2 has achieved.

In reality, the perfect RPG is a goal that will never be met. It is a goal that is being stretched towards, however. And the most stretchiest are the closest to calling themselves RPG's.

Tune in next time when I'll be showcasing my Fallout 4 ideas!