Shadowrun Is Shadowrun Returns a cRPG? Case study

[IncendiaryDevice]

Honestly, anyone who isn't familiar with the history of the genre and the classics that defined it isn't qualified to make any statements about whether a given game is or is not a cRPG.

Haha, so quick to bite down on the smear campaign...

Is this politics or a gaming discussion?

 

[JarlFrank]

Honestly, anyone who isn't familiar with the history of the genre and the classics that defined it isn't qualified to make any statements about whether a given game is or is not a cRPG.

Haha, so quick to bite down on the smear campaign...

Is this politics or a gaming discussion?

No, just the simple fact that a genre has roots, and to make any definite statements about the nature of a genre you need to be aware of these roots, preferably by first-hand experience with those roots.

I played the Gold Box games, Might and Magics, and the famicom versions of the old Wizardries (they got the prettiest graffix), and they are all rather poor in several aspects that are nowadays commonly seen in RPGs, such as NPC interaction and narrative C&C. And while I have not played them myself, I've also read about plenty of other 1980s RPGs on the CRPG addict blog (great blog btw, really valuable when it comes to game archaeology), and most of them are just the same: barebones dungeon crawlers with little to no NPC interaction at all.

It would, however, be idiotic to call them "not cRPGs" because they literally founded the genre of cRPGs. Without them, there would be no cRPGs. So while they only have a bare minimum of RPG elements (crawl through a dungeon with a party of characters whose abilities are defined by stats, which can be leveled up during the course of the game), these elements are by definition enough to count them as cRPGs. They may have been surpassed by better, more comprehensive games that include more elements of the P&P experience that the cRPG originated from, but they're still cRPGs. And Shadowrun Returns has those features, therefore making it a cRPG.

It doesn't mean it's a good one compared to other games from the past or from its own time, but it is a cRPG.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

No, just the simple fact that a genre has roots, and to make any definite statements about the nature of a genre you need to be aware of these roots, preferably by first-hand experience with those roots.

I played the Gold Box games, Might and Magics, and the famicom versions of the old Wizardries (they got the prettiest graffix), and they are all rather poor in several aspects that are nowadays commonly seen in RPGs, such as NPC interaction and narrative C&C. And while I have not played them myself, I've also read about plenty of other 1980s RPGs on the CRPG addict blog (great blog btw, really valuable when it comes to game archaeology), and most of them are just the same: barebones dungeon crawlers with little to no NPC interaction at all.

It would, however, be idiotic to call them "not cRPGs" because they literally founded the genre of cRPGs. Without them, there would be no cRPGs. So while they only have a bare minimum of RPG elements (crawl through a dungeon with a party of characters whose abilities are defined by stats, which can be leveled up during the course of the game), these elements are by definition enough to count them as cRPGs. They may have been surpassed by better, more comprehensive games that include more elements of the P&P experience that the cRPG originated from, but they're still cRPGs. And Shadowrun Returns has those features, therefore making it a cRPG.

It doesn't mean it's a good one compared to other games from the past or from its own time, but it is a cRPG.

Now, to me, that is obviously a weak display. If that's it, if that's all you need for your game to be RPG, then, as someone else has said, well, pretty much everything is an RPG. I mean, you could use almost the same explanation for apologising as to why God of War is an RPG. But I don't see you campaigning to have GoW threads in GRPG. So is it just the P&P roots that you find it hard to disentangle yourself from? It sounds to me, by your standards, a good visual novel is more of an RPG than a dungeon crawler like Grimrock, for example...?

Do you honestly think SRR: DMS is closer to a cRPG than it is to either X-Com or a vaguely interactive Visual Novel? If so, then I'll let you have the last word on our specific exchange... as I couldn't find anything more to counter than I already have and if you don't see it then you don't see it and one would have to conclude that you seem determined to maintain this game's RPG heritage for some reason.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Would you, by your definition, also call the Gold Box games "squad tactic games with stats"?

I think Sawyer is right when he says if these games came out today, we wouldn’t consider them RPGs. They certainly aspire to be RPGs. They come closer to being RPGs than anything else that came out in the ‘80s. I’d argue that the Gold Box games or the early blobbers were a transitional state on the road to what we now consider a CRPG. Is a homo erectus human? A million years ago, sure, but by the standards of today, absolutely not.

For its first twenty years, the genre got better and better and better, to the point where it’s fair to classify the late ‘90s renaissance era CRPGs as a new species. Maybe it’s unfair to usurp the label and boot the originals off it. I’m fine with letting Wizardry keep the RPG name, but then these new RPGs with many more features deserve a different designation. Fallout is a complete RPG in a way that Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord isn’t. We can call the more modern standard uberRPGs if you prefer. It’s pointless to fight over “what is an RPG,” but these are clearly two distinct things and they deserve distinct terms.

Wizardry is a rope, stretched between the animal and the overman—a rope stretched over an abyss.

Shadowrun Returns is the same: it strives to be an RPG (or uberRPG) but doesn’t get there (the difference being that SR doesn’t have the excuse of incredibly limited technology). Dragonfall has more choices, more reactivity, much more of a pen and paper feel, it is an uberRPG.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

I already pointed out simple criteria:

The character has stats/attributes/features that the user controls and then these features can affect the gameplay and the C&C.

That's an RPG. Whether it is done well, whether there are other elements such as a well-told story, well-written characters, great exploration, turn-based or RtwP or RT mechanics is all topping.

EDIT: And before anyone asks, I have no mouth, but I must scream is dangerously leaning close to the cRPG genre but does not really have control over the character you choose in any way; i.e. you can't really evolve it characterwise.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I already pointed out simple criteria:

The character has stats/attributes/features that the user controls and then these features can affect the gameplay and the C&C.

That's an RPG. Whether it is done well, whether there are other elements such as a well-told story, well-written characters, great exploration, turn-based or RtwP or RT mechanics is all topping.

I disagree, an RPG is lots of things, components, which make for a whole. If you pick out just one aspect as a judge-all then you're, effectively, creating a whole new genre, in your case, justifying people selling Visual Novels and Choose Your Own Adventures as RPGs...

 

[CryptRat]

Would you, by your definition, also call the Gold Box games "squad tactic games with stats"?

I think Sawyer is right when he says if these games came out today, we wouldn’t consider them RPGs. They certainly aspire to be RPGs. They come closer to being RPGs than anything else that came out in the ‘80s. I’d argue that the Gold Box games or the early blobbers were a transitional state on the road to what we now consider a CRPG. Is a homo erectus human? A million years ago, sure, but by the standards of today, absolutely not.

For its first twenty years, the genre got better and better and better, to the point where it’s fair to classify the late ‘90s renaissance era CRPGs as a new species. Maybe it’s unfair to usurp the label and boot the originals off it. I’m fine with letting Wizardry keep the RPG name, but then these new RPGs with many more features deserve a different designation. Fallout is a complete RPG in a way that Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord isn’t. We can call the more modern standard uberRPGs if you prefer. It’s pointless to fight over “what is an RPG,” but these are clearly two distinct things and they deserve distinct terms.

Wizardry is a rope, stretched between the animal and the overman—a rope stretched over an abyss.

 

[JarlFrank]

Now, to me, that is obviously a weak display. If that's it, if that's all you need for your game to be RPG, then, as someone else has said, well, pretty much everything is an RPG.

Not everything. It has to have a clear relation to the lineage of RPGs, be they computer or P&P. Shadowrun does have cRPG mechanics and does have a clear lineage that allows us to trace it back to other RPGs. Doom is not a cRPG. Quake is not a cRPG. Tomb Raider is not a cRPG. Super Mario is not a cRPG.

I mean, you could use almost the same explanation for apologising as to why God of War is an RPG. But I don't see you campaigning to have GoW threads in GRPG. So is it just the P&P roots that you find it hard to disentangle yourself from? It sounds to me, by your standards, a good visual novel is more of an RPG than a dungeon crawler like Grimrock, for example...?

Again, let's look at lineage. God of War's lineage can clearly be traced back to other action games of its kind, and if it contains any stats and leveling up (I wouldn't know because I don't have a console), then that can be considered an RPG element that has been borrowed from the RPG genre. But overall, the game would still be an action game - that is its core.

I don't see how you get to me thinking visual novels are closer to RPGs than Grimrock? Grimrock is a dungeon crawler whose lineage can clearly and unmistakably be traced back to the Dungeon Master line of RPGs, so it's 100% a cRPG, no doubts about it - even though it lacks some significant RPG elements whose lack you lament in Shadowrun Returns (specifically, NPC interaction and narrative C&C). Visual novels tend to be low on interactivity, don't allow you to build your own character, and have a very different lineage from cRPGs - they can't reasonably be traced back to any P&P or computer RPG that defined the genre in the first place.

The P&P roots are an important part of the genre, and most games of the genre have tried to translate the P&P experience to the computer (and the best games of the genre are those that managed to come the closest to that: Fallout, Arcanum, BG2 for example).

Do you honestly think SRR: DMS is closer to a cRPG than it is to either X-Com or a vaguely interactive Visual Novel? If so, then I'll let you have the last word on our specific exchange... as I couldn't find anything more to counter than I already have and if you don't see it then you don't see it and one would have to conclude that you seem determined to maintain this game's RPG heritage for some reason.

It is closer to a cRPG than it is to a vaguely interactive visual novel, for sure. You get to create a character, choose which skills to level up on him, on most runs you even get to choose who comes with you (you can hire other runners for money, if I remember correctly), and there are a couple of dialogue checks too. Yes, overall it's a very linear game and I never claimed it excels at being a cRPG, but it does fulfill the basic requirements of one, and its lineage can be at least partially traced back to P&P and cRPGs of the past, although I do grant you that concerning the combat system, it also took heavy inspiration from the new X-Coms.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

JarlFrank lineage is a slippery slope. Is Dark Alliance an RPG? Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel?

I agree that approaching pen and paper matters. That’s why we need a separate classification for games that come much closer to approximating the feel of p&p. If Fallout tried to mate with Pool of Radiance, they would not produce fertile offspring.

 

[JarlFrank]

If Fallout tried to mate with Pool of Radiance, they would not produce fertile offspring.

I dunno, Realms Beyond takes plenty of inspiration from both.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

JarlFrank lineage is a slippery slope. Is Dark Alliance an RPG? Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel?

I agree that approaching pen and paper matters. That’s why we need a separate classification for games that come much closer to approximating the feel of p&p. If Fallout tried to mate with Pool of Radiance, they would not produce fertile offspring.

There are tons of D&D games which don't warrant cRPG attention as well. If you search the whole forum for "Fallout: Tactics", you'll find threads in GRPG, General Gaming, Strategy & Simulation, the whole caboodle, so this whole P&P thing is obviously quite entrenched for some, but no guarantee for others.

 

[DavidBVal]

Would you, by your definition, also call the Gold Box games "squad tactic games with stats"?

I think Sawyer is right when he says if these games came out today, we wouldn’t consider them RPGs.

I hope by "we" you mean Sawyer, you, and all the other people that believe they live in a Golden Age of cRPGs. Implying that Pool of Radiance is not an RPG is one of the most ignorant things I've ever read in this forum, which is quite an achievement.

Have you played it? Sure, no flirting, no silly jokes, no bisexual lock-picking character with a loooong backstory, and you're not a Mysterious ORphan with Powers. But you can reconquer a town infested with evil, district by district, and see how what were dungeons are now new civilized parts of town. You can infiltrate the evil side of town disguised as a monster to participate in a magic items auction, or discover that a member of the city council is a traitor and take your revenge on him, walk into a trap set up by the Zentharim, or... heck, just slaugther everybody in the temple of Tempus or the Town Hall because you can and feel like it. Gold Box achieves more with two lines of dialogue than all PoE with its incessant and self-obsessed walls of text.

Gold Box is the epitome of RPGs and most of what was added later may indeed be fun and satisfy some needs, why not. But banging the female elves in your party or avenging your murdered grandma is not what defines RPGs, as you have that in every other genre and actually in every story even outside videogames. Think for a moment what RPGs have that are not part of other genres and you'll have a good start at understanding what are the true building blocks of cRPGs.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I'm going to use some pictures to help clarify my point:

Exhibit A: The Streets:

WOW, doesn't that look EXCITING! Sooo much stuff going on here. Well... nope, there is literally nothing going on here, it's just a pretty picture. Or perhaps one door you can walk into, that being your objective, that, for some reason you have to sometimes walk to and sometimes you can teleport straight into the building.

No navigating your way round the city, no stumbling upon things, just zoom, you start this mission here, go to destination asap pls & don't forget to talk to anyone who's talkable along the way. That caravan come stall outside that building? You've gotta be able to interact with that, right? I mean, all that effort to put that thing there, there must be a reason for it, right? Nope. It's just there, a block of colours woven into a shape that you walk by and say "Ooo, that's pretty, oh, nothing there" and instantly move along, instantly forgetting that it was ever there.

Now, someone put the effort in to put that thing there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy caravan/market thing, that takes up a huge amount of your screen. For no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". This is not how RPGs work, this is not what RPGs do. In RPGs, well the good ones mostly, everything you see has some kind of point to it. In a 'normal' RPG someone would have been told to "make an interesting location for an eccentric trader/healer/NPC" and then they'd come up with this. Then it would be incline. Instead, this game just has this block of nothing for no reason.

Like-wise, all these buildings you walk past, every single one bar the quest location is a dead picture and nothing more. You can't go inside any of them. In any 'normal' RPG you would walk in these random buildings just for the exploration of it all. One might have a group of angry cultists you have to fight, one might have a 'nice' family that you have to choose between giving them #50 credits after a sob story or just leave or kill them for a #20 credit gain, another might have no-one in but some loot hidden away for the most observant players. But no, this is all just fuck all. Someone put the effort in to put that building there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy street map, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice".

Perhaps you can have some fun with the few NPCs you can interact with along the way? You mean you can't interact with everyone you see? That's right, the game has loads of sprites that walk about completely oblivious to the fact that they're in a game. Someone put the effort in to put those people there. Someone spent hours of development time making these fancy NPCs, that takes up a huge amount of your disc space, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". Now, about those NPCs you can interact with. Well, as soon as you've exhausted their dialogue options they cease to be interactive. You can't even repeat a conversation. You can't kill any of them or even just stop to say hi and get some brief repartee.. Only traders are permanently interactive, but you still can't kill them, pick pocket them or anything.

It's amusing how the RPG barrel get's so much mockery and stick for being a redundant RPG loot mechanic, and rightfully so, but in this game, jeezus, just one fucking barrel, just give me at least one fucking barrel. At least it would be something.

Exhibit B: Inside a Building:

You see those stairs there? You can't go up those. There appears to be part of the bar you should be able to walk to up there, but it's just another waste of space, you can't go up there. Someone put the effort in to put those stairs there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy upper floor, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". And the same can be said for the entire left hand portion of the room. From the first dancing girl all the way to the empty tables next to the wall. No NPCs inhabit that area, well, aside from that one dude with the yellow speech bubble above his head who could quite easily be in any other room in the building. You can't ever talk to anyone there, you can't interact with the dancers, you can't look for loose change down the back of a sofa, you can't start a brawl. Someone put the effort in to put that section of the building there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy lounge area, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice".

No. Instead, you have to press the only interactive thing in the room, the piano at the far end, and go underground to your base of characters. Because, instead of making this backroom a secret room, what an RPG needs is an empty dead space you have to walk through to get to the secret room. & why not throw in a loading screen into the bargain while we're at it, because that was so necessary.

An RPG would allow you to do something with this room. An RPG would allow you to go everywhere you can see, at least at some point in the game. An RPG would have some reason for having holographic/real dancers beyond "Ooo, that looks nice". Inherently. Without thinking about it. The room would fill itself with RPGing almost naturally and by osmosis simply by being underwritten with a sound RPG mechanical core or it would not be a part of the development process in the first place. I mean, what was the order to the designer? "Design me a bar/nightclub"... "ok boss"... "cool, now sprite guy, put in XYZ characters"... "ok boss"... "Ooo, that does look nice"... "yes boss". At what point did anyone say what the point was for any of it?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Could we plz stop regarding "RPG" and "cRPG" as interchangable? They're not. My brain is constantly doing flip-flops reading through this. Thanks.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Would you, by your definition, also call the Gold Box games "squad tactic games with stats"?

I think Sawyer is right when he says if these games came out today, we wouldn’t consider them RPGs.

I hope by "we" you mean Sawyer, you, and all the other people that believe they live in a Golden Age of cRPGs. Implying that Pool of Radiance is not an RPG is one of the most ignorant things I've ever read in this forum, which is quite an achievement.

Have you played it? Sure, no flirting, no silly jokes, no bisexual lock-picking character with a loooong backstory, and you're not a Mysterious ORphan with Powers. But you can reconquer an town infested with evil, district by district, and see how what were dungeons are now new parts of the city. You can infiltrate the evil side of town disguised as a monster to participate in a magic items auction, or discover that a member of the city council is a traitor and take your revenge on him, walk into a trap set up by the Zentharim, or... heck, just slaugther everybody in the temple of Tempus or the Town Hall because you can and feel like it. Gold Box achieves more with two lines of dialogue than all PoE with its incessant and self-obsessed walls of text.

Gold Box is the epitome of RPGs and most of what was added later may indeed be fun and satisfy some needs, why not. But banging the female elves in your party or avenging your murdered grandma is not what defines RPGs, as you have that in every other genre and actually in every story even outside videogames. Think for a moment what RPGs have that are not part of other genres and you'll have a good start at understanding what are the true building blocks of cRPGs.

It’s been nearly twenty years, but I remember a lot of the city council telling me what to do and then dungeon crawling (or urban renewal/eminent domain crawling). Maybe I’m just a sucker for dialogue trees, but the late ‘90s CRPGs seem to have a lot of things that the late ‘80s CRPGs lack. Anyway, some of what you describe above is just the main quest. Big fucking deal. You should cite the parley mechanic, though, that’s the kind of thing I think the genre was evolving toward in its first twenty years of existence.

At any rate, you should read the rest of my post. I’m arguing that there’s a continuum. On one end you have a pure dungeon crawl like the earlier Wizardries, on the other end you have what I’d consider the best expression of the genre, as exemplified by the CRPGs of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The gold box games are somewhere in the middle. We can call all of these things by by same name if you want to, but as your bitching about Obsidian’s dialogue and BioWare style romances indicates, there are in fact some very real qualitative differences here.

I don’t know why you’d assume I’m talking about romances in the first place. The example I cited for a highly interactive uberCRPG was Fallout. But let’s take Baldur’s Gate if you’re so pissed about having companions you can talk to. Early BioWare’s great leap forward wasn’t romances, it was followers who could turn on you or even each other. You may not like all of this NPC interaction and party wrangling, but in my experience it comes much closer to capturing the feel of a pen and paper session.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

EDIT: And before anyone asks, I have no mouth, but I must scream is dangerously leaning close to the cRPG genre

 

[thesheeep]

I learned from this thread that the c in cRPG stands for "classic".

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

All this has given me some insight into people around here:

3) Speshul people who think that RPGs are somehow speshul games totally not like other games

Well... dur...

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I learned from this thread that the c in cRPG stands for "classic".

But what's your view on the thread topic? Yay or nay?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

All this has given me some insight into people around here:

1) Those who think RPGs are about killing monsters and getting loot

& oh yeah, mondblut , another one for your

 

[thesheeep]

I learned from this thread that the c in cRPG stands for "classic".

But what's your view on the thread topic? Yay or nay?

I find the the whole cRPG term absurd. The c stands for computer, which, by now is pretty much everything.
"But not consoles!!!!!!11111"
Then what if a cRPG gets ported to a console? Is it suddenly not a cRPG any more? Ridiculous.

For me, cRPG = RPG and that is relatively easy to define (character skill > player skill, character building, must be playing an actual role in the game world, everything else is irrelevant).

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I learned from this thread that the c in cRPG stands for "classic".

But what's your view on the thread topic? Yay or nay?

I find the the whole cRPG term absurd. The c stands for computer, which, by now is pretty much everything.
"But not consoles!!!!!!11111"
Then what if a cRPG gets ported to a console? Is it suddenly not a cRPG any more? Ridiculous.

For me, cRPG = RPG and that is relatively easy to define (character skill > player skill, character building, must be playing an actual role in the game world, everything else is irrelevant).

as opposed to pen and paper...

edit: if we really cared about the platform above everything else, we'd say Shadowrun Returns is not a CRPG because it's designed for smartphones. But no one's saying that here.

 

[Jason Liang]

There is no "core" definition of what an RPG is. The concept of an RPG is like a doughnut. The best examples of RPGs are those that share gameplay with another genre, whether it's -

- squad tactical games (Pool of Radiance, ToEE, DMS/ Dragonfall)
- text adventure (Wizardry)
- adventure games (Ultima, PST, Fallout)
- action adventure games (BG2)
- shooters (Bloodlines, New Vegas)
- open world games like GTA (Skyrim)

But these games form a ring; at the center, if you try to make a "pure" RPG that is not hybrid in some way, you actually fall into an empty hole.

That's why there's no precise line. It's fuzzy. How do you draw the line, for example, between what is a RPG and what is a hybrid like ARPG?
Baldur's Gate 2 -> Dark Alliance -> Marvel Ultimate Alliance -> Diablo 2

How can you define the line that seperates BG2 from the other 3?

 

[JarlFrank]

cRPGs are games where the precise genre definition can be discussed on the Codex in 10 pages or more

that's the one defining feature of cRPGs as a genre

 

[mondblut]

I think Sawyer is right when he says if these games came out today, we wouldn’t consider them RPGs.

I don't see many retards crying that Grimoire is not an RPG. Storyfag soyboys are clearly in the minority on this site.