RPGs where you don't save the world

[Darth Canoli]

Shining in the Darkness

As far as i remember, you're summoned by the king to save the kingdom, fight the villain and maybe save the princess.

Also, Fallout ...

You're pretty much on a quest to save your own, then the world in both of them ...

 

[DraQ]

In Beyond Divinity, all you try to do is escape a demonic world.

Spoiler

And you end up bringing doom to your homeworld.

You can include Divinity II as well:

Prior to expansion

Spoiler

you are duped into giving the big bad exactly what he wanted.

After that

Spoiler

you merely break his siege and kill his love. The guy is still out there, still alive, still powerful and now mightily pissed. At best you have made a tiny first step saving the world.

 

[laclongquan]

Technically speaking, Icewind Dale 1/2 party is groups of mercenaries, tasked with saving Ten Towns in the Spine of the World mountain area. hardly saving the world~

 

[Mastermind]

The protagonist is really some poor schmuck that happened to be Embraced that night. There's literally nothing special about them, even by the end of the game, as one of the endings so nicely shows.

the game implies you're considerably lower in generation than the average fledgling

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Fallout 1 what?

 

[Dustin542]

Shining in the Darkness

As far as i remember, you're summoned by the king to save the kingdom, fight the villain and maybe save the princess.

Also, Fallout ...

You're pretty much on a quest to save your own, then the world in both of them ...

Fallout 2 especially because the FEV Curling-13 would kill all mutants in the world.

 

[DraQ]

Shining in the Darkness

As far as i remember, you're summoned by the king to save the kingdom, fight the villain and maybe save the princess.

Also, Fallout ...

You're pretty much on a quest to save your own, then the world in both of them ...

Fallout 2 especially because the FEV Curling-13 would kill all mutants in the world.

Which pretty much translates to "everyone".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Technomancer

Spoiler

The world is blown up.

 

[Lhynn]

The first 3 exile of course

Whole point is escaping.

 

[vota DC]

-the adventures of Robin Hood: you just have to reclaim your castle and build decent relations with your people else they lynch you.
-Caravaneer 1 and 2.
-Castle of the winds. Part 1 you avenge your godparents, part 2 you conquer a realm....yep you are the guy that is a menace for the status quo and not the villains.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

The first 3 exile of course

Whole point is escaping.

You also have 2 other different end game goals, you can actually destroy the overworld to take your revenge OR settle down in the caves to leave a peaceful life.

 

[Cael]

The first 3 exile of course

Whole point is escaping.

Technically, you saved the overworld if you went on to destroy that Vahnatai asshole archmage.

 

[aweigh]

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

 

[Serus]

Technically speaking, Icewind Dale 1/2 party is groups of mercenaries, tasked with saving Ten Towns in the Spine of the World mountain area. hardly saving the world~

It's in the "save a village/city/small area" category. So not saving the whole World or large part of it but still being saviours acting to save others for mostly altruistic reasons. As someone pointed out, CRPGs where you actually save the whole World are rare. A more important distinction is between acting on your own behalf - doing some personal quest or acting to save a larger amount of other people because you are the good guys. IWD is clearly the latter.

 

[vota DC]

Crpg where you save whole world are quite common, maybe not from destruction but often from the powerhungry tyrant that plan to conquer all never seen a big villain say "muhaha whole luxembourg will be in my control and then......I will go to the Eu parliament to discuss some laws peacefully."

 

[Kalin]

Age of Decadence? Did you even play the game?

Spoiler

BALZAAR

 

[Hevnknekt]

"Ultima VIII: Pagan". You don't save the world... you just save a world, as a consequence of trying to return to your own world so that you can save it.

 

[laclongquan]

Planescape Torment is all about personal drama. You try to resolve the matter of your Immortality that as long as it exist will pull lots of innocents into death. Though horrifically, the scale is at thousand range at most. The scale of a small town.

 

[TemplarGR]

While i am primarily a WRPG player the games i would like to mention are 2 of the best, if not the best, jrpgs: Suikoden I and II for the PSone. Those games remind you they are japanese only through the artwork, but the story in many ways has nothing to do with anime and japanese faggotry. So i will talk about those as most WRPG will be mentioned by other people.

Suikoden 1 is about a corrupt empire. You are the son of the greatest general of the empire yet circumstances lead you to stand against the empire in open rebellion and lead the rebels to victory. No saving the world, just a great story.

Suikoden II has an even darker story, despite the cute presentation: You are a teenage soldier for your country during a war, alongside your best friend since childhood, and you witness a false flag and a blatant buchery and betrayal of your unit for political purposes. You barely make a run for your life and get rescued by a group of mercenaries in the employ of the enemy country. You get cought in the war while you keep witnessing war crimes, atrocities, betrayals, you learn dark secrets about your foster fother, and eventually you lead your second home country into an effort to reclaim their lost territories and end the war. Again, no saving the world, but wonderful, touching story.

Seriously, i you may say what you want about jrpgs, but those 2 Suikodens are the best of the best. Real masterpieces that got completely overlooked back in the day because 2D graphicz. You owe it to yourselves to grab ePSXe and those 2 roms. Suikoden 1 is around 20 hours long and II is double that. No RPG gamer should go without completing those games, it will make you realize that 20 years ago the japanese could make good rpgs and not faggot simulators.

 

[Cael]

"Ultima VIII: Pagan". You don't save the world... you just save a world, as a consequence of trying to return to your own world so that you can save it.

I thought you pretty much destroyed Pagan after you wiped out the Titans and took over their powers, and then left the place, when the powers granted by the Titans were the only thing keeping it alive in the eternal night?

 

[Cael]

While i am primarily a WRPG player the games i would like to mention are 2 of the best, if not the best, jrpgs: Suikoden I and II for the PSone. Those games remind you they are japanese only through the artwork, but the story in many ways has nothing to do with anime and japanese faggotry. So i will talk about those as most WRPG will be mentioned by other people.

Suikoden 1 is about a corrupt empire. You are the son of the greatest general of the empire yet circumstances lead you to stand against the empire in open rebellion and lead the rebels to victory. No saving the world, just a great story.

Suikoden II has an even darker story, despite the cute presentation: You are a teenage soldier for your country during a war, alongside your best friend since childhood, and you witness a false flag and a blatant buchery and betrayal of your unit for political purposes. You barely make a run for your life and get rescued by a group of mercenaries in the employ of the enemy country. You get cought in the war while you keep witnessing war crimes, atrocities, betrayals, you learn dark secrets about your foster fother, and eventually you lead your second home country into an effort to reclaim their lost territories and end the war. Again, no saving the world, but wonderful, touching story.

Seriously, i you may say what you want about jrpgs, but those 2 Suikodens are the best of the best. Real masterpieces that got completely overlooked back in the day because 2D graphicz. You owe it to yourselves to grab ePSXe and those 2 roms. Suikoden 1 is around 20 hours long and II is double that. No RPG gamer should go without completing those games, it will make you realize that 20 years ago the japanese could make good rpgs and not faggot simulators.

Suikoden 5 is pretty good also, and the ending can be a Goddamned kick to the nads if you didn't recruit all 108 guys and kept them all alive...

 

[Elex]

Planescape Torment is all about personal drama. You try to resolve the matter of your Immortality that as long as it exist will pull lots of innocents into death. Though horrifically, the scale is at thousand range at most. The scale of a small town.

“the world “on planetscape mean “every single plane and all the worlds of the material plane”
is the point of the game explain how much pointless can be an immortal creature in the multiverse.
is even possible save the multiverse? saving it from what? from the very force that keep the planes in balance?

 

[Master]

In The Witcher 1 (spoiler for the ending... )

Spoiler

you end up ultimately destroying the world by preventing the bad guy from carrying out his plan

 

[laclongquan]

Planescape Torment is all about personal drama. You try to resolve the matter of your Immortality that as long as it exist will pull lots of innocents into death. Though horrifically, the scale is at thousand range at most. The scale of a small town.

“the world “on planetscape mean “every single plane and all the worlds of the material plane”
is the point of the game explain how much pointless can be an immortal creature in the multiverse.
is even possible save the multiverse? saving it from what? from the very force that keep the planes in balance?

It's a matter of scale. TNO's immortality curse snuff other's lives in order to revive him. How many times has he been killed? Based on the latest and final incarnation, thousand at most. Combined other incarnations make me guess generously at ten thousand. A town's population, basically. While the number is horrifically, the scale is... so-so.

As for saving multiverse talks, it's just the Practical Incarnation's grandstanding.

 

[Black Angel]

Since JRPGs are being mentioned, I'll bring up a JRPG I replayed so many times in my youth which, now that I think about it, isn't really about saving the world: Radiata Stories. The story is largely about the relationship between multiple, different races like humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs. Each race has their kind of guardian entity in form of dragons, and the existence of each dragon is what kept the coexistence of the races in 'balance'. In the intro cinematic, we witness a human fighting one of the dragons, and later in the game we learn that the human succeeded in killing the dragon. And from what I remember, the humans happened to have 2 dragon guardians, each of them having kind of a 'shift'-based duty. As you play, you will arrive at a branching path roughly halfway or 2/3 of the game, where you choose to either side with the humans or non-humans, with each path having completely different ending. In both paths, however, the dragons will all be killed one-by-one, with the difference that by siding with the humans you will be the one who defeat the dragons, while if you side with non-humans you get to witness the dragons being defeated (sucks, I know). The final fight for both path is against humans's current guardian dragon. In the endings, however:

Spoiler

if you side with the humans, the vessel that was meant to contain one of the humans's dragon guardian is killed, and with the current dragon guardian killed, no dragons survived and, thus, one can say humans became way too powerful to overwhelm the balance of multiple races coexistence. If you side with the non-humans, you can save the vessel, and after the final fight supposedly the vessel fulfilled her duty and the only dragon to survive is the one humans dragon guardian. Except, as the MC and the vessel walked into the human kingdom, no one can be seen, so take that as you will.

It's been 10 years or so since my last playthrough, however, so I don't really remember most of the story.