The Escapist - Playing it Properly

[aries100]

In an editorial at Ed Smith from The Escapist ponders over if seasoned video game players aren't playing the games incorrectly. Using Heavy Rain as an example, he tells the story of how his girlfriend plays Heavy Rain. Here's his thoughts on this:

I start to feel like she's playing it wrong. Not badly, you understand, just incorrectly. See, for all its lengthy dialogue and scripted action, Heavy Rain is pretty choice-heavy; you can talk to that guy, or this guy, or neither, and your decisions affect the game. My girlfriend's talking to all the wrong people. Take one of the early levels. As FBI agent Norman Jayden, she's meant to be rounding up evidence from a muddy crime scene. After about fifteen minutes of scanning for fibers and walking around, she's turned up nothing but cop DNA and dead cats. Another detective comes over and asks if she's ready to leave. Shrugging, she hits "yes" and I only just manage to grab the controller before she gets back into her car.

And here's his conclusion:

And then it hits me. Like Batman staring down at Harvey Dent's body, I suddenly realize I've become the thing I hate. Nagging my girlfriend to do what she's told, I'm the scoring system at the end of each level, the angry support character telling you off for doing it wrong. I'm the thing that kills videogames, the prodding performance review that won't let you be.

Heavy Rain is an adventure game, but when I read this, I wondered whether or not we,
the veterans of the rpg-genre, are doing the same as Ed Smith is. Please discuss.
More information.

 

[Melvil]

Every time we argue about what defines a "real" rpg we are doing this.

 

[Falchor]

And every time someone says: "You're doing it wrong..." which I seem to read and re-read on every gaming forum on the interwebs. Everyone claims to have the best idea how a certain RPG can be played: which NPCs to pick for your uber-party, which skills to focus on, etc... Min-maxing... always.... When you tell someone you just like the idea of role-playing a half-orc cleric-mage, even though it is certainly a non-optimized race-class combo, they respond to you as if you're insane, because from their min-maxing stance you are.

I honestly believe that the first reaction to a game.. your very first decisions are almost always the "right" decision because they are coming direct from your noggin' and onto the keyboard. I wish Heavy Rain had done a bit better job simulating that noggin-to-keyboard communication (without all the unncessary QTEs), but I agree with the article: let... people..... play.

 

[Couchpotato]

Nope not going there. Everyone has there own opinion on what makes an RPG and on every forum were wrong it seems. As for Heavy Rain I never played it. The game never got my my attention enough to play it..

 

[Drithius]

An RPG can come in many flavors, but what it boils down to for me is that if I feel little impact from playing that so-called RPG, I won't have any regrets over deriding its mechanics. And, unfortunately, many RPGs of today fall into that category of shallowness.

 

[Biff The Understudy]

Considering how loosely the term rpg has been thrown around the past decade or so i am pretty sure everyone has their own personal definition of it.
For me it has allways been about choice and consequence.
If you have choices and they come with consequences it is an rpg and if not it is something else. Levels, partys, xp, loot or whatever is completly irrelevant to me when deciding if i consider something an rpg or not.
Now if only the rest of the world could agree to follow my definition we might finally see the end of theese debates.

 

[DArtagnan]

Heavy Rain isn't an adventure game. It's a game about performing tedious tasks with a story on top.

 

[khaight]

Heavy Rain isn't an adventure game. It's a game about performing tedious tasks with a story on top.

So it's a Bioware RPG?

 

[Badesumofu]

Heavy Rain features far more player agency than the average Bioware game. The story IS the game in Heavy Rain, the 'tedious tasks' are just the way you interact with it. If you think of it like an RPG that has gameplay and has a story, you're approaching it in a way that is unlikely to result your enjoyment of it.

It's different, sure. If you try to examine the 'gameplay' independently of the story, you'll probably think it's tedious and boring. If you view it as an interesting narrative that you get to significantly shape with your choices (which are typically far more dynamic and natural than getting a dialogue that explicitly informs you that THIS IS THE BIG CHOICE!!!), then it can be a very enjoyable experience. It out-RPGs basically all modern RPGs in this way.

 

[JuliusMagnus]

Considering how loosely the term rpg has been thrown around the past decade or so i am pretty sure everyone has their own personal definition of it.
For me it has allways been about choice and consequence.
If you have choices and they come with consequences it is an rpg and if not it is something else. Levels, partys, xp, loot or whatever is completly irrelevant to me when deciding if i consider something an rpg or not.
Now if only the rest of the world could agree to follow my definition we might finally see the end of theese debates.

So, Heavy Rain is an rpg?

 

[Biff The Understudy]

I dont play console games so wouldnt know, but if you had a lot of choices which affected the narrative (ie actual choices not "bioware choices") it would fit my personal definition of an rpg, yes.

 

[DArtagnan]

So it's a Bioware RPG?

Combat is slightly more exciting than opening windows manually for "immersion"

But good point, otherwise.

 

[CraigCWB]

Yeah, I feel like that a lot watching YouTube videogame brags. I remember the first Skyrim video I watched was some level-way-higher-than-anyone-should-ever-be showing people how to find the witch at that cabin right near the starting area. He'd somehow missed it(which was a huge red flag, wasn't it?) and had heard about it on the net. So he runs up to the cabin with his (modded) army of uber sidekicks and she casts a spell at him. And he's like "OMFG she's attacking me!!!" and then one of his companions one-shots her and he's "LOL! So easy! Wow! I thought this was gonna be hard!!!".

Fucking ruined the game for me, realizing that's who Bethesda is catering to. Guys just like him.