One of the most beloved RPGs of the last decade is Disco Elysium. A game in which you play a cop who wakes up in a dingy hotel room with no memory of anything, and he has a murder to solve. What follows is a very strange game set in an alternative Earth with its own strange history, countries and technologies, before you even get to the actual game itself. You have twenty stats, who each talk to you based on how much you use it and how much you put points into these stats. All in all, a very unique and memorable game.
As with everything people praise, there is pushback. The most interesting of these arguments, is that Disco Elysium can't be one of the best RPGs because it's actually an adventure game. (Or the more extreme cousin, a CYOA) Some say this, stating that despite the game having stat checks, not having combat disqualifies the game from being a RPG. Others because the gameplay, despite having stat checks, is mostly following an adventure game template. Use an item on something, in this case selecting equipment to give yourself an edge in certain stats, and most of the game is a dialog puzzle. Things which usually aren't thought of as RPG gameplay, more as adventure gameplay.
Most of the time, this argument comes from RPG players, and usually people who seem to view calling a game an adventure game an insult. But despite this, the idea is intriguing, and doesn't seem like it's been discussed much by people who actually like adventure games. So, is Disco Elysium an adventure game? Should we cover it a thousand years in the future when we get to 2019? Feel free to bring up its spiritual predecessor, Planescape Torment, as well, since that often gets hit with some of the same arguments.
I think this is a very similar discourse as the one surrounding Roguelikes, in that the status of many games described with the label are contested. As a genre, the Roguelike is generally agreed to have a set of common conventions and mechanics (it's even got a fancy name, the Berlin Interpretation).
ReplyDeleteI quite like the Berlin Interpretation because it's not wholly prescriptive: you don't need to check off every item in the list to make a case for being a roguelike, but the more you have the stronger your case is.
Looking at Disco Elysium from this angle, if we had a Berlin Interpretation Of RPGs, I think we'd say, yes, it doesn't have a combat system*, which is a point against its claim. But it so manifestly fulfils so many* of the other common criteria of the CRPG that I'd say this still easily passes the bar.
You could make a case for it being an adventure game, I guess, but that's true for a lot of RPGs since the genres have a common origin. And you've reviewed hybrid RPG-adventures on the blog before, so I think coverage here wouldn't be inappropriate.
* off the top of my head: dice-based skill checks; a customisable character build of statistic that meaningful influences the aforementioned; levelling and experience; NPCs with branching conversation options; choices with meaningful consequences for the story; an interface that very closely resembles one of the most common CRPG forms; multiple forms of character progression (equipment that provides stat bonuses and maps to specific body slots, a perk system, improvable stats); a functional economy that goes beyond money as a inventory puzzle solution; and last but not certainly least, real role playing choices that allow the player to make qualitative judgements about how to respond to events in a way that expresses something about their interpretation of the player character.
** although it does have a few instances of what can reasonably be described as combat, they're just not resolved by a separate system of combat mechanics.
dont know, havent played it yet. Its in my backlog. Mind that my backlog has around 3000 games right now, some of oldest entries are from 1991 (not the games, the time where I started my backlog)
ReplyDeleteMore coverage of an interesting game is always better than less coverage of an interesting game. No further justifications required :)
ReplyDeleteThe claim that Disco Elysium is not a RPG because it doesn't have combat seems quite weak to me. DE makes extensive use of its RPG systems for most interactions — it just so happens that they are overwhelmingly non-violent. Even then, there is actually one encounter in the game that could be classified as "combat", and just like the rest of the game, the outcome relies on your skills, equipment, choices and a bit of luck with your dice rolls, just as you'd expect from any RPG. Meanwhile, there are many games with just as many RPG systems (skills, checks, character progression, equipments, and so on), that use them solely for combat and nothing else. So, which game is "more" RPG? The one that uses RPG systems for nearly all kinds of interactions, or the ones that use them for combat and nothing else?
ReplyDeleteAs for the argument that DE mostly follows an adventure game template... I mean, sure, you do a lot of item and information gathering, but at its core it's still a RPG focused on skills, checks and character progression. Most items you collect are actually used to help you on skill checks, and most of them are not required to complete your quest anyway. If anything, I'd say that games like Ultima IV/V/VI or Magic Candle are much more "adventure-like" in that regard (not that I'm complaining, I love those games)
https://mixnmojo.com/news/Double-Fine-among-Xbox-studios-facing-closure
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