Turn-based RPGs need to make a comeback
I'm starting to remember the greatness of using a turn-based system for electronic (as opposed to pen-n-paper) RPG games. I'm reminded of this via the fun I'm having playing a graphically-enhanced Rougelike game. It's a dungeon-crawler game, so the RPG-story elements are bare minimum, but it's super fun for what is is, in addition to the fact that, (1) the game's developer made the game quite humorous; the game not taking itself very seriously is pretty great for a gaming experience that usually becomes somewhat grindy and repetitive. And, (2) the dungeons are procedurally-geneated and thus random, so you're never ever playing the same game twice.
Something happened in the late 90s when computer (and console) graphics were becoming exponentially (this might be a tad hyperbolic) more elaborate as each year passed. Games from pretty much every genre jumped on the techno-progress train and ran with this trend. Game development budgets and team sizes swelled and the whole endeavor became ever-more elaborate, expensive and corporatized. Large software studios swallowed up what were once small, independent operations.
And of course RPGs suffered greatly from this progression pattern. Better graphics meant that real-time action could look a hell of a lot more realistic and thus believable. And so real-time combat action replaced the old turn-based system that closely mimicked the original pen-n-paper RPG game mechanics. I'm not going to deny that there were a lot of fun-factor advantages to going real time, especially for multiplayer games; in multiplayer mode real-time combat would be quite awkward for anything that's not a digitized card game. But in general, this transition eventually meant that entire RPG games started to revolve around real-time combat and as a result, the games became more and more arcade oriented. Dare I say the games became dumbed-down for action players, especially...cough...console gamers. Take the Elder Scrolls series as an example. With each release, the franchise became progressively more action-arcade oriented and thus, less RPG-story oriented. The plethora of player development paths and dialogue options we found in Morrowind got slimmed down in Oblivion and even further reduced in Skyrim. By the 2010s (Skyrim came out in 2011), the concept of actually having to read dialogue text off a screen became all-but-verboten. All-spoken dialogue means lots of voice actors. Which means a bigger budget and more development grunt work. So then NPC dialogue becomes minimalistic and used as a bare necessity for advancing the game's main plot-line and maybe a limited bundle of side quests. On the contrary, when most of the dialogue is text, there's no need for a minimal approach; the sky's the limit for side quests and other adventuring options.
IMHO, the turn-based combat dynamic stays true to the original concept of what an RPG is supposed to be. And it allows the player to focus the most on the strategy AND storyline aspects of the game; as opposed to becoming too preoccupied with the sort of rapid button-mashing that's better suited for action games. Every turn in a battle is just like a turn in a board game. And finally, the combat dynamic in many video RPGs isn't all that to begin with. Skyrim battles might look graphically impressive but it's often just a bunch of frantic clicking and button-mashing; in the battles that are actually very difficult (most are tediously-easy) you have to end up constantly pausing the game and toggling between different menus anyway; that real-time magic gets constantly disrupted.
Luckily with the new Indie game trend, the games are actually becoming the focal point of gaming, if only among the niche audience who plays these games. I predict that within this boutique vidya genre, some amazing story-driven RPGs will come to life. And some of them may even be turn-based.
Something happened in the late 90s when computer (and console) graphics were becoming exponentially (this might be a tad hyperbolic) more elaborate as each year passed. Games from pretty much every genre jumped on the techno-progress train and ran with this trend. Game development budgets and team sizes swelled and the whole endeavor became ever-more elaborate, expensive and corporatized. Large software studios swallowed up what were once small, independent operations.
And of course RPGs suffered greatly from this progression pattern. Better graphics meant that real-time action could look a hell of a lot more realistic and thus believable. And so real-time combat action replaced the old turn-based system that closely mimicked the original pen-n-paper RPG game mechanics. I'm not going to deny that there were a lot of fun-factor advantages to going real time, especially for multiplayer games; in multiplayer mode real-time combat would be quite awkward for anything that's not a digitized card game. But in general, this transition eventually meant that entire RPG games started to revolve around real-time combat and as a result, the games became more and more arcade oriented. Dare I say the games became dumbed-down for action players, especially...cough...console gamers. Take the Elder Scrolls series as an example. With each release, the franchise became progressively more action-arcade oriented and thus, less RPG-story oriented. The plethora of player development paths and dialogue options we found in Morrowind got slimmed down in Oblivion and even further reduced in Skyrim. By the 2010s (Skyrim came out in 2011), the concept of actually having to read dialogue text off a screen became all-but-verboten. All-spoken dialogue means lots of voice actors. Which means a bigger budget and more development grunt work. So then NPC dialogue becomes minimalistic and used as a bare necessity for advancing the game's main plot-line and maybe a limited bundle of side quests. On the contrary, when most of the dialogue is text, there's no need for a minimal approach; the sky's the limit for side quests and other adventuring options.
IMHO, the turn-based combat dynamic stays true to the original concept of what an RPG is supposed to be. And it allows the player to focus the most on the strategy AND storyline aspects of the game; as opposed to becoming too preoccupied with the sort of rapid button-mashing that's better suited for action games. Every turn in a battle is just like a turn in a board game. And finally, the combat dynamic in many video RPGs isn't all that to begin with. Skyrim battles might look graphically impressive but it's often just a bunch of frantic clicking and button-mashing; in the battles that are actually very difficult (most are tediously-easy) you have to end up constantly pausing the game and toggling between different menus anyway; that real-time magic gets constantly disrupted.
Luckily with the new Indie game trend, the games are actually becoming the focal point of gaming, if only among the niche audience who plays these games. I predict that within this boutique vidya genre, some amazing story-driven RPGs will come to life. And some of them may even be turn-based.