Role Playing

I’d been in a bad relationship for almost 15 years: A relationship with video game RPGs. It has taken a long time, but I’ve finally realized that I wasn’t getting what I needed out of our relationship and now I'm trying to move on. It wasn’t the fault of the genre, really. I just kept expecting RPGs to fulfill my needs in a way in which they were never meant.

Now that the love is gone, I’ve noticed that I hate the RPG genre. I hate being stopped every three steps for a random encounter. I hate the monotony of the combat. I hate having to talk to every damn villager. I hate micromanaging spells and equipment and skill progression. I pretty much hate every thing there is to do in these freaking games.

And yet, I kept messing around with them for years. I’ve started things up and not finished over a dozen of these games. I’ve repeatedly, over the years, spent weeks being confused as to why I wasn’t enjoying the game I was playing, before wandering away, always with the intent to return and finish later. To date, I have only actually completed one traditional eastern RPG: the original Final Fantasy.

It was only in this past year that I have realized the terribly obvious fact: I don’t like RPGs. How could I spend 15 years not noticing this incredibly obvious thing? Why did I keep playing them? Why didn’t I know better?

I think the thing of the matter is, there is a coolness to the RPG genre. Now, clearly, I don’t mean that RPGs are in any way actually cool, assuming you define “cool” in the classic sense of you are more likely to get laid if a potential mate sees you participating in the activity. GAMING ISN’T COOL, KIDS. That said, if you’re a nerd, RPG’s have a very tangible appeal. These games let you have epic scale adventures that are also (somewhat) non-linear. You can watch your characters start as wussbags and build them into godslayers. And the choices you make in the game might affect the final outcome. That’s pretty appealing, and back in the cartridge-based days of yore, a pretty good trick.

But the thing is, RPGs are perhaps the most inefficient way to have fun man has ever invented. You play these accursed things for the stories (which are usually bog-standard fantasy boilerplates.), but rather than just tell you the story, the game makes you play the dullest, repetitive, math-iest “game” you could imagine before doling out a small part of story (traditionally told by slow scrolling, badly translated text). And then you get to undergo a few more hours of random encounters and equipment micromanagement. There is fun to be had in this, but it is at staggeringly low levels. Meanwhile, these things take what? 40 hours? 80 hours to get through? That is 80 hours that could be spent playing with your friends, taking in a concert, making out with someone pretty. We've only got so many hours in our lives, people!

If you like juggling numbers, get a job as an accountant. If you like crappy epic fantasy, read a Dragonlance novel. Don’t play RPGs. Playing these games requires a special kind of stupid. A kind of stupid that I now recognize in myself, and that I’ve moved past.

Except.

Except, RPGs are turning a corner, aren’t they? Knights of the Old Republic was a fun, immersive game that rarely felt like resource management. I’ve heard amazing things in the same vein about Final Fantasy 12. And Mass Effect is right around the corner and just might blow all of our minds. RPG doesn’t seem to mean what it used to. They just might be growing up. So, what now? Just as soon as I walk away from the relationship, it looks like RPGs might finally be getting their act together, changing their ways. Do I give them another chance? Or do I make a clean break of it?