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Comments
Now if only Dragon's Dogma was just a little bit better designed, I could encourage people to play it to actually play that.
Wizards still beat spellblades though
no fuck you
spellblades > eelektross 4eva
I feel the choice to make the world so large and dangerous while having few travel options was a poor one.
I also feel that it's a poor design decision that you can be trying to get to a quest only to find yourself trapped between a dragon and a cyclops.
I just have tremendous respect for traditional RPG character roles.
"NO, son, you are NOT becoming a spellblade. You're going to be a WIZARD and YOU WILL LIKE IT!"
NO FUCK YOU
*enrols in Fighter Academy*
And then I inherit your blood oath to kill a lich.
Thanks a lot, Eelektross.
Hope you like being stuck with a retarded bard and Psycho Bilbo Baggins!
Dragon's Dogma is one of the better-designed RPGs of recent years, I think. But it's an early child of Demon's/Dark Souls in its punishment towards players, and I don't think Capcom had worked out what made the difficulty in the Souls games tick like it did.
That said, it's encouraging to see concepts from games as diverse as the Souls games, TES, Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger get an outlet like Dragon's Dogma. The biggest "issue" with the game from a conceptual standpoint, I think, is that it too heavily tried to imitate WRPGs in some aspects. In many ways, it's a JRPG that presents itself as a WRPG -- but since its core structure is derived from the collectivist leanings of JRPGs, this can work against it.
I'd love to see a game like Dragon's Dogma tackle more defined characters, for instance. Unlike most real-time RPGs, it gives you a party to fight alongside most of the time, so I think a game like itself that went the full nine yards and made these allies proper characters would be a strong experience. On the other hand, the lack of personal will of the Pawns tied into the deterministic themes of the game, so the core narrative elements would have to be different for my preferred approach to work.
Ideally, the combat would be a bit more deliberate and there'd be some kind of menu for controlling your allied NPCs, like in the Tales Of games. Perhaps with a better class structure, too, since we got three base classes, one advanced class for each that didn't really make much difference, and three hybrid classes. I think we could do away with the advanced classes and just have a more varied set of base classes. And if your allies are proper characters, then they could be the key to unlocking the classes you didn't start as.
Actually the most practical application of a spellblade would be:
Enemy: Hurr hurr hurr I'm so great
Spellblade: -turns enemy into toad-
Enemy: Croak croak.
Spellblade: -chops toad's head off-
Oh, certainly. It just still has significant design flaws. For example:
I can't even get my mages to heal me when I'm above 40% health.
No argument there. Dragon's Dogma is a good game and a good effort that took some risks, but that doesn't mean it didn't have some weird stuff going on as well. Although I'd argue that your issue is less a design issue and more an issue of AI implementation.
For instance, I pointed out in my last post how the advanced classes don't really add much to the game. While I thought DD's separation between class advancement and character level was neat, having classes that were the same but more wasted a lot of that potential. Some parts of the game were also radically more difficult than others for no apparent reason, completely violating the proper relationship between player power curves and difficulty curves. Bending that relationship is fine, as is using monsters as beefgates against players entering certain areas too soon. But sometimes the game just throws something insane at you.
Overall, though, DD makes me optimistic about the future of RPGs in general.
Well, they're not unrelated.
I remember one quest, appropriate to my level, where they threw two cyclopses at me. They did give me a ballista, but there was also an enemy ballista firing at me. I tried to destroy the enemy ballista so I could focus on the cyclops, but it didn't work, and I ended up dying.
Well, it makes me optimistic about the future of mechanics in RPG's. I'm still holding out on my opinion on narrative in RPG's.
DD threw a surprising narrative curveball towards the end. It wasn't high art, but I thought it worked really nicely in context. But perhaps that was because of the amazing voice acting that went with it.
I couldn't get far enough in the game to get to that curveball, I guess.
On a more general note, and I may have posted about this before, but I think all narratively effective magical spells have the following components:
... which, as you might have observed, is the essential formula for any kind of fiction. What I'm contending here is that magic is fiction in its most abstract, emotionally raw form, where reason gives way to what makes narrative sense. For instance, The Witcher posits that of two magical species in its setting, cats are one of them. They don't cast spells, but are magically resonant. This makes sense, because we've all witnessed cats doing stupid things or things we don't understand. So The Witcher provides us with an answer -- because cats are magically resonant, they prioritise their attention in ways that exceed our potential for observation.
In a more complete context, think about the spell wherein a princess has to kiss a frog to return it to human form. We have three characters: the princess, the frog, and the spellcaster who turned a person into a frog. Our conflict is that the frog is supposed to be human and doesn't want to be a frog. This doesn't make logical, real-world sense, nor any kind of sense from the perspective of a consistent magical system, but it provides an abstract conflict for the characters to work through. Our resolution comes when the princess kisses the frog and it returns to human form. How did we get to the princess kissing a frog? That's down to any individual writer, but the essence of the situation is that magic provides a means for this conflict to exist, plus its solution.
You might have noticed, though, that the solution to the magical problem is mundane, if pretty bizarre. I don't think anyone here has kissed a frog or is likely to, whatever disparaging things I might say about any of you behind your backs. Only a wizard or a witch can cast a spell, but anyone can kiss a frog, and I think that's the essential point here. That scenario, like most good magical scenarios, doesn't have its spell take place in a purely magical context. The mundane is just as important a factor of magic as the more explicitly magical, bringing the world together and ensuring that a variety of characters have a part to play.
If you look back, the great spells in fiction aren't fireballs or bolts of lightning, but spells that create character conflict. Sure, when Galgarin the Resplendent shoots a goblin with a magic missile, you technically have a story through two characters, a conflict and a resolution... but not a very interesting one. You have some bearded blowhard turning a goblin to chunks, but no character development or thematic discussion. But if Galgarin cast a spell to turn his rival into an otter during a fit of rage, regrets it immediately and doesn't know how to reverse it, you have some actual characterisation, a potential plot and an upcoming solution.
(That being to murder the otter and declare his rival missing. Sucker.)
All narratively effective X have a conflict and resolution. Spells fall under that purview.
^^ I don't think that's necessarily true to the degree it is with magic. Other narrative elements don't typically structure themselves in the way a plot does, particularly because they're narrative elements rather than complete stories in their own right. A narratively effective description or piece of dialogue, for instance, don't require conflict or resolution in any singular unit the way magic does.
It is. At least, to some things.
Magic works in two ways; it works as a narrative device, and it works as a narrative tool. The same goes for many other things; combat, for instance, can work as a narrative device, wherein it provides a significant conflict for the characters to resolve, and it works as a narrative tool, where it is employed to, essentially, give everyone something to do.
Magic works in that it can both be effective towards the conflict in the story and it can be an effective tool to help the story along, is what I'm saying. But magic is far from the only thing that does that, although not everything does that.
Do note that I am specifying narratively effective X's, rather than narrative devices.
^^ Combat (to use the same example) is only truly effective in context of a meaningful conflict, though. If a character is doing something for the sake of doing something and we're not talking about a video game, then there's something wrong with the way the story is being expressed. Stories typically only have a limited amount of practical space to express themselves within, and unless the plot, characterisation or underlying discussion of the story is moving forward, then nothing is being expressed to the audience and the thing is being narratively ineffective.
So using the same example (combat), we need it to be combat between two or more meaningful characters, combat where the audience considers at least one meaningful character to be at legitimate risk, and/or a combat sequence upon which a part of the plot (or the whole plot) could hinge. Sir Greenwich slaying a minotaur just because is just as meaningless as Galgarin the Resplendent wasting a goblin.
There are arguably exceptions, but even the timewasting that existentialist literature tends to like is essentially an expression of existentialist perspective, and therefore appropriate considering the themes of its genre. Just to use one example.
^ True that. Which is why, as fun as they are, they're not meaningful examples of magic. Gandalf, in fact, rarely casts spells of much meaning but often uses his intelligence and wisdom to solve situations without it. That's the point of his character -- as powerful as he is, he mostly gets things done via clever application of the mundane rather than some great big punching spell.
In fact, in Middle Earth, the most powerful force bar none is trust in one's allies. It's part of the overarching themes of LotR.
"Truly effective" is not a phrase you want to throw around lightly.
Combat in and of itself is effective when it is a part of a meaningful conflict. However, combat is a supporting device for many, many other conflicts, even though combat is not the primary focus.
For instance, we have an army commander who is camping with relatively few soldiers. A group of enemy soldiers sweep in, and the soldiers loyal to the army commander, and the army commander themselves, engages them in combat.
In this instance, combat is used to support the conflict. However, the conflict itself is not the combat- rather... in this case, let us say that the conflict is in a betrayal, where someone close to the army commander has sold them out to the enemy.
Combat is thereby the means where the narrative conveys tension to the reader in order to further the conflict; but the combat itself is not a meaningful conflict. However, it is still truly effective in what it is being used for; propping up the true conflict, the betrayal of one of the heroes.
Magic is much the same; it can be a conflict in and of itself, or it can prop up other conflicts, and neither is any worse than the other.
^^ Except that magic is, in abstract, structurally identical to an entire story in its own right. So it might be more useful to think of an individual spell as a plot in its own right rather than a tool for a character to get something done. Most of us are gamers, so we're used to thinking of magic as a means to an end through mechanically standardised applications rather than in its wider narrative context.
So is, say, a political scheme.
The difference is that a political scheme isn't nearly as abstract. It has characters, conflicts and resolutions inherently built into it, whereas magic lets go of all the rules and can justify any kind of scenario. Or rather, magic is informed by and makes room for any kind of character, conflict or resolution through its mutability, whereas a political scheme includes commentary on its own context to a more significant degree.
A badly done political conflict isn't nearly as abstract, sure.
Outside of that, a political scheme can do just about anything to a character without taking it to the realms of the fantastic. A political scheme cannot turn someone into a frog, for example, but it can do something functionally identical- the classical 'royal family is deposed and the prince becomes a carpenter' springs to mind.
It lacks the fantastic aspects, but in terms of how it shapes the narrative, they function in exactly the same manner.
To be really pedantic, a magical-spell-as-plot scenario could be a political scheme as well as whatever else, thus why I consider it to be the more abstract, versatile and fundamental example of synchronicity with narrative structure.
And, combat could be a political scheme as well as a conflict of its own.
And combat can be a conflict on its own; think of either a mercenary's journey to destroy a previous hirer, or a story dealing with an army, where the conflict is combat between multiple soldiers of opposing sides. Which is ignoring singular examples of combat being a conflict in and of itself, such as a duel.