The decline and fall of the RPG: How Mass Effect 2 is to blame

This concern of mine began as little more than a premonition but, sadly, one franchise has already turned away from its RPG roots and is all the weaker for it. This game is another Bioware title by the name of Dragon Age 2. Now admittedly I’m only basing this on the gameplay seen in the recent demo as, at the time of writing, the full game has yet to come out. Regardless, I was rather disappointed with what I saw.

The original Dragon Age had a really classic PC RPG feel to it, and I’d almost go as far as to describe it as the Baldur’s Gate 3 I’d always wanted. The combat could get a little stale, but the complex moral choices and deep characters kept me coming back for more. Yet, I got no hint of these qualities in the demo for Dragon Age 2. The standard drop down dialogue options of DA 1 have been replaced with the circular dialogue system of Mass Effect. Whilst this worked in ME, it just feels wrong in Dragon Age and, by putting your “good” options at the top of the circle and the “bad” ones at the bottom, a mockery has been made of the ambiguous moral decisions I so enjoyed in the first game. If that wasn’t bad enough, the dialogue choices are now accompanied by a little symbol to tell you what mood they are meant to evoke. You get a theatre mask to denote a jovial response, a fist for an angry outburst, a leaf for a peaceful retort etc. Without wishing to sound like a stuffy academic, it must be said that the english language has adequately been able to express emotion for centuries without the need for these little emoticons. Did Shakespeare have to put a sad face on stage to communicate the content of his tragedies? Hell, even Dragon Age was able to get across its story through the complexity of the language alone. The occasional emotional signifier in brackets is acceptable, but a little symbol to accompany everything my character says in the game seemed like an insult to me. We gamers are not the plebs that Dragon Age 2 would make us out to be.

Really? A dialogue wheel? Was that even necessary?

Even the narrative just whiffed of over the top thriller movie too much for my liking. Whereas the RPGs I was used to from my youth favoured a narrative that aimed for immersion through a focus on your main character, Dragon Age 2 seems set to adopt a split frame narrative that begins in media res. Whilst I though the the narrative devices were witty and well implemented, I am concerned that you will not feel the same bond with your main character as you would had you been controlling him through a straight chronological narrative.

It is ironic that so many RPGs are trying to leave their roots behind, whilst many other genres are starting to adopt RPG elements. Most action games nowadays have adopted experience points, and the perks that inhabit most modern shooters also feel like a throwback to the skill trees and spells that dot the role-playing adventures of my youth.

But maybe I’m taking the wrong line on it all. Perhaps the RPG needs to evolve to stay relevant. With our current gaming scenes being inhabited by families and casual gamers now, is the traditional RPG too slow moving and inaccessible to the average gamer? Perhaps the role playing game is merely making the necessary alterations to keep up with the pacey changes that are occurring within the industry. Still, I hope one day we can return to the good old days of ogres, quests and a mild sprinkling of steam punk here and there.

This article has focused on one side of the argument, so I would be glad to here other opinions on the matter. Please feel free to sound off in the comments below.