Jun 25

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

by saru in Analysis

Increasingly, I am growing tired of the predominance of combat in games. Specifically, RPGs.

In some genres, it’s necessary — even the point. What’s a first person shooter without combat? Or a real time strategy game? But even with genres where it’s more of an aside, like RPGs, combat is becoming more and more the main focus. No longer is story and character what people want from an RPG, but now a unique, interesting, most of all new combat system. And what for? So they can spend untold hours grinding away in dark dungeons to get a high enough level to take on the next boss that has little to do with the actual story.

In reality, for RPGs, combat is a game-lengthener. Obviously, it is a gameplay mechanic that people seem to enjoy, but really, it is a way to artificially increase the length of the game to the designer’s wishes. Persona 3 is a 100+ hour game, but if you took out Tartarus (the only combat field), it would be around 40 hours. And believe it or not, that’s fine with me. Every time I stepped into combat in that game, I cringed. The characters were so interesting, the story so engrossing, that I felt angry and jolted every time the game told me I had to set it all aside to level up. What’s wrong with having 40 hours of a story, without beating stuff up?

I know I am in the minority when I wish all combat would disappear from RPGs, but I can’t help but see what a colossal waste of time it is. A story you will remember for a lifetime. How long after you beat that beetle will it stick in your mind? There are very few RPGs where the combat didn’t bother me; two, actually, come to mind. Ar Tonelico, and Mass Effect.

Ar Tonelico did it right — it knew the otaku playing it were really after the dating sim aspects of the game…the parts where you dove into your Reyvateil and experienced a deeper understanding of her. So they tied the combat system into that - only by fighting were you able to obtain Dive Points, which were the only way to advance on your psychological ‘dates’. The combat was similar to every other turned based system, but I fought almost every random encounter and loved it, because I was guaranteeing I could date my beloved Misha.

Mass Effect handled it differently — combat was part of the atmosphere. No shattering screen transition, with a different combat engine loading up…it was all in the same view. You could talk to a smuggler, then pull out your rifle and blow him away. Similarly, there was absolutely no grinding in that game….events happened fluidly. You leveled, you got experience, but you did it naturally…never did the game want you to go back through fifteen levels fifty times over to get enough experience to go on. It was intelligent, and you were always at a ‘just right’ level. So combat became part of the story, another way to show the kind of life the characters were living. Not a bit of it was forced.

And that is the type of combat I actually hate — unnatural combat. In RPGs, you are following a set group of people who most likely are trying to save the world. Would they really spend 30 hours (who knows how many hours/days/weeks/months in game) destroying killer bunnies in a field so they could learn Super Double Death Strike, the only way to get any damage on the Sewer Grate monster that’s blocking the way to the underground passage to the next town they have to go to to gather clues on where the main enemy is?

I’ve often been told, if I hate combat so much, why am I even playing video games? I should be watching movies. And while that may be true, movies have always lacked the interactivity, longevity and depth that I love about video games….which brings me to the genre of game I loved the most of all of them. Adventure games.

Those were the days….combat didn’t ever really exist in adventure games (I ignore King’s Quest VIII). It was about unfolding an intricate, deeply woven story filled to the brim with believable, fascinating characters that always left you wanting to do and see more. You didn’t grind for gold or experience or items. You explored, and learned, and solved puzzles, and experienced. But for some reason, such an unmanly genre threatened gamers, who decided it was way more fun to shoot each other in the head and call each other fags.

I don’t hate combat in every game. I enjoy first person shooters; Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 are two of my favourite series on the planet. I love real time strategy games, and shooters, and turn-based combat games, and virtually anything else with a gun. I have the action part of my mind to enjoy blowing something to bits, and the patience part to relish a game novella. People used to be able to do both as well…so why did we all get so dumb and impatient that the idea of an hour of story without killing someone was the most boring thing imaginable? I have no problem with combat, I have a problem with what combat has done to our mindsets. We don’t want to listen to how the aliens arrived on the planet, why they’re hostile, or what will become of a six-year old we could briefly see in a 15-second action cutscene, face plastered against the glass, eyes wide open. We just want to pick up a gun and shoot the fuck out of all of them.