RPG Design: Exploring New Dimensions
One of the things that makes RPGs so friggin' difficult to make for indies is the sheer quantity of content required for the traditional exploration-based gameplay that is one of the hallmarks (but, I note, not necessarily a requirement) of computer role-playing games. Indies have a constrained budget, almost by definition - and all that content can be really, really expensive to create.

Besides using higher-level building blocks to create content, another approach I've been fascinated by is to separate "exploration" from geography. Television shows re-use the same sets over and over again. It's usually when they decide to take a road trip to some exotic location that they jump the shark. While television shows aren't exactly a key example of "exploration," they do explore ideas, characters, and issues. While the locations change, the context changes each time. The bridge of the Enterprise may usually be the same (except when it's half-destroyed), but the people, time, and situations change. And those are things that could be equally fun to explore in an RPG.

I was delighted to find Persona 3 took this approach. Persona 3 does have plenty of content crammed into the game - particularly with something like 170 different "personas" that only sometimes share geometry and animation data, 40+ NPCs, and a like number of enemies (plus texture variations). But it's not geography. Most of the game takes place at the player character's dorm building, the high school, at a couple of strip malls, a shrine, and a train station. Oh, and "Tartarus" - an extra-dimensional tower that replaces the high school at midnight. And you'll frequently visit the "Velvet Room," another extradimensional space in the world of dreams.

There are a few extra locations thrown in for variety at certain stages of the game. At one point, the party goes on a trip to the beach for summer vacation, and there is a class fieldtrip to Kyoto in the fall. The other characters talk about "exploring" Tartarus, but it is really an uninteresting, randomly-generated series of some 256 dungeon levels. That's grinding, not exploring.

No, the real exploration takes place not in the alternate dimension of Tartarus, but along the dimensions of time, context, and characters. I visited the Paulownia Mall a great number of times during the course of nine months of in-game time. At times, it was simply where I went to buy items and buff up my character. Sometimes, I went there in search of the ruthless businessman or the strange monk who hung out at the night club. Once, I accompanied Elizabeth there on her rare forays outside of her dream-world elevator, and laughed out loud as she deduced that the wishing well must be some sort of an alter to a water-spirit, and proceeded to empty out millions of yen from an impossibly-full purse as an offering. Yukari invited me there on a Christmas Eve date. One night during the "Dark Hour," the transformed and disturbing center of the mall, the fountain spewing blood, was the location of a battle against a very powerful shadow - a battle complicated by the abduction of Junpei by another persona-user.

It was the same setting (with some occasional variations). But the context changed everything. It was story and character I explored here - finding out answers to "what happens next?" and "what happens if I...?" questions. The stupid little mall became a comfortable "set" for my adventures.

Later, in the expansion, your trapped party manages to open an interdimensional doorway to Paulownia Mall... in the past. I was amused with my own reaction when the doorway opened - it was a return to the familiar, kinda like seeing Indiana Jones on the big screen once more (minus the crushing realization of how much Ford has aged in the last movie), or watching the landing sequence opening of Serenity. I imagine if I finally re-upped my Everquest 1 account and stepped into Freeport, it would feel the same. It had become a place in my brain, with some familiarity and memories associated with it.

The storylines of various "social link" NPCs in the game was - to me, at least - a cheap addition that totally made the game for me. I've found that the expansion, which (so far) doesn't include this aspect of the game, is far worse off for it. The social link storylines were amusing in their own right, but from a gameplay perspective they also increased your potential power and capability when you fused personas, and (at maximum levels) gave you access to new, more powerful personas with unique abilities. The gameplay here was a balancing act between limited opportunity, and (sorta) mutually exclusive relationships. For example, if you find yourself dating one of the girls in the game, you'd better not let your social link with another datable character rise above a certain level, or you'll find yourself with an "inverted" link and a character upset with you. This can also happen if you say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, or go back on promises of spending time with them.

So there is a whole network of story possibilities that you can navigate which, by design, is impossible to fully explore within a single play-through. I still want to find out how certain storylines end... and how their "epilogue" comes out. But I'm not quite ready to jump in and play through a complete game again to find out.

Another form of exploration that the game offers is an exploration of the game systems. When you hit another tier of Tartarus and the monsters change, some caution is required as you discover what forms the shadows take, and learn their strengths, weaknesses, and powers. Later, fighting them will almost be mechanical, as you sic party members on appropriate targets and switch personas to best deal with whatever mix you have encountered - but for the first level or two, there's always a bit of hesitation as you consider, "If I try and blow this thing up, is it going to backfire on me?"

The fusing of Personas is a whole sub-game system that I spent literally hours playing with. It's sort of an M-Rated Pokemon game here. I'll probably talk more on this some other time. But it was another way in which the game gives the player a ton of things to discover and play with. While I ended up with about ten maxed social links by the end of the game, I was only able to figure out how to obtain about half of the personas unlocked by those links. But it was enormously amusing trying to construct (fuse) certain personas with just the right combination of skills to balance out my "inventory."

I think part of the key to the feeling of discovery and exploration in Persona 3 was the very obvious knowledge that there were parts of the game that you were denied seeing simply because it is impossible to explore every one of the possibile paths in the game. But in spite of repetitive actions and a very limited group of locations, the world felt even bigger and more interesting to me than many RPGs which advertise entire worlds or continents to "explore."

Labels: Game Design, Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:34 AM (Permalink)