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Poll of the Day > Why can't indie RPGs ever get the story right?

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PK_Spam
09/04/23 8:46:35 AM
#1:


Playing Sea of Stars now. Its definitely a visually impressive game, and I really really like all the freedom of movement for a pixel art JRPG (being able to climb and jump down from any ledge saves a LOT of time when backtracking) but the story and characters are boooorrrriiinnnnggg.

Toby Fox? That man basically made a 50k novel with all the text, practically by himself, and if you ask 100 random people what their favorite line/joke in Undertale/Deltarune is, its possible youll get like 75 different answers for every game.

All those new fangled games are focusing on the wrong stuff! Have a history of taking shrooms and smoking weed all through your Earthbound rom hack career and then come back and see how your writing improves along with the brain damage.

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papercup
09/04/23 8:56:49 AM
#2:


Honestly if I were to make an RPG, the story would be bare bones and the focus would be the combat. Like, the story wouldn't be very long, maybe like 8-10 hours, but then there would be like 8-10 hours of optional difficult postgame content.

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Judgmenl
09/04/23 8:59:55 AM
#3:


It's basically not worth interacting with modern games because expectations will never be met. This is why I moved to live service games. Expectations will never be met, but at least I am addicted.

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papercup
09/04/23 10:03:33 AM
#4:


Honestly if people tell me that it takes 20/30/50/whatever hours for the game to get good, I basically just go "so you're telling me I have to slog through multiple real world days worth of shit to get to the good bits?" then the designers probably fucked up somewhere.

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Judgmenl
09/04/23 10:05:53 AM
#5:


papercup posted...
Honestly if people tell me that it takes 20/30/50/whatever hours for the game to get good, I basically just go "so you're telling me I have to slog through multiple real world days worth of shit to get to the good bits?" then the designers probably fucked up somewhere.
Don't you play FFXIV or am I mixing you up with someone else?

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papercup
09/04/23 10:08:29 AM
#6:


Judgmenl posted...
Don't you play FFXIV or am I mixing you up with someone else?

Yes. According to my Steam page I've played 11,000 hours of FFXIV.

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Judgmenl
09/04/23 10:19:39 AM
#7:


And do you have the same feedback for the ARR/Heavansward MSQ? There's a ton of reasons I could never get into FFXIV, so I'm not saying you're wrong for enjoying it (I have like 6000 hours played in Runescape).

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papercup
09/04/23 10:38:11 AM
#8:


I recognize there are/were problems with ARR/HW MSQ(a lot of this stuff has since been reworked, and a lot of the filler has been cut out.) But I still enjoyed it, ARR felt like going on adventure in a silly fantasy world, with some sprinklings of more serious political and darker fantasy elements, and HW was a more serious mature story. But, you're right, ARR is the weakest part of the MSQ. And modern FFXIV has its own problems, which I suspect stem from covid, but I'm hoping Dawntrail is a return to the Stormblood/Shadowbringers form.

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AltOmega2
09/04/23 11:06:54 AM
#9:


I'd wager something like 10% of all video games stories actually benefit from being in a video game rather than a VN or anime or some such.

Judgmenl posted...
It's basically not worth interacting with modern games because expectations will never be met. This is why I moved to live service games. Expectations will never be met, but at least I am addicted.
That's certainly one way to look at things...

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Judgmenl
09/04/23 11:16:53 AM
#10:


papercup posted...
I recognize there are/were problems with ARR/HW MSQ(a lot of this stuff has since been reworked, and a lot of the filler has been cut out.) But I still enjoyed it, ARR felt like going on adventure in a silly fantasy world, with some sprinklings of more serious political and darker fantasy elements, and HW was a more serious mature story. But, you're right, ARR is the weakest part of the MSQ. And modern FFXIV has its own problems, which I suspect stem from covid, but I'm hoping Dawntrail is a return to the Stormblood/Shadowbringers form.
The most reasonable FFXIV take I have read and I regular /r/MMORPG.

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Buddyblade
09/04/23 1:02:20 PM
#11:


If I ever make an RPG it will involve five things: Toby Fox style dialogue, Cats and dogs with swords as the protagonists, a cartoonish modern day setting, science fantasy, and a fishing minigame.

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Lokarin
09/04/23 1:52:46 PM
#12:


That's not just a problem with indie RPGs... but ALL games. It's one of the main reasons I rarely pay attention to the story.


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Yellow
09/04/23 2:14:33 PM
#13:


A) most people don't have that skill naturally
B) most developers think about the gameplay first and warp the story around that

How much sense does it make that some average guy is just going around beating everyone up? Because that's 90% of every video game story.

To make a good story you basically have to think of nothing but the story, no gameplay, otherwise you just come up with goofy noise

At least that's what I think.
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Lokarin
09/04/23 2:23:36 PM
#14:


I do recommend y'all play LISA: The Painful... great story

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Zareth
09/04/23 2:28:39 PM
#15:


Sometimes I'm afraid that anything I write will be awful, but then I remember how successful Shonen Isekai is and I feel a lot better

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SilentSeph
09/04/23 2:29:39 PM
#16:


I felt that way about the characters from the demo. I figured it was a short sequence so I didn't think of it too much, but it sucks that they seemingly don't improve in the full game. How has the combat been so far?

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adjl
09/04/23 3:26:03 PM
#17:


Judgmenl posted...
It's basically not worth interacting with modern games because expectations will never be met.

That sounds like more of a problem with your expectations than with the games.

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ReturnOfFa
09/04/23 3:40:25 PM
#18:


I like when the story is interesting but unobtrusive. Celeste is a favorite for me. I think that's a hard balance to strike, because Celeste does it so well; the story and dialogue compliments the gameplay, even though the gameplay is basically just old-school platforming.

I still love story-driven RPGs but few blow me away. Generally, game dev teams aren't on par with novelists/filmmakers. Once again I kind of like the simple stories that play on RPG conventions like FFIV and Earthbound. FFIV is pretty simple but the emotional bits hit home more because of the simplicity. But of course the story just gets all nutty as it progresses. Which is kinda classic gamer shit lol.

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Zareth
09/04/23 3:58:55 PM
#19:


ReturnOfFa posted...
FFIV is pretty simple but the emotional bits hit home more because of the simplicity.
And then they fuck it all up at the end with only one person actually dying

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Lokarin
09/04/23 4:12:37 PM
#20:


Zareth posted...
And then they fuck it all up at the end with only one person actually dying

Dragon Quest 11

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ParanoidObsessive
09/04/23 4:30:29 PM
#21:


Yellow posted...
A) most people don't have that skill naturally
B) most developers think about the gameplay first and warp the story around that

C) Most story-driven indie devs just default to visual novel style play or "walking simulator" rather than RPG.

RPG mechanics really don't add to narrative - it's usually just something that exists parallel to the story rather than integrating with it. If you have a story to tell and you view it as the most important part of the game, you're more likely to focus on gameplay mechanics that enable that story more effectively.

A lone dev basically has to prioritize tasks because they don't have a team handling every aspect of games. So an indie game with robust mechanics likely has crap art and terrible story. A game with stronger story probably has weak gameplay mechanics. And so on.



papercup posted...
Honestly if I were to make an RPG, the story would be bare bones and the focus would be the combat. Like, the story wouldn't be very long, maybe like 8-10 hours, but then there would be like 8-10 hours of optional difficult postgame content.

For me the priority would be reversed - I'd probably just make a Choose Your Own Adventure style game with general gamebook mechanics and multiple endings. Using dialogue flags like crazy to alter how NPCs interact with you and whether you've triggered certain events.

I basically built a game like that in HyperCard years ago. I could probably do it with HTML now if I wasn't so lazy. The main discouragement for me would be that I'd want to make more of a 90s style point-and-click adventure game visual style, but I lack the artistic ability to draw or pixel art anything - so all I could really do would be 80s style text-based.

In theory, I could exploit the hell out of AI art now. But I don't know how well that would work if the intention is to make a commercially viable game.

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Lokarin
09/04/23 4:32:21 PM
#22:


ParanoidObsessive posted...


For me the priority would be reversed - I'd probably just make a Choose Your Own Adventure style game with general gamebook mechanics and multiple endings. Using dialogue flags like crazy to alter how NPCs interact with you and whether you've triggered certain events.

That's kinda how Geneforge works

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ParanoidObsessive
09/04/23 5:06:36 PM
#23:


Lokarin posted...
That's kinda how Geneforge works

There's a few different companies/services that work that way. And it's sort of what Ren'Py is often used for.

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adjl
09/04/23 5:35:42 PM
#24:


ParanoidObsessive posted...
RPG mechanics really don't add to narrative - it's usually just something that exists parallel to the story rather than integrating with it.

Or when they do, it's in the form of the choices you make to build your characters influencing how the story unfolds, but that exponentially increases the amount of writing needed, often beyond what smaller studios can realistically accomplish.

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