You'd never think this game is an RPG
Could this be a new TGE section?
What makes a game an RPG?
When somebody asks me to name an RPG, my mind immediately goes to classic games that everyone knows as role-playing games; Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls, Pokémon…
The term encompasses a lot of different genres: from JRPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest or the most recent Expedition 33, cRPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape or the original Fallout games, to Action RPGs like Diablo, Dark Souls or Kingdom Hearts.
These games tend to have certain features in common, namely the character creation and progression, the focus on narrative and worldbuilding, and player agency on the story. However, many RPGs shed one or more of the aspects that traditionally define what an RPG is, be it its focus on character creation (per example, the Final Fantasy franchise abandoned the aspect of naming your adventurers in favor of having premade characters with compelling stories), storytelling (like how Kenshi, per example, has absolutely no story to follow other than the narrative that the player will craft through gameplay), or player agency.
Whatever it is that officially makes a game an RPG has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but the game I want to talk about is a game that features many aspects shared with an RPG.
In this game, you start by creating your character: you can choose from some premade characters or make your own from scratch. You can choose their sex, appearance, height and weight, and it has a pretty in-depth sculpt system to ensure you can really make your character look like anyone. In the customization, you not only get to choose what they look like, but also what kind of equipment they wear, as well as how they style it, and you can even choose between a few options of animations for when your character is moving around, running, etc.
It sounds like a pretty good character creation system, doesn’t it? Can you guess which game I’m talking about yet? If not, let’s move on with the character background. The game allows you to create a custom background with your own set stats, but also to pick and choose from 4 or 5 different origin stories that give you different attributes and stats.
Once you have picked those, the game allows you to finally select a location to start the game on, and so you are released into this game’s surprisingly deep sandbox.
Deep character creation, but what makes it an RPG?
If you haven’t guessed what the game is, I’m gonna keep you reading a while longer.
The game starts us off with a cutscene of our character being introduced to the world. At the beginning of the game we are automatically joined with the faction belonging to our starting location. The game barrages you with tooltips for its many mechanics, and here’s where my two favorite aspects of this RPG surface: personality and skill progression.
You see, in this RPG, you must make small choices that affect how your character’s personality develops; show loyalty to your faction and you may gain points towards a certain personality, or act more like a lone wolf and develop a different one. As you gain progress toward leveling up these personality types, you unlock the ability to equip perks related to those personality types. At the same time, you are able to equip more of these perks as you level up, and the balance between natural leveling and personality development ensures that you’re always going to have a perk ready to use when you unlock the next perk slot.
On the other side of small choices are the private life choices: choosing to use some of your hard earned money to invest in certain businesses in your location to get profits later, or spending some of the money on permanent buffs that improve your XP gain, personality gain, or others.
The character progression is well made, and the best part is that your character reflects the skills you gain; not only you get new moves that you can perform while playing, but the stats are actually reflected: leveling up your speed makes you move faster on the field, better stamina, power, etc. all contribute to how your character feels when you’re controlling them.
Still, if a great character creation system and well balanced level progression don’t make this qualify as an RPG, perhaps the next feature will…
Player agency and the ability to create your own story
If Kenshi’s appeal as a game relies on its living world and the player’s ability to craft a narrative with the scraps of lore they can get and the emergent events that happen in the game, then this game also provides a narrative based on the player’s actions.
As time passes in this game, the player character is often given the chance to traverse the world, move to new locations, and change factions. Sometimes, the new faction will have the player relocate to the other side of the world, other times the faction will be a direct opposition to the current one. However, the player often has the choice of remaining loyal to the current faction.
It’s this dynamic system of constant change in environment and opponents which provides the player with an emergent narrative. You may spend hours working to help your faction gain power and glory, only to a few hours later find yourself opposing them, as you betrayed them in pursuit of your own power and glory.
These dynamic goals and objectives are supported by the game’s own dynamic side quest system; whenever you embark on a main quest, the game will provide you with side objectives that change depending on your playstyle. And yes, this includes your personality. However you craft your character, the game will adapt to provide you with extra objectives that will still be part of your playstyle, and in this manner ensure you don’t have to waste time doing things that you would otherwise not be doing.
Have you guessed it yet?
If you’ve come this far, I’m sure you’re either itching to know the name of this apparently so fantastic game, or confident that you have the right name in your head. I ask you, reader, to go to the comment box and give an answer; what game am I talking about, which is not an RPG, yet has so many well crafted RPG mechanics?
Unfortunately, it has just occurred to me that it would be great fun to not give the answer until the next post in this series. Next week I won’t just give the answer to this riddle, but I will also write a more detailed article, journaling my own experience playing this game. Until then, dear reader, I hope you will forgive me for this cliffhanger, and tell me your thoughts on which game you believe I am talking about.