Ingredients to an Entertaining RPG

By: Elizabeth Kim
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:46:20
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In ancient times, in the land of Gaming Entertainment, all creation were two-dimensional and pixelated. Creative sages gathered together and shared tales of both large and small creatures. From these tales sprung adventures of trolls, humans, numans, elves, and more. And with these many characters, came to life worlds of danger, epic battles, drama, romance, heroes, and villains. As the power and knowledge of the sages grew, with passing years, the worlds became bulged, smudgy, rounded, realistic and alas, three-dimensional. And so...today, the worlds we see are as beautiful as paintings, every screenshot captured from these adventurous worlds looks like a kodak moment, and tales we play may bring tears to our eyes.

Well, perhaps not all role playing games (RPG) are like what I’ve described above, but what make an entertaining RPG anyway? In the Gaming Industry, where hundreds of games are being produced every year, it’s difficult to actually sit down and play all the RPGs that are offered. In our busy schedule, people want to try and find the best games that are out there. Afterall, there is simply no time to waste on adventures that will bore us and RPGs should at least capture our attention and commitment.

Here are some of the key ingredients to what makes an RPG so entertaining that it could glue millions of us in front of our game consoles.

Story

Every RPG needs a compelling story. Whatever theme the RPG world may have, whether it be science fiction, fantasy, gothic, and others, without a solid and intriguing story, the RPG can only survive by being fluffed with good graphics and gameplay. Within every story, there should be characters that people can eventually love and relate to. Imagine playing a game where you hated the characters you were controlling. Now that wouldn’t be much fun. Also, just as good heroes can easily capture an audience, a powerful, fearsome villain does just as much.

BattleMode

Over fifty percent of the time you spend playing a RPG, you will be fighting monsters and villians. That is why, it’s important for the battlemode to not cause narcolepsy on gamers. The battlemode should hold people’s attention and shouldn’t be another ‘tedious’ thing to do to level up characters. There are variety of battlemodes that have successfully been implemented and found ‘fun,’ all of which share common characteristics: Fast-paced, interactive, and challenging.

Navigation

If it’s difficult to control the movement of your character(s), any game can be an automatic disaster. If the character(s) can do variety of movements (jump, climb, run, etc.), it is important that there is ease and flexibility for the gamer to adjust to the controls. Not only that, camera rotations, visibility of maps, or menu/ status screen should all be easy to follow or at least have a low learning curve for the gamers to actually hold interest in the game. I don’t think many games require us to actually skim through the manual to get through thirty minutes of playing. Most game developers have created in-game tutorials to tackle any confusions.

Graphics

We’ve got to admit, we can be a little shallow even when we play games. It’s not always fun to be the Ogre or a Behemoth of the story. Character designs, menu interface, game art for the RPG world, and cutscenes can have dramatic effects on the gameplay. Good use of graphics doesn’t mean clutter of pretty cutscenes every climatic moment of the game. It means well designed interfaces for the game menus, amazing worlds that characters can travel in, clarity of the graphics on-screen, simple battle graphics, and more. Yes, simplicity does wonders. If an explosion from a spell took thirty seconds to graphically display and finish, people may think twice before using that spell again. That is not what developers or gamers want or look forward to.

History

Believe it or not, history of the world within the games affect how gamers view or play their RPG. Recently, games are having sequel, prequel, or some-quel booms everywhere. Afterall, it is a good marketing strategy and the easiest way to bring back old fans to old game titles. If game developers continue creating great games, they build a reputation that people will remember. And more than the name of the game developers, people will remember titles of the games. Reappearances of favorite characters from the previous version of the game, also sparks interests and fans to shout in glee. So naturally, if you see a part II to your favorite game title, wouldn’t you want to grab it?

So there you have it. There are, of course, many other factors in creating entertaining RPGs, such as music, minigames, sidequests, secrets and more. Still, the five above are the core ingredients to most traditional RPGs.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. I believe all RPGs, the good and the bad ones, deserve some recognition. Enormous amount of work and time are needed to build an actual RPG. (I should know, I’ve helped develop one.) The amount of creativity in every RPG is amazing and inspiring. So, try your best to finish every RPG you start, although I’m guilty of quitting some in the middle. Still, we never know if we might fall in love with it at the end. I sure hope that my point of view of what makes RPGs entertaining gave you some insight of what you can look for when searching for a good RPG to play. Now I must join the other sages to continue a story of our own...till then, Happy Gaming!

Author's Bio: Elizabeth Kim is currently a college student in California, studying Computer Science. She dedicated her life to Jesus Christ when she was 17 years old. Ever since then, her goal in life was to continually be an inspiration and a blessing to people. She loves to write, sing, play video games, and create digital art. Winter of 2005-2006, she has created an full length RPG in a group of four students, majoring in Information and Computer Science, which took second place in a contest held nationwide by University of Illinois, Champaign and sponsored by Microsoft. She is continuing to develop the game with the same team and now building her store: True At Heart (http://www.cafepress.com/trueatheart).

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