PC Gamer - October 2011

TIME FOR REAL TIME

Like it or not, RPGs have transi- tioned to primarily using real- time combat. There’ve been plenty of missteps where design ambition greatly outreached technical proficiency, and early real-time experiments such as 1998’s Descent to Undermountain were crudely debased interpretations of the tabletop RPGs that inspired the genre. Even the landmark games that propelled the genre into real-time, such as 1992’s Ultima Underworld, offered tactically simplistic combat, stripped adventurers of their NPC companions, and awkwardly tried to incorporate character attributes to prevent a player’s dexterity from being

Combat’s just one method of dispute resolution, albeit a thoroughly cathartic one. Nothing says “I

disagree” more viscerally than a warhammer to the melon of a contrarian, but to retain depth, developers shouldn’t abandon other methods of solving tasks and circumventing obstacles, whether through dialog, exploration, or creative use of available resources.

1.

Party-based combat is still viable, as Bio Ware
has clearly demonstrated in the Mass Effect
games. Dragon Age 2, for all its flaws, also showed
some remarkable improvements in scripting that
allowed AI-controlled companions to function reason-
ably well independently. That’s a big step toward over-
coming one of the primary shortcomings of real-time
combat in RPGs, and with it, even a primarily single-
character game can effectively utilize companions in
certain circumstances (see Fallout 3’s Dogmeat.)

2.
LIVE S

Include meaningful difficulty levels, and not
just by cynically bestowing an inordinate
amount of hitpoints on enemies. Action-oriented
combat requires difficulty levels to account for varying
player skill levels, so embrace that neces-
sity by actually making it more rewarding
to play at higher difficulties. Consider
making fights that unfold differently,
varying content, and granting achieve-
ments to both reward and incent replay.

3.
Attacks that appear
to hit but actually

Skill-based attacks don’t work,

because attacks that visually appear
to hit their mark but actually whiff are
unintuitive and annoying. Nobody wants
to feel like the doomed fool in Pulp Fiction
who missed six shots at point-blank
range. Instead of using character attri-
butes to determine accuracy to cause players to miss
opponents squarely in their sights, use attributes to
determine damage or effects to make character skill
feel relevant.

Real-time combat in RPGs has evolved to be varied, tactical, sophisticated, and rewarding. Risen, Mass Effect 3, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and DA2 all approach real-time combat differently, but each one retains substantial RPG depth. Computer RPGs have evolved beyond their tabletop roots, and properly executed, real-time combat is a great way to do battle in their worlds. ■

4.
whiff are annoying.
ALTERNATE

determinative. Perhaps most importantly, the actual real-time combat wasn’t very satisfying—fighting in first-person perspective in RPGs in particular often consisted of just “two-stepping” forward and backward. Now, finally (as I discussed last month), technology and developer skill have caught up with design ambi- tions, and the compromises imposed by the transition to real-time combat have largely been overcome. To some ardent gamers, no iteration of real-time combat will ever be a worthy substitute for a turn-based system, and so they’ve eschewed or remained deeply cynical of real-time RPGs. For them, I can recommend turn-based Japanese and independent RPGs, including some gems like the recently released Avadon: The Black Fortress. Troika’s Temple of Elemental Evil remains a guilty pleasure of mine, which the crew at Circle of Eight ( www.co8.org) continue to enhance.

For most of us, however, the turn-based versus real-time combat battle is over. So what advice can we give developers to further improve the use of real-time combat in RPGs? Here are my four suggestions: If companions in Mass Effect 3 can handle themselves, who needs pausing?

Desslock is happily weighing combat of Avadon: The Black Fortress against Fallout: New Vegas and the Mass Effect games, using Plants vs. Zombies as a misplaced arbiter. Email him at alternatelives@ pcgamer.com.