It has been three years since RPGDot's first appearance on the web. In order to celebrate this we asked our visitors to write something for us. Something related to RPG's. Not because it is time to do something back for us, but because we want to put our visitors in the spotlight as they made us into what we are now. If they didn't keep on visiting us and encouraged us to keep on going, we might not have lasted these 3 years. We can't ask all our visitors to write something of course, so we asked a few out of the large number of visitors we have. And if any of you feel left out, RPGDot has always been open to reader submissions ;-)

This third day we have a story from Suicidal Cockroach a frequent visitor on our forums, who gives us his opinion on who is responsible for the lack of a solid story in many RPG's.

From Planescape...
I had originally intended this article to be about my personal favorite video game Planescape: Torment, I asked my self why this game stood out in my mind above all others. Was it the graphics, the morbid style, the thought of Sigil; a place with infinite portals to infinite worlds with infinite possibilities, these all added to my enjoyment but they were not the core reason.
Was it the combat? I think combat can make or break an RPG, and I like the D&D style, but I've seen better combat in other games. Was it the fact that the game appeared to be very heavily influenced by one of my favorite books ‘Pages of Pain' by Troy Denning, this is why I bought the games in the first place, but not why I enjoyed it so much.

The reason this game stood out to me was the fact that it had a deeper and more meaningful storyline than any other game I had or have since played. As I said before, I had intended this article to be about my favorite game, this is after all a gaming site, however the more I thought about the game the more I realized there was a larger issue at hand. If this game was so good because of it's story, then why aren't there more games with meaningful stories?

The other day I posted the following question on the forums: "Do the game companies just not give us the deep/meaningful storylines we want, or have we become so attracted to the instant gratification of most games that we've stopped asking for the stories? Who is to blame us, them, or both?".
Within a couple of hours there were ten votes: one for us, three for them, and six for both. There have been some interesting responses as well, some of which I will quote in this article. This is however an editorial not a news story, so it is not my job to tell you what the truth of the matter is (I am far from qualified to do that), but to instead give you my opinion and throw in a few facts on the way. But, my opinion has changed twice already in the last day, and I can't be sure that it won't change again in the process of writing this. So for now I'll save my opinion until the end.

...and Diablo...
Before I talked briefly about PS: Torment, so now onto it's counterpart on this issue, Diablo. Both Diablos, one and two, have been insanely popular and have no doubt made Blizzard a very large amount of money. The storyline of both games was that Diablo and his siblings have escaped and are causing havoc, and at various points through out the game people, like Cain, will tell you that some demon is in the area and you should go kill it. Now, I will admit I bought and enjoyed both games; I think, they were very well made, and are perhaps the greatest games in the action/RPG sub-genre. But if the Diablos have no real story, then why do we fans of Role Playing Games like them?
The only role involved is of a guy that hacks at everything in site or a mage that does the same with fireballs. The combat is fun, but all of the strengths of the Diablos could be accomplished by simply creating an FPS with a highly customizable character, which is something I'm surprised we don't see more of. Perhaps a similar argument could be made for FPS fans as to why they don't have Diablo style customization in their games.

I've also found that there are many games that have good story lines, but little depth. It is not always the storyline that makes the story, I believe the most important part is how the story itself affects those characters that are a part of it. This was something the creators of Torment seemed to understand well, for each NPC that joined you had a story and they sacrificed a great deal in order to follow you.

...to Baldur's Gate II
I'd like to use another game I very much enjoyed as an example. Baldur's Gate 2. The plot is that an evil sorcerer has stolen your very soul, as well as the soul of your half-sister Imoen. This is a good idea for a story, and one that has a great deal of promise, yet while the gameplay was very good the story was not. Let me give some examples. During the game there are several parts where Jon Irenicus, aka the evil sorcerer, appears in your dreams and questions your very nature, yet during the rest of the game the only affect having your soul stolen has on you is that you feel a little dizzy and empty sometimes, that and you turn into The Slayer. My character was of good alignment, he was part thief so he stole, but he gave back to people in other ways and generally believed in doing good things as often as possible. Yet when he turned into an ancient avatar of evil and murder, aside for the initial shock value, he just seemed to take it in stride like it was no big deal.

Another good example is Minsc. Anyone who has played the game knows that Minsc is mentally unstable, from receiving to many blows to the head. Minsc has also lost his witch, the woman he has guarded for so long, who he must guard to prove his manhood, the woman who is seemingly his oldest friend. (She stated in the first game that she knew him before he lost his mind and met Boo.) Yet aside from some initial remorse he seems fairly unaffected by her death. Where is the despair, the self doubt? What about Jaheira? She lost her husband; she was initially shocked and saddened, but she said she would morn his death when they escaped Irinicus' prison, yet she never really did.

Other opinions
Before I get to my own opinion I will give you some of the responses on the forums, this is so you can see a little from multiple sides of the argument.

Ekim: In my opinion, we are also BOTH responsible for the lack of depth in stories. See, my opinion is that game developpers first started to give us that type of thin games. We bought them. We put them on pedestals and claimed them to be great games (and sometimes they are, admitedly), which prompted the developers to create more of them.'...'It's kind of like a vicious circle.'

Val: look at how many copies of Diablo 2 that have sold then look at how many copies of Planescape: Torment that have sold.

Ekim: I think that advertising is to blame in this case though.'...'D2 on the other hand, was a very anticipated game, and it would have sold like cupcakes even if it had been crap.

Joey Nipps: My feeling is that "they" are responsible.'...'First, it is fairly easy to see from discussions on this forum site and others around that gamers (specifically those who play CRPGs at all) do indeed want good stories that are not too linear (a high degree of freedom). So since "we" are asking for good stories, it is the responsibility of gaming companies to produce these (rather than the thin, linear games that are typically produced).

Ekim: Tell me, why would they want to spend more money and more time to create a complexe game and develop and deep story when they could spend half the time and money creating a game that's fast pace and has a generic story but will sell as much or maybe even more?

The point
Ok, now the real point of any editorial, the writer's point of view. Originally I came to the conclusion that the developers should make the best game they can, but that they are still beholding to the bean counters, so they have to make what we've been buying. So if we stop buying games that don't have good stories than they will start making better stories as policy. Therefore it is both our faults.

However there was one factor I had forgotten to take into account, buyer's remorse. How many times have you bought a game and then wished you hadn't. How many game companies allow you to return a game you have opened and played if you didn't like it? So how can you tell if you should buy a game? There are reviews, but most reviewers gave Gothic a moderate to poor review and that seems to be one of the most popular games among users of this site, or at least it's forums. You can check the website for information from the developer or publisher, but they profit from each sale.
There are demos. One day I downloaded the demo of Simgolf because I was bored, even though the game didn't look that good to me. The demo was surprisingly fun, but it was very short and I quickly did everything it would let me do so I bought the game. The full version turned out to be no better than the demo, and I was bored with it by the end of the first day. I tried the demo of Wolfenstein and didn't think it was very good, but one day I saw it on sale and bought it anyway so I could play the multiplayer, and I really enjoyed the full version even the single player campaign.

So there really is no accurate way to tell if you are going to like a game or not until you play it. As long as that is the case, and companies take the advice of bean counters over the opinions of proven developers and fans, I believe that the responsibility for game content lays solely within the hands of the game makers. While we could boycott buying games until the games get better, since we don't know ahead of time which are good and which are not, we would hurt the good ones as much as the bad. And as long as we love playing videogames, we will buy whatever the best ones on the shelf are. We can only tell the companies what we like but as long as they listen to the accountants more than they listen to us, the responsibility of creating great games is theirs.