I've been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins over the past week and a half and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm also a big fan of Bioware's work generally, so I found this chart of Bioware RPG clichés funny and not too far off the truth. Patrick Weekes of Bioware posted a somewhat disproportionate response on the Mass Effect forums, and it got me thinking about how the formula present in Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, Bioware's three most popular RPGs of the last few years, affects narrative and how it compares to other classics of the genre such as the Baldur's Gate series*.
*I'm ignoring Jade Empire because I haven't played much of it and it strikes me as a more experimental game.
The basic formula is split into three parts: an introductory section where the main plot exposition happens, including revealing the main baddie, followed by an open section where there are four main tasks to complete (generally involving stopping this baddie), and finally a conclusion which resolves the story, including some kind of confrontation with the main baddie.
Weekes argues in his response to the chart that there are three reasons that Bioware use the formula. His third reason is that it's a structure that works and there's nothing wrong with using it, which I agree with, even if he seems to be overreacting to something that was clearly not made as a damning criticism but just a bit of fun. It's his first two reasons that got me thinking though.
1) It's easy. It's not as easy as making the player do everything in order, but you can generally just treat each area separately except for a few variables, which makes logic-testing and QA work a ton easier. What happens on Feros stays on Feros. [...]I accept both of these arguments, particularly the second, that too many things to do at once is confusing. Particularly in an RPG of this type, where subquests make up such a large part of the game, you want the main plot to be as clear as possible. My question is: why the need for four things at all? Why not strip down the narrative further and "make the player do everything in order"?
2) Players can understand it. In usability tests on one project, we learned that players with more than four things to do at a time in any given area will feel frustrated -- they get overwhelmed and have no idea what to do first and get the names mixed up. So you don't dump twenty small planets on the player all at once. You hit them with a few big things that they can understand. [...]
The problem with splitting the middle section of the plot into four separate chunks which can be done in any order is that while you are gaining freedom you are losing flow in the narrative. The reason for this is obvious - the player can do the four chunks in any order, meaning they have to be limited in their interaction**. What happens on Feros (or Manaan, or Orzammar) stays on Feros. This leads to a disjointed feeling, breaking the player's immersion in the game. When you make the game more linear, it becomes much easier to make the narrative flow.
** Of course, this is partly a matter of how much time you have to make the game. In theory it might be possible to make the areas different depending on which order you go through them, but it would require a lot more time which is often not an option.
Let's compare with the original Baldur's Gate, which has a much more linear plot. The main difference is that you do not know exactly what is going on at the beginning, and the plot is driven by discovery of the conspiracy around the events happening on the Sword Coast. Deus Ex also shares this plot structure. In both these games each part of the story directly relates to the parts before and after it, increasing the suspense, giving a much more compelling plot than that of the formula described above, in which each chunk of the large middle section of the game isn't going to further the plot, and you know you are going to end up fighting the big bad guy sooner or later.
The other problem with this approach is how the main "save the world" plot fits with the subquests. When you're busy stopping evil plans to take over the universe there are always people asking you to rescue their cat, fetch some item or kill someone. This is one of the reasons I enjoy Bioware games so much. The richness of the world outside of the main plot is something you don't find in many other games. However, these subquests always seem rather trivial compared to the main plot. What does it matter if your cat is lost when the whole world is about to be taken over by the big bad guy anyway? While the main plot urgently pushes me on, the completionist in me wants to finish every subquest, and again, the narrative loses its flow and the feeling of immersion is lost.
What is the solution to this problem? I dislike timer mechanisms, as seen in the first Fallout game, as they can be frustrating and makes it difficult to explore the world. Instead, why not include the subquesting as part of the plot, as in both Baldur's Gate games. In the first one, there is just as much freedom for the player to go off and do whatever you like, as you are not on a holy quest to stop someone taking over the world. In the second, there's a rather neat idea of having to raise enough cash to mount a rescue operation, hence, you need to go off and do some subquests before you can continue with the main plot.
I think that a linear structure for the main plot with freedom to stray beyond it is much stronger in narrative terms than the more obvious freedom to visit four planets in any order. It also can allow for subquesting, a vital part of a good (western) RPG, to fit in without disrupting the story.
