During a podcast about the design behind RPGs organized by PC Gamer, gathered some of the gaming world’s top developers to discuss the genre. Pawel Sasko from CD Project Red talked about high budget games soon hitting a wall. It is about both the players’ expectations and the problem of meeting them. Dragon Age co-creator Mike Laidlaw also talked about expectations from players, he said the following:
As soon as you’re delivering something that starts to be cinematic, you then are essentially inviting comparison to the most cinematic things. So you are kind of keeping pace with Naughty Dog or Cyberpunk,
A recurring dilemma is not only managing the expectations of the players but also the costs. These have shined for the high budget games. Strix Beltran narrative director at Hidden Path Entertainment believes that procedural generation of narrative and tools for this will help to:
“crack the code” of pricey triple-A game development by making it easier to tell larger-scale stories, though they won’t be a cure-all.
There was a consensus that procedural generation of narrative can become one of many tools, to more cheaply create good and grand RPGs. During the podcast, there was also talk about how the high-budget productions have trained the players in cinematic means quality. Of course, this is not always true, but has put the developers in a bit of a trap. It is expected of the developers to constantly break the boundaries in technology, graphics, cinematic sequences, cinematic storytelling and much more. Beltran believes that it is an unhealthy attitude to have as a developer. You can listen to the entire podcast here. What do you think is most important in RPGs?
