LINEARITY IN RPGS?

A video game by itself prevents linearity, the only good answer you're going to get is "it depends" do you want to sacrifice all your core mechanics for an expansive world? like, what do you ultimately want? you could just scrap the story and tailor it to allow a bigger area if you really want the open world shit, or you could just roll with what you're going for anyway and still make it enjoyable.

No one is going to look over your shoulder and be like: "heh wow going for the cheap corridor picnics huh"

As much as I find games like Morrowind and Skyrim fun (textbook examples of non-linear RPGs), I prefer to play RPGs which are for the most part very linear in their design (jRPGs, for example).

The writing tends to come off much more developed in linear RPGs, and I always prefer to have things like memorable characters and amazing stories rather than great gameplay if I had to choose.

author=LockeZ
But once I got outside, there were a million things I could do, and it was up to me to even find them, much less decide to do them. Am I wrong?

You're right. Although some quests are already in your quest log upon exiting the vault (main story quests and the DLC content.) and they can be selected in menu to give you a way-point.

You're given a choice to handle situations differently in most cases but its never enough. Excellent re-play value though.

I've found that there's different kinds of non-linearity and they are good for different things.

There's sandbox non-linearity where you basically create your story as you go along. Simulator games mostly do this. I'm thinking of Crusader Kings 2 (which is strategy-roleplaying) or Dwarf Fortress and similar games. They are completely open and you can do whatever the engine allows you to do.

There's open world non-linearity where you have a quest to follow but there's also so much other things to do in the world that upon entering a new town you're basically assaulted by a bunch of quests that take your mind off the main story. In this you create your own story as well, but following whatever the writers also had in mind. Fallout and Bethesda games probably fall into this.

The difference between open world and sandbox is probably a bit diffuse. But I think that one of the differences is that in an open world there is a storyline written while a sandbox game is more or less "generated".

Then there's multiple choice non-linearity. As an example I mean Mass Effect where the game is essentially linear but with points within the game where you make certain decisions that affects the game world. This is the non-linearity that tends to have the best writing because they combine the focus you can have in a linear game with only a couple of branching points that makes the game a bit more personal for the player. The non-linearity in these games can also take a number of different forms.

Take for example Mass Effect (2) versus Deus Ex (HR). Both of these games are very linear but with choices for the player to make at different points. In Mass Effect these choices come during dialogue scenes where you pick how you react to things and pick who is going to live and who is going to die. In Deus Ex you make these choices as you approach a scenario. You don't pick who is going to live and who is going to die in a dialogue choice instead you pick it by shooting the person who is to die and letting the other go. In Mass Effect these shooting bits are linear corridors while in Deus Ex they are open to various approaches.

Both are non-linear in their storytelling but one is during the story bits and the other is during the "gameplay" bits. (I put gameplay in "" because you could argue that the story bits IS the gameplay in some games like this)


I for one like the stories that the last one gives. They can have stories with twists and turns while still providing an experience where I'm not just playing as someone else's character. That's not to say I don't enjoy the more open games but usually differently. The open games require a bit more investment and once you're in you can't go out until you're done because if you jump in mid-game you'll forget what you were doing (how many of us haven't restarted Fallout or similar games because we played for two weeks then went away for two months and forgot what we were doing?).

For the casual-but-meaningful experience the multiple-choice linearity is pretty good. There's also the bit where you have "mission hubs" where you do your stuff and then move on to the next. Sometimes you can go back (like in Vampire: Bloodlines) and sometimes you can't (like in Human Revolution).


Now personally (personally mind you, this is controversial), I think the multiple-choice linearity is the minimum required non-linearity for a game to be a roleplaying game. If you're just going through someone else's story without being able to make any real decisions the game is not really a roleplaying game anymore. Of course this goes into the old thing of "what is an rpg" and we don't want to go into that at all. But I'm just saying so that you know where I'm coming from and what my definitions are.

Well there's sandbox mechanics in a lot of games. Another definition of sandboxing could be that you can screw around in it with no real consequences. (this is slightly different from a simulation sandbox where your choices actually tend to have some kind of consequences. Even if it's just that you removed a mountain in Minecraft) So GTA is actually a very linear game. There's storyline missions that you do and inbetween you can just play around with the engine with no consequences whatsoever.

But there's also not a whole lot of rewards in the GTA sandbox in the end. So in a way the GTA sandbox is similar to the "sandbox" you can find in a Final Fantasy game when you walk around in the overworld beating enemies. You're not doing anything meaningful and anything you do have no consequence, you're basically just dicking around until you get to the next "mission"/dungeon. (and I guess, unlike completely linear experiences, these kinds of sandboxes are defined by infinitely respawning "enemies" (or cars or people to run over))

Clareain_Christopher, basically has it spot on.

Non-linear games have less of a plot due to the nature of non-linearity. The game is paced according to the player. The game is looser in the sense that the player can freely skip around and do things the way he wants.

Whereas in more linear games the developer can specify the experience by putting the player on tracks, like a roller-coaster ride. It goes up and down, the results are more potent in a controlled environment.

This is like trying to mix RPGs and jRPGS. Me, personally, I prefer more linear based game play.

author=Cinderblock
Non-linear games have less of a plot due to the nature of non-linearity. The game is paced according to the player. The game is looser in the sense that the player can freely skip around and do things the way he wants.

Whereas in more linear games the developer can specify the experience by putting the player on tracks, like a roller-coaster ride. It goes up and down, the results are more potent in a controlled environment.

This is like trying to mix RPGs and jRPGS. Me, personally, I prefer more linear based game play.

All of this is is very true but I'd argue that RPGs are not (and should not be) the go-to genre for this kind of experience. There are loads and loads of awesome linear experiences out there. Perfectly paced and crafted stories that don't leave any room for experimentation (except maybe in what gear/abilities you use to deal with a certain encounter, but even there many games provide you with the gear/ability needed just before an event happens).

In theory I personally like the more open games where I can experience a world at my own pace and explore and stuff but in practice I tend to actually play (and more importantly actually finish) the linear experiences because it is a lot easier to just shut off the brain and fight some things in a corridor, while having an immersive storyline pumping in the background.

author=LockeZ
I'll be honest. I loved the linearity of FF13. The only part I didn't like as much was Pulse, with all the missions, which I felt messed up what was up until then a brilliantly paced game with a wonderful lack of stupid distractions.

I realize I am basically the only person in the world who feels this way though.

Apparently open world gameplay is all the rage for some reason. I guess players like to feel like they're in control of the story or something? I dunno what the enchantment with it is, really. I find them generally worse-written, and with less compelling goals. Most of what I'm doing just doesn't feel that important - I think the writers actually go out of their way to make sure the optional things don't feel important, so that they really feel optional. And when stuff does feel important, it feels awkward to leave and go do something else.

Also even though I'm a "gameplay guy" I really do like games to tell as good a story as possible, and letting the player control tons of your plot points is just going to diminish that any way you look at it. You can limit the damage that heavy nonlinearity does to your narrative, but you can't prevent it. Not only because they might do things that aren't ideal plot threads, but also because the amount of work you have to do to create each piece of dialogue and make versions of it that are well-written and compelling and relevant to all possible plot scenarios goes up exponentially. (Even typical linear JRPGs can have this problem, to a lesser extent, if they let you backtrack to places you've been before.) However, if you have only a small number of options that the player is given, i.e. if your nonlinearity amounts to a series of multiple choice decisions and there's no real way to go backwards or sequence break, then I've found it can be really interesting to create ten or fifteen different versions of your story.

Ultimately JRPGs and WRPGs are almost like different genres. They share a lot of their combat mechanics, but they're played very differently, and players play them for very different reasons. One is about finding your own path and making choices, and the other is about undergoing a quest and going where it takes you. I think if you are making a sequel to a WRPG, your sequel needs to also be a WRPG. If the only issue is that people would recognize your main character, that's easy to solve - change his appearance. Maybe he wears a helmet to hide his identity, or his face has been burned. (Alternately, write scenarios in all the visitable places to account for visiting when they don't know you're alive. But this gets into the whole "your story suffers because you have to write too many possibilities" thing.)

Nah, I feel the same way about FF13.
Man, I loved that game, VERY underrated, and harshly reviewed as well.