Home and RPGs – The Forgotten Genre
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
I love role-playing games, having played this genre since they were created for video gaming back in the 1970’s. This probably stems from my love of reading fantasy novels; this genre just speaks to me in a voice than no other can match. From Suikoden to Final Fantasy, to Legend of Dragoon, Star Ocean, Dragon Age and now Skyrim, I have always tried to conquer the evil that has populated the various worlds that the games created. Many of my friends and family love them, too.
There have been some incredible role-playing games created over the past several years. Many of them were instrumental in bringing heretofore unknown elements of graphics and game play into being. Bethesda Games, the creators of the new megahit Skyrim, created a new graphics engine called Creation Engine to be able to do what they wanted in the game. New technologies that bring more realism to games is a common element in the role playing genre.
Home has incredible graphics built into it already and previous games and gaming promotions have proved that our avatars are capable of doing amazing things within a redesigned area in Home; Uncharted3 and now Yeti vs. Hunters are prime examples of this.
Home is a place where the people themselves can become a role players through their avatars or choose to be themselves. In a very loose sense, Home runs on the same architecture as a huge RPG, and it has an unlimited variety of choices for which role you will play. You can be the troll who is hated and reviled by everyone, the good person who has a lot of good friends, or the quiet one who rarely speaks but is a good listener. You can physically change into anything from a fairy to a demon, a lobster to a dog, or a boy to a girl; the possibilities are endless. There are also moral choices available to us – to strive like Cloud and make our Home world a better place, or be the Jenova that the rest of us are fighting against – just like an RPG at its most basic level.
My question is this: if Home is like a giant role playing game, why don’t we have a few RPGs to play within its gaming structure? We have shooting games now, also sports, casino and carnival style games; why not RPGs?
I must stress that what I mean by this is not the text-based, Zork-derived minigames found at the Xi Museum; I mean using Home’s own architecture, with elements of an RPG layered atop it, to make the Home experience itself more of a game.
What is a role playing game? At its core, it is like a fantasy novel; it is always good versus evil – the hero against the evil tyrant, the last Jedi knight against the Empire. These are the basic elements of any good fantasy or role playing game. From there you build your characters through play and experience points, which many times can be distributed in leveling up your character in various aspects from magic use to physical prowess.
This is where Home could be used to role play in a way unique to gaming. The questing system that has already been implemented here could be used in a way that is very different from its present form. Quests are an essential part of any good RPG. In Skyrim I have heard that Bethesda plans on having an infinite amount of quests. Why not use the questing system to give us things to do within Home where we would fight to save it from invading evil by finding and implementing different pieces of a machine or magical device? We could have a new quest to do each week to accomplish this, with an associated upgrade in armor or magical clothing and weaponry as a reward for accomplishing it.
A long time ago, there were rumblings about a new space coming to Home based on a Steampunk version of the world, where there would be a game built in to save the world from an advancing meteor. This would have been a step toward a great RPG because it required people to work together as a group or party to accomplish some daily or weekly task. Here is a video that Sony released over a year ago about this space.
No one knows why this new area was never brought to Home, or if it is still in the works toward being implemented. Some Steampunk clothing was introduced quite awhile ago, but since then there hasn’t been a whisper about this great looking project.
There are quite a few people who would love to see some sort of RPG implemented in Home; after all, there is a lot in common between Home users and fans of RPGs. It would bring a whole new group of dedicated gamers into Home, and with the focus being geared this year toward adding more gaming elements, I would hope that Sony or another developer would create one for us. It could be a simple pretext that is built upon as time goes on into something a bit more complex, depending on what the developer decides to do.
Perhaps it could be a castle space with one team assailing the castle and another defending, or a series of dungeons to go through with a team, collecting treasures as you gain rank and level up. These spaces could be upgraded every few months with different challenges and dungeons to conquer, much as Sodium2 comes up with new content regularly. The new demon fighting game coming to the Granzella Edo space has a little bit of these elements built into it, but its one flaw is that it is still single player, and many role playing enthusiasts are into team play.
If Home is to pull people from this genre into the population of regular users, it would make logical sense to utilize what’s already present in Home to make it more of an MMO gaming experience. Even though I come into Home for its social aspects, that isn’t true for everyone. Creating a true RPG would bring a lot of new blood into this place we all love called Home.
March 10th, 2012 by Burbie52 | 3 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Very nice article Burbie. I too would love to see RPG-styled games in Home. I think one problem is syncing everyone so they experience the same thing. Anyone with multiple PS3s will tell you that there are lags and other viewable differences between the consoles. Irem had a space in Japan where you fought skeletons and ogres alongside other avatars. It was obvious that everyone saw enemies in different places which makes coordinated attacks impossible. I would love to go on RPG game quests with friends, but there may still be some technical difficulties to implementing them in Home.
Burbie, I love RPG as well. If you look at my video game collection it’ heavily represented. I was a Dungeon and Dragons fanatic as a kid and for me the Role Playing Games is just a really cool continuation of that. We are also a really loyal bunch of people, I mean how many Final Fantasy’s has there been? (not enough if you ask me!)I like yourself I would love to see RPG in Home.
The Questing system is the best hope for ever seeing RPGs. Building the space AND the adventure is probably too cost prohibitive right now. But adding quests to spaces is probably the way things will go for now. Watch, I’ll say that and next week Lockwood will come out with their all adventure space. I think they read my posts and just create things to prove me wrong. They are truly so superlative that I cannot estimate what they will come out with next. I’ll just be back here in the corner playing with my Demon War Horse.