The origin of RPG (Role-playing Game) goes back to the wargame in tabletop games. In the 1970s in the United States, the Beat Generation had three main hobbies: smoking pot, listening to Bob Dylan, and playing wargames. The Lord of the Rings was also popular in Europe and the United States during this period, and together these factors gave rise to RPGs.
While wargamers got together to push models against each other and show grand battles on the front battlefield, some players had the whim to try to simulate skirmishes. They first tried to control one model each in combat – with one Viking warrior against one Saxon warrior, rather than a group of Viking warriors against a group of Saxon warriors. But then players decided that was boring too, so a player who loved medieval settings and The Lord of the Rings, Gary Gygax, incorporated some new elements into the wargame, such as replacing the stone throwers with fireball magic. His ideas became more and more popular, and people started playing new kinds of wargames. Gary and his friends released this wargame rules set in 1971 and named it Chainmail
Later David Arnason joined Gary’s coven and came up with a new idea: to give the game a story and make it more interesting. After improving it, they released Dungeons & Dragons (DND) in 1974, which started the history of RPG games. Since RPGs were initially seen as a new type of wargame, in order to distinguish them from the old wargames, which focused on achieving strategic goals, the emphasis was placed on the part of the game where only one character played, which is how the genre came to be called “role-playing”. In order to distinguish it from the video games that came later, RPGs that were played on a table with pen and paper were called TRPGs (T means Table).
With the sad feeling of the last fight, producer Hironobu Sakaguchi named his latest game Final Fantasy, intending to finish this last work which represents Square’s dream of game and then change his career. The game was a huge hit, and the game with the name “Final” was released generation after generation, and with the continuous innovation and breakthroughs in the design of the Final Fantasy series, it pushed the development of JRPGs, and the Final Fantasy 6, which was usually released in 1994, is considered to be the masterpiece of JRPGs.
The design of Final Fantasy gives JRPGs distinctive features that are completely different from those of European and American RPGs. First of all, the game changed the first-person view of the battle to third person, the player squad and the enemy in the screen divided left and right, making the battle process more intuitive and strategic; players can see the full body image of the character, strengthening the character image and sense of immersion; and designed a different from the European and American RPG transfer and magic system, creating a new route for the future development of RPG.
The Rise of ARPGs
Perhaps it was because the fun of RPG was not direct enough in the earliest days, so some people tried to integrate RPG with other game play, of which ARPG (A refers to ACT, action game) became one of the most influential genres. Japanese ARPGs are represented by works such as The Legend of Zelda series and the Isu series, while the representative of European and American ARPGs is the famous Diablo series.
In 1986, Nintendo launched The Legend of Zelda (in fact, The Legend of Zelda was born a little earlier than Bravely Default). Instead of switching to a battle screen, players fight in the game by attacking or dodging monsters directly on the map. Zelda” turns the deep and difficult RPG graphics that players originally saw into an action game-like style of instant animation, greatly lowering the threshold of understanding the game and making it easier for players to feel the fun.
In the design of “Iso”, the concept of “affinity” is emphasized, how is this reflected in the game? First of all, the game does not emphasize the operation and the difficulty of killing enemies, players rarely encounter the situation of stuck, but try to keep the player in the operation process of tension and pleasure; secondly, the game can be archived at any time, so that players have a full sense of security; furthermore, the simple and fresh style of painting and melodious music to create a relaxed and immersive dream journey for players; finally, the overall length of the game is very moderate, not The overall length of the game is very moderate, so that players do not feel bored and tired in the long journey. This kind of design for players soon paid off in the market, making it the most popular RPG of all time. How popular was it? In more than a decade, the first generation of “Iso” has been ported to FC, MD, SFC, PC-E, SS…… and other successive generations of consoles up to the PS2 version, with audiences across all kinds of platforms.
European and American ARPG influential works came much later. The most important one is “Diablo” launched by Blizzard in 1996, whose mouse instant operation and 60-degree top-down stereoscopic projection graphics style became the standard for European and American ARPGs. And Diablo 2, launched in 2000, became the pinnacle of the category and still has a huge impact today.
The Evolution of European and American RPG Design
In 1994 and 1996, Bethesda released the first entry and the second entry of The Elder Scrolls series. It created a new genre of RPGs: open-world RPGs, featuring huge explorable areas and a non-linear multi-plot, multi-mission gameplay, which allowed players to freely assign their characters’ attributes, visit the game’s areas at will, and complete various quests, large and small.
In 1997, Interplay developed the post-apocalyptic RPG “Fallout”. With an open-ended plot flow design, players can complete missions in a good or evil way with different styles in the game, while the game innovatively adopts a career-free design, players only distinguish different specialties in terms of abilities and equipment.
In 1998, the sixth generation of the three major RPGs, Magician’s Gate, was released: Order of Heaven. It also used an open-ended quest flow design and a vast world that allowed players to explore freely, thus allowing Magician’s Gate to continue its past glory for a while before the full arrival of the 3D era.
Produced by BioWare and published by Interplay, “Bode’s Gate” completely erased the last boundary between turn-based and real-time games in December 1998.
The late 1990s were a time when RTS (real-time strategy games) were all the rage, and the design of Bode’s Gate was more or less inspired by it. Bode’s Gate borrowed the RTS-style mouse interaction and handled the start of each character’s turn individually, completely incorporating and transforming the traditional turn-based RPG rules with complex rule determination into a real-time game.
In addition to the design innovation, Bode’s Gate also obtained the license of Dungeons & Dragons, highly restored many of DND’s rules and settings, and built an open world using the complete worldview it has accumulated over the years. This approach both evoked the DND sentiment of traditional RPG players and shaped the good reputation of the work with design breakthroughs, making “Bode’s Gate” an unprecedented success.
In 2000, the sequel “Bode’s Gate 2: Shadows of Anm” was released, and this work is the sealing work of the “Bode’s Gate” series. In the past, European and American RPGs were often criticized for their simple plots and thin characterization, but “Bode’s Gate 2” completely overturned this impression with over 1.3 million words of scripted dialogue and intertwined plot branches, with flesh-and-blood NPCs and protagonists having to make soul-torturing choices from time to time, pushing the status of the “Bode’s Gate” series in the history of RPGs to an unprecedented The
The 3Dization of RPG
With the introduction of the fifth generation of console SS and PS in 1994, game consoles began to officially enter the era of 3D, and the emergence of Voodoo graphics cards in 1996 made the PC follow suit. However, the first games to eat 3D were mainly FPS and ACT, while the maturity of 3D technology had a substantial impact on RPG genre from 1997.
In 1997, Square released a 3D version of Final Fantasy – FF7. Not only did the game’s graphics become 3D, but also introduced 3DCG animation in the narrative and plot advancement, bringing the sense of immersion and immediacy of the plot to a whole new dimension. This has made FF7 a huge success in the global market, becoming the first 3D RPG with significant impact.
In 1998 Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the first 3D game in The Legend of Zelda series, which became the highest rated game in history by the media. Ocarina of Time solved many of the operational challenges of 3D games in one fell swoop, laying the groundwork for what would become the full-scale 3Dization of the gaming industry.
European and American RPGs were represented in 3D after 2000. 2001 saw the release of Microsoft’s 3D ARPG Dungeon Siege, 2002 saw the release of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and the same year BioWare released Winter’s Eve, a legacy of the Bode’s Gate series. Because most of the design challenges had been solved before, the 3D of these works mainly brought about improvements in picture quality and a better gaming experience.
The birth of early MMORPGs
Innovations in technology can often bring a series of changes in related industries. At the turn of the century, in addition to the development of 3D technology, another important change was the popularity of the Internet. This change set off a new revolution in the game industry, and in addition to changes in platforms and channels, it also brought about a new direction in game design, and thus MMORPGs were born.
The prototype of MMORPG is MUD (Multi-User Dungeons), the basis of MUD operation is the BBS bulletin board system, which is commonly known as the forum, MUD emerged in the late 70s, so the style is a bit like the 70s RPG, using text and character drawings to represent all the content. Text MUDs, known as “mud” in China, were popular among niche groups as an alternative to massively multiplayer online games before the advent of online gaming. Through 16 years of observation and analysis of player behavior in MUDs, MUD designer Richard Bartow came up with the famous “Bartow Theory” before MMORPGs were introduced, classifying players into four types: achievement, killer, exploration, and social, which provided important guidelines for future MMORPG design provided important theoretical guidance.
The aforementioned “Father of Genesis” Richard Garriott founded Origin in 1983 (acquired by EA in 1992, Origin is now the name of EA’s online gaming platform), and continued to produce the Genesis series until its 8th generation (1994). Origin was also originally going to produce a sourcebook for Gen 8, but the project was cancelled due to the poor sales of Gen 8. Against this backdrop, Richard began to think about a new way forward for Genesis.
The “King of Britain” has appeared as an avatar of Richard throughout the generations, and since this NPC is set to be immortal, there have been special players who have tried to challenge the rules of the game to kill him over the years. The purpose was to determine how many players could play at the same time. While Richard was using his GM character “King of Britain” to start his scheduled speech on the wall of the game’s castle, a player threw a “Wall of Fire” spell at his location. When the screen went black, Richard realized his character was dead and looked at the development team and said, “Oh my God, what do we do now?” They later found out that the server had just gone down because of too many people, Richard forgot to check his character’s “invincibility” option when he logged back in, and the server lag caused the surrounding guards NPCs to not be activated, and the more unpredictable was the player’s uncontrollable behavior. This incident made game designers think about how to deal with various challenges to the game rules in MMORPGs.
In March 1997, a Korean, Kim Saw-Chen, founded NCSoft, intending to have a career in the direction of Internet of Things. But within a few months, the Asian financial crisis swept through Korea, and Kim had to start rethinking his business direction. The following year, an online game called Lineage was born. This Korean national online game adopted a Diablo-like interface and pure mouse operation, had a complete guild system, and created the first large-scale PVP national war and cross-services war system. The Asian financial turmoil instead led to the huge success of Paradise, as Korean men began to have no money to go out to golf courses and squatted at home and in Internet cafes to play the game. After that, Korean online games began to form an independent genre, and later works such as “Hot Blooded Legend” had a profound impact on China.
In 1999, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) released Endless Quest, which made MMORPG one of the most popular game genres in the world. This game well preserved the evolved European and American RPG style with a huge open world and personalized characters, changed the original European and American RPG design of multi-character squads into a multi-player squad design requiring professional cooperation, and had rich dungeon adventure content while well controlling PVP behavior among players.
Before the launch of Endless Quest, most European and American players did not know what online gaming was, and the producers themselves felt that the game would thank God as long as it survived six months. It was also the game that gave the most inspiration to the later World of Warcraft, creating such mechanics as RAID, the copy system, the hate system, the reputation system, the macro command system, etc. that have become the bones of today’s MMORPGs, and it can even be said that the core gameplay of World of Warcraft was first created and shaped in Endless Quest. But this game also has many unfriendly aspects, such as the dialogue with NPCs in the game, which requires players to type as if they were talking to a real person, lending keywords in sentences to trigger NPC interactions.
In 2000, the Japanese company SEGA launched “Phantasy Star OL” on its sixth generation console DC, which was the first MMORPG on a home console. “Phantasy Star OL” was closer to an action game, where multiple players could team up to challenge mission levels, which also laid the foundation for a series of console action online games such as “Monster Hunter”. (To be continued)
