RPGs are known for their numbers. The numbers that go up when you win a battle. The number of dialogue choices available in any given conversation. The number of levels you need to gain to take on a tough boss, or the number of endings available, or the number of skills you’re able to have equipped at one time. But part of what makes anRPGsuccessful is impossible to quantify. It’s something simple, but also indefinable. How does the game feel to play in the downtime between big events? What does it feel like to inhabit the game’s world? Are there characters that are worth talking to? And is the place where they live interesting?
Sea of Stars is a great RPG. I said so in my reviewhere. Ialsosaid that one of its only real problems is that its towns just aren’t very good.
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I grew up onPokemon. Red, Blue, and Yellow were the first RPGs I ever played, and they set a standard for what this kind of game can do with its inhabited areas. In thoseGame BoyPokemon games, you could enter any building (unless there was a story reason that it should be locked) and talk to the people inside. They often only had a sentence or two to say, but that small amount of dialogue helped make the world feel alive.
Sabotage Studio made Sea of Stars in the style of RPGs from the ‘90s, but it only manages to capture this aspect sporadically. LikeCyberpunk 2077, there are a lot of doors that are locked for no reason — especially in Brisk, a port town you reach early on. The result is that towns that could liven up and flesh out the world feel like a bit of a letdown instead. Playing Sea of Stars has me thinking about what exactly it is that makes a good RPG town? Is it just that you can talk to everybody? Is there more to it?
It depends on the kind of RPG we’re talking about. When playing a huge, sprawling, 3D open-world game likeThe Witcher 3, it doesn’t seem fair to expect each NPC to have fully-voiced dialogue. If an NPC only exists to sing a few lines of “Singin’ in the Rain” as I pass by in Novigrad, so be it. The ambient chatter thatFinal Fantasy VII Remakeuses is a smart way to build out a world without having to give each NPC a conversation tree. In fact, I would love to see more developers outright steal this presentation.
Others have gone further.Rockstar Gamesshouldn’t be the standard for the industry because it has so much more money and time to perfect projects than most other developers (and its pursuit of that perfection has, historically, led toreports of crunch). ButRed Dead Redemption 2is the rare open-world game where you may talk to every single person in the world. Even in a city as sprawling as Saint Denis, everyone is able to talk to you. That makes the world feel real, but it also isn’t possible for most studios.
At the moment, I’m playingBaldur’s Gate 3. It’s a game, like Red Dead Redemption 2, that would be difficult for most studios to pull off, with seemingly endless possibilities stretching out from the Nautiloid crash site where the game begins in earnest. Your early adventuring can take you to a few different settlements. There’s the Druid Grove, the Blighted Village, and the Goblin Camp. Each has tons of NPCs, and there are lots of small interactions that can play out with each of them. One child merchant might distract you while another steals your gold and hides it away. You might attempt to guide an Owlbear through a racetrack in exchange for its freedom. You might walk in on an ogre banging a bugbear in a barn.
Ultimately, a game can accomplish a similar feeling with a much smaller budget. An old man sitting in his house in Pokémon might not do anything but say one line. But if the line is memorable, then it helps to paint in that corner of the world. Or, the developers could place a useful item in the trash can in the corner of the room. Or the character could be running around the house because they’re late for work. None of these things require cutting edge tech, just a little thought about how to build the world out. Wherever you go, it feels like there’s stuff — however small — going on.
In the end, that’s all I really want from an RPG town. The “stuff going on” might be that Team Rocket is operating out of the supermarket at the center of town. Or, it might be that a Druid is locked up in the dungeons below a goblin encampment. When a location and characters come together in the right way, it can make you feel like you’re part of something bigger; like you’re more than just a number in a world where numbers go up.
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