Noted CRPG enthusiast Josh Sawyer—who directed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and Pentiment—recently gave an interview to where he delved deep into the "crunchiness" of RPGs, a term used to describe games laden with tweakable statistics, i.e. lots of gear o༺ptions and room for optimisation.
Sawyer made an interesting point regarding the accessibility of these more complex RPGs, saying the key to making aꦏn accessible RPG was not simplified mechanics, but difficulty options.
If You Can Make It, You Can Tweak It
"I think we can accomodate different types of players, but it's not with a 'one size fits all' thing," he explained. "When companies like Owlcat re🌺ally go crazy on difficulty custo🐟misation, that stuff is actually great. I'd love it if more of us did that; where we really dive in and say, what do you want?"
The concept of difficulty in video games is still a contentious issue for some players, who believe that some games should be gated by skill level. This opinion is especia�﷽�lly prevalent in the Soulslike community, though even within that genre, opinions are changing.
"I'd like us to be more tho𒐪ughtful about that, because I want to suppo🌸rt the sweaty boys! I am at least sweaty-adjacent in my own gameplay. If I don't play at the highest level of difficulty, I'm just below it. I do get annoyed when I play a game and there's nothing for me to tinker with," Sawyer continued.
By sweat, Sawyer is referring to players who enjoy optimising their characters to give them the best chance of success. Of course, yo༒u want this progression to feel granular; you fail, you optimise your build, and then you succeed, but then a new challenge forces you to r⛦e-think your approach. It's a constant balancing act for game designers.
"I think if you make systems can do all of that [crunchy, reactive design], you can also make systems that support scaling and like, collapse in on themselves and simplify those things, right? It's not that it's no wor🀅k, but it's not as much work as you might think if you pღut the time into it."
Take Sawyer's own Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, for example. That game's 'The Ultimate' challenge has only been completed by 15 players, despite Obsidian sending a handwritten letter to the fꦉirst 50 players who successfully do so. On the opposite end of the difficulty spectrum, the game's 'Story Time' mode makes it almost impossible to die.
"I wouldn't say I'm an expert on tuning, but I think there's room to support both real serious, crunchy challenge, tactical combat, and also thoughtfully say 'You know what? If you just want to cruise through this, and just ♔kind of see the sights and go through the story, we can do that fꦺor you too. It's okay'".
Fallout: New Vegas
- Released
- October 19, 2010
- ESRB
- ♏ M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs 🍸
- Developer(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Obsidian Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
Your comment has not been saved