Exactly!

[the_gneech]

What Mumbles says about Skyrim here? My big problem with sooooo many games (including every MMO ever).

Doing the same task with different class mechanics doesn't roleplaying make. Having a different character, being reacted to as is appropriate to that character, choosing to approach problems in a completely different way, or even choosing to say "To heck with this quest, I'm going to do something else!" ...that's roleplaying. Which is why no matter how pretty they get, almost every computer RPG fails at actually being a RPG.

-TG

Comments

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

It is true. It is very hard to make a video game with anything like the amount of choice and variation and reaction as true roleplaying.

However, SWTOR, Dragon Age, and other Bioware games get closer to real-roleplaying status than many other RPGs do.. and they're getting better over time. In the DA games, people react to Mages, especially, often completely differently than they do to the other classes, and there are racial changes.. and there is some places where choices you make actually affect the story properly-like.

Even in SWTOR, where actions can't affect the main story of the game because it is a classic MMORPG, there are choices you can make that will affect your character's own personal story.. my Knight made Master at the end of my class story, but one of my friends' Knights didn't.. possibly because he hooked up with his padawan, which is just wrong. Also there are quite a few supporting characters alive in my version of the story that aren't in others.. a lot of Knights don't bother trying to save and turn the Sith they run into during the story.

It still isn't anywhere near the choice in a real tabletop or live RP, but it isn't half bad either. Bioware does good. If any current video game company can make a real RPG, it'd be them.

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

Any PC or console RPG is only a program, and a program can only anticipate what the programmer tells it to.

Anyone who's played or DM'd a tabletop game for any length of time knows how often and how freely players can go way off course from the projected scenario of the game. For example: in a Vampire: Masquerade game I played a lifetime or three ago, the Storyteller (via the city's Prince) sends the party to meet with someone he's hiding as a refugee from the local Tremeres...and the Malkavian decides after about three seconds of travel to divert to the airport and steal the lights off one of the emergency vehicles because it's "pretty". Hilarity - and a massive violation of the Masquerade - ensued.

"...or even choosing to say "To heck with this quest, I'm going to do something else!"..."
I am actively doing this with one of my Skyrim characters. Somehow I wound up on a sidequest involving (and requiring) acts of cannibalism. As I am unable to remove the quest from my journal, I am simply going to ignore it for the rest of that character's life.

[jamesbarrett.livejournal.com]

Ah, Namira and her ring. I've made it my policy to just have my character say "yes, boss" to every otherworldly entity he meets, thus avoiding any unpleasant conflict with them cause they're gonna use me no matter what I do anyway ;) But I'm also a rotten sneaky theif/assassin, so doing those nasty things is just the way things are for my little Redguard hellion.