The Art of the "Lite RPG"

Games
1

I’m pondering a personal video game project and so I’m researching other games in the genre, which is the “Lite” RPG or adventure/story-driven RPG.

The prime example for me are the Worlds of Ultima games from the Warren Spector era at Origin (the time of Ultima 6). Martian Dreams is, especially, a beloved game for me. Most RPGs focus on the things I just really don’t care about: random encounters, combat mechanics, deep skill trees, character specs…

What I love about those games is how they present a story in a more open-world format than a point-and-click adventure game. They use the mechanics of an RPG to create a highly interactive world and then set problems in front of you to solve, often in whatever order you like, or that you encounter them.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s ever been a huge identifiable audience for these. They’ve kind of been an evolutionary dead-end as far as the market is concerned (although some old RPGs fit the bill just because they had less to work with). I’ve been hoping that the recent RPG renaissance might result in some of them. If it has, I can’t quite find them.

Which is why I’m tapping you guys: Can anyone think of a good, story-driven, combat-light RPG adventure?

It can be turn-based or real-time. Retro art or otherwise. Recent or classic. Top-down perspective is preferred, but I’m happy to look at anything that might get the balance of story/puzzles/combat right.

Some games I think are in the ballpark: Stardew Valley, Driftmoon, Expeditions: Conquistador, Deathspank.

Any I am missing?

2

The Persona series??? They have a LOT of combat, but that’s hardly the focus

3

The Shadowruns don’t so much de-emphasise combat as emphasise setting and story. But if Conquistador’s on the list, maybe Shadowrun would do. There’s a new Expeditions game too, with a Norse setting I think.

4

New Shadowrun games and maybe Banner Saga?

5

Maybe this?

6

Fallout and the Torment games, quite probably.

I’m not too sure what is part of your RPG lite definition. Conquistador and Banner Saga are TRPGS to me, but I guess I classify from the combat first.

7

First thing that pops into my mind is Anachronox, since you can crank down the difficulty to
Make the game’s combat fairly inconsequential, making it more or less an adventure game with some combat.

I like the idea of what you’re planning. I feel like most RPGs way overdo the combat. It affects my enjoyment of stuff like Witcher 3, which I otherwise really enjoy.

8

Death Road to Canada? It’s not open world, but it feels kind of like a lite RPG, due to some procedural narrative and the way the story (brutally) plays out.

9

The main problem stems from how much work you have to do, and time you have to invest, to create art assets. Combat is a way to re-use art assets over and over. If you only use something you’ve created once, in a story driven game, it very quickly becomes a monumental task to try and make something that will last the player longer than a half hour.

Chewing through content, and the time it takes to create content, are the main reasons you see so much combat, and re-use of assets.

There have been a series of story driven games out lately, but I wouldn’t call them RPGs. They have all gotten around the asset problem by creating static scenes that you have to fish around in with point and click. Players typically spend 10-30 minutes on these static scenes. It tends to stretch things out a bit, but these games are all incredibly short in comparison to RPGs that you typically spend 40-100 hours in.

I’m not sure how you crack the chewing through content problem in a combat lite RPG, it will be interesting to see what you come up with.

10

Undertale?

11

Reading all of Nightgaunt’s post, I was thinking he was going to mention it!
There has been quite few games using JRPG interfaces and tropes to tell a story – maybe with the ease of use of RPGMaker and its assets? The just released Rakuen fits, but is actually taking some flak for having gameplay elements, instead of being purely storydriven like a To the Moon. Lisa is sitting in my backlog, and seems also to fit your description, Nightgaunt, maybe.
The free Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt, from Daniel Remar and Ludosity, features shoot’em’up combat (a common trait with Undertale, eh!) and is light on story. It is mostly nonsensical and silly, but it fits the other point and is very addicting, somehow.
I was going to say Dark Souls might be the most perfect example of what you are describing, but while I could argue it isn’t “hardcore”, I can’t counter the fact its combat mechanics are proeminently featured.
Driftmoon is such a perfect example though. Lovely game.

12

disorganized thoughts:

  1. maybe Arcanum? It has some divergent skill trees, and many encounters can be handled with combat or without.

  2. Ultrazen’s comments about reuse of art assets is interesting. Another aspect of what makes combat important to an RPG is that it’s the primary injection point for randomness, especially randomness that you can skew by being good/smart/well-equipped/whatever. If the idea is to have challenges that you can bypass without randomness by being clever, that’s more of a classic adventure game than a traditional RPG. If the idea is that you can try something non-combat, and via randomness sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and you get pushed into combat… well, that’s Arcanum, at least.

  3. That said, the tabletop RPG campaigns I’ve enjoyed have tended to be heavy on plot and problem-solving and not so much on combat, but you still need something that makes it so that being higher level is relevant other than some artificial “now you have +6 on Persuasion instead of +5” because you don’t want to do your persuading via d20 and that’s usually combat (or puzzles that require high-level magic to solve, I guess). I feel like it’d be tough to do that well without a strong text parser though.

13

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. To address some:

Persona: Man, I’ve wanted to play one of these pretty much every time one gets released because they are praised so highly. If I have a PS3 and a PSP, which one should I/can I get?

Shadowrun: These were on my list to check out. I did look at some videos, and they look like really slick throwbacks to an older style of game, which I really like and am looking to do with my project. Dragonfall is the best one? I’m sorta agnostic on combat style at the moment, but the thing I want to do has puzzle/problem-solving using the objects in the world, and a decent amount of chatting with characters. Do the Shadowrun games do any of that, or do are they a linear progression of combat challenges? I guess that’s kinda how they looked to me…

Banner Saga: I played Banner Saga and like it a lot. Definitely applicable here.

King of Dragon Pass: I have this and have tried it a few times! I’m always really intrigued by it, but I’m never quite sure what I’m doing, or how to figure out what I should be doing.

Fallout: Played 1 and 2 in the past. These are way more involved than I’ll be able to make, but you’re right that they lay down a pretty good pattern. Torment, too (I’ve only started it a couple of times, and couldn’t get past the wall of text).

Anachronox: I wish I’d played more of this when it was in the Classic Game Club. Maybe I’ll try to crack it back open.

Death Road to Canada: What is this thing?? Now I’m very curious. Can you describe it?

Undertale: Seems like Undertale (which I haven’t played) is sort of doing it’s own weird thing. But maybe I should give it a look. I think I just got it in a bundle or sale of some kind.

To the Moon and Rakuen: I played To the Moon and I just discovered Rakuen today thanks to indiegames.com. To The Moon was very much a walking simulator. I’m hoping to have more game in there, and have a more systematized world. I have heard about Lisa, but haven’t checked it out yet. Good suggestion! Princess Remedy reminds me that the Cthulhu RPG games by Remar are a good example!

Arcanum: I remember playing this a tiny bit when it came out. I feel like it’s probably too heavy on the systems for my purposes here.

14

Age of Decadence!

It’s not really all that light, but the combat component can often be avoided through alternate means - conversation, quest lines, etc. Certainly meets the requirement of being heavily story driven.

Maybe Inquisitor as well. Definitely also story driven, but there will be more combat. The combat is a bit more on the ARPG style, however and I think there is more of it.

15

I love that in a “lite RPG” thread, Fallouts 1 and 2, Planescape Torment, and Arcanum got mentioned.

Looking forward to War and Peace, Finnegan’s Wake, and Infinite Jest coming up in the lite novels thread. ;)

One interesting game that seems out of the ordinary a bit is 80 Days. It’s hard to tell if there are light RPG elements to it, but based on choices Passepartout makes, you get this intriguing feedback about “You are more bold” or “You are more intuitive.” etc.

16

Just as an aside, this game is getting a long overdue sequel (if you don’t count the King’s Bounty games) this year.

17

I’m fine with anything that leads to more people playing Arcanum. Or reading Infinite Jest, for that matter.

18

Persona 4 on PS3, which is a ‘PS2 Classic’ game. You should be able to upscale it to 720p.

19

Haha. Well, Dark Souls was brought up, too, so maybe these look “lite-er” by contrast.

I have played and loved 80 Days. There is some role-playing in there, but it’s so totally unique in its structure that it doesn’t really resemble the thing I personally have in mind, but I certainly think it belongs in the thread!

@sharaleo – Age of Decadence says “hard-core” right in the Steam store description! I did look at Inquisitor, but I’m assuming it’ll land where Underrail did, where “old skool” means “like Fallout 1.”

20

Ultrazen – You make good points, but I think there are a few ways to get around asset limitations without a heavy reliance on combat. And I say this because I think Martian Dreams and Savage Empire accomplish it.

Basically those games are adventure games built on an RPG engine. What that means is that the object interaction rules are systematized (as opposed to uniquely scripted, as in a point-and-click game). E.g., I can dig anywhere with my shovel, but I’m only going to find something if I’ve followed the treasure map to the right place. When I need to cut strips of cloth, I can use a kitchen knife or a pocket knife or a Martian pod knife, because they all have the same “cuts cloth” property under the hood. I think this kind of thing allows the object interaction to provide a lot of gameplay that normally would be filled by combat without a lot of asset work.

Of course, it helps that they’re both older games from when, arguably, standards were lower. They’re also not enormous games, unlike many RPGs, since it’s a genre that values the “epic.” I recently played all of Savage Empire in a day, with the help of my memory of past playthroughs and a bit of cluebook help to get through some of the annoying mazes.

Also, those games both have a sprinkling of combat, so they’re not entirely abstinent in that area. But, as an example of the weightiness of the systems, weapons have three or four levels of damage dealing. There are three stats and no classes. You level up, but it mostly goes unnoticed except for your increased HP.

Which all begs the question: Does anyone out there want a game like this? There’s clearly an appetite for RPGs these days, but I think a lot of that depth and complexity is part of the craving. Plus meaningfully branching storylines… another thing I doubt I’ll be able to accomplish.

If you’re curious about how combat-lite RPGs can work, though, I’d obviously recommend playing Martian Dreams. It’s free on GOG!