Acts! It used to be just those old-timey theatre productions that had them, but as in many respects, videogames have ni…
  • NuXCOM_90PercentEnglish
    71·
    9 months ago

    It has been genuinely exciting to watch all the metaphorical bugbears (rather than just the literary ones) of CRPGs get exposed to a wider audience with BG3.

    I think the last time we saw something like this was the rise of DLC that “ended the story”? And everyone was freaking out while basically the entirety of the ARPG genre quietly hoped nobody noticed. Because it really was nothing new. Diablo 2’s final act was the expansion pack. Same with D3 and I want to say both of the good Dungeon Siege games? Hell, Divinity 2 did it too and so did basically every game in the genre and even most RTSes. Not to mention a lot of FPSes (even if the story ending expansion pack was usually farmed out to a support studio and disowned when the game was successful enough for a sequel…).

    Same here. Part of it is very much the nature of the grand stories that CRPGs want to tell. They are based on tabletop gaming where an “act” might coincide with someone leaving the group, new people joining, or everyone really wanting to play a different game and the GM trying to make it “work” without needing to throw out all of their planning. And that is why the overall story for a LOT of CRPGs is

    1. Protagonist is a special special person who now meets a crew of really fun companions and does some stuff for them. The overall narrative is built around a bunch of seemingly unconnected events that will converge with the introduction of the big bad
    2. The protagonist is pushed to a position of power and influence. Generally as some form of feudal lord who spends almost no time ruling and all the time adventuring, but now has a home base and possibly some dialogue quests so that people can take a break from endless combat rolls. Lots of companion/NPC quests to flesh them out and give you a sense of agency as you decide if your fuck buddy will be a lovable terrorist or a mean terrorist. The narrative is built around that big bad starting to directly attack the protagonist.
    3. Oh no, the big bad has fucked all that shit up and now we are in a different dimension where the protagonist has no responsibilities other than to push The Big Bad’s shit in. Companions are now finishing their storylines and, depending on how broad the roster is, might outright leave the party.

    And, personally, I like that three act format. It pairs very well with a “fork join” model for narrative and “Choice” and gives the best of all worlds. But, especially in an era of open world sandbox everything, I get that people don’t have the patience for it and shaking things up is important for the overall genre.