Editor's note: It may seem like an unlikely match, but Alex argues that first-person shooters are often more immersive than role-playing games. Shouldn't that be the other way around? After all, RPGs are ostensibly all about stepping into someone else's shoes. -James
I have nightmares in which I direct my body using Battlefield: Bad Company's Xbox 360 controls. One by one, the buttons stop working, and I feel helpless.
When I'm awake, the head bob, movement speed, and jump height are all perfectly tuned to push me into my nameless soldier who's weighed down by his gear. Even without 3D or motion control, it's the closest I've felt to sharing someone else's body.
By comparison, Fallout 3's Lone Wanderer feels like an unmanned drone. Role-playing games should immerse the player more than any other genre. But when I'm not listening to dialogue or reading diaries, I feel like I'm controlling avatars by remote, or worse -- like I'm giving them instructions by email.
At GDC 2010, Virtusphere demonstrated their virtual-reality hamster ball with a rudimentary first-person shooter. Likewise, when someone invents a proper holodeck, they'll use the genre that already gives the player the most control over their avatar and the simplest method of interacting with their environment.
But look at old episodes of Star Trek -- at least as many holonovels are character-driven RPGs as are shooters. The best RPGs have huge, detailed worlds that beg us to explore them. Too bad the tools we have are so clumsy. Too bad (most of) the best shooters have clumsy writing.
Immersion comes from many places. It could be from a well-placed audio log, a complex party member, or a stunning futuristic skyline. In FPSs, it comes from having complete control over a body and the tools (guns) to interact with the world.
Why can't RPGs have both? No matter how great Fallout 3, it's not a good action game. Too often, RPGs that aspire to be such games produce third-rate results. Reviewers praised Mass Effect 2 for its shooting, but I can't help wondering if they were all secretly thinking: "...for an RPG." More importantly, though, Shepard moved with weight and banked around corners like a human.
More than anything, I love depth in games' characters, dialogue, and universes. But until I can explore one using a control scheme as deep as developer DICE's Battlefield series, I'll feel less like I'm actually in those worlds with those characters. I don't need to have a gun, but I want my avatar to feel like a real person -- not only in the way they talk and act, but also in the way they move and feel.
I don't know. While I'll agree there are lessons to be learned, I don't exactly expect Infinity Ward-level shooting in a Bethesda or Bioware RPG. I'm also wary of notion that seems implied that anything short of something that's at the apex of a genre isn't good. It's a like hearing people that railed on Treyarch as a bad developer for not being Infinity Ward. Granted, I'm not arguing any RPG has had COD: World at War level-shooting either, but it wasn't like ME3 or Fallout 3 had awful shooting mechanics either. They were good. Not great, not transcendent. Just good.
Honestly, I haven't exactly seen DICE put together something with the ambition in terms of genre mixing of Fallout 3 or ME2 either to not feel part of why they are so good at the stuff they do isn't just because they are focused on just putting out a shooter. It's extremely easy to put together a brilliant shooter mechanic and design when that's mostly all you're doing from a gameplay standpoint. They tried to switch things up with Mirror's Edge and do something part platformer, part melee, and that included a shooter mechanic, neither aspect of the gameplay was exceptional.
I honestly can't think of many games that truly try to blend genre's (rather than tacked on "elements") that do both exceptionally well. If you can find one, you're probably finding a diamond in the rough.
It's not so much that DICE are great at genre mixing (I liked Mirror's Edge more than you seem to, but it's definitely flawed) or making single-player campaigns (Bad Company 2 is like a shooting gallery) -- it's that the feeling of movement is so nuanced.
If an RPG could do that, then the action bits and the dialogue would seem less detached. Like I said, it doesn't have to be an FPS -- just make the walking-around bits feel like I'm controlling a real person.
Also, I loved those RPGs I mentioned. Just not for the shooty bits.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Mirror's Edge quite a bit. I thought it was a good game that didn't quite master anything it attempted to do in way D.I.C.E. normally does. Which, granted, is a daunting task considering what they were attempting to do. All the credit in the world for having the guts to try it in the first place.
I've been thinking about this question a lot, too--the idea of first person shooters as more immersive than RPGs. (I've actually been playing around with the idea of making a first person game where you have one bullet for one purpose in the game, and make everything else story driven.)
I don't know if developers are guilty of following gaming conventions too closely, or if gamers are guilty of not embracing first person "experiments" enough. We want immersion, but since first-person games that don't have "Call of--" or "Halo:-- " at the beginning tend to be overlooked, what we've gotten so far has been so-so