A few weeks ago I was stuck for something to play, after all, game releases over the last few months have been scattered to say the least (at least for the 360). So I went through my old games to try and find something that I hadn’t played in a while, and my eyes landed on Fable 2. Fable 2 was a great game, with its corruption and reputation system, it seemed that you couldn’t do anything greedy or selfish without feeling the repercussions. I truly enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone who is only a newly discovered gamer or maybe just wanted something fun. But when I put it into the disk tray I realized something, something so horrible that I almost slapped myself in the face (but I didn’t, that would hurt).  I had committed the blackest sin when it comes to RPGs, playing the core storyline of a game and then shelving it.

I had done barely anything outside of the quest to thwart Lucien. I hadn’t unlocked any of the Demon Doors, I hadn’t bought any of the large buildings such as the Cemetery Mansion or Brightwood Tower, and I hadn’t, even once, ran around in my underwear slaying bandits. This was a shock to me, but also a welcome surprise, as I now had several hours of fresh content to play and spent the next week re-absorbing the beautiful landscapes of pre-revolutionary Albion.

This got me thinking a bit, how many RPGs suffer the same problem? I personally am a huge RPG fan and so it never really crossed my mind that people would leave parts of the game out until I did it myself. Then my thoughts drifted to Skyrim, Bethesda’s epic RPG coming out on the eleventh of November this year. This game apparently has a campaign that is 100+ hours of single player gameplay, which has been a relatively consistent theme in the recent elder scrolls games and I doubt I was the only one who nearly messed their pants when they heard of its release. But what if the same thing happened to Skyrim? Its core storyline is apparently only about 30 hours of the total play time, which means that there are 70+ hours of the game that isn’t the story of the Dragons. So what would happen if I decided to shelve it after this was accomplished? Would Vlatko Andonov (President of Bethesda Sofltworks) climb through my window and force me at gunpoint to finish it?

Now if Bethesda were smart (and I’m pretty sure that they are) they would make certain core missions to hard for people to complete unless they do some side missions, get some XP and beef up their skills. This will pull people into the world and get them invested in it, making them want to spend as much time in the land of Skyrim as possible. Now this does sound like something that should be obvious but way too many RPGs suffer from the tendency to flat-line after the core storyline is done, and it’s going to be a refreshing splash in the face if Bethesda manages to keep it fresh and entertaining after we have saved the land.

Now there’s one part of this game that has the enormous potential to deliver just that, and that’s the Dragons. Now I know that when I say that some people turn off and say “OMG, what a nerd. This guy just wants to see some dragons” and that’spartially true… or maybe abit more than partially.

we're going to get to kill these

But I do have serious grounds for geeking out as much as I am about the inclusion of Dragons in this game. Dragons have a special spot in western culture as being a creature that inspires fear and at the same time awe, they are always described as being intelligent and mighty and the men in mythology who have managed to slay them have gone down as courageous and powerful. Now ask yourselves this, when was the last time that this theme was successfully transported into a videogame. Dragons in videogames have always either been a basic kind of enemy, in the sense of a Blue Dragon or a Red Dragon or a Green Dragon etc. in which case they haven’t been anything special. Or they have been Bosses, in which case you need to beat them to continue and as we all know far too well, boss battles have a tendency to be a series of gimmicks (with the odd exception) which takes away from the awesomeness. Bethesda is promising a series of creatures that are intimidating and fierce, and HUGE, they’re bigger than anything else that these games have seen before (kinda like a boss) and are randomly generated in a range of different shapes and sizes (kinda like a base enemy). They’re going to come after your hero with the intention of making him a nice little snack between the flock of cattle they just ate and the village they are just about to burn down. One thing’s for sure though, if it’s done well this is going to be a serious game-of-the-year contender.

I’m going to leave you today with a link to a song that was recently composed by a gamer named Danny Wiessner, for IGN’s podcast BEYOND! episode 200. It’s about RPGs and games in general and is a must-listen/download for anyone who calls themselves a gamer.The World Is Saved: Gamer Music Video