FPS games pulling RPG elements as the gaming market matures

It used to be the case that RPGs were for the geeky.   One step away from sitting in a dingy basement, rolling dice while huddled over a gaming board with your mates are pretending to be Orcs and Elves…

Over time though, RPG games really moved into the mainstream gaming market – Final Fantasy led the way in recent years with a phenomenal franchise that has figuratively and literally transcended generations of gamers and paved the way for games such as Elder Scrolls to find their way into gaming store’s top 10 lists.

But there was always a stigma attached to RPG gaming – even a divide, between the RPG faithful and the console generation of FPS gamers.  That divide has been blurred over the past couple of years (mainly due to the popularity of WoW) and now we see games like Bioshock that stay true to traditional FPS gaming, but also pull core RPG elements into their gameplay concepts.

For those who haven’t played it yet, Bioshock is a FPS set in a sunken city.  The basic premise is that you are trapped and fight your way out, killing many zombie-esque enemies with the usual array of FPS weapons.  The twist though, is that the scientists in the city have developed a range of enhancements that you can make use of and these work in the same way as magic skills work in RPG games.

While the game doesn’t go “hardcore RPG” and require the player to level up, complete a multitude of long quests and develop different skills, it does bring in some of the more interesting RPG concepts and applies them to the FPS format.

For example, you can build up currency to buy upgrades (more health / mana equivalent) and new abilities.  These include the ability to set your fire on target (and laugh while they run about trying to find a pool of water to put the fire out) and then the ability to shock the target (while they are in the pool of water) to do more damage!  Even some old school RPG elements such as levitation have a nice FPS twist – you can catch grenades thrown at you and chuck them back at the enemy (similar to Half Life).

I think this integration is great!  I love both genres so I guess I get the best of both worlds from them though!

Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the next generation of online games – these should really pull together the formats and I hope we will see a nice combination of frantic FPS multiplayer action and RPG style character development and strategy.  IMO, some games are trying to do this just now but it really isn’t working (PVP in WoW is just boring and even some PVP for FPS console games can suck!).

The bridge between being able to log on for some quick action or work seriously on long term character development is still not as strong as it should be – but I think when that bridge is built we will see some interesting changes to the face of the gaming world.