Filed under: Features, PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, RPGs
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on “Western” role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
It took four or five levels gained for me to realize something was different. I was playing the Diablo 3 open beta last weekend, merrily leveling my monk up, when I noticed that half the time a gained level just happened, without me needing to do anything. Sometimes I could choose new skills, yes, but I wasn’t given five points to distribute to my core attributes like Strength, Vitality, etc. There’s a little bit of text that notes which attributes have improved, but that’s all. Diablo 3 isn’t the only major recent role-playing game* to downplay the importance of its characters’ core attributes. Mass Effect 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, both released within six months of Diablo 3, avoid core attributes entirely.
Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 don’t include attributes at all, in fact, something that would have been unthinkable for a computer role-playing game at the dawn of the genre. But the lessened importance of attributes isn’t necessarily a sign of the simplification of the genre (although that’s often part of it). Instead, it’s part of a trend in which skills, not attributes, serve as the most important statistical measure of an RPG character.
Continue reading Why skills are in, attributes are out in modern role-playing games
Why skills are in, attributes are out in modern role-playing games originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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