Good battles in shooter are only enhanced by great introductive and threading stories. Good stories do not make a shooter. And they do not make a RPG.
This is precisely the core of my complain with Bioware games post-Infinity Engine (at least, in games where the game was "about the story"). The story provides direction, impetus even, but it is not the core of the experience. No more than having a really strong cast of supporting characters is the core of an RPG. Obviously feelings differ these days and with the "what is an RPG?" waters being muddied up by every developer that wades into the pool, but my personal feeling is that an RPG provides some sort of opportunity for the player to act out a role. Whether the role is that of a more predetermined character as in The Witcher or the Blank Slate kind of character you'd create in an Elder Scrolls game, there's some sort of player input as to the definition of the character themselves. Moral choices. Class (this being the biggie in the earliest RPGs: there WAS often no story in early RPGs, just your choice of Wizard, Fighter, Thief, and that was enough). An world open enough that it allows the player to simply
do what their character would do (or, if they're roleplaying themselves, what THEY would do). The whole Narrative angle is extremely new, but it doesn't bring anything to the RPG table. RPGs were simply the genre that used it earlier than the others.
Now, I don't have any real problem with the redefinition of the specifics of a marketing brand so long as it still manages to differentiate the genre from the others (what's the point of having a term for it if it doesn't, right?), but at this point, the term "RPG" is simply too broad to have any practical use for me. These days, I also look for the terms "old-school" or "retro" or "party-based" or "classic", because the new definition of the RPG genre is inclusive of a degree of narrative that I feel doesn't have anything to do with "roleplaying" at all.
Strip away the plotline, and there's really not a lot to a Biwoare game. The combat is usually all right -- engaging, fun, but not a lot of depth or challenge, usually -- and the settings haven't been any sort of priority for them since BG1 (for me, BG2 SoA marked the real start of the "levels-first, world second" design approach, and they've been paring down their environments ever since, culminating in the corridors-and-arenas in recycled-maps schtick that DA2 foisted off on a largely unsuspecting public... though they shouldn't have been if they'd been paying attention to 1) history and 2) development cycles). The characters are where the "story" is at in a Bioware game these days. That's the only place imagination is still allowed to play without the game ruining the fun.
Honestly, though, I'm not sure I can really call Bioware's games "story-driven", anymore. I know that's been their marketing tag-line for the last decade, but for me, "story" includes setting as well, and as mentioned, Bio doesn't do Setting. That puts their games, in my personal opinion if no one else's, in the realm of PLOT-driven. But with ME2's story being found more in the NPC acquisition and loyalty missions, and DA2 being... what it was, with its so-called ten-year narrative and its evident lack of an overarching storyline, I almost have to wonder whether the time for this discussion hasn't already come and gone, at least as it applies to Bioware games.
If anything, I'd say that Bioware's games are not longer Story-driven, no longer even
plot driven, but are now simply
character-driven, as if just one more aspect of what a good "story" entails has been stripped away.
I can see a couple benefits to focusing on character development, rather than plot-lines, but for me it explains a nagging sort of dissatisfaction I've had with the recent Bioware offerings... even outside of the obvious "rushed development" sorts of issues. The emotional resonance simply isn't where it used to be for me, even for video games. They're wonderfully written characters, but that's all they are to me: characters on a stage, playing their parts. Most of that feeling, the sense that they're just actors rather than people, boils down to context. As well written as Grunt and Thane were, they were elements that stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the experience. They all were. They had no place in the world of their own, because there was no world to speak of. There never is in a Bioware game. Just little character sketches on a textured background. Contrast that with Triss, Roche, Letho, and in my mind the difference is pretty stark. One game succeeds with flying colours, the other falls flat. The characters are similar in their writing and the amount of screen time and interaction, but its their place in the world that brings them to life. Hell, even with SoA... I HATED Bodhi; hated, feared, and pitied Irenicus, held Anomen in just a bit of contempt, but they all attained the trappings of people, rather than just actors. Alistair, Morrigan... very well realized in an of themselves, but they were all just islands. Once the dialogue screen closed or the movie was done playing, their place in the game was gone, too.
Anyway, Character-driven games.... that's what bioware does now, I think, if their last two games are any indication. Almost pure soap-opera material, save for the action element. I know they've said they're aiming a the Call of Duty demographic, but I can't help but wonder if their method isn't putting them much more toward the Bored Housewife demographic instead. Would certainly explain the obsessive fixation the board members have with romance, at any rate.
And yes, I know. tl;dr
