(Don’t) Give Me That Old Time RPG Combat

We’ve been clamoring for the triumphant return of turn-based combat systems in modern day CRPGs for years now, and inXile’s Wasteland 2 Kickstarter project appears to be headed down a path that will make that dream a reality. Of course, there will always be naysayers, which is about the only title I can offer the author of this piece on Joystiq that complains about the “slow-paced” and “unrewarding” combat systems of yesteryear that only existed due to “technological constraints”. That’s the logic he uses to explain why Wasteland 2 will ultimately be a failure if it mimics “old time RPG combat” in the era of the first-person shooter, anyway:

The original Wasteland was released in 1988, towards the start of a transitional era for role-playing games, both technologically and creatively. The core mechanic of role-playing games of the era — combat — started to shift, and lose some of its importance.

1980s RPGs generally served as simulations of Dungeons & Dragons-style combat, with some exploration. Part of this was creative. After all, by far the simplest component of tabletop role-playing to translate to computer was the most mechanical, the statistic and dice-based combat systems. But it was also based on technical restraints. Those early games had to fit on tiny (in bytes) floppy disks, yes, but they also couldn’t work with much speed at all. Real-time movement, animation, combat, were all largely impossible.

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Part of the reason menu-based combat is dead is that, well, it’s not very good. It has a few factors working against it from the start: it’s more abstract than most other forms of combat, it’s inherently slow-paced, and it doesn’t allow a huge amount of variety or depth. Those difficulties could be overcome, but not when attached to huge, repetitive battles. This is one reason that many of those 1980s games are virtually unplayable for many people (including, often, myself). The grind of combat is simply unrewarding. When my fellow game history connossieur Richard Cobbett attempted to replay Wasteland recently, he found the same was true for that game.

The second slow-paced (but still actually popular) mode of combat was the tactical combat utilized in the Ultima series, as well as The Magic Candle and the Gold Box games. The added depth of positioning and geography tended to make this tactical combat more satisfying, and it can still be seen in pure turn-based form in a variety of different game styles (especially Japanese, to be fair), while some components, like the importance of positioning and protecting weaker party members, are part of most combat systems.