Playing a Role, or Does the Role Play You?

eToychest has published an editorial called “Playing a Role, or Does the Role Play You?”, in which they point out the role-playing “flaws” in RPG classics like Planescape: Torment and Fallout. This might not sit well for many of us who are fans of such games:

…Akalabeth, the precursor to Ultima, was totally derivative of Dungeons and Dragons. But while the pencil-and-paper RPG scene rapidly expanded to fit every niche imaginable – horror, intrigue, adventure, and romance – their digital counterparts stayed as close as possible to plate mail and red dragons.

There were certainly some deviations from this, such as Wasteland and the subsequent Fallout franchise, but these attempts were both rare and typically conservative in how far they dared to push the genre envelope. Typically, these efforts found a less than enthusiastic reception from audiences despite widespread critical acclaim. The ones that succeeded were the ones that stayed closest to the molds set by the swords and sorcery epics. Fallout may be about a post-apocalyptic future, but the gameplay doesn’t stray far from the dungeon crawling epics of the day.