r/gaming • u/Asianboiforwhitedad • 10h ago

Kingdom Come Deliverance studio co-founder says a lot of RPGs are 'still games for teenagers,' and that he's 'tired of all the RPGs where you are this chosen one'

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/kingdom-come-deliverance-studio-co-founder-says-a-lot-of-rpgs-are-still-games-for-teenagers-and-that-hes-tired-of-all-the-rpgs-where-you-are-this-chosen-one/
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u/slip_and_fall_school 9h ago

In a way, he's not wrong.

However, even in games like KCD 1&2 where it is explicitly and repeatedly made clear that you're a nothing and nobody you still get to a point where Henry is a terminator.

Not really sure how to balance the "just a regular guy" ethos and the wish fulfillment and player agency that most gamers desire, or at least I haven't found a game that hits the sweet spot.

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u/7screws 9h ago

Well.. you could also spin it a little that if you put the time in you could become something might be more realistic

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u/NiceTrySuckaz 8h ago

Hell yeah. A game where you grind for twelve years to get promoted to junior level executive at a bread distribution company

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u/7screws 7h ago

The end end game is getting laid off at 50 and trying to find a job in the AI market

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u/LeGrats 6h ago

But the side quest where you cheat on your wife with the housekeeper and destroy your marriage and finances was pretty well fleshed out and entertaining

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u/Coffeeey 6h ago

Ooooh look at Mr. Money Bags here who could afford the housekeeper DLC

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u/Jay_Nova1 3h ago

I mean now we're just doing Schwarzenegger RPG simulation at this point.

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u/REDDITATO_ 1h ago

A simulation of an RPG.

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u/TheBrickWithEyes 6h ago

I love a good fantasy game!

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u/Coenl 2h ago

At 44 this was way too spot on

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u/WM_ 2m ago

That's how the sequel game starts with a fresh beginning.

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u/Giovannis_Pikachu 6h ago

"this guy's taken Roy off the grid. He doesn't have a social security number!"

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u/machine1979 3h ago

Pressure washer simulator and after 9 months of daily samey tasks you get canned

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 3h ago

So that's it after 12 years? So long? Good luck?

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u/Cyberslasher 21m ago

That's just RuneScape 

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u/Altruistic-Ad-408 9h ago

This is my problem with criticisms of the chosen one trope, it's always coming from people that are fine with plot armour, action hero protags and so on, every character is chosen by the author, making it official in universe just lets you do more with it, if need be.

I'd rather see people play around with expectations than deny them on principle. It's juvenile to call it juvenile, especially if you're not even trying to do something deeply mature, dude makes a power fantasy about swordfighting.

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u/PowerSamurai 9h ago

I think you are misunderstanding the issue. The issue is not that you are the main character in the story since that is always the case. It is that it restricts role play, who your character is and in game it is a tired trope.

It is interesting to explore fantasy worlds through several lenses and especially in an rpg to define yourself within the world through your decisions.

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u/kueso 9h ago

Yea, I think there’s a difference between “you’re born to save the world” à la Legend of Zelda types of stories and the “you’re put in a situation where you get challenged and have to make the best of it”. I think both tell hero stories but one has more moral quandaries and leaves room for difficult decisions.

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u/FarrMixture 8h ago

Yeah, that distinction makes a lot of sense. Being thrown into a situation and rising to it feels way more satisfying than being destined for it from the start

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u/Korashy 53m ago

Kinda depends.

Destiny can be a bitch.

Kratos tries so hard and still can't escape fate.

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u/VruKatai1972 8h ago

Or, you get a game like BG3 that was so well written, the player can take any moral path they want and the story allows for those choices.

As others have said, this isn't actually a gameplay issue as we're always the player. It's really a writing issue in the stories told and that's where player=savior is the real implication of any trope. Some of the best stories that games get built around have really ambiguous endings and journeys to those endings.

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u/EremiticFerret 7h ago

It isn't *only* a writing issue, it is a development issue as well. You need the time and resources to develop all those side paths and different approaches to the problem.

It is far, far easier and faster to develop the game so you can't avoid the Druid Grove, then the Druids are invulnerable so you can't be evil and wipe them out and the forced into the "find Halsin" quest. Arguably the writing is the easiest part going from that to what we got.

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u/FlailToMace 6h ago

Or, you get a game like BG3 that was so well written, the player can take any moral path they want and the story allows for those choices.

That has yet to be anywhere close to done. BG3 is a great game, but the writing doesn't take into account that healers are a thing. It is like how DBZ tries to pretend there are stakes, when multiple forms of dragon balls are a thing. Only in reverse.

Divine magic that can bring people back from the dead is a thing. I quite specifically created a character that can do such a thing. They even have a scroll of true rez in their backpack. It can bring someone back to life even if there isn't a body.

Someone got hit with an arrow however so nothing can be done. They shouldn't have been an NPC.

BG3 might be the least railroaded campaign in any D&D video game, but it is still a railroad with a pretty simple track. An option to bottom for a bear doesn't change that.

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u/s0ck 6h ago

That magic exists, and as per the rules, typically comes at heavy cost, far beyond what your average adventurer could afford.

GMs typically waive that part away, but the rules as written define the setting and world. Hence, getting hit by an arrow and dying isn't unusual. It's still the expected outcome for the overwhelming majority of characters in the setting.

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u/FlailToMace 4h ago

That magic exists, and as per the rules, typically comes at heavy cost, far beyond what your average adventurer could afford.

... unless a cleric PC who is super into healing just happens to be twenty feet from you.

BG3 is expansive. You can kill anyone, talk to anyone, flirt with anyone, and even engage in acts of pseudo bestiality. It is however on rails that disallow basic interactions. Such as using the ability you have specifically to stop the thing that that is happening in front of you from happening.

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u/Normal-Cellist205 3h ago

A player character of sufficient level can pretty easily heal or even resurrect people. Yes, in lore healing magic is rare and expensive and difficult to learn, but that doesn’t translate to the actual mechanics of D&D, where a PC can learn that magic on level-up and use it all the time. 

By extension, BG3 has the same problem, only it’s worse obvious because it’s a video game. A sufficiently quick-thinking dungeon master can change the story or circumstances so that a key NPC being revived does not break the story. A game can’t change on the fly, so when you try to revive an NPC whose revival would break the story, the game just says "nuh uh, you can’t use that magic this time" without elaboration.

It’s an unavoidable problem but I can 100% understand why it might be frustrating or immersion-breaking.

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u/Deaffin 5h ago

Or, you get a game like BG3 that was so well written, the player can take any moral path they want and the story allows for those choices.

Granted, I only played an hour or so of that one, but that's absolutely definitely not true. I'd be hearing...things, about it. Pseudo-bestiality is certainly a choice, but it's far from encompassing the full spectrum of moral dubiosity.

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u/ash_ninetyone 7h ago

Unless somehow someone manages to make a story work where you're just some guy that happens to save the world whilst the actual hero takes the credit.

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u/Magnusg 3h ago

There's a legitimately mediocre isekai that covers roughly how I feel about this.

It's called something very similar to: I can believe I'm trapped in this stupid otome game

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u/urixl 8h ago

I think Gothic does a really good balance between tropes.

Nameless Hero knows he's just nobody, a convict thrown in the colony, where's no return from.

He mocks this trope every time, yet agrees to do the quests.

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u/Chowder110 3h ago

And then there are games like fable

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u/Demiurge_1205 8h ago

Exactly. Cyberpunk 2077, to name a mainstream recent example, does give you a legendary macguffin that everyone wants. But you get it thru sheer dumb luck, and all that you ammount to is to make some sense of your current condition by the endgame. Yes, some world changing events do occur, but mostly because you are a cog in a larger machine that moves accordingly.

I also remember Zombi U, which functioned a bit like a soulslike: whenever you died, you character was dead for good, but a new character would appear to pick the slack and your leftover gear.

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u/SpeculativeFiction 8h ago

>This is my problem with criticisms of the chosen one trope, it's always coming from people that are fine with plot armour, action hero protags and so on, every character is chosen by the author, making it official in universe just lets you do more with it, if need be.

I don't see a lot of criticism of chosen ones in games, honestly. Usually it's people who prefer power fantasy vs those who favor gritty realism mechanics and difficulty.

In books, the Chosen one trope is looked down on these days for a few reasons.

  1. The chosen one is essentially boring and talentless, and being the chosen one is the only thing that makes them stick out, which makes them a boring character.
  2. They're a Mary Sue.
  3. They're a decently interesting character, but being the chosen one still robs a lot of the tension or meaning from their character. After all, if they're the "chosen one" then weren't they fated to win anyway? "Fate" being a thing means the plot is basically on rails, so what's the point? Even if victory isn't guaranteed, it rarely feels that way.
  4. Prophecy (about chosen ones or in general) is useless or easily averted. Game of thrones has a bit of this. Some minor things come true, but otherwise it's either so vague it could be anything or trivially diverted. Plus there are tons of false dreams/prophecies. In which case it feels pointless.

I think the only examples I like are people spreading false prophecies about a chosen one or altering real ones.

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u/Sharizcobar 6h ago

I like the Dark Souls/Elden Ring version of the trope.

You might be the Chosen One. A lot of others like you thought they were. We’ll know if you succeed in doing it.

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u/Sageypie 5h ago

Feel like the one game that did the best at balancing this was probably Outward, but even then, you get juuuust enough power creep that you're left deciding the fates of towns and whatnot. And this was a game that was explicitly set out to be about the nameless nobody and all that jazz. Creators wanted the player to not be able to get apocalyptically overpowered.

It's just that...there's still progression. That's the whole issue here. You can't have progression in a game without the player eventually becoming overpowered in some way. And an RPG without said progression just feels lousy.

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u/Chowder110 3h ago

I feel like bg3 does it well

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u/goatanuss 8h ago

Reminds me of that life sim Real Lives where it’s based off actual statistics and demographic data of real life and you get fun gameplay like “you were murdered at age 4”

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u/Arch____Stanton 7h ago

I suppose you could have a game wherein the player doesn't participate and simply watches what happens.
Generally, those kinds of games are called 'movies'.

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u/Kougeru-Sama 6h ago

if you put the time in you could become something might be more realistic

that's not realistic at all, though lol