A couple weeks ago, I started playing Outer Worlds, and I found myself immediately pulled
in by the incredible setting, intriguing characters, and impressive writing.
After about an hour of playing though, right when I was faced with the first major choice
of the game—that being deciding whether to divert power from the corporation run town or from the
small camp set up by deserters, I realized that despite Outer Worlds having pretty much
everything I look for in a roleplaying game, I wasn’t really roleplaying.
I was just gathering information
to try to make the “best” decision.
And I find that this happens to me a lot when playing choice-based video games, especially
ones that let players create their own character.
What’s interesting is that this differs drastically from how I approach roleplaying
in tabletop rpgs like Dungeons and Dragons.
In those games, I create in depth backstories for my characters so that I can justify why
they make certain decisions, I spend arguably too much time thinking about how the events
of any given session might influence them moving forward, and I try to take myself out
of the equation and think of the character as their own person.
I have them do what they would do and not just what I think will lead to the “best”
outcome.
With video games, I do none of that.
Whether it happens right away or after a few hours of trying to play as a specific kind
of character, I almost always end up falling into playing as a variation of myself.
I make choices based on my own moral code, I value relationships that reflect the ones
in my real life, and while I am often a little snarkier than I am normally, I talk to people
in about the same way as I do every day.
Honestly, the biggest difference between me and the characters I play as in video games
is that I would never get into a fight.
Playing as yourself isn’t an inherently bad way to approach a game; imagining how
you would go about living in a fictional world can be a lot of fun.
However, from a narrative perspective, it ends up making the protagonist not really
feel like an actual character in the story.
In conventional narratives the character who changes and grows the most is the protagonist,
but in these kinds of games, the main character can so easily disappear into the background.
When the protagonist is a reflection of the player, it is harder to bring about change in them
because chances are, the player's understanding of themselves won't be profoundly changed by the events of the game.
In my experience, A title might challenge how I view certain things, but given that most of my personal
development happens outside of games, I am unlikely to go through my own hero’s journey
with every title I play.
So, despite there being almost no separation between the character and myself, playing
like this creates a disconnect between the character and the story because there is a
disconnect between me and the story.
A lot of games intentionally make their protagonists blank slates so that it is easier for the
player to attach whatever they want to the playable character, and while I get the logic
of this choice and how it may help some players feel like a part of the story, for me, it
gets in the way of roleplaying.
I find that it leads me to become passive as a player; I shut part of my brain off,
and go on autopilot.
It doesn’t take a lot of extra thought for me to be me.
And by now I'm sure some of you are asking, "Hey, Raz, if you don't like playing as a version of yourself
why do you continuously do it?
And yeah, that is a fair question
The answer is complicated.
Part of it has to do with how easy it is to fall into a passive mindset when playing games;
part of it has to do with me typically binging through titles and not stopping to reflect
on their story until after I’ve finished it; but the biggest part of it is that if
I create a character and establish a distinct personality and goals, on a first playthrough,
I have no idea if what I come up with will make sense in the context of the overall story.
With tabletop rpgs, there is typically someone playing as the game master who is there to adapt the story to work with the decisions of the
players, but, at least right now with today’s technology, it is impossible for video games
to predict every kind of character a player may want to play as, meaning stories can’t
be tailored in a way that responds to the actions and decisions of any given character.
When I think about games where I actually ended up roleplaying, almost all of them have
established playable characters.
There is space for the player to ultimately decide how that character approaches the world,
but there are set elements about them that writers can build around.
For example, when I played The Witcher 3 for the first time, I didn’t make choices as
myself; I took measure of the kind of person I thought Geralt was and then made choices
that I thought he would make.
I viewed him as someone who has spent his life being deeply misunderstood, leading to
him being cold to those he doesn’t know and incredibly protective over those who have
let him in.
My understanding of him dictated the kind of quests I completed, the people I talked
to, and even the places I went.
I mostly stuck to the main quest of having Geralt search for his surrogate daughter Ciri.
Given my assumption that he would be protective over the few people he has in his life, this
seemed like the path to follow.
As I tracked her travels, I learned of the adventures she had gone on and the obstacles
she had overcome, showing me and in turn, Geralt, how capable of a person she had grown
into.
So, despite playing most of the game as an overprotective father, when the two were finally
reunited and she began asking for advice, while my personal instinct was to be as accommodating
as possible, I felt that Geralt would most likely recognize her strength and push her
to be self-sufficient.
That he wouldn’t try to protect her from her own mistakes.
My understanding of Geralt grew, and, in turn, so did he as a character.
Him having defined characteristics made it so I couldn't just have him be a version of me, because Geralt and I are distinctly different from each other.
Also, because Geralt is a defined character, it allowed the game’s writers
to come up with scenarios that would best challenge the primary aspects of who he is.
Presenting moments that will be most impactful to a character is harder to do when the player
has nearly full control of creating them, but some titles do try to find a middle ground
by giving the playable character one or two defined traits.
This can be hit or miss.
Like, with Skyrim, no matter what the protagonist is the dragonborn which means they are destined
to one day battle Alduin.
This doesn’t really lead to any interesting roleplaying and just acts as justification
for getting the player to do the main quest.
A game that actually pulls this concept off, and I promise I am as surprised as you are
that I am about to compliment it, is Fallout 4.
The predefined aspect about the main playable character is that their child has been taken.
For me, this acted as the core of every decision I made.
I needed to find my son.
As I learned more about the world and started hearing rumors about the Institute which is
very much presented as a shadowy cabal that abducts and kills people, I also started to
develop pretty strong anti-institute sentiments.
However, once the first major plot twist is revealed—that Shaun has grown up and become
the head of the Institute, I was faced with a really tough and intriguing roleplaying
decision.
My primary motivation had been to find been to find Shaun but my secondary motivation
had been to fight against the institute.
I had to betray one of those two things, changing the character forever.
Even though I personally would have chosen to go against the Institute, I decided to
work with them for the sake of my character’s family.
These moments work so well because the writers created interesting conflicts centered around
the character traits that players would likely latch onto.
And, I think this knowledge is part of the reason that I find myself more willing to
roleplay in games with an established protagonist than games without one: it’s a safer bet
that my investment will be rewarded with interesting character development.
This mindset though has kind of led to a self-fulfilling prophecy of being disappointed with roleplaying
in certain titles.
I make the assumption that my effort won’t be rewarded or my arc won’t end up making
sense, so I don’t do the work needed to craft an interesting character, which, to
no surprise, causes roleplaying in titles like The Outer Worlds to fall short.
So, I decided to see what would happen if I fully dedicated to roleplaying as a character
I created by starting a new file in The Outer Worlds.
Having played a little bit of the Outer Worlds already, I had a decent idea of what kind
of character would fit well into the world—by that I mean making someone who is kind of
a piece of shit, so I came up with a guy named Alvric Alina who back on Earth had worked
for a mob boss named Tommy Tin Mouth.
Alvric had a long career as a bruiser type, but as he aged, he got a little weaker and
a little slower and the law finally caught up to him.
When given the choice between life in prison or being sent to the colonies, he went with
the latter.
As I played, I focused on two major aspects of his backstory: the first being that he
spent his entire life as a follower and the second being that he used to always solve
problems with his fists, but can’t now that he’s older.
I tried to give him stats to reflect these things, but because the game didn’t let
me have any leftover skill points, I had to dump a few into areas that I would have preferred
to not have as high.
Regardless, I gave him really low strength and dexterity to show how his age has caught
up to him and poor temperament to indicate that his preferred method of conflict resolution
was violence.
These two traits ended up working really well given the story of the game.
One of the first things that happens is that the playable character becomes the captain
of a ship.
Given Alvric's personality and experience with doing jobs on his own, he started off not
wanting to work with others, but as he realized that his skillset of beating the crap out
of people had stopped being viable, it became imperative to recruit a reliable crew.
Alvric’s arc became about learning what it means to lead and how to rely on others.
I tried to do various things to reflect that character shift.
I started off by only using melee, but as Alvric continued to get destroyed in close
combat, I had him switch to mid-range weapons and eventually long range ones, leaving the
heavy lifting to his more youthful companions.
Also at first, I would have him ignore the requests given to him by the crew, but as
he witnessed other leaders being callous about the lives of those who worked for them, I
had him start to take more of an interest in his—still always at a distance, but at
least taking them into consideration.
I made decisions from the point of view as someone with few morals who believed they
were never meant to lead.
This resulted in a lot of missteps for Alvric, as he tried to not only view a situation from
his point of view but also from the point of view of those flying with him, but over
time it led him to become someone who was proud to be the captain of the Unreliable.
One of my favorite things about how I approached this playthrough happened relatively early
on.
Due to Alvric having low temperament, his health didn’t automatically regenerate,
which meant the only way reliable way to get health back was by taking drugs.
Outer Worlds has a system where character can develop Flaws from repeatedly doing things,
so he eventually became addicted to Adreno.
What I love about this is that a backstory choice I made led to me approaching combat
in an inefficient way which caused him to develop an in-game flaw.
In turn, him developing the flaw is part of the reason I had him change how he approached
combat.
His character grew through gameplay instead of character interactions, which made everything
feel connected.
Also, due to his new flaw, I decided to have him buy as much Adreno as possible every time
he came across a vendor, even going as far as selling items to afford more, and he would
pursue any side quest involving medications.
On top of all that I did a lot of little things to stay in character.
Like, if a crew member was disrespectful to Alvric or someone else on the squad, I’d
have him send them back to the ship.
Or if an encounter seemed too dangerous for the old man, I’d just have him and his crew
run away.
Or if I wanted Alvric to do something very clearly illegal, like rob a Medical Bay to
steal all their supplies, I’d have him leave the ship on his own.
I took notes of every choice I made, I wrote journal entries from Alvric’s point of view,
and when I wasn’t playing, I spent time thinking about how the journey changed him
as a character.
All of this reflection led to biggest decision I had him make.
Because started off as a follower looking for someone to lead him, he immediately latched
onto the man who brought him out of stasis, Dr. Phineas Welles.
But as Alvric took on a leadership role, I started to feel like he’d be less and less inclined
to do the bidding of others, and I eventually had him abandon the main questline in favor
just being the captain of a ship; taking jobs, making money, and supporting his crew and
bad habits.
From that point on I just took on sidequests until I had my fill.
And, yeah, it wasn’t perfect.
I had to make up a few conversations in my head, there was no real climactic end to the
story, and I ended up missing out on the intended story, but it made sense for Alvric to follow
that path.
While I wish my approach would’ve led to a more climatic ending, I did walk away with
an experience I don’t think I’ll forget any time soon, and I can’t really say that
about the various open-world games where I played as a reflection of myself.
I’m not going to say that this kind of approach is the best way to play a title like The Outer
Worlds.
The actual act of roleplaying is interesting to me, but I imagine there are a lot of people
that don’t really care about it all that much.
And, I get that.
Some people just play games to chill.
My time with Outer Worlds was a lot of things, but relaxing was not one of them.
I paid attention to every little thing happening around Alvric, I never did anything that didn’t
have a clear purpose, and I spent hours outside of the game trying to get into the head of
someone that I made up.
It was both rewarding and exhausting, and it is not something I plan to do with every
single open-world rpg I play.
In all honesty, focusing so much on roleplaying can lead to railroading certain quest lines.
Playing as Alvric did pull me into the story in a way no video game had before, but it
also led to me not exploring the vast landscapes of each planet or engaging with a majority
of the content in the game.
There is a give and take to every approach, and in the future, deciding whether I will
play as a reflection of myself in order to experience more content or as an original
character so that I can dive deep into roleplaying, will depend on what I am looking for at that
moment.
As technology continues to improve, video games will start to provide role playing experiences that offer
a similar level of depth as tabletop rpgs.
Stories that perfectly align with the development of the protagonist won’t only exist in titles
with predefined playable characters.
It will be awhile, but I really do think it will happen.
With that said, even though those kinds of games are stil a ways off
what I learned from my time with Outer Worlds is that players can
close a surprising amount of that gap by putting in the work.
Video games are an interactive
medium, and the more the player chooses to interact with it, there’s a pretty good
chance that they will get more out of it as well.
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For all of you who watched this video, thank you; you’re incredible, and I appreciate
you.
More videos are coming soon, so ya know do what you will with that information.
Until then, I hope you have a great day and/or night, and I will see you in the next one.