A Fading Genre

by Stu

When I imagined the future of gaming some 10 years ago, I was most excited to see what the tactical role playing game (TRPG) would evolve into.

Bored with the traditional turn-based battle screen, the combination of a playing field with positional meaning and the classic level-up, turn-based RPG system was exactly what gamers needed back then. Each map feels like a focused landscape, framed at the perfect angle for tactical command. The “slice of the world” isometric map is a unique and purposeful style—not inherently complex, but with the potential for huge depth.

Isometric RPGs were especially satisfying to me, worlds created with blocks of terrain: river, lava, rooftops, each with values that gave the environment gameplay meaning, as well as a visual stimulation of the imagination.

Standouts in the genre often involved the ground you’re standing on in more than a quantitative way. Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, gave players the ability to become a bender of the elements—geomancers could inflict status effects on their enemies based on the kind of tile they stood on.

The reality is that most modern tactics games are remakes and ports of old classics limited to handheld devices or fast-paced genre hybrids like Valkyria Chronicles that don’t hit the same notes as the classics. Many of these ports, remakes and hybrids are quality games, but I can’t help but want something fresh—the next evolutionary advancement of the tactics game. Instead, the genre has faded into near non-existence.

An American Thing

 “Publishers run a mile from anything with turn-based mechanics – it is regarded as too niche. RTS games pretty much killed off turn-based strategy games in the mid-90s–but now even RTS games are regarded as niche.”

––Julian Gollop, 2010, creator of X-Com, the popular 1990s turn-based isometric tactics game.

When Gollop says “too niche,” he means, “too niche for Americans.” In Japan, turn based games fare much better critically and commercially. There is a whole country of people who find turn based games equally as fun as action based ones (or so the sales say). So, why is it that these games are considered “niche” in America?

It would be pretentious to say that developers are trying to appeal to the lowest common gamer—it’s more to do with money than manipulation. There was a time when Call of Duty was not the poster boy for the aggressive male gamer. Still, at some point, the shooter series acquired  that “target audience”—giving it wizardly money making powers.

TRPGs, despite featuring many wizards, do not have a target audience. Turn-based games in general do not enjoy a large target audience. There is, however, a target audience for shotgun-facilitated zombie murder and bloody dragon screaming smashing games that don’t exactly demand turns or tactics.

Oddly enough, it’s exactly this evolution that is now paving a new route for TRPGs. Ever since cookie-cutter shooters and RPGs that ride the line between movie and game too closely (that’s looking at you, Final Fantasy XIII) started flooding the market, gamers have been experiencing a grass roots movement as indie developers move into the spotlight.

This is evidenced by Sony courting indie developers for the PS4, while Steam is reigning supreme with programs like Steam Greenlight. There have been some very definitive indie games, including Braid and Binding of Isaac, causing gamers to take notice, thus initiating the rise of the small developer .As we expand our pallet with the new, exciting tastes of indie games, we will undoubtedly become eager for many of the genres we once thought should be saved for other media. Difficulty is no longer taboo, as challenging rogue-likes and even AAA games like Dark Souls begin to tout how difficult and even “badass” their challenges are.

Blurred Genres

Tactics games traditionally fit somewhere in the overlap between strategy, RPG and simulation. Most are small-scale warfare simulators, attempting to emulate all of the tactical decision that would occur during a real situation. Two distinguishing factors that always stood out to me were squad based gameplay and free positioning in a three dimensional environment. These two aspects are essential to consider when playing a tactics game—your squad must operate together through complimentary character classes and the formations you execute must be essential for success. Turn based mechanics alone do not make a tactics game.

Both aspects were refined and adopted in some different genres. Valve recently took advantage of an innovation in the RTS genre by developing DOTA 2 and bringing a “cult” hit to  full potential—turning it into a mainstream game. The game is known for its strong (and perpetually angry) community and the squad based gameplay that is arguably easy to learn and very hard to master. In many ways, DOTA 2 is the closest thing to the modern version of the tactics game, as it has a focus on tactical positioning of different specialized squad members. DOTA 2 illustrates that tactics can function in the absence of turns.

With turn-based gameplay, you trade the animation, adrenaline and the reflex and replace it with heaps of details that make every decision require a large amount of thought. A simple action in a turn, like moving three spaces forward, requires you to consider all of the possible outcomes of that move. You have to visualize all of the opponent’s most likely responses and position other units in a way that will account for those. It sounds exhausting and slow, which some of the classic tactics games, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre have most certainly been criticized for. But now we have so many options, assuming the market allows it, the genre is begging for refinement.

Adrenaline, however, is where the money is at.

How do you make a game that is mostly time spent thinking, not reacting, adrenaline filled? You write good characters that have a real risk of dying. Losing a character in Tactics Ogre might generate enough remorse to get you to restart the entire battle.

With today’s technology, we can make the permadeath mechanics featured in those games mean more by implementing a good autosave feature. Dark Souls is a good example of this, as the game makes it virtually impossible to “re-load” and try again, forcing you to accept your fate as it unfolds, whether it be horrible or glorious. It makes every event more impactful, makes every step more important and every checkpoint more relieving. Consistent, reliable autosave features are just one example of a technological feature that hasn’t been applied widely, despite its ability to hugely enhance gameplay experiences.

Worlds Apart

The Final Fantasy Tactics series has been limited by its banishment to the handheld realm which brings with it inherent technical limitations. The games revolve around the battle system. Everything else was an exercise in menu navigation. Tactics games deserve the full world treatment, complete with exploration or some sort of interaction with the highly detailed worlds—anything to make winning battles less meaningless. Add a reliable and unforgiving autosave feature and suddenly you can’t take back your tactical misjudgement. That’s especially painful when you realize it’s your own damn fault that your best soldier is facedown in the mud (mud that failed to protect him from a giant fireball).

An open world would do wonders for the environments that you, as a player, would interact with in a tactics game. Imagine if terrain not only output a boatload of stats and advantages, but allowed your characters to climb trees, dive under water or use shrubs as camouflage.

The tactical RPG deserves the same modernization many more mainstream genres enjoy. As Americans become more comfortable with games that challenge the status quo, they will seek out interesting and fresh ways to play alone and with others. The tactics genre has the opportunity to become a huge hit, whether as a tactical story-driven adventure or as a multiplayer game that emphasize tactical preparation and innovative environment-driven competitions. It may be up to independent developers to show the big publishers that it can be done.