Professional Documents
Culture Documents
html
One issue I want to tackle before looking at the history of the action RPG is how to define the level-up.
Critics and fans have argued about the point at which an action game has enough RPG content that it
becomes a true action RPG, instead of just being an action or action-adventure game. (David Brevik
himself pondered this question in another interview [25] without coming to a conclusive answer.) For
example, many question whether The Legend of Zelda games are really RPGs. I say that they are,
because Link can gain more health, magic, strength, etc. over time. These gains are usually not
connected to experience points, nor are they part of explicit “character levels,” but does that mean the
game is not an RPG? For me, Zelda is still an RPG, because these things are still level-ups. A level-up
is a permanent, periodic increase in the power of a player-character. When Link gains more heart
containers, his maximum life is permanently increased, and that permanency makes it a level-up.
When he gains the use of the Master Sword, it represents a significant increase in power over the
starting sword, and he has it for the rest of the game. These gains are all connected to finding loot, but
as we’ll see many more times in this book, loot is often the most important kind of level-up. Link makes
one or more of these gains in every major dungeon. The period is simply measured in dungeons rather
than being measured in EXP. Whether or not you agree, this definition is enormously important to the
rest of this book.
The combination of RPG and action is not only for the action gamer’s benefit, however. Designers often
found that action game skills could be developed right alongside RPG stats over the course of a game.
Demanding higher levels of thumb-skills from the player is a great way to defeat one of the RPG’s
1 of 3 06.05.21, 16:37
Reverse Design: Diablo 2 - The Legacy of Action Games in Diablo 2 http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_D2_4.html
greatest problems: power creep. From the very beginning of RPG history, clever players have found
ways to exploit the vast, interlocking systems of RPGs to become unstoppably powerful. That
exploitation can be mitigated, however, if the player cannot execute many of the action-game skills
required to take advantage of it. Diablo 2 isn’t designed to demand a ton of dexterity from its players,
but they absolutely need better command of the action skillset to survive their first trip into the final
difficulty setting. That said, what Diablo 2 really gains from action games is the revolutionary challenge
curve which they invented. At its most fundamental level, Diablo 2’s difficulty structure looks more like
that of an action game than that of an RPG, even though it leans more heavily on the latter genre in
terms of mechanics and goals.
2 of 3 06.05.21, 16:37
Reverse Design: Diablo 2 - The Legacy of Action Games in Diablo 2 http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_D2_4.html
This causes each level in the game to become more difficult as the player progresses through it.
Rather than correct this error, Nishikado kept it as a design feature. Indeed, he embellished it by
making each successive level start at a slightly higher level of difficulty, thus reiterating his
serendipitous difficulty structure at the macro level.
I call this up-and-down motion in videogame design Nishikado motion. Nishikado motion is the
fundamental structure that underpins nearly all of mainstream videogame design. Even today in the era
of extensive player psychology research and interest-curve diagrams, Nishikado motion remains the
central pillar of mainstream videogame design.
Want to read more? The rest of this section can be found in the print and eBook
versions.
3 of 3 06.05.21, 16:37