(Video Game) Open World RPG: About the Storytelling Medium, How You Write it, and Reasons it May Fail Your Story

22 Dec

Written By Josh

What is a Medium?

Click HERE to read more about story mediums.

What is an Open World RPG?

To those unfamiliar, an ‘open world’ game is one where the player (or audience, if you will) has almost complete free reign to explore the map of the game, regardless of narrative need.

An RPG (short for Role Playing Game) is a game where the player/audience inhabit not just the narrative body of the protagonist but also have some autonomy over the characters health and personality. RPGs are often characterised by skill trees, that let the character develop to suit the players playstyle. More recently they also include basic health and wellbeing mechanics, prompting players to eat certain foods for boosts or to restore health, or even skinning deer to make a coat to survive in colder terrains.

The marriage of ‘open world’ and ‘RPGs’ is known, would you believe it, as an open world RPG. Open world RPGs are… big. And getting bigger. As technology develops, the worlds are becoming more detailed, more densely populated, and packed with more story than ever. The protagonists that inhabit these worlds are at the same rate becoming more powerful and more vulnerable. Superpowers, if possessed, are stronger and more devastating than ever. Weaknesses, which all good protagonists have, are woven into routine mechanics with effortless ease.

As the character learns, grows, and pushes forward in the story, more sections of the open world become accessible, and the environment around the protagonist changes. In many modern cases, the playable environment is completely unrecognisable by the end of the main campaign (or A storyline, if you will).

You can probably tell by now that open world RPG’s are dense. Packed with story, intricate gameplay mechanics, and a vast world to explore, there’s a lot to draw writers in to a project like this.

But, is it worth it?

Examples of Open World RPGs

Red Dead Redemption 2

The Witcher 3

Skyrim

Horizon: Forbidden West

Baldur’s Gate 3

Benefits of Writing an Open World RPG

Worldbuilding and Environmental Storytelling

If you walk down the high-street, you’ll see (hopefully) a long row of open shops. Each of those shops stock different items, and are staffed by different people. The floors above, which you’ve likely never paid much attention to, may house flats, or offices, or the lair of the goblin king.

How can you tell?

Well, there’s shadowy figures scuttling behind fluttering curtains, there’s strange music being played in that direction, and there’s scratch marks up the wall leading to… an open window!

As a writer, you don’t have time in most mediums to explore that goblin lair above the local chemist. In an open world RPG, you’re encouraged to build your story not just through your protagonist, but through the world they live in.

Story length is entirely up to you

As a general rule, use big worlds to tell short stories, and small worlds to tell big stories. As a universal rule, ignore the general rule. The fact is, the world is yours to do with as you please, as is the story you tell within it. Some of the best open-world games have surprisingly short main campaigns, something they get away with by packing the world out with side-quests, B storylines, and an expansive roster of characters. Other stories tell long, winding, expansive stories in a thinly populated world.

It's your story, as long as it fits, it’ll work.

Increase sense of audience ownership and investment

If you think that Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t make you feel like a cowboy, you’re insane. We, as players, are not actually cowboys, but we all populate that map with our own version of Arthur Morgan.

When audiences feel they have control over the world as well as the character they’re playing, it becomes their world. When your audience feels that sense of ownership, they’ll be more likely to buy your book set in the same universe, or watch your TV series. Why wouldn’t they? It belongs to them (more on that later).

Almost limitless scope

Technology is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to creating continent-sized maps for modern open-world RPGs. If you’re a writer that plays open-world RPGs, you’re likely familiar with the routine gaming articles about ‘things you missed’ in a game that released half a decade ago.

If you wanted to, you can pack so much into a single gaming experience that only the devoted or unemployed will be able to discover it all, and you can always hang it over them that there’s one thing they missed (whether they did or not).

YOU can live in the world YOU CREATED

Okay, forget the audience. Forget the story. Forget all of it for a minute. You’ve made this world. You’ve poured months, years of your life into it. Maybe you spent three months designing the species of tree that populate your woodlands, or drawing up plans for ancient temples. If nothing else, a AAA open-world RPG gives you the unique opportunity to walk in your world. Yes, you can walk on a film set, but that’ll be dismantled and thrown in storage. This digital world? It’s always 30 seconds away.

Drawbacks of Writing an Open World RPG

You can’t do it all yourself

From an employment perspective, you haven’t got a hope of being the sole writer on an open-world RPG. It’s too big. You may be senior on the writing team, or relegated to a consultant, but you will not be the god of this particular work.

Some writers relish that opportunity to collaborate, and should, but early career writers should be aware that Ubisoft aren’t going to give you a million dollars, free narrative reign, and command of their hundreds of game designers.

Storytelling vs Gameplay

Speaking of Ubisoft, another drawback is the inevitable battle between the story you’re trying to tell and the game the designers are trying to make. Your idea for a level or mission may be exciting, but if it requires a gameplay mechanic that the game has never used before and won’t use again, it’ll need to be chopped or changed. Every secret cave, item of clothing, and pane of glass will need to be built, designed, and implemented. So, be mindful of that.

Production Timeline is Incompatible with other mediums

Big games, these days, should take around five years to make. The good ones, anyway. So if you’re telling a story in a shared universe, this is one medium where you can’t pivot half way through production because of narrative changes. There is some wriggle room in this, but if your games protagonist is a side character from your film series, and you’ve had to kill them in a last minute re-shoot, your RPG is going to fall apart.

For this to work, you need a solid roadmap, or at least a deep understanding of what kind of shared universe you’re making.

Limited to life cycle of gaming consoles

It’s not open-world, but how many times have Naughty Dog re-released The Last of Us? A lot. Why? Because it’s a damn good game that tells a damn good story and the creators don’t want it to be left behind by the obsolescence of their original console.

Also, money.

Most games, though, do get left behind. They’re a moment. The Matrix had games that charted important narrative beats in the franchise. With the death of the early 2000’s consoles, those games became unplayable, and The Matrix is now inherently incomplete.

Maybe you’ll find a creative way to solve this problem, but for now a video game is an enormous commitment for a result that may not survive a decade of technological advancement.

Audience Genre Expectations

Gaming audiences, am I right? I said I’d come back to audience ownership, and here it is. Gaming audiences are some of the most self-righteous and opinionated audiences on the planet. Certainly online, their priority is to scrutinise, with enjoyment of their game a secondary endeavour. If a skill tree is too simple, or a world is poorly populated, it will take the studio years to recover, if at all. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. After a flawed launch, the game was review bombed into obsolescence. While it’s recovered its credibility now through massive gameplay and narrative expansions, the damage done was unimaginable.

There are gaming mediums where experimentation is welcome, open-world RPGs are not one of them. To survive, you must evolve, deviation is rarely welcome on Reddit.