An MMORPG is not just a playground where you level up your hero; the game world plays a crucial role in how “at home” a player feels.
The newly released trailer for the upcoming dungeon crawler The Bard’s Tale 4 got me thinking. Normally, I rush into a dungeon in an RPG and take down the enemies that stand in my way. It doesn’t matter whether I am playing alone or in an MMORPG with friends. Monsters are cannon fodder. They give me EXP and items.
Enemies with their own personality
In the trailer for The Bard’s Tale 4, however, the creatures serve another purpose. They fill the game world with life and a credibility that is simply lacking in many games. For example, you see how the party sneaks past a horde of enemies that are currently busy with some excavations in an ancient ruin. They converse and argue. Shortly thereafter, a monster scurries past an intersection.
Shortly after, an ambush occurs. Yet even during this fight, the enemies bicker amongst themselves, insult each other when things go wrong, and wonder about a shadow that disappears into one of the hallways.
These interactions between the enemies and also between the enemies and the player group create an atmosphere that few games offer. It feels like you are dealing with living beings that have a real purpose in the game world, far beyond being cannon fodder. You almost feel pity for the creatures you have to kill in combat.
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This leads to a credible world and situations that simply linger in memory. Just defeating a horde of goblins over and over again in one place in a dungeon might be nice, but that situation is unlikely to stay in any player’s memory.
It’s indeed regular situations that one goes through, everyday life. Enemies having conversations, insulting each other, panicking, and pleading for mercy. Those are the things that stick in one’s mind. Highlights that define a game and that one fondly remembers.
A game can actually only benefit from such a credible world. Such situations are difficult to implement in MMORPGs, but definitely feasible in instances. A lively world with a believable population, where even monsters acquire real significance and personalities, is something I wish would happen more often – even in an MMORPG, and even if it means that enemies are no longer just cannon fodder for grinding.
Maybe we will see more of such credible game worlds in the future, even in MMORPGs.
