Noted CRPG enthusiast Josh Sawyer—who directedFallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and Pentiment—recently gave an interview toPC Gamerwhere he delved deep into the “crunchiness” of RPGs, a term used to describe games laden with tweakable statistics, i.e. lots of gear options and room for optimisation.
Sawyer made an interesting point regarding the accessibility of these more complex RPGs, saying the key to making an accessible RPG was not simplified mechanics, but difficulty options.
If You Can Make It, You Can Tweak It
“I think we can accomodate different types of players, but it’s not with a ‘one size fits all’ thing,” he explained. “When companies like Owlcat really go crazy on difficulty customisation, that stuff is actually great. I’d love it if more of us did that; where we really dive in and say, what do you want?”
The concept of difficulty in video games is still a contentious issue for some players, who believe that some games should be gated by skill level. This opinion is especially prevalent in the Soulslike community, though even within that genre, opinions are changing.
“I’d like us to be more thoughtful about that, because I want to support the sweaty boys! I am at least sweaty-adjacent in my own gameplay. If I don’t play at the highest level of difficulty, I’m just below it. I do get annoyed when I play a game and there’s nothing for me to tinker with,” Sawyer continued.
By sweat, Sawyer is referring to players who enjoy optimising their characters to give them the best chance of success. Of course, you want this progression to feel granular; you fail, you optimise your build, and then you succeed, but then a new challenge forces you to re-think your approach. It’s a constant balancing act for game designers.
“I think if you make systems can do all of that [crunchy, reactive design], you’re able to also make systems that support scaling and like, collapse in on themselves and simplify those things, right? It’s not that it’snowork, but it’s not as much work as you might think if you put the time into it.”
Take Sawyer’s own Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, for example. That game’s ‘The Ultimate’ challenge has only been completed by 15 players, despite Obsidian sending a handwritten letter to the first 50 players who successfully do so. On the opposite end of the difficulty spectrum, the game’s ‘Story Time’ mode makes it almost impossible to die.
“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on tuning, but I think there’s room to support both real serious, crunchy challenge, tactical combat, and also thoughtfully say ‘You know what? If you just want to cruise through this, and just kind of see the sights and go through the story, we can do that for you too. It’s okay’”.
