Obsidian is one of the most interesting video game developers when it comes to the world of role-playing games and one of the most important designers working for the company says that its future games will try to make players unable to cheat the game systems.
Speaking during the GDC 2011 European event, J.E. Sawyer has talked about how bad
role-playing design actually encourages players to cheat the game systems and exploit the game world to their advantage.
The developer said, “All it causes is this: ‘Yay! I’m gonna reload the game!'
He added, “There’s nothing to prevent me from reloading. Any of these checks where there’s something important on the line… It just results in degenerate gameplay behavior.”
Sawyer pointed to statistics that have little impact on actual gameplay as another problem with a number of role-playing games and praised Mass Effect 2 and the way it makes actual shooting skill important as a way of solving this issue.
The veteran developer also believes that players should have enough information in role-playing game so that they do not create characters that cannot progress past a certain point and suggested that all games should have a way to change choices linked to attributes and skills.
Obsidian is well known as being a studio that creates role-playing game and that tries to push the limits of the genre, although their titles are often affected by bugs on launch and sometimes their ambitions are bigger than the resources they can use to deliver on them.
Their most recent effort is Dungeon Siege III, which tried to re-invent the old franchise while emphasizing the loot collection mechanics.
At the moment, they are also working on delivering more content for
Fallout: New Vegas, the mix between action and role-playing game published by Bethesda.
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