With Fallout 3 coming out last week, and Valkryia Chronicles on the way in just a few days, my excitement for new RPGs is hitting a high point that I haven’t seen a long time. There is a distinct style to their play that allows you to really shape your own story, to an extent, and experience something drastically different to someone else depending on your play style. The open world concept that many games try and bring into the 3D landscape seems to be a lofty goal, but if we look back at when the bug-prone explorable worlds of today weren’t a reality, and the cinematic experiences that we’re thrown into were more defined by the individual encounters you had in the world itself.

Even within what most would consider to be the RPG genre, in that you play the role of specific character in a (mostly) turn-based world, there are defined stories for you to play out. Many Japanese RPGs have you take on a specific character, play through their story, join up with other well-defined characters, and the story essentially will play out the same no matter what. Ambiguity and open play styles, like that we’ve seen in the Fallout series, though, allow you to define your own story and the kind of person that you want to be. While the concept of Good V. Evil may be a bit overplayed in many Western RPGs at this point, Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer tells us about how his students write and shape their own characters out of the actions they take, and how different those roles will be.

We all want to play the hero, the one taking charge whom the world revolves around and influences all those within that world. Whether it is destroying a village or saving it, we want to impose our vision of our character and the grandeur they exude upon the game world we have been thrust into. That personal story line is what really defines the RPG for me, and though it isn’t necessarily a traditional consideration for being part of the genre, it seems to be the most critical for actually creating your own role. Story-driven strategy is always an epic thoroughfare and it’s no fault to many of the most beloved games within the RPG genre that character you play as has their history and actions essentially shaped by how the designers intend it to be, but there is a lot to be said about knowing your own intentions and why you make every move you make, instead of assuming that your characters has their own darker or deeper motivations that perhaps you haven’t been shown yet.

One of the most interesting parts of narrative is the why. The reasons that shape each characters actions, whether understood by the player or not, should be at least somewhat defined to make the goals all that more important. Making sure you have consequences for your actions are also important to keeping that why and character’s story alive. If you intend to be evil, and your actions are evil, the world should react to your intentions and your actions appropriately. It all goes towards that immersion factor that game designers tout so readily in their pitches, and the further that developers get into allowing you to shape your own actions and see the consequences, the better experiences we are able to extract from their games. It’s why the classic Fallout series and RPGs of that age still hold a special page in many gamers’ books. It wasn’t about the beginning and the end, it was about the journey and what they did with it. It was about who they were.