IS VIOLENCE REALLY THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE THINGS? DON’T FIGHT ME ON THIS!

Open world action RPGs need to drastically rethink their relationship with combat

Everything was planned out: I was going to be a chatty character, guiding the Unreliable across the Halcyon system with wit, charm, and sticky fingers. I purposefully neglected my strength skills as I wanted the challenge of only using violence as a last resort. Suffice to say, things did not go to plan.

Once I got to tinkering, my base body stats no longer mattered. After picking up a machine gun, it was all over for every marauder long before they crossed paths with my space pirate. That early-game challenge of skulking around backdoor security systems prone to exploding intruders on sight became a distant memory. In its place I found myself pushing my sizeable advantage in samey firefights.

To The Outer Worlds’ credit, Supernova difficulty significantly raises the stakes. But I find myself growing weary of the typical action roleplaying game combat formula. So, I’d like to make a radical suggestion: let’s axe it entirely and see what’s left.

Let’s be clear: getting into fights is core to the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto, so I’m not suggesting their future instalments should make you a pacifist protagonist; I’m not saying we should remove all violence but more suggesting a significant reframing. Too often in games like Bethesda’s premier adventures violence feels inconsequential or plays a poorly defined role within the story.

NATTER, NOT BATTER

As janky as it is, the way The Council allowed other mechanics to take centre stage by moving its focus away from combat systems still intrigues me. When things do get violent, it’s an impactful re-establishing of the stakes as you are the wimpy Louis de Richet, and will probably lose a fight if you don’t think quickly and speak even faster. How Disco Elysium approaches its handful of combat encounters, engineering them to be fleeting, with a wealth of unique animations for maximum impact, has me feeling far more optimistic about what lies ahead for the genre. But with Bloodlines 2’s desire to make you feel like a creature of the night baked into everything you do, maybe I’ll be singing a different tune by the end of 2020.