Fallout co-creator Timothy Cain has released another fairly depressing video about the state of RPG game development today compared to his heyday in the late ’90s to early ’00s. According to Cain, RPG developers aren’t bothering as much with hidden and optional content because the people with the money aren’t as willing to shell out for stuff that most people won’t see. Broadly speaking, Cain even argues the industry is trending away from non-linear game design altogether.
“Things are really going to linear storylines, with one end state,” he says. “There are still some non-linear games being made, but more and more I see linearity with one end state. And I think this is done because they’re trying to not only minimize that expensive-to-make unseen content, but they’re trying to make a lot more common moments so that when people talk about the game, they’ve all gone through these same stages.”
I’m not qualified to question Cain’s insights, but this is a curious bit of commentary as I’ve personally struggled with open-world fatigue in recent years, but I can reconcile that by drawing a distinction between the kind of uninspired, checklist-style quest design that I’m bored with, and the embrace of signposting, which seems to be more what Cain is referencing.
Cain says “unguided exploration” is going the way of the dodo. “You used to just wander around, especially the world map, and you stumbled across places, and you stumbled across items and combat encounters. Now, everything kind of has a quest marker or a map indicator or visual or sound cues that draw your attention, ‘oh, there’s something really good right there.’
“It’s almost as if nobody thinks people will find things on their own, which means anything that you do find, you can kind of tell it’s intended for you to find, and everyone else playing the game to find.”
It’s unclear which corporate overlord Cain is referring to here, as he’s worked for a number of big budget studios going back to OG Fallout developer Interplay in the ’90s, but he says he’s been told “‘don’t hide these things and let players rejoice over their discovery’, but how much of a rejoice can you have over something that has a giant neon sign over it, pointing down going ‘here’s a cool new item’?”
Even optional dialogue branches are under scrutiny these days, according to Cain. That sort of thing, coupled with hidden content and quests you have to dig deep to find, are the bread and butter of beloved modern RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, but if Cain is to be believed, we may be seeing RPGs embrace a more deliberate, single-path narrative in the future.
“I’ve been told to stop spending so much time and money writing dialogue and making VO for player conversations and NPC responses that only a small fraction of players will ever see,” says Cain.
Whether or not the industry is turning its back to non-linear games, there’s no denying developers are under increasing pressure to tighten budgets and appeal to as large a market as possible, so I’m not surprised to hear people like Cain are being told to cut hidden and optional features in games. Still, I doubt beloved developers like Larian, FromSoftware, and CD Projekt Red are ditching the sort of hidden content their most diehard fans keep coming back for any time soon.