Day 26: Is it an RPG or a Shooter?

So lately I've been playing a lot of Borderlands on PS3 and Fallout: New Vegas on PC. It's astounding to me how similar both games are in premise but in execution are completely different. They're both RPG/Shooter hybrids. Despite Shooters being the most popular games nowadays...the similarities virtually end there. However, they're both categorized as RPG Shooters when they're virtually nothing alike. Borderlands is a shooter with RPG elements and New Vegas is an RPG with shooter elements. Well what's the difference?

Borderlands is a shooter through and through. A shooter focuses on quick, fluid controls and non-stop action. A shooter is like taking an adrenaline shot and charging into a horde of zombies with a chainsaw. But...Borderlands has health points, and levels, and proficiencies, and skills! The health points and levels are just arbitrary constrictions on which enemies you can combat at a given time. If your level is high then you're practically invincible and if it's low then enemies are practically omnipotent. The proficiencies and skills are just arbitrary enhancements to your power which is always focused on aiming and shooting...and sometimes punching. The 'skills' in Borderlands are misleading in that no class has any 'skills'. Every class has one skill and the rest is just perks to enhance the shootings and punchings and survivings.

The most significant departure Borderlands makes from other shooters is its campaign. Most shooters have you trekking through mazes looking for arbitrary 'keys' to progress forward while fighting hordes of enemies along the way. Most RPGs have you trekking across maps collecting an arbitrary amount of items or killing an arbitrary amount of enemies, returning for a reward, and repeating until all NPCs are satisfied and let you fight a boss and move on to the next realm. Depending on the shooter, the campaign is a linear, run and gun, pushing the line initiative until you eventually reach the end. Or the campaign may be finding your way out of labyrinthine mazes. RPG campaigns are comprised mostly of fetch quests, kill quotas and diplomatic relations. What Borderlands does is take the shooting gameplay and put it in an RPG campaign full of fetch quests and kill quotas. Also, they added the loot system popularized by Diablo. Where loot is important to an RPG with the abundance of customization options in a shooter it makes little sense. It doesn't matter what the item's stats are, if I can aim and shooter better than the enemies I'm going to win no matter what I'm shooting with. Luckily, the loot system is such an addicting gameplay mechanic that even in this shallow implementation it'll turn everyone into hoarders. You can only fire one gun at once, only carry four, and your inventory grows upwards of 40+ slots...we totally don't need this many guys...but why can't I get rid of them?

Which brings me to New Vegas, a different kind of hoarding. Where Borderlands has you hoarding guns because one might be better for a certain situation, New Vegas has you hoarding just because there's valuables you don't want to waste. I could or would use this item...I think I'll take it. Then 15 minutes later you've overfilled your inventory and need to start combining those 20 10mm pistols and chugging those 30 bottles of beer. The only difference is that Borderlands you're never going to use most of the stuff you find and couldn't keep it anyway. New Vegas you can always find a place to stash your stuff and everything wears out with use so you never know when something will come in handy. Sure, you know you'll never use 15 Plasma Rifles until they're broken and stripped for parts...but why just leave them there when I can take them with me?

New Vegas is a true RPG disguised as a shooter. Every action has consequences and a host of alternative actions. Person A wants Person B dead. Do you do it? Do you tell B that you'll say you did it? Do you kill A instead? Which leads to another point, not everything is solved at the end of a barrel. Borderlands gives you 2 actions: shooting and picking up items. New Vegas has tons of actions and specializations that determine how the story goes. You could go through most, if not all, of New Vegas without killing anyone yourself. If the action in New Vegas weren't designed like a shooter then this game wouldn't be called a shooter at all. You can at least get through the whole game without shooting anyone I know that for sure.

The thing that makes games like New Vegas unique is that it's an action game where your non violent actions have real effects. If you were playing something like God of War or Uncharted and wished you could sneak out of a situation or negotiate? Too bad, punk! Fight or die! In New Vegas your voice matters just as much, if not more so, than your gun. In fact, for the most part the world, and yourself, are better off when you exercise as little violence as necessary. However, for the bloodthirsty, all you need do is wander outside of civilized areas where various monsters are waiting to be hunted. No one'll shed a tear if you make Deathclaws extinct, I promise.

So, what are they? Borderlands is a shooter with an RPG questing system and arbitrary combat limits to keep you on track. Fallout New Vegas is an RPG with some shooting. Borderlands is not a 'role-playing shooter' as they've called it, it's just a shooter with a progression system. New Vegas would define 'role-playing shooter' if such a genre existed. They're both excellent in their own ways but genre tags would mislead one into thinking they're similar...they're not.