4. Stat-Specific Dialogue: Sometimes it’s hard to feel like your character is as unique as they might be. In RPGs you can customize your face, give tattoos or scars and a funky hair color, but beyond that and your combat-related abilities there’s not a whole lot going on in terms of uniqueness. The original two Fallout games had a big leg up over many RPGs in one aspect: what you could say was heavily influenced by your stats and abilities. Mid-level intelligence gave the standard conversational responses, yes, no, various inquiries, but the smarter and more charistmatic you were, things could be different. When chatting with potential foes the more charming types could talk them around to at least neutrality, or even sway them into doing things your way. In particular the final stage could be completed with a minimum of effort. Simply talk to one scientist and he’ll agree that his comrades are tragically misguided and wipe them out with a virus, but not before dosing you and your people with the antidote. The crowning jewel of this feature though was the fact that if you make a character with lower intelligence your conversational abilities are substantially lowered. NPCs respond to your butchered speech and monosyllabic vocabulary with either patronizing pity or outright disdain. Drop it down to the lowest level and you were completely non-verbal, only able to utter “uh” and other similar grunts. Of particular note was one NPC who was relatively dim himself, because if your character was of a similar level of intelligence the dialogue featured what you were actually saying followed by in parentheses what you understood each other to be saying, which was written in language florid enough to make an Oxford professor proud.
5. Asymmetrical Multiplayer: I’m not talking about when you hop into an online match with strangers and get put on a team of relative newcomers and quickly discover your opponents have been playing the game nonstop since its release. In most multiplayer games everyone is essentially playing the same sort of game or character. There might be some minor changes in weapon loadouts or models based on the game and which team you’re on, but largely you know everyone’s doing the same thing. There have been a few games that did things a little differently though. In some way multiplayer was different depending on which group you were placed in. The two best examples I can think of are Left 4 Dead and the Alien vs Predator games. Left 4 Dead has an option where one group of players are the stalwart human survivors and the others play the zombies hell-bent on devouring them. AvP had several different multiplayer modes but the basic deathmatch had players choosing their sides and experiencing very different modes of gameplay as a result. Space marines ran around with an arsenal of guns trying to stay alive. Aliens crawled up walls and leapt from ceilings to bite and claw their prey. Predators lurked in the shadows with their invisibility cloaks and utilized their combinations of high-tech weapons and melee implements. Overall it was fun for everyone, but presented a different set of challenges for each group of players. This style of game isn’t that prevalent in part because in many shooters you find yourself facing off against foes who are the same species as yourself or at least the same method of attack. You might be fighting aliens in Gears of War, but they still shoot at you. .
