Hades is a neat counterexample, at least in the mainline plot — you're doing your thing for personal, even selfish reasons. It does get recontextualized later on, though, and I think that recontextualization speaks to why games are this way.
Depending on what you want to focus on, a game can only accomplish so much, and RPGs, which are typically focused on the journey of just a few characters, need to make sacrifices to focus on those characters. Aside from the most wild developer fantasies, you can't really simulate a whole living world and tell deeply personal stories and have engaging minute-to-minute gameplay. So with RPGs, where the mechanics are kind of innately focused on just a few characters, the narrative also kind of has to focus on those characers. It just leads to a more developable game, more intertwining between mechanics and narrative. Otherwise you're spending all this time with faceless stat blocks.
In Hades, the core gameplay loop stays pretty much the same, but the reasons you're doing it changes — that allows the developer to fit a whole lot of narrative in the flow of the game while reusing that core gameplay loop. It's the same in GTA: you do the same driving and shooting, but for different reasons. GTA especially does a lot with the quest-giver role, where a slight variation on a street race would be a lot more boring without Brucie's roided-out bellowing, and that sort of benefit is where the quest-giver role shines. The narrative of your characters intertwines with someone else, you get a bunch of (hopefully) good voice acting and writing, you see a new side to your protagonists, and the plot or mechanics can advance.
The quest-giver role is just too powerful a narrative tool for designers to ignore most of the time. It lets you put all these things that a game is made of into one place and make them work together.
Transistor is fantastic even though I had to try it a few separate times to really get into it.
Pyre has super strong aesthetics, but I never really got into it.
In any case, Hades can definitely stand on its own even if you never play the others. Supergiant is worth supporting, but you don't need to do it in order
I didn't play pyre or transistor either, but I'm really considering going back to play transistor. I trust supergiant's design sensibilities to be engaging even if I've played another of their games with similar mechanical themes.
Funny, I thought a roleplaying game was a game which involved roleplaying. Disco Elysium doesn't even have a battle system and it's the best RPG I've played in years.
That's a definition of RPG that hasn't really fit strictly in years. Even if it did, the aspect of RPGs that OP is discussing isn't actually that part, and isn't super inherent to open-world games or RPGs anyway. Hades serves as interesting contrast to the dynamic OP is talking about
Hades is a neat counterexample, at least in the mainline plot — you're doing your thing for personal, even selfish reasons. It does get recontextualized later on, though, and I think that recontextualization speaks to why games are this way.
Depending on what you want to focus on, a game can only accomplish so much, and RPGs, which are typically focused on the journey of just a few characters, need to make sacrifices to focus on those characters. Aside from the most wild developer fantasies, you can't really simulate a whole living world and tell deeply personal stories and have engaging minute-to-minute gameplay. So with RPGs, where the mechanics are kind of innately focused on just a few characters, the narrative also kind of has to focus on those characers. It just leads to a more developable game, more intertwining between mechanics and narrative. Otherwise you're spending all this time with faceless stat blocks.
In Hades, the core gameplay loop stays pretty much the same, but the reasons you're doing it changes — that allows the developer to fit a whole lot of narrative in the flow of the game while reusing that core gameplay loop. It's the same in GTA: you do the same driving and shooting, but for different reasons. GTA especially does a lot with the quest-giver role, where a slight variation on a street race would be a lot more boring without Brucie's roided-out bellowing, and that sort of benefit is where the quest-giver role shines. The narrative of your characters intertwines with someone else, you get a bunch of (hopefully) good voice acting and writing, you see a new side to your protagonists, and the plot or mechanics can advance.
The quest-giver role is just too powerful a narrative tool for designers to ignore most of the time. It lets you put all these things that a game is made of into one place and make them work together.
Great, another reason to go get Hades. I feel like I need to play Pyre and Transistor before Hades though.
Transistor is fantastic even though I had to try it a few separate times to really get into it.
Pyre has super strong aesthetics, but I never really got into it.
In any case, Hades can definitely stand on its own even if you never play the others. Supergiant is worth supporting, but you don't need to do it in order
I didn't play pyre or transistor either, but I'm really considering going back to play transistor. I trust supergiant's design sensibilities to be engaging even if I've played another of their games with similar mechanical themes.
For me, it's a guilt thing.
Hades is in no way an open-world game though, and it's not much of an RPG either.
For the point I'm making, it's functionally the same as an RPG: character-focused with a mostly linear main storyline
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Funny, I thought a roleplaying game was a game which involved roleplaying. Disco Elysium doesn't even have a battle system and it's the best RPG I've played in years.
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That's a definition of RPG that hasn't really fit strictly in years. Even if it did, the aspect of RPGs that OP is discussing isn't actually that part, and isn't super inherent to open-world games or RPGs anyway. Hades serves as interesting contrast to the dynamic OP is talking about