Director's Blog Page 3
(Original taken from 1UP.com posted at 04/26/2007 10:14 AM PDT.)

3 steps to death

Well, the team is saying I shouldn't talk so much about the game mechanics, so this time I'll talk about why we decided to make a dungeon RPG.

In the first Dragon Quest, at one point in the game you were told, "Walk 4 steps south of the well in Kol to find the Fairy Flute." The number 4 is easily understood, but the way it's used makes it very exciting. As you find the well and get into position, you think, "3 more steps, 2 more steps, 1 more..." You know there's something there, and you can't wait to get it! Ahh, nostalgia.

But I've gotten off the subject, which is the reason we decided to make a dungeon RPG. I'm a little embarrassed to say this, because it sounds vain, but I wanted to get back to the roots of what an RPG is.

The essence of an RPG is possibility, and calculation. In dramatic terms, it's the difference between going forward and going backward. In a dungeon RPG, that's very noticeable, due to moving in the 1-space increments. Think of two situations in an RPG:

- At the center of a long walkway, you will encounter a strong enemy.
- On the 5th space of a 10-space walkway, you will encounter a strong enemy.

I think the second version gives a little more flavor to the game. Since you know you won't encounter it on the 4th space, and you know you will encounter it on the 5th space, you're able to calculate in advance what you should do. In my opinion, it's better to know an enemy is 1 space in front of you than to know that an enemy is very close in front of you.

The challenge and enjoyment for the player lies in planning ahead. If you know there's a strong enemy on the 50th space, a good treasure on the 51st, and a random encounter roughly every 5 steps, then you can calculate how to manage risk: you can plan the best method of reaching the strong monster on the 50th space, and how to defeat it once you're there. We put a lot of those situations into Etrian Odyssey.

Some people will play this game and be surprised, saying "Oh, I never thought of playing a game in that way." For those of us on the development team, that kind of comment from the player is what we like best.