RPGs Wore Me Out. Then Griftlands Came Along.
By rethinking some genre staples, Griftlands found a way to finally get me invested in an RPG
On the surface, role-playing games seem like such obvious examples of the potential of video games as an artistic medium. Storytelling is at the root of what makes art resonate. A medium that lets the audience take on a role of active participation is inherently interesting, especially when that participation is all about making decisions that can affect the direction a story takes. It’s an enticing prospect, but for me it can also be nearly impenetrable.
My history playing games heavy on roleplaying could be described as spotty and not for a lack of trying.
As a kid I tried and tried again with Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, bouncing off every time, overwhelmed. Then as a teenager I made a run at both Fallout 3 and New Vegas and couldn’t find the fun there either. I briefly had a good time with Skyrim, the most streamlined of Bethesda’s open worlds, but even during such a big cultural moment for the genre, I wasn’t nearly as caught up in the magic as most of my friends. More recently I had just as little luck with the much lauded Divinity: Original Sin 2.
After trying (and failing) so many times, I think I’ve zeroed in on my problem. Most of the examples I have mentioned (other than Skyrim) have combat that leans more heavily into tactics than action. I’m usually receptive to gameplay that moves more methodically, at least as long as a game hooks me in other ways.
It’s too bad for me that my tendency to avoid violence in these games means a big part of my time is spent picking options in a dialogue tree rather than engaging with the deeper (if still slow-paced) combat system. So my experience boils down to a lot of running around, fumbling with items, and picking what to say from a list. Usually it ends with me getting burned out before I ever get in a groove with the game, and way before I can see much of the effect my decisions had on the world.
Klei Entertainment’s Griftlands, however, breaks this pattern.
Much like recent indie-smash Hades, Griftlands gestures toward the run-based rogue-like formula, but doesn’t fully commit to it. At its heart this game is more of a RPG, pushing your adventures along with character interactions and story tidbits rather than the allure of the next crazy item drop. Unlike Hades though, your many deaths aren’t diegetic. So rather than slowly building a winding narrative brick by brick, you end up tinkering with variations on a handful of fairly straightforward adventures.
In each run you’ll play as one of the game’s three main characters, all of whom have a distinct quest and their own set of motivations. There’s Sal, a bounty hunter out for revenge against the crime boss who sold her into indentured labor. There’s Rook, an ex-military spy who struck out on his own and is taking on one last job before he retires. And there’s Smith, the black sheep of the family, who recently was kicked out of their parents’ funeral. The stories themselves aren’t really the draw here though. Instead, they each serve as a template, a kind of ostinato for you to riff on and experiment with.
Along your journey, you’ll meet dozens of characters, some major, some minor, almost all with the potential to impact your story.
Maybe on one go-around you’ll be stopped by a guard for trespassing and talk them into letting you off the hook. On the next you decide it’s not worth the trouble, so you just beat them up instead. This choice changes not only the way you solve a problem but also how that person (or maybe their friend) feels about you.
Characters’ opinions of you aren’t just surface level either, they come with the added bite of mechanical consequences in the form of the game’s extensive list of “boons” and “banes.” If a clerk in the government loves you, maybe you can ask other government workers to help you out in a fight when they’re nearby. If a bartender hates you, maybe they’ll taint your drinks, making you more tipsy whenever they serve you.
The sheer volume of possibilities at hand here is impressive! There are dozens of characters, all with their own boons and banes that you can run across at multiple times in various situations. Considering the scale of it all, that Griftlands remains so accessible is some kind of minor miracle. These types of classic roleplaying cause-and-effect hooks usually only exist in games that take the time and attention I’m not always willing to give. Here though, those thrills have been miniaturized for the rogue-like structure.
As for the deck-building and card battles, they draw you in with a handfull of the usual tricks. The characters all have different pools of cards to draft from, and each one comes with its own unique mechanics. Some options include: building up combos and punctuating them with finishers, stacking bleed damage and using it to heal, overcharging your pistols to trade away protection for more damage.
Each deck gives you a couple of fairly clear cut builds to work toward, along with fun little combos and synergies that keep things interesting. Like most deck-builders, it starts out a little overwhelming, but they introduced slowly new cards to ease you in. Just give it a little time and it all falls into place neatly enough. And if you find yourself thinking none of this sounds all that new, I’d agree, but I’d also argue it’s more than good enough for a game that updates other elements so effectively.
Griftlands’ primary innovation is how it transforms your nonviolent choices into gameplay in such a fully fledged way. Debates, deception, and diplomacy all play out in card battles in much the same way combat does. You just have two decks to build as you go, and instead of targeting your opponent’s health, you target their arguments. So all those dialogue trees funnel not only you into combat but also into, well, more discussion. Only now it’s fun. And since fighting someone isn’t any more mechanically satisfying than talking your way out of things, the addition of this parallel gameplay track means it’s no longer merely possible to overcome challenges in multiple ways, it’s incentivized.
It’s also worth mentioning that the simple act of making gameplay out of something other than combat is a worthy goal, especially in a medium that has an overreliance on violence as a means of making things fun. This isn’t some grand statement for Griftlands or anything, it’s a dangerous world after all (it’s right there in the name) and one way or another you’ll inevitably be pushed into a fight of some sort. Nevertheless, this game’s even-handed approach is a small but welcome breath of fresh air.
This game is another entry in a diverse and growing list of Klei’s games that deserve your attention. With some adjustments to a few genre staples, as well as a healthy dose of rogue-like immediacy, Griftlands finds a flow that’s both brisk and satisfying, a real rarity in the world of RPGs. It’s accessible, content rich, and reasonably priced, and if you have even a passing interest in deck-builders, I’d recommend you try it.
It worked on me, for one, which is even more impressive because so many of its hooks are normally things that would drive me away. I’m not about to tell you Griftlands changed how I see roleplaying across the board (no, it hasn’t suddenly inspired me to go back and give Baldur’s Gate another go). But it gave me a window into a kind of creativity and fun that games usually reserve for someone else.
