General RPGs Need a Run Button

This is not the most controversial opinion I have possessed.  As hot takes go, this one’s temperature is clocking in somewhere between Cocytus, and fans’ reception to Suikoden 4.  It’s basically common sense.  Nonetheless, it’s worth being said: RPGs should pretty much always give players the option to run.

And most of them do!  This isn’t usually a problem; the run feature was figured out and widely adopted back in the 16-bit era, and by the time the 32-bit era rolled around, it was basically standard.  And thank goodness for that; can you imagine the mundane frustration of navigating a Playstation 1 Final Fantasy from start to finish at walking speed?  Squall walks to a destination like he’s read ahead in the script and knows exactly how stupid the next thing that’s gonna happen to him is.

But there are still a few RPGs even nowadays that don’t program a feature to allow players to run, and that really just shouldn’t be the case.  And weirdly, they seem to be RPGs that are actually really good.  Like, the first ones that come to mind for me are Undertale and Rakuen.  Undertale is a cornerstone of the genre which has influenced what RPGs are and can be going forward, and Rakuen is an emotional titan whose story and message still sometimes make me cry a little just to remember.  Each is virtually flawless...except for the fact that actually playing through them is kind of annoying, because the plodding pace of the protagonist can’t be increased in any way.*

I mean, it’s not that big a deal for most of Undertale, since you’re frequently stopping to check details of your environs as you move forward, but there’s plenty of moments in the game where you’ll want to backtrack, particularly if you love the characters as much as you’re meant to (and Toby Fox is good at his job, so you will) and want to see all their dialogue changes as the game progresses.  And Rakuen really, really needs a running feature, because unlike Undertale, a large portion of progressing from beginning to end involves going through areas multiple times as new paths and possibilities open up, so the start-and-stop novelty of exploring new surroundings that Undertale benefits from isn’t something that Rakuen can likewise rely upon.

And sure, you can make a defense of Rakuen based on the fact that its protagonist is a kid who’s sick in the hospital.  It’s thus quite plot-consistent that he wouldn’t be sprinting through the halls faster than Elon Musk toward a way to embarrass himself.  Still, I gotta tell you: shortly after I started playing Rakuen, I downloaded a mod for it that added a run button, and I don’t think that saving myself a cumulative couple hours of my life on the commute from 1 plot event to another ever lessened my immersion in the game or made the main character’s situation any less meaningful to me.  I certainly don’t think my tear ducts’ output was lessened whatsoever at the appropriately moving parts of the game for the fact that I’d had a more convenient time in arriving at them.

Also, this should probably go without saying, but in addition to having a running feature, RPGs should also always be made in a way that this feature is, well, functional.  The whole point is player convenience, after all, so having this feature be in itself inconvenient doesn’t really work.  We luckily don’t have to deal much with situations like Secret of Mana or Wild Arms 1 any more, where the ability to move faster meant being forced to go in a line so narrow and forbidding of detours that it could be considered practice for playing Final Fantasy 13.  But sprint meters and their kin are still a very real and annoying thing, and then there’s the thing where mouse-based RPGs force you to double-click your destination if you want the character to run there, because just a single click will mean them slowly walking instead.  Disco Elysium is 1 of the greatest games ever created, a work of such skill and brilliance that it feels humbling just to experience its majesty, but it sure makes you fucking work for the privilege of experiencing its excellence if you’re on the PC, because EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to go somewhere, you’ve gotta double-click that spot, person, thing, whatever.  The pace at which Harry moves toward a single-click implies that he’s drunk, exhausted, depressed, out of shape, and has been shot in both his legs--and only most of that can be true at any given time.  I can’t for the life of me conceive why ZA/UM decided to use Windows 95 as their inspiration for this particular part of their gameplay design, instead of just having running be the default movement speed and walking the one that’s selected with the less natural double-click.

And don’t even get me started on the PC Shadowrun titles’ approach to the run function.  That one probably just deserves its own admittedly short, but highly vitriolic rant.

It’s not even like giving the players a functional option for running really has to impact your work’s gameplay pace.  I mean, in total frankness, a lot of a run button’s convenience is entirely mental.  Like, take the examples I gave before of the Playstation 1 Final Fantasy titles.  As I mentioned, the regular walking function in them is stupidly slow, to be the point of being outright unfeasible.  The overall size of screens in Final Fantasy 9, for example, are, I think, basically designed with the assumption that the player is going to be running through them, not walking.  I’m relatively sure that if you compared the general size of most Final Fantasy 7 environments and the speed at which you can proceed through them while running, it’d probably be, functionally-speaking, very close to that of Undertale’s unchangeable walking pace.  So in effect, the run buttons in these Final Fantasies aren’t really any faster than the walking speed of a walking-only RPG that’s been fairly well-designed.  You can still design your game to be traversed at the pace you prefer either way--but having a run button is a lot more psychologically pleasing to the player, even if the result winds up being the exact same.  And unlike just about everything else related to human psychology being employed in the gaming industry these days, this placebo of travel autonomy is harmless.

Also, in cases where the lack of a run button is felt most annoyingly during backtracking, as it is with Undertale, you can always use an alternative method like Tales of Berseria’s geoboard.  The geoboard in ToB is basically just a hoverboard that goes a little faster than the normal running pace of the protagonist, which of course makes it very convenient (as does its ability to just smash through enemies that are a level lower enough than your own, something which you all know I like a lot).  But even once you gain the geoboard during the course of ToB’s story, it’s not something that you can automatically use--each area of the game has a spot at which you can activate the feature, and only after reaching this spot can you use the geoboard in that dungeon.  In practice, this usually means that you’ll only be making use of the geoboard’s extra speed once you’re near or at the end of any given dungeon.  But while that’s an unfortunate downside in Tales of Berseria, whose regular run speed does leave something to be desired,** a similar system of awarding run functionality for backtracking purposes would’ve been a hell of a useful feature in Undertale, while still allowing for the existing controlled pace of only being able to walk through new territory.

Like I said before, this isn’t a problem for 90% of the RPGs coming out these days.  Run functions are a standard feature built into the game for most developers at this point.  Still, there are some indie RPGs that, for whatever reason, don’t include it, and not every game that does have one utilizes it in a way that actually makes it convenient.  And while I adhere strictly to my policy that gameplay considerations do not affect an RPG’s quality and worth, even I have to admit that it’s hard not to resent a game that makes me feel like I’m wasting my time getting from Point A to Point B.  RPGs need run buttons.














* Well Rakuen also does have the flaw that it doesn’t have a non-vocal version of its main theme and I totally want one.  But that’s admittedly more a subjective thing.


** Yes Angel I heard your complaints the WHOLE time and am hereby publicly acknowledging their legitimacy; are you happy now?