Our Obsession With Builds Is Ruining RPGs

thegamer.com:

There has been a lot of talk about builds in games recently, particularly through Elden Ring. Our own Ben Sledge wrote about starting over in Elden Ring with a new build, and a big topic of debate has been to do with magic builds - these are seemingly easier builds, or at least ones that allow you to keep your distance more easily in battle, and are therefore deemed by some sections of the community as ‘cheating’. I don’t have time to get into that (okay, here’s three seconds: it’s stupid), but I do think it raises an interesting problem with the very idea of builds, especially in an RPG.

In a shooter game, I think builds are fine. It basically refers to your loadout: which gun is best for your playstyle, how can you offset its weaknesses with extras like grenades or flashbangs, and which sidearm ties the whole package together best. These builds can typically be changed with each match, although you may need to upgrade certain elements of this build through repeated wins or completed challenges. Still, shooter games have a very relaxed attitude towards builds. That’s why it’s especially weird that RPGs, where you’re supposed to be able to carve out your own identity, lock in right from the start.

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Let’s take Elden Ring to start, although many other RPGs have the same issue, which I’ll get into below. Elden Ring has several starting builds which seem alien to outsiders because of their abstruse names, but are essentially two-handed weapons, dual-wield, sword-and-shield, various magic builds, and a thing called Wretch. Wretch has all the attributes equalled out, meaning you can take this character wherever. However, most players aren’t going to do this