Difference between JRPGs and CRPGs towns... Tolkien/Beowulf

[Louis_Cypher]

JRPG towns don't seem to have a lot of interactivity, but are sometimes quite high in purely artistic expression. It might have the feel of being a tourist haven, or a city of high culture, or recently recovering from a war, or have a set-piece calmness to it where people enjoy the finer things in life in peace. CRPG towns are usually highly interactive, more so than the surrounding wilderness. They convey themselves differently, more through dialogue maybe, although the two share a lot in common.

I play both genres, so I can see a lot of common things, and a couple of little differences. But I'm playing an eastern RPG right now, and I was thinking about some of the smaller differences in approach that can be quite hard to explain.

Japanese RPG towns are self-directed artistic experiences

Japanese RPGs have a reputation among CRPG players for having no interactivity. (I think this is actually not true for every JRPG series, some JRPGs even still have CHARGEN like their origins in early CRPGs such as Ultima, however Final Fantasy, which is most people's introduction to the genre, is not very CRPG like). JRPGs can sometimes be hard to approach for a CRPG player because it can seem that control is being taken away from you every two seconds. I had trouble with Final Fantasy for this reason, where every five steps there was a cutscene.

So it came as a surprise to realize that in many JRPGs, the quintessential town experience is actually quite self directed, in a sense. There are no checklists. There are no quest markers. There are no collectables. There are few items to gather from chests, although they might be important. Dialogue seemingly amounts to little. But they are usually quite high on the measure of lived-in artistic detail, with local regional cuisine set out on the tables, different wines and spirits arranged on shelves, different styles of architecture, different environmental conditions, different culture, shrines honoring local deities or philosophical concepts, and a general ambiance of a long rooted culture. If you enter one expecting things to do, in the conventional CRPG sense (side quests, dialogue trees) you are gonna be horribly disappointed, but if you saunter into them like a tourist, visiting the town to look at it's art and natural scenery, these aspects tell a story. In other words, the town (in the best examples at least), is there to tell you something about the world, or further the narrative, but gives you almost no prompting to examine it, you have to appreciate it slowly and soak it in like art.

So Zelda: Breath of the Wild recently got a lot of praise for being a very self-directed open world game (as compared to some previous Zeldas which had been criticized as being on rails from start to finish with an tutorial or fairy always present). The game technically does not have a lot of interactivity in the sense of The Witcher, but rather the player takes in natural vistas like a 19th century romanticist discovering a new valley as they explore the Swiss Alps. Think German painter Casper David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". A reverent awe of nature's majesty. Shigeru Miyamoto talked about how he used to wonder the countryside of Japan and discover hidden lakes and caves, and this was part of the inspiration for Zelda. You want to climb mountains, not to collect anything, or solve a quest, but just to see what is there. Likewise the best JRPG town is something you visit to see what is there, not an obstacle. It's ephemeral beauty is enough.

Japanese RPG towns have mythological themes of life and pollution

In many mythological systems, humanity is seen as in an eternal spiritual battle courageously eking out a home among wild chaos. It's a powerful primordial theme that resonates even today, since we are a species that had to fight to survive it's environment and judiciously ally with aspects of nature. Some philosophers like Spinoza thought that actions could be classified by whether they helped or hindered the flourishing of life; deception and exploitation were entropic, but fidelity promoted orderly civilization, and in the east others framed the same thing differently (with unbalanced behavior leading to pollution/entropy). Depression is likened in fiction to darkness, or an enemy, and so it might have a psychological resonance; the unhelpful thoughts that drive us to despair are entropic, serving no practical benefit, but are seductive.

Fighting chaos/pollution/darkness/impurity is thus a huge thematic aspect in fantasy, and it's fun. Tolkien's famous essay, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", pointed out that modern people were trying to judge an epic poem from 600 AD by the standards of their modern literature, with it's multi-faceted characters, when the monster were never meant to be multi-faceted, but rather symbolic of an eternal enemy; pollution, chaos and darkness, like the people of the time literally had outside their towns and enclosures when England was still inhabited by wolves and bears. The Lord of the Rings was a work in which the forces of darkness were described as physically corrupted and polluted in contrast to the pure and beautiful mortal races. Orcs, while technically a corruption of Elves, are not meant to be a rival nation to be emphasized with like Klingons or Lannisters, but rather mythical servants of unlife, not overly rationalized into a culture.

So towns are treated as a safe enclosure, because perhaps many Japanese games are quite spiritual in this secular literary sense, dealing with the resonant themes described above. It's not simplistic, just different in focus. Some of them take completely non-ironic glee and fun for fun's sake, but still aspire to be art. When you humanise monsters into a multi-faceted individual, or make fantasy races just different cultures, it moves away from being about primordial themes, and becomes more like historical fiction. Both have their strengths. If towns are like enclosures of orderly civilization, then the monsters outside are often unbalanced spirits, who have tipped too far toward some extreme of behavior, and become literal monsters as a result.

I think the two approaches can learn from each other. There is room for JRPGs to be a bit more interactive. I can see a change happening recently, as Japanese and American developers have always pollinated each other with ideas. There is room for western ones to get back in touch with the mythical themes of the genre, which are sometimes poorly translated. Just some random thoughts.

 

[Neanderthal]

Ultima says why not both?

 

[Infinitron]

Nice effortpoast.

Feels like you're talking about a lot more than just towns in the last section.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Ultima says why not both?

Something else I've thought about doing a post about is CRPGs and JRPGs having a common origin in Ultima, then diverging from each other.

I might as well post a couple of thoughts here about it. I don't think the two genres are as estranged as we sometimes think. Their emphasis has kinda changed, but they still cross-pollinate. I enjoy them both for their very different strengths. Here is how I understand it, trying to be brief as possible...

Ultima IV

Dragon Quest I

Maybe we can break down the history of the split between CRPG and JRPG down into stages, for ease:

Stage 0 - Pen and Paper RPGs - Early 1970s

The video game RPG comes from the pen and paper RPG. In pen and paper, the GM presents a scenario highly open to interpretation "you enter a tomb, hewn deep into the mountain, dripping with moisture, it's walls are oppressive; a long-broken sarcophagus lies in the centre, there seems to be no way forward, what do you do?" Some of the beauty is in how you have multiple approaches in how to deal with the situation. You can use any idea, taking into account your tools, skills, and the surroundings, to try to overcome the situation with your wit, or your brawn. Ideally the GM paints a vivid word-picture for you.

Stage 1 - Early Computer RPGs - Late 1970s

The earliest computer RPGs were programmed and played in both the west and Japan by early nerds on their early home PCs. They were straight up text-only adaptations of the pen and paper RPG complete with a computer simulated GM giving you text "what will you do?" type scenarios, and you responding with text commands. Basically trying to capture the intent and atmosphere using only descriptive text, which is still an idea with merit today. Some started to add a few graphical elements, like a picture that flashed up showing the castle you are approaching, etc.

Stage 2 - Both Genres are One - The Rise of the CRPG - 1980s

Then, developers had idea of marrying a graphical representation of what you character is doing to the commands on the screen. An overworld. Ultima (1981) and Wizardry (1981), the two forefathers of the genre were born. They were an incredible influence on both sides of the pacific. Richard Garriot and co. were like rockstars in Japan, being crowded for autographs when visiting games stores. Ultima gave birth to the top-down perspective, and Wizardry to the first-person perspective. Those two continued with sequels, and other series like The Bard's Tale (1985) and Might and Magic (1986).

Dragon Quest (1986), Japan's oldest and biggest-selling RPG series, basically married Ultima's overworld with Wizardry's menu combat to create the JRPG as we know it. Hironobu Sakaguchi was influenced by Ultima when making Final Fantasy (1987). It's notable that Ultima, Wizardry, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Might and Magic each have a ton of sequels, many still going strong today; 9 Ultima games plus spin-offs, 8 Wizardry games plus numerous spin-offs, 11 Dragon Quest games plus spin-offs, 15 Final Fantasy games plus a ton of spin-offs.

Stage 3 - The Great Divergence - Western RPGs and Japanese RPGs - 1990s

The western CRPG genre stuck to the original concept of player choice much more faithfully, simulating the tabletop GM experience, to a much greater degree. In Japan the pen-and-paper RPG went so mainstream that kids as young as six were playing sort of stripped down youngster-friendly D&D-lite games at school. The early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games, it is sometimes forgotten, had CHARGEN; you could select class in Final Fantasy I, and name characters.

The art styles began to separate because people thought it would be cool to basically apply the RPG genre to the anime settings that they were seeing on TV all the time. For example, in Buddhist literature, psychological states are sometimes rendered in prose into physical 'power fields', so one trait has been for example the depiction of characters become physically wrapped in a visible Dragonball field of power, to represent how 'charged up' they are feeling inside. The move away from allowing full CHARGEN however I think was just that people wanted more freedom as auteurs. Some of the companies were based in Tokyo, and Tokyo had a reputation as a city of high brow theatre and drama, so maybe people naturally wanted to try writing their game like a more high brow, or maybe it was just chance. It's not like this approach is entirely absent from the west, after all, Planescape: Torment, is like that.

Reccomendations for people who don't like JRPGs

I personally don't think Final Fantasy is the best introduction to the JRPG, the way it came to be seen for two decades. I think Suikoden should be regarded as the exemplar JRPG. Or... The Legend of Heroes. Both have persistent settings, which is something not that common in JRPGs; they are also a little more grounded in realistic politics. Suikoden is the Japanese name for the famous Chinese novel Water Margin, about a gang of outlaws dissatisfied with the breakdown of society; a theme anyone can appreciate, where some obscure Gnostic-influenced plot about fighting a creator god, might leave people cold. Imagine you have an ancient civilization with a long history of order and urbanity like ancient Rome or the Han Dynasty. The prime focus is gonna be on the breakdown of institutions, and the characters involved. The Legend of Heroes is quite a good one too, since it features 19th century style nation states trying to navigate the challenges of a changing technological landscape, among a setting with ancient mysteries. Megami Tensei is quite a good alternative too. You gotta play them slow, soaking it in; put pressure on yourself and you don't enjoy them.

---

To understand the point of RPGs I think it is essential to understand their origin. To avoid just being a simulacrum. The point of D&D is basically to allow extreme freedom of approach to a problem. You could have 6 monsters in the entire game theoretically, and they might even be skippable, the point is in the how you deal with it. I was actually a big fan of what they tried in Torment: Tides of Numenera; an effort system with tons of branching scenarios.

My opinion on what east and west could learn from each other:

I think the Japanese RPG could do with re-learning some of the reasons the tabletop RPG existed, perhaps even occasionally allowing CHARGEN of the entire main party once again. To be fair, some still do. But perhaps allowing for just a little difference in approach to a situation even beyond menu commands might be healthy; say to incorporate some ideas from Breath of the Wild. I think I can see this happening. Western RPGs such as The Witcher are played in Japan, and gameplay trends are noticed. Some recent JRPGs have started changing their approach. The RPG is much more healthy in Japan where it's essentially as mainstream as Call of Duty.

The Western RPG could to with more often raising itself to a higher literary level, aspiring to be more literate. It could do with treating the tropes of the genre un-ironically, realizing that some of them represent timeless themes, not necessarily to be mocked. It's all in how deft the themes are presented, that makes the difference. Most of the fantasy games I see on Steam don't really seem to Tolkien, on any kind of literary level, just present a kind of World of Warcraft type pastiche of fantasy. But I don't want to sell the CRPG short, because there are a shit ton of deep CRPGs made even now on a lower budget, and many Japanese games are trash releases.

 

[Drowed]

This reminded me a bit of the criticism I saw about Dragon Quest XI.

The towns of Dragon Quest XI are environments that appear to have been created with great care and attention to detail. It's almost like being strolling inside a city of a cartoon, with exaggerated and colorful characters in each corner. If you look around carefully, you will find several small information that could go unnoticed, which may be references to other (and older) games in the series, explain a bit of the history of the city or simply be a beautiful thing to look at.

But at the same time, the game cities really don't seem to have any "life" in them. Most characters don't move, staying in the same position day and night, regardless of anything happening around. You cannot interact with the overwhelming majority of objects around you, which exist just to fill the space - and the few you encounter that you can check, will at most allow you to collect one or two generic items. The comparison with a painting seems to me quite appropriate: the city is there to be observed and admired, and very little beyond that.

 

[abnaxus]

Do you come to the Cloud district very often?

 

[Louis_Cypher]

This reminded me a bit of the criticism I saw about Dragon Quest XI.

That is actually what I am playing right now. First hour is really unpromising. At first I thought "ah shit, this is looking pretty boring so far, I've fallen for the hype", after that now-famous Kotaku review (it's a shameless love letter)... the game is, by choice, relentlessly old-school.... at first combat consisted of selecting attack repeatedly on a menu... but after a while it started showing it's value. The attitude and the atmosphere are fun, it doesn't care, and the story is getting more interesting. For the wrong audience however, it might put them off JRPGs forever.



It's not gonna satisfy everyone, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone here knowing that, I would actually warn them off it. I would caution people to know what they are getting into; it will take a light hearted approach, and an appreciation of mood/beauty for it's own sake. The towns are beautiful though. Having come off the back of some western games with hugely branching dialogue like Numenera, I get what critics might say about the towns, however when I accepted the 'author intent', I found I was personally enjoying them, like you say, like a painting.

There are better, more ambitious, JRPGs however. Like the review guy said, it's more comfort food.

 

[Shinji]

Nice post, thanks for sharing you thoughts

I have always enjoyed JRPG's towns more, as they usually tend to give the player a sense of wonder. As a downside, I feel that once you're done with it, there's not much to see or do afterwards, but I guess that's the point after all.

I think I remember an interview with a japanese developer, and he said something along the lines of "we create the locations of the game to match whatever is happening at the current moment in the story" or something like that, which reinforces the idea that in these games towns are transient, and after they have served their purpose, you naturally just move on to the next location.

Which is a different approach from western devs, which usually do all the worldbuilding first, and only afterwards they try to fit a game and a story in it.

 

[Dorateen]

A traditional computer role-playing often begins within proximity of an inn or tavern because the location is a natural gathering place for adventurers looking to band up. Towns should be interactive, since from the days of pen and paper, cities can be just as much a hotbed for adventure as wilderness or dungeon environments, with danger lurking behind every corner.

I'm fascinated by the concept of civilized hubs that nevertheless are filled with random combat encounters and other high-risk events. By modern sensibilities this can fly in the face of common sense and realism. The earliest Might & Magic role-playing games had this quality and so does Grimoire. It adds further excitement when walking from a temple to a training hall becomes a life and death struggle for a low level party.

 

[JarlFrank]

Personally, JRPGs and their towns do nothing for me precisely because of the lack of interactivity. Yes, they may be beautiful, but in a game I want to interact with things. If I want to examine things passively I will just look at a painting.

Interactivity is the most important part of a game. You lack that, your game fails as a game.

 

[Mustawd]

The earliest computer RPGs were programmed and played in both the west and Japan by early nerds on their early home PCs. They were straight up text-only adaptations of the pen and paper RPG

Is this actually true for JRPGs though? If you do some wikipedia surfing you find a lot of the early korean/japanese RPGs were influenced by already existing CRPGs. In which case, it's going to be a derivative of the CRPG but without it's actual P&P roots. Which, if true, would mean that the split between the two types of games came from the very beginning: [WARNING: Wall of text follows]

Spoiler

The country's first fully-fledged computer game was Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol, also known as Legend of the Sword, released for the Apple II computer platform in 1987. It was programmed by Nam In-Hwan and distributed by Aproman, being primarily influenced by the Ultima series.

source: https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Video_gaming_in_South_Korea

Created by Yuji Horii, Dragon Quest combined the overhead movement of Ultima with the first-person, random battles of Wizardy, and effectively created the Japanese RPG subgenre.

source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131926/the_history_of_dragon_quest.php

And if you look at some early Japanese games the Wizardry and Ultima influences are pretty strong. Take a look at felipepepe excellent thread here: link

I cannot write about this subject without also mentioning Seduction of Condominium Wives / 団地妻の誘惑, Koei's erotic RPG about a condom salesman visiting an apartment block, where he must knock on doors trying to "sell his products", while battling Yakuza and ghosts who roam the halls:

I believe this quote by Tokihiro Naito (creator of Hydlide), found in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol. 2, best represent the spirit that dominated Japanese game development at the time:

"Back then, Japanese people didn't have a well-defined sense of the RPG as a game genre. I suspect that because of this, the creators took the appearance and atmosphere of the RPG as a basic reference, and constructed new types of games according to their own individual sensibilities. In my case, I never had the opportunity to use an Apple II, so I was completely unaware of Wizardryand Ultima."

Although there are examples where felipepe points out the devs were D&D fans, a lot of the JRPGs seem to have big inspirations from Wizardry.

D&D inspiration:

he Old Gamers History Vol. 3 book begins their timeline with Kei's Dungeon, claiming it has a known release date and among the early titles it's the one closest to "modern RPGs". It's easy to see why. Instantly familiar to anyone who played Ultima, Koei's Dungeon asks you to pick a class – Warrior, Thief, Cleric, Wizard or Ninja – and explore a large island in search of El Dorado. ......The developers were probably all big D&D fans, as you’ll face Mind Flayers, Frost Giants, Flesh Golems and even the demon prince Demogorgon, awkwardly traced from the rule book

The Impact of Wizardry in Japan:

But Woodhead’s biggest distraction — and soon his greatest passion, one that would change his life forever — was Japan. After first marketing Wizardry in Japan through Starcraft, a Japanese company that specialized in localizing American software for the Japanese market and vice versa, Sir-Tech signed a blockbuster of a deal with another pioneering company, ASCII Corporation, publishers of the magazine Monthly ASCII that can be justifiably called the Japanese Byte and Creative Computing all rolled into one. Increasingly as the 1980s wore on, ASCII also became a very important software publisher. With Woodhead’s close support, ASCII turned Wizardry into a veritable phenomenon in Japan, huge even in comparison to the height of its popularity Stateside. By the latter half of the decade there were entire conventions in Japan dedicated to the franchise; when Woodhead visited them he was mobbed like a rock star. In the face of such profits and fame, he began to spend more and more of his time in Japan. After leaving Sir-Tech in 1988 he lived there full-time for a number of years, married a Japanese woman, and eventually founded a company with his old buddy Roe Adams which is dedicated to translating Japanese anime and other cinema into English and importing it to the West; it’s still going strong today. The Japanese Wizardry line also eventually spun off completely from Sir-Tech to go its own way; games are still being made today, and now far outnumber the eight Sir-Tech Wizardrygames.

On the Influence of Dragon Quest

Polygon: It’s been mentioned many times before that Ultima and Wizardryhad a big influence on the creation of Dragon Quest, but what was appealing about that specific kind of Western fantasy theme? Why did you go with that instead of changing it to something with more of a Japanese influence?

YH: There were so many options we could have potentially gone with: ninja, samurai and those kinds of themes. But Japanese people are already familiar with those topics; I felt like there wouldn’t be a sense of escapism. I thought swords and sorcery, which Japanese people weren’t quite as knowledgeable about, would help expand people’s imaginations. That kind of style, but made more lighthearted.

If you've read all that I think it's arguably true to say that JRPGs don't really have their roots in P&P. Rather they have their roots in a video game derivative of P&P (i.e the CRPG). One might say those are basically the same things, but I'd point out that the early CRPGs like Wizardry and Ultima only capture limited parts of the P&P experience. So as a standalone product they are quite different. Then put it in the hands of a Japanese developer to make for a japanese audience and you have an instant fracture of the two subgenres.


EDIT: I'll also point out that the large amount of grinding seems to be a very japanese thing. In an interview with the creator of Dragonquest, he mentions that trying trying trying and trying again is a very Japanese characteristic.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, early Japanese cRPGs have their roots in Ultima and Wizardry. Pen and paper didn't really reach Japan the same way it reached audiences in the US and Europe. Both the US and Europe had their own P&P systems and a sizeable P&P culture in the 80s when cRPGs became a thing.

Japan imported the cRPGs and made their own derivatives from those, rather than trying to create computer versions of the P&P experience.

That's one major reason why JRPGs feel so non-RPGy to western players. They miss a lot of the features P&P has and later cRPGs in the 90s would also adopt (dialogue choices and C&C for example). Most JRPGs even do away with custom character creation, which is much less common in western RPGs which are based on P&P, where creating your own character is pretty much a given.

 

[Mustawd]

The early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games, it is sometimes forgotten, had CHARGEN; you could select class in Final Fantasy I, and name characters.

And you seem to forget that Wizardry also had CHARGEN. Not necessarily a P&P inspiration directly.

The art styles began to separate because people thought it would be cool to basically apply the RPG genre to the anime settings that they were seeing on TV all the time.

This is actually true. In fact, the creator of DQ (Yuji Horii), was actually a writer on shonen jump. And the main artist in DQ was a famous Manga Artist in Japan.

That's one major reason why JRPGs feel so non-RPGy to western players.

For DQ at least, the art style shift seems to be by design to get away from the westernized themed art completely:

Polygon: Outside of the slime and maybe the Drackies, the first game’s aesthetic felt relatively traditional, very Dungeons & Dragons. But then the series grew and felt more whimsical and comical, especially after Dragon Quest 4. What drove the decision to bring the design away from more standard monsters to things like dancing cucumbers?

YH: From the very beginning we wanted to create a warm, inviting world. In that vein, we started to shift towards monsters that had a broader appeal — a kind of cuteness. Something that attracted you to them.

We were also really careful about how we presented defeating monsters. We never say, “You killed the monster.” It’s always, “You’ve defeated it.”

Polygon: It’s been mentioned many times before that Ultima and Wizardryhad a big influence on the creation of Dragon Quest, but what was appealing about that specific kind of Western fantasy theme? Why did you go with that instead of changing it to something with more of a Japanese influence?

YH: There were so many options we could have potentially gone with: ninja, samurai and those kinds of themes. But Japanese people are already familiar with those topics; I felt like there wouldn’t be a sense of escapism. I thought swords and sorcery, which Japanese people weren’t quite as knowledgeable about, would help expand people’s imaginations. That kind of style, but made more lighthearted.

Notice that the Polygon writer inserted D&D, but Yuri doesn't even address it at all. Compare that to how many CRPG devs credit P&P in Matt Barton's videos. It's usually the first thing they mention in terms of inspirations.


EDIT: In addition, the DQ creator also mentioned how he wanted to simplify the RPG genre because he's the type of player who never reads the manual. Which is basically the opposite of a rules heavy RPG like Realms of Arkania. Chargen alone can take an entire day in ROA. And RTFM is imperative.

 

[Mustawd]

Sorry for multiple posts, but I'd rather break my responses up instead of having a huge wall of text.

The move away from allowing full CHARGEN however I think was just that people wanted more freedom as auteurs.

I think this also kind of ties into the anime aspect, where the goal is to tell a story through interesting and engaging characters. Whereas in early CRPGs, the goal was to let you recreate a party much like in P&P. Of course story was always an aspect, but your avatars were self created. A JRPG is almost like playing an anime character in a way. The immersion comes from being part of the narrative in a sort of a Neverending Story kind of way.

At least that's how I always feel playing JRPGs. It's never "me" or "my guys". It's also a reason I dislike using companions in crpgs. If I wanted that I'd play a JRPG where every character is already chosen.

Reccomendations for people who don't like JRPGs

I'd argue the best way to get into JRPGs is to watch anime. Find one that you like. A lot of the tropes in JRPGs in terms of the aesthetic and character design begin to make a lot more sense once you're familiar with Anime tropes and like them.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

It's a complete un-cited source, but I remember reading a Quora post where someone claimed pen and paper is really really popular in Japan, although I don't know whether it had any influence on JRPGs, or indeed, even whether it arrived in terms of popularity before or after Dragon Quest. One of the images he used to illustrate his post was interesting, for showing the tonal differences between the two:

"They prefer their own rules and anime style illustrations.

Also while in US rpgs are aimed more towards older audiences the majority of RPGs in japan are aimed to children.
What is weird that we dont have more rpgs for children.

You can find many games that are practically Dungeons and Dragons with simpler rules and child friendly illustrations. (I really dont know why we dont have that.)"​

 

[Agame]

Nice to see constructive discussion about WRPG vs JRPG, please do carry on!

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Thought maybe going further into the differences between self-directed appreciation of the art:

In Buddhist and Taoist influenced schools of thought, since the world is meant to be quite ephemeral, or has a natural flow, the art often leans toward the ephemeral. Japanese pottery famously likes to have minor flaws in it, to show the inherent impermanence and imperfection of the object; it's beauty is it's flawed reality, rather than an illusion of permenance. Not to be too attached to something that will break. It's a bit different from Plato's influential theory of forms, in which a perfect ideal version of something exists in principle (even if just as a theory in our mind), and we try to attain that perfection. I wonder if this sort of influenced the JRPG town, since they are often meant to be experienced, then moved past.

A parallel tradition exists in Europe, with a lot of literature and philosophy learning this way. English and German romanticism, etc, had an fascination with the sublime. The veneration of nature, not unlike Shinto. They termed this awe of nature's majesty "the sublime" and sought to capture it in literature and art. As in all these schools, there is no 'perfect' way to spend your time, no way to minmax life. You experience things, and in not trying to hold onto them, they are experienced more fully. Thus the idea of having no markers, no pressure, just time and the landscape, would be quite familiar. People currently are asking for less handholding in games, and this is ironically a little pocket in a genre known for otherwise being on rails. The lack of a directive can be seen as freeing, akin to BOTW just dropping you in an open world with Ganon terrorising it and saying "do as thou wilt".

To expand upon all this, I think that might be why some JRPGs expect you to be a self-directed learner. They expect a keen engagement with mood and to notice artistic details. When I played some of the FF games I noticed that while the towns were sort of lifeless compared to say Sigil in Planescape: Torment, they told a lot through subjective interpretation of the art you were seeing, although again I'm not sure it's a 'better' approach, just different, and I appreciate both.

 

[Mustawd]

It's a complete un-cited source, but I remember reading a Quora post where someone claimed pen and paper is really really popular in Japan, although I don't know whether it had any influence on JRPGs, or indeed, even whether it arrived in terms of popularity before or after Dragon Quest.

Again, this is just Wikipedia surfing, but the article regarding Tapletop rpgs in japan seems to point to CRPGS such as Ultima and Wizardry as sources for the increased popularity:

It was not until the late 1980s, when role-playing video games such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, modeled after the western computer RPG's Wizardry and Ultima, helped popularize the traditional role-playing games. The first Dragon Quest was published by Enix in 1986 for the NES and MSX/MSX2 platform.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabletop_role-playing_games_in_Japan

So again, we have Wizardry and Ultima being a huge influence in not only JRPGs but also traditional P&P Rpgs. But once again...we’re talking a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. So it’s no wonder there are huge differences in style.

What’s funny is that the articles and interviews I’ve read seem to suggest that the Japanese viewed the Beholder as particularly ridiculous. Never mind, see below.


IIRC felipepepe mentions this briefly in his thread, but also appears in this uncited blog post:

This was also the period when HAGIWARA Kazushi threw a Beholder into his manga serial Bastard!!, but had to give it limbs and rename it SUZUKI Dogeazom.

source: http://no-sword.jp/blog/2008/03/lets_roll.html

EDIT: Oh wait, it just seems to be copyright related.

citation found: http://bastard.wikia.com/wiki/Suzuki_Dogezaemon

Also, https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/64x7cj/a_beholder_is_called_what_in_japanese/

 

[Neanderthal]

I'd say that interactivity has been decreasing in wrpgs as well, look at how you went from living worlds of Ultima to painted backdrops of IE games that you couldn't interact with except where devs wanted you to, look at how non combat focused classes have been totally remade to be just another kind of Fighter, look at how almost all games plots are now decided by combat alone. Most crpgs now are really arpgs that are slowly sliding into playing themselves.

Having some nice background detail to look at from art department isn't going to change unless it impacts game play, a la Dead Money.

 

[Kron]

I find the mere comparison of "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" to an artist such as Caspar Friedrich to be laughable.
How does the bland, empty, cartoony nothingness of that game come close to provoking the dramatic awe of his paintings?

As a sidenote, I honestly cannot understand the mental gymnastics people go through to defend that mediocre game, it's truly mind boggling.

 

[Tigranes]

Good post, Louis_Cypher receive thy brofist

Ultimately, Jarl is correct that a game must generally be defined by its interactivity, and that means the prettiest JRPG town is never really going to be a great video game town. But those limitations acknowledged, we can still appreciate some of the cool things they end up doing on that weird path. A city like Midgar has almost zero interactivity/reactivity and can be quite a chore to get around; it's not really a superbly designed town by many yardsticks. But one thing it does superbly is echo a sense of a strange but coherent place, something that very few WRPG towns with great gameplay elements do. (Athkatla being one of the exceptions.)

Talking about art, Alfred Gell says that something like a painting 'abducts' - it sucks you in, and it produces an experience that often feels like it is not of your volition. It's in this grey zone; it's not so conscious like analysing a picture, but it's not like a picture forces you to feel something, obviously. But great paintings will often leave you pulled away from yourself, if only for a moment.

Obviously, this doesn't happen in the same way, or with such elegance, in JRPG towns or any game moment compared to the great works of the past. But nobody was arguing that. It's interesting to consider how sometimes, you will have elements of a game - the way music bleeds into the rhythm of Fallout 1, the role of skeuomorphic UI in older games that the Codex knows so well - that don't really fulfil any active gameplay function, but leaves an indelible mark on your experience.

 

[Sacred82]

JRPG cities are the fucking worst


*wins close call battle with a boss monster* *pumping music sets in* *high on adrenaline*

"Hey Thundercock-san, let's go back to the village. It's been a long day!"

*soothing music sets in* *little picturesque shit town appears* Aww jeesus, now I have to go into every single unassuming looking building to look for that unique +2 powerup item before I get access to +3 item in half an hour, and speak to every single greybeard and scullery girl because that might be how the story goes on

*throws away controller and gets something to eat instead*

 

[JarlFrank]

A parallel tradition exists in Europe, with a lot of literature and philosophy learning this way. English and German romanticism, etc, had an fascination with the sublime. The veneration of nature, not unlike Shinto. They termed this awe of nature's majesty "the sublime" and sought to capture it in literature and art. As in all these schools, there is no 'perfect' way to spend your time, no way to minmax life. You experience things, and in not trying to hold onto them, they are experienced more fully. Thus the idea of having no markers, no pressure, just time and the landscape, would be quite familiar. People currently are asking for less handholding in games, and this is ironically a little pocket in a genre known for otherwise being on rails. The lack of a directive can be seen as freeing, akin to BOTW just dropping you in an open world with Ganon terrorising it and saying "do as thou wilt".

Sure, as a massive fanboy of Morrowind and a guy who enjoyed all three of the Gothic games, I love exploring, wandering, having to find my objectives without a stupid marker always pointing me to it.

And yet, the JRPGs I tried never gave me that sense of exploration. Because ultimately, there's little to discover due to the extremely low level of interactivity. I go to a place pretty much knowing there's not going to be anything really cool to find there. It's almost like with heavily level scaled games such as Oblivion, where I know exactly the chest at the end of the dungeon will contain nothing but trash.

This is quite in contrast to going out exploring in the real world. Forests, abandoned buildings, unattended archaeological dig sites. I was on a trip to Armenia in early September and exploring the locations I viisted was a pure joy because I knew there were interesting things there. Some old pottery shards to pick up, inscriptions in church walls I could try to decipher, cool things to actually interact with. Here at home in Germany, I like to go out into the forest during early fall in order to search for edible mushrooms. Whenever I find a mushroom I know is edible, I pick it up and put it in my basket. These are all very interactive experiences. Exploring not just to look, but also to interact.

In JRPGs, you can't pick up pottery shards, and usually there aren't even inscriptions on the walls to decipher. It's all very pretty, but also very empty when it comes to actually doing things. You can only look, if you find a cool-looking item the game doesn't even truly acknowledge its existence beyond its decorative function. You can't pick it up and turn it over and look at it from each side. You can only look at it where it sits, completely static. You don't really exist as an explorer in this world, because the world cannot truly be explored - it can only be viewed as a passive observer. And that defeats the purpose of a game, which is an inherently interactive experience, and completely destroys my immersion. If I walk through a city with 100 NPCs in it, and there's nothing to actually do there, no sidequests to be gotten by talking to NPCs, no houses to break into and steal shit... why am I even there? I could be looking at a painting instead, which I love to do (I got 900+ classical paintings in my paintings folder). But a game is the wrong medium for this kind of thing: just like you wouldn't release a movie that shows a static image for 90 minutes without the camera ever moving, you shouldn't release a game with static locations that can't be interacted with by the player.

Contrast this with something like the later Ultima games. Ultima VII and Ultima Underworld are excellent examples of how this should be done. Every object in the world is interactable. Even useless junk can be picked up and thrown around. One of the most popular and influential RPG series of the west, Elder Scrolls, was inspired by this and also lets you dick around with everything. The Divinity series is the same. Fallout and Arcanum also have a high degree of interactivity - heck, playing a techie in Arcanum pretty much requires you to dig through trash cans to find stuff to use for crafting. The cities in these games feel more like real places than any JRPG city because they aren't static. They can be interacted with. You can talk to NPCs, some of which have quests for you; you can break into houses and steal things; you can even attack people if you want to be a dick and wipe out the town's entire population. You are an actor within that world, not just an observer.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Agreed Jarl. Thanks for all the well-considered replies everyone. I happen to enjoy cultural exploration in games like the two Torments, or KOTOR II, much more than any JRPG. But I thought I would offer a perspective on how to find value in them. Sometimes the anime tropes can obscure the genuinely human writing in some JRPGs. Seeing past that is one challenge for a CRPG player, or someone jaded by years of anime, and another is this tendency toward empty worlds, which can seem almost like some flat MMO. I find however that unlike those horrible worlds, the genuine exemplars of the JRPG genre have more to them, but as I say they sort of expect this attitude of someone watching an old play or listening to classical music or something, in terms of how much you are meant to forgive the medium.

I guess at the end of the day the thing that I have been reaching to articulate, was that Japanese games aren't so bad when you get past anime tropes, and that some of the deeper experiences in gaming in general are best enjoyed slowly, with no pressure, or objective. I think there is some tendency in the very presence of things like objectives, to minmax RPGs, treating quests like a shopping list. Being able to treat them like an ephemeral phenomena allows a self-directed non pressurized experience. This stating the obvious for a lot of people, but you would be surprised how easy it can be to fall into that, and probably how many gamers do, removing all spontaneity. Not a defense of JRPGs or anything, just a few things I noticed playing DQXI.