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Gothic is not an RPG

Black Angel

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1- If we are going to call story-driven games with non-custom character as rpg, then we should also call Prince of Persia and God of War as RPG too.

2- There is a linear scenario in the game, your decisions don't effect shit other than the armor color. Such a game should fall into the Action category.

3- You cannot follow various methods while doing quests.

4- I'm not saying Gothic is a bad game.
Ur mom is not an RPG
 

Jacob

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
1- If we are going to call story-driven games with non-custom character as rpg, then we should also call Prince of Persia and God of War as RPG too.

2- There is a linear scenario in the game, your decisions don't effect shit other than the armor color. Such a game should fall into the Action category.

3- You cannot follow various methods while doing quests.

4- I'm not saying Gothic is a bad game.
Ur mom is not an RPG
upload_2021-11-3_21-47-14.png

There's no data on the CRPG Analyzer (A totally reliable source considdering it's from RPGWatch) on whether OP's mom is an RPG, so there's more merit on discussing the RPG-ness of OP's mom than of a classic that's been discussed to death.

I disagree though. There are more open ended scenario in OP's mom (Though mostly they're a slightly different variation of getting beat up by OP's dad) than in Gothic so it's definitely an RPG.
 

0wca

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1- If we are going to call story-driven games with non-custom character as rpg, then we should also call Prince of Persia and God of War as RPG too.

2- There is a linear scenario in the game, your decisions don't effect shit other than the armor color. Such a game should fall into the Action category.

3- You cannot follow various methods while doing quests.

4- I'm not saying Gothic is a bad game.

This is all true. I love the atmosphere and the world of Gothic as the game as a whole (except for the combat), but it is NOT an RPG. It has RPG elements in it, such as levels and training different abilities, spells, but that's about it. An RPG needs C&C to be considered one, but if you want to go by textbook definition of what an RPG is, it is a 'Roleplaying Game', which means you playing the role of someone else, which Gothic does.

However, if we go by standards of what an RPG SHOULD be, then I agree Gothic does not reach that mark. It's still a cool game, but it's an action game with RPG elements.

Every game with level-ups is an RPG, including God of War.

So you consider Fallout 4 to be an RPG?
 

Butter

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So you consider Fallout 4 to be an RPG?
I thought I was pretty clearly being facetious, but yes Fallout 4 is an RPG. It's not a good RPG, or a good game in general, but RPG is a genre, not a stamp of quality.
 

0wca

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So you consider Fallout 4 to be an RPG?
I thought I was pretty clearly being facetious, but yes Fallout 4 is an RPG. It's not a good RPG, or a good game in general, but RPG is a genre, not a stamp of quality.

Again, you're right, if we're going off of textbook definition. But I believe OP was talking about the standards of what an RPG should be, based on its RPG predecessors.
 

Cryomancer

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Gothic doesn't have C&C? IS this right?

You can make a deity win the eternal conflict or none in G3. There are a lot of narrative and mechanical character building in gothic.

And in Gothic 2 + Returning, deciding your guild is a long quest with a lot of consequences. To become a necromancer, you need to ask Xardas for apprenticeship, he will think, try to warn you about the risks of dark magic, then after accepted as his apprentice, you need to train your spirit and mind to be able to understand and hold the power of dark magic. Paying high tuition fees to mages train your mana, reading books, doing alchemy, learning new languages to get enough INT to be able to understand the dark magic and then, do the initiation into the circle of darkness which involves killing a "sheep of innos" in a monastery full of powerful fire magicians. After 14 hours, I finally become a necromancer, but din't had enough resources to learn summon skeleton and arrow of darkness. BTW, to make arrow of darkness, you need a expensive black pearl. Learning the most basic dark magic spells bankrupted me. I had to sell my potions.

Potions doesn't insta teleport to your belly. Potions require a drinking animation and heal/regen mana slowly in returning. There are insta regen potions(which only requires the drinking animation) but they are too expensive from merchants, are available in small quantity and the recipe for this potions are behind optional ultra powerful bosses and require mastery over alchemy and rare herbs to make. Summons? No summon cap, but each summon has a mana upkeep. You only fell like a fully fledged necromancer dozens(if not hundreds) of hours later, when you learn spear of darkness and how to summon skeleton warrior at the third circle of dark magic). When you learn the 4th circle of magic, Xardas gives a robes of high dark arts which doesn't offer stats, you wear this robe because you are a powerful necromancer like in a gear farming cooldown managing game.

How this is not an RPG???

but yes Fallout 4 is an RPG

This I strongly disagree. FL4 is a action shooter with very light RPG elements. IMO :
  • fl 1 = great rpg
  • fl 2 = great rpg
  • fl 3 = bad shooter rpg hybrid
  • fl nv = good rpg/shooter hybrid
  • fl 4 = awful shooter with very light rpg elements on it.
IMO in order to a game to be a RPG, he needs to focus on role playing. Just like a single racing mission in GTA won't make it a racing game. A single racing mission in Crash 3 doesn't make it a racing game, but Crash team racing is a racing game. Even visual novels has more RPG elements on it than FL 4.
 

Butter

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This I strongly disagree. FL4 is a action shooter with very light RPG elements. IMO :
  • fl 1 = great rpg
  • fl 2 = great rpg
  • fl 3 = bad shooter rpg hybrid
  • fl nv = good rpg/shooter hybrid
  • fl 4 = awful shooter with very light rpg elements on it.
IMO in order to a game to be a RPG, he needs to focus on role playing. Just like a single racing mission in GTA won't make it a racing game. A single racing mission in Crash 3 doesn't make it a racing game, but Crash team racing is a racing game. Even visual novels has more RPG elements on it than FL 4.
The problem is that role-playing is something that occurs in the player's mind. It's not a game mechanic. At best we can judge whether a game is built around typical RPG hallmarks like gaining experience, leveling up, creating a build, doing quests. Fallout 4 does all of these things (even if it does them extremely poorly). You might argue that it's an action RPG, or a FPS/RPG hybrid, but that's getting into semantics that I don't really care about.
 

Harthwain

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An RPG needs C&C to be considered one [...]
I think this approach is detrimential, because it makes people forget that you could make an RPG in which your "choices and consequences" could be implemented by putting them directly in the gameplay (via implementing the proper systems), rather than having to hand-craft the entire narrative (which in itself limits how much you can put into it).
 

arcanum

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This thread is about the classification issue and due to the inconsistency of the definition of "a RPG" it really has no sense. Suppose you have the perfect identification of Gothic as RPG\non-RPG - what does it change? Nothing.
 

Rincewind

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I think most of you are approaching this from the wrong angle. I'm with Matt Barton on this; cRPGs are heavily pen-and-paper RPG inspired but that's about it. You don't really "role-play" a character in any cRPG. Conversely, you can say that you "play the role" of some character in most computer games in existence (except for the really abstract ones like puzzle and card games).

You could argue that cRPGs with heavily branching storylines (e.g. Age of Decadence) are the only "true" RPGs because the choices your character makes during the game heavily influence how the story unfolds. But then what about those older text adventures that had branching storylines and different endings?

So, how I see it, we just have different types of cRPGs, and Gothic just fits nicely into the general single-player action RPG category. Then you have Dungeon Master likes, Wizardry likes, Ultima likes, Gold Box games, Infinity engine games, all of them focusing on different things. They're all vaguely cRPGs in the sense that they have stats, you can equip your character with items, combat plays a major role in conflict resolution, you can gain XP and level your character(s) up, but otherwise I'd argue they're quite different experiences. Liking Gothic, Witcher and ELEX doesn't guarantee that you will care about Gold Box games at all, for instance, and vice versa.
Then we have adventure games with stats like Disco Elysium +M

Here's the snippet from Matt Barton I was referring to:

Although most people would probably think it's a trivial matter to trace the CRPG back to its tabletop, paper-and-pencil based "equivalent," doing so probably obscures more than it reveals about the two genres. As anyone who has actually played D&D is acutely aware, the two games are as different as playing intramural basketball and College Hoops 2K7. Indeed, the typical "CRPG" is not a "role-playing game" at all, or, if it is, that's generally the least distinctive thing about it. After all, you "play a role" when you play PAC-MAN or SPACE INVADERS,and even in games like Tetris you're playing a role--the unseen force that causes those falling blocks to shift and rotate. It's probably more accurate to describe first-person "interactive fiction" games like Zork or Myst as a "role-playing games," since in those games the player literally assumes an important fictional role within the game. Likewise, a first-person shooter like Half-Life seems to come much closer to the ideal of "playing a role" than a game like Icewind Dale, in which you only indirectly control a whole group of characters.

Source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/desig...aying-games-part-1-the-early-years-1980-1983-
 
Last edited:

Shaki

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Ok, Gothic is cool, but can we go back to discussing actually important topics, like Disco Elysium not being an RPG?
 

grim1234

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Nov 10, 2021
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It has stats that make your character grow - both numerically and immersively. You have an open, living world, in which you're free to do whatever you want and which reacts to your actions accordingly.

And, you know, character creation does not automatically make something an RPG, and vice versa. If your GM hands out a premade character for you in PnP RPG night does that mean you're not playing an RPG anymore? It's common for RPG players to assume premade, clearly defined roles - and they just play those roles. By the way, you can play a PnP RPG game without even having a character sheet. It's a ROLE playing game, after all - the ROLE which you assume is the main focus, and freedom, of course.

While Gothic doesn't give you freedom that you would wish for, it doesn't mean it doesn't have enough to call it an RPG. While Fallout is a heavy or hardcore RPG, Gothic is easily an RPG too, just on the lighter side - but still has the qualities of an RPG, and there's no mistaking it.
 

Glop_dweller

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Sep 29, 2007
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All RPGs essentially evaluate when to say, "No". This applies throughout the various mechanics, and dialog trees.

The Stats & Skill levels indicate the PC's strengths—and more importantly their weaknesses.

RPGs are about what the current character could manage to enact or achieve in a given situation, or their failure at it. It's about what they would decide in deeds, and in conversations, and the consequence of these.

________________

I would argue that RPGs are not about pretending to be a character class, or imagining one's self in the game world.
 

lametta

Educated
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Feb 4, 2021
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the definition of "what is" and "what is not" an rpg game is determined by general consensus. So if the majority of games who played/know Gothic think that its an rpg game then it is an rpg game.

So yeah Gothic is an RPG because most people who played it or know about it would agree.

Tl;dr version: most ppl think its an rpg op's opinion is thus irrelevant.
 

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