I feel that the problem with computer RPGs is that to this day, no one really knows how to make them or even what constitutes a good cRPG. There are only a handful of genuinely beloved classic games, many of which have very little in common with one another, and it follows that there is no broadly agreed recipe for a classic RPG.
More to the point, it seems like places like RPGCodex have had
something that was meant to amount to such a recipe, which just so happens to have made much of choices and consequences. The problem, I suspect, is that the list was
wrong. I was thinking about all those threads by
Safav Hamon about how great Deadfire is, and I feel like he's on to something there - as far as the scope and scale of the game is concerned, going strictly by numbers, one might expect it to be a good cRPG, but judging by the response (I haven't played Deadfire, so I wouldn't know) it's not a particularly great game. The same is true, to an extent, of Torment: Tides of Numenera, which I
have played and which I
know to have, in principle, elaborate and somewhat meticulously constructed choices and subsequent consequences. However, that doesn't really matter, because the game is long-winded, uneventful and boring, with no impetus to make the player really want to play.
One reason for this confusion, sad to say, is readily apparent in this thread - Japanese RPGs generally
don't have C&C, and so, it seems natural to latch on to that as a distinctive element that
clearly elevates even the most mundane cRPG above Japanese popamole filth. Never mind that Fallout and Planescape: Torment, among othes, have by and large slipshod reactivity and respond inconsistently to player choice (particularly so when more elaborate game mechanics are involved) at best, and games that have tried to improve on that count (and have, arguably, succeeded) haven't actually turned out to be superior cRPGs. I feel that the correct inference to make is that reactivity should be considered a peripheral feature for RPGs - a worthy side dish, but entirely unsuited to be the main course. However, even if I'm right, that still leaves us with all the real work ahead of us, since we'd still have to figure out the things that
actually make cRPGs good (and why they're clearly, obviously, self-evidently better than any JRPG that has ever been made).
As far as JRPGs are concerned, I feel that the genre has
also been in decline since the PS1 era (largely due to bloat, which inevitably leads to bad pacing), but be that as it may, the properties of a successful and interesting Japanese RPG
are fairly well understood. Thus, it is possible to consistently make at least passable JRPGs, and since there are a
lot of them, pure chance would inevitably mean that some of those games would have to turn out to have exceptionally good gameplay or a genuinely entertaining story, and a handful will have both. Subgenres like the Japanese tactical RPG and dungeon crawlers are even
better delimitated and understood, so games in those genres are increasingly polished and focused and thus very good. I doubt I'll ever see a western RPG as precisely and meticulously constructed as Valkyria Chronicles, but I'm certain it won't happen without a re-examination of what cRPGs should aspire to be.
