On western RPGs and user satisfaction, compared to JRPGs

[JarlFrank]

- no character creation
- leveling up gives you specific bonuses for each character, you don't get to spend points at levelup yourself
- dialogs are completely static cutscenes, you don't get to pick your responses, not even fake choices, just linear cutscenes
- every character has specific abilities, rather than you being able to develop your party into the direction you want

Yeah it barely qualifies, even Wizardry 1 had stronger RPG gameplay than that.

It is a good action adventure game though.

Talking about arbitrary semantics may be futile, but this seems like another (although somewhat more justified) example of constraining the definition of RPG in such a way as to exclude JRPGs. Which is fair, but I think it's unhelpful because for all practical purposes, definitions created in this way tend to obfuscate rather than elucidate the things that make RPGs good, fun, interesting and distinctive. I also think it's confused, because it is in contradiction with what is unambiguously the original measure of RPGs, that is to say, actual pen and paper games. There are plenty of Pen and Paper RPGs that do not involve character customization - hell, the original Dungeons & Dragons had barely any whatsoever - or even character growth through experience. More importantly, it is quite common to play PnP RPGs with pre-generated characters, and it should be obvious that playing with pregens does not in any way change the nature of the core activity, that being the actual roleplaying, which unfortunately cannot be replicated without the participation of a human game master.

In any case, Chrono Trigger is a great game and certainly not an action-adventure game, as it has nothing like an action component. I don't particularly care whether the game qualifies as an RPG or not (since the so-called "RPG elements" aren't really integral to PnP RPGs anyway), but I do think that Western RPGs could learn something from the process of development that JRPGs, as a genre, have gone through; for better or worse, the Japanese RPG in its various subgenres has essentially been pruned and narrowed down in its focus to specific elements reminiscent of RPGs that actually work in video games, while in the Western RPG this has been more of a process of dumbing down rather than specialisation. Now, the Western RPG shouldn't go the route of JRPGs (that probably results in something like Bioware games), but it's important to get away from this kind of "but it doesn't have this or that feature!" kind of thinking, when the key thing is whether those things are (or even can be) done well.

Well, personally the label of JRPG was always more confusing to me than labeling those games something else, because I went into them expecting an RPG and never got a game that felt like an actual RPG, with the exception of simple dungeon crawlers with barely any storytelling, which often feel similar to western dungeon crawlers from the 80s. But whenever the Japanese devs take a step forward and add their own ideas to the genre, it stops feeling like an RPG to me, but like something else, something distinct with an identity of its own - and one that is shared among most JRPGs. The sheer linearity and the frequency with which control over your characters is taken away from you is a defining feature of the experience. Even a good JRPG like Chrono Trigger often takes control away from you, whenever a storytelling sequence happens in a JRPG, be it a dialogue or a cutscene, it's a completely hands-off experience for the player, and this is in direct opposition to what I expect from a good RPG.

An RPG can be a proper RPG and a good game with barely any story at all. Just give me a decent dungeon crawler and I'm happy with that. Japs are pretty good at delivering that experience, and I enjoy their games focused on the combat and exploration experience, be it classic crawlers or modern action RPGs like Dark Souls. But whenever a stronger element of story is added, it just devolves into "read dialogues where you don't get to choose your responses, and watch cutscenes where you don't get to make any decisions". It's just completely static and hands-off, and it takes me out of the experience. The fact that these are often unskippable and excruciatingly slow (god, the way text in JRPGs tends to be typed out rather than appearing instantly... urgh) makes it even worse.

And a game that regularly and with a high frequency takes away control of my character from me is not a good RPG.

I hate retarded scripted sequences where your party walks into an ambush and gets captured for story reasons, too. Interestingly enough, Dragon Age did that kind of scene well, it's been a long time since I played it but I remember a hard as fuck battle at the end, after which you're supposed to be taken prisoner. You're supposed to lose it, and it's designed in a way to be almost impossible to win, but you get to fight it and you CAN even win it if you play it well, skipping the imprisonment entirely. Correct me if I'm wrong.
In your standard JRPG, you get lots and lots and lots of scenes where your characters act without your input, and the story just progresses without you having any say over it. So many story beats happen because of things your characters do while you have no control over them, and that is simply inacceptable in an RPG. This didn't happen in the early RPGs like Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic. They barely had any story, sure, but once they started introducing stories and more complex quests, control over your character or party was never taken away from you. No cutscene-induced incompetence, no decisions your party would make without your input. When it comes to handling conversations, most early RPGs would employ a keyword system where you, the player, actively typed in keywords you wanted to talk about, or chose them from a list. In later games, you would get a list of dialog options to choose from. Again, player input. In JRPGs, you get zero player input, you just read a static pre-scripted dialog, hands-off.

It's all these hands-off, input-less elements that make many JRPGs feel not like RPGs at all to me, so far as to have nothing in common with western RPGs anymore, not even with the 80s RPGs they were inspired by. This is a major, major difference between western and Japanese RPGs, and this is precisely why many JRPG players can't get into western RPGs, and why many western RPG players are put off by JRPGs. Putting them into the same genre when their very design principles are so fundamentally different is confusing to those expecting roughly similar experiences when they see the label "RPG".

 

[Sigourn]

Talking about arbitrary semantics may be futile, but this seems like another (although somewhat more justified) example of constraining the definition of RPG in such a way as to exclude JRPGs.

My personal opinion is that you can't define an RPG, but you can very much judge whether a game is an RPG or not. I've personally come up with my own set of rules that do a great job satisfying me.

Top two games are not RPGs by my definition. Final Fantasy VII has a degree of customization, but nothing stops you from undoing said customization. The only thing that makes characters TRULY unique is decided before you even play the game: Cloud uses swords, Barret uses a gun, etc. What's funny is that there are items that let you increase individual stats, but you can farm these to reach max stats with each character anyhow...
Bottom two games are RPGs by my definition. Final Fantasy has a degree of permanent customization, and you cannot undo it. You decide your class, which has consequences in the form of stat progression, available equipment, and available abilities. For mages, this means you also cannot master all spells, not even the ones they ARE able to learn. Fallout is an RPG with a much greater degree of freedom but not any less penalties.

If you asked me to narrow down my definition of what an RPG is: a game where your characters have permanent individuality, but where you can define them. More examples of RPGs:

1. Wizardry series. Pretty much the same as Final Fantasy.
2. Deus Ex.
3. Dark Souls.
4. The Witcher 1 (haven't played the others).
   
5. Fallout: New Vegas.

The difference between something like New Vegas and your typical JRPG is that choice and consequence happens because of your BUILD, not because of a random dialogue option that has nothing to do with your build (e.g. "do you want this treasure chest as a reward or this sword?"). I'm even inclined to say Vagrant Story, my favorite JRPG ever, is not an RPG. You can't ever make Ashley Riot your OWN character.

A very easy way to tell whether a game is an RPG or not is to consider its gameplay replayability. You will pretty much play FFVII the same, all the time, with major differences being which party members you choose to use and how good you get at deciding materia combinations. In Final Fantasy 1, the difference is much greater because of how many party (class) combinations you can have, that lead to dramatically different playthroughs.

There's also the argument "nothing stops me from sticking from certain Materia during the entirety of a playthrough and giving each character a defined role", which leads to the counter-argument "then Quake is an RPG if you only play with a shotgun".

 

[Hobo Elf]

...becomes a very divisive game. JRPG fans praise the shit out of JRPG music and storytelling. Anything that gets in the way of repetitive gameplay (minus long cutscenes of course) is seen

Having played Unlimited SaGa, I can say that it is a bad game, but not for the reasons why the majority hate it.

 

[Beastro]

I think Western RPGs just need to take risks more. It's cool to remake the classics, but you need that innovative, spirited and youthful desire to create something *new*.

Western media hasn't been innovative since the turn of the millennium. The trend has always been for safe, guaranteed successes that are a return on money even if they are forgotten once they're out of theaters.

Vampire - Bloodlines was like nothing at all before it or really after it, and you'll find that it was something fresh, unique and new at the time, and is now a classic CRPG.

And look what happened to Troika.

Customers may want a chain of companies going bankrupt producing classics, I certainly do, but the industry refuses to do that now. They'd rather be like TV and film and be safe and mediocre.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The problem with a lot of these arguments is when people say "JRPG" they seem to be referring to SNES- and PS1-era Squaresoft games, and their immediate derivatives. When you point out stuff like SMT2, which has stat-allocation on level up, a complex party-building system based on demon fusion, a story with branching dialogue, the ability to talk your way past all enemies, multiple paths, and even totally opposite endings (you can side with either faction, or kill both of them), suddenly they say "Oh well that's not a TRUE Jrpg."

None of the criticisms commonly presented against JRPGs make much sense when applied to stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Monster Hunter, Dragon's Dogma, the Souls series, the SaGa series, Etrian Odyssey, etc. etc. If you dislike 90's era Square soft games, say that.

There's also the argument "nothing stops me from sticking from certain Materia during the entirety of a playthrough and giving each character a defined role", which leads to the counter-argument "then Quake is an RPG if you only play with a shotgun".

What you are pointing out here is that weapon choice/specializations aren't really meaningful at all to the definition of RPG. RPGs are combat simulators where you level up, thats' about it. More options are definitely good and more fun, but aren't absolutely necessary. Many of the classic, genre-defining games in the RPG genre have only the bare minimum of weapon, spell, or build choices. Consider the Ultima games where there are only 3 stats and a handful of weapons; everyone in Ultima 5,6,7, is basically identical, their stats and builds make almost no difference in gameplay. It's pretty funny to point to the relatively sparse gun choice of Fallout 1 and argue it's a greater level of customization than zillions of materia and their various combo effects in FF7. Finding materia is not guaranteed, leveling them up takes time and requires choices with tradeoff, as well as choosing a loadout and determining their effects and ultimate goals.

Considering Vagrant story, you obviously can customize Ashley into specific builds, and it requires a great amount of training and work building your equipment and honing the stats to do the job you want. Yes, with patience and time you can eventually get maxed-out weapons, but so what? Arbitrarily placing a cap on player power levels doesn't make customization inherently better. I can build a character in Fallout 1/2 who can do everything in the game and it's effortless to do, whereas in Vagrant Story if I want an all-powerful hero I have to work for it.

Personally I enjoy JRPGs because they often have wildly innovative leveling and combat mechanics compared to the west, which seems to have decided that "skill points plus feats" and "diablo 2 branching skill trees" are the only leveling systems that exist.

 

[a Goat]

Does this overwhelming praise for JRPGs all across the board (sans the Codex) mean JRPGs are better games

Tojonese ARPG's are better than Western ARPG's and codex is popamole so they mostly play ARPG's. I mean you have to be mentally retarded to prefer The Witcher - or any other nubioware-style game - over Dragon's Dogma, Dark Shits or Monster Hunter.

 

[Night Goat]

JRPGs are infinitely superior to WRPGs. Compare this:



To this:

 

[Sigourn]

What you are pointing out here is that weapon choice/specializations aren't really meaningful at all to the definition of RPG.

My post makes it look that way because I was basically writing what I was thinking of at the time. To be more accurate, there's a difference between:

1. Choosing what gun do you want to use.
2. Choosing what your character is inherently good at.

There's no roleplaying in picking any of the different swords for Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. But there is roleplaying in saying "my character specializes in Small Guns" in Fallout. Because in Quake you can't specialize in anything. You can choose to use only a Shotgun, but that is not what "Specialization" means. Specialization would mean getting a Shotgun bonus for a choice you make at the beginning of the game, for instance.

That's ultimately my argument against Final Fantasy VII's materia system: it allows for very diverse materia combinations, but you don't specialize in materia.

Finding materia is not guaranteed, leveling them up takes time and requires choices with tradeoff, as well as choosing a loadout and determining their effects and ultimate goals.

This is something I thought of as I finished writing my comment. Especifically the "leveling them up takes time". Because it is true that you don't get Mastered materia from the start, rather, it takes time. But then again, in the context of Final Fantasy VII, said time is pretty much meaningless, because 1) Grinding AP is easy, and 2) It's not like your choice of Materia will make or break the game. The most basic materia combinations will get you through the game, this is me as a 14-year old speaking, someone who was absolutely out of his league when playing Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. So that can tell you an idea of how simple and pointless the Materia system is, ultimately.

Lots of customization, but in the end, pointless except for the Super Bosses, and reversable at any time.

Considering Vagrant story, you obviously can customize Ashley into specific builds

Not really. You cannot choose your stats. These only increase when you beat a boss or when drinking wines or elixirs (a great feeling, that). I also don't consider the honing of weapons in Vagrant Story to be very RPG-like. You can argue that is a "build", but in reality most people will simply carry many weapons on them and switch them around (so there's not much "building" happening), or disregard the system entirely and resort to chaining.

I miss creating ultimate weapons in Vagrant Story, never managed to get that Damascus Brandestoc.

 

[TemplarGR]

JRPGs are infinitely superior to WRPGs. Compare this:



To this:

My GOD!!!!! The cringe is REAL!!!!

Then we wonder why human civilization is on a downward spiral...

 

[Paper]

To japs, work through endless repetition is a virtue. They're raised to grind... Westerners prefer romancing humanoid aliens and level scaling.

 

[Saduj]

Skyrim is not "dumbed down". It is just designed around the things that matter most in an CRPG: Fluid gameplay, total freedom, great immersion!

Yes, it lacks number porn, and that is a GOOD THING. If you want number porn, play an Excel Spreadsheet.

But why does Skyrim cling to this new age number based, character building nonsense at all? None of the original classic rpgs had any of that garbage. Space Invaders. Asteroids. Pac Man. You just start up the game and you're in command of a mobile artillery piece tasked with repelling an alien invasion or you're lost in your spaceship trying to survive an asteroid field or you're a hungry yellow circle thing being hunted by ghosts. 100% fluid gameplay and freedom! No numbers. No "perks" or "abilities" that attempt to unrealistically define you, breaking your immersion. No stopping the immersive experience to mess with inventory and items and level ups. You are who are you and you have nothing but your own skill to get you through. You get better with experience but its your own experience playing the game! I don't know why people associate this character building crap with the genre now when clearly it does nothing but detract from the experience.

 

[Karellen]

Well, personally the label of JRPG was always more confusing to me than labeling those games something else, because I went into them expecting an RPG and never got a game that felt like an actual RPG, with the exception of simple dungeon crawlers with barely any storytelling, which often feel similar to western dungeon crawlers from the 80s. But whenever the Japanese devs take a step forward and add their own ideas to the genre, it stops feeling like an RPG to me, but like something else, something distinct with an identity of its own - and one that is shared among most JRPGs. The sheer linearity and the frequency with which control over your characters is taken away from you is a defining feature of the experience. Even a good JRPG like Chrono Trigger often takes control away from you, whenever a storytelling sequence happens in a JRPG, be it a dialogue or a cutscene, it's a completely hands-off experience for the player, and this is in direct opposition to what I expect from a good RPG.

Well, I agree, really - it's really plain as day that cRPGs and JRPGs constitute (broadly speaking) different genres, even though both descend from early computer RPGs and, ultimately, PnP RPGs. Though I feel like adding that cRPGs too have also diverged from both the earliest RPGs and actual pen and paper RPGs to such an extent that they can't really be considered the same type of game in any significant sense, and if anything, I think the problem with cRPGs is that they haven't diverged quite enough; there has been a tendency to needlessly hold on to specific trappings of PnP RPGs even when those things don't translate well to computers.

As you say, it's not that Japanese don't like games about free exploration of gameworlds with substantial player choice. Clearly they do, since they make them. It's just that they have effectively broken down the RPG genre to multiple subgenres depending on what feature they want to emphasise. And this being the case, Metroidvanias, Japanese dungeon crawlers and the likes of Dark Souls tend to be better when it comes to, say, area design than just about anything in the cRPG genre. Similarly, Japanese tactical RPGs often have far better combat encounters than basically any cRPG. Even linear, narrative-based RPGs (which is really a subgenre unto itself), even taking their Japanese cookiness into account, have more interesting stories than the bulk of cRPGs. This is, plainly, the advantage conferred by specialisation.

Which is more or less the bone I have to pick with definitions like Sigourn's, here - I don't mind people liking the things he mentioned, but I see no reason why those things should be expected of RPGs in general, or all at the same time. Something like elaborate character building didn't exist in early D&D and was never particularly common in PnP RPGs in general, and certainly the current trend has (for very good reasons) been to move towards lighter and simpler game systems. The significance of choices made at character creation in PnP RPGs is usually not that big (and when you have a party, generally most bases will be covered), and in something like OSR play, the whole point is for player ingenuity to trump character statistics. And certainly anything related to "replay value" is basically inimical to PnP RPGs, because PnP scenarios and adventures aren't meant to be replayed in the first place by the same people. None of these features are self-evidently important for RPGs unless you're talking about a particular interpretation of the cRPG subgenre typical of the late 90s and early 00s. And even then, as far as this thread is concerned, there is a problem - that is to say, basically nobody knows how to make good games in that subgenre.

Speaking personally, I should say that things like character building choices or dialogue options don't do a whole lot for me in most cRPGs, for pretty much the same reason Sigourn finds Materia lacking - there's not enough at stake there. That's largely the reason that, for me, games like King of Dragon Pass and FTL feel a great deal more like roleplaying than just about any cRPG, because decisions made in those games have unique, situational short-term and long-term strategic considerations that I have to weigh in the context of each narrative situation on the spot. This is, more or less, what happens in actual PnP RPGs, where all situations are unique. Without that, for me, the bulk of choices in a cRPG appear as a vaguely annoying optimisation challenge with missing information that I ultimately don't find terribly interesting, in which chase I actually prefer something like the Materia system, since it's at least largely unobtrusive.

But, all that said, it's not as if there's anything wrong about most cRPG features in themselves. I just think that they generally come across as half-baked in cRPGs because they're treated as necessary elements for a game to even be an RPG, rather than game elements to be honed and polished for the sake of making the best game possible. In the late 90s, it was certainly cool that such features existed in a game just for their sheer ambition, but at this point, there's no novelty to them, and I suspect that they're dragging games down. What I'd like to see more of is games like FTL that basically pick one thing they want to do really well, and then design the whole game and supplementary features to support that one thing.

 

[Sigourn]

FFS look what you made me do

Spoiler

Trigger warning

Spoiler

The CRT makes the colors pop in a way my LCD can't do the game justice with emulation. It's gorgeous.

 

[laclongquan]

This statement is objectively false because I played Chrono Trigger, and while it was an enjoyable adventure game, it definitely wasn't an RPG.

Is that a troll post or what? By any definition of RPG around here Chrono Trigger is one.

Please say YOUR definition that lead you to think CT is not a RPG.

Just so we could laugh at you.

- no character creation
- leveling up gives you specific bonuses for each character, you don't get to spend points at levelup yourself
- dialogs are completely static cutscenes, you don't get to pick your responses, not even fake choices, just linear cutscenes
- every character has specific abilities, rather than you being able to develop your party into the direction you want

Yeah it barely qualifies, even Wizardry 1 had stronger RPG gameplay than that.

It is a good action adventure game though.

The concept they follow, is that a strict "roleplay as that character in this story" method. By that method, the idea that you can change your character is out of place ( I dont say it's not fun, just not fit the concept). Same as changing dialog, or a fixed characters roster. It's like you roleplay Hamlet in Hamlet drama. Heresy and old school, I know, but there it is.

By the very root defintion of the words "role playing game" the concept followed by Chronos Trigger is the truer compared to the current concept of changing your character stats, dialogs...

You dont like that concept, I get that. Hell, I even understand why. And I agree that the changing stuffs in a game is funner, better, and more attractive to play.

But to say that is not RPG is just plainly wrong.

 

[Sigourn]

The concept they follow, is that a strict "roleplay as that character in this story" method. By that method, the idea that you can change your character is out of place ( I dont say it's not fun, just not fit the concept). Same as changing dialog, or a fixed characters roster. It's like you roleplay Hamlet in Hamlet drama. Heresy and old school, I know, but there it is.

By the very root defintion of the words "role playing game" the concept followed by Chronos Trigger is the truer compared to the current concept of changing your character stats, dialogs...

You dont like that concept, I get that. Hell, I even understand why. And I agree that the changing stuffs in a game is funner, better, and more attractive to play.

But to say that is not RPG is just plainly wrong.

The modern definition of RPG is basically "if it has stats, levels and experience, it is an RPG". That's really all that matters in the eyes of the majority. And when you think twice about it, you realize why that is such a pointless metric for what an RPG should be.

 

[LordofSyn]

Well, I agree, really - it's really plain as day that cRPGs and JRPGs constitute (broadly speaking) different genres, even though both descend from early computer RPGs and, ultimately, PnP RPGs. Though I feel like adding that cRPGs too have also diverged from both the earliest RPGs and actual pen and paper RPGs to such an extent that they can't really be considered the same type of game in any significant sense, and if anything, I think the problem with cRPGs is that they haven't diverged quite enough; there has been a tendency to needlessly hold on to specific trappings of PnP RPGs even when those things don't translate well to computers.

As you say, it's not that Japanese don't like games about free exploration of gameworlds with substantial player choice. Clearly they do, since they make them. It's just that they have effectively broken down the RPG genre to multiple subgenres depending on what feature they want to emphasise. And this being the case, Metroidvanias, Japanese dungeon crawlers and the likes of Dark Souls tend to be better when it comes to, say, area design than just about anything in the cRPG genre. Similarly, Japanese tactical RPGs often have far better combat encounters than basically any cRPG. Even linear, narrative-based RPGs (which is really a subgenre unto itself), even taking their Japanese cookiness into account, have more interesting stories than the bulk of cRPGs. This is, plainly, the advantage conferred by specialisation.

Which is more or less the bone I have to pick with definitions like Sigourn's, here - I don't mind people liking the things he mentioned, but I see no reason why those things should be expected of RPGs in general, or all at the same time. Something like elaborate character building didn't exist in early D&D and was never particularly common in PnP RPGs in general, and certainly the current trend has (for very good reasons) been to move towards lighter and simpler game systems. The significance of choices made at character creation in PnP RPGs is usually not that big (and when you have a party, generally most bases will be covered), and in something like OSR play, the whole point is for player ingenuity to trump character statistics. And certainly anything related to "replay value" is basically inimical to PnP RPGs, because PnP scenarios and adventures aren't meant to be replayed in the first place by the same people. None of these features are self-evidently important for RPGs unless you're talking about a particular interpretation of the cRPG subgenre typical of the late 90s and early 00s. And even then, as far as this thread is concerned, there is a problem - that is to say, basically nobody knows how to make good games in that subgenre.

Speaking personally, I should say that things like character building choices or dialogue options don't do a whole lot for me in most cRPGs, for pretty much the same reason Sigourn finds Materia lacking - there's not enough at stake there. That's largely the reason that, for me, games like King of Dragon Pass and FTL feel a great deal more like roleplaying than just about any cRPG, because decisions made in those games have unique, situational short-term and long-term strategic considerations that I have to weigh in the context of each narrative situation on the spot. This is, more or less, what happens in actual PnP RPGs, where all situations are unique. Without that, for me, the bulk of choices in a cRPG appear as a vaguely annoying optimisation challenge with missing information that I ultimately don't find terribly interesting, in which chase I actually prefer something like the Materia system, since it's at least largely unobtrusive.

But, all that said, it's not as if there's anything wrong about most cRPG features in themselves. I just think that they generally come across as half-baked in cRPGs because they're treated as necessary elements for a game to even be an RPG, rather than game elements to be honed and polished for the sake of making the best game possible. In the late 90s, it was certainly cool that such features existed in a game just for their sheer ambition, but at this point, there's no novelty to them, and I suspect that they're dragging games down. What I'd like to see more of is games like FTL that basically pick one thing they want to do really well, and then design the whole game and supplementary features to support that one thing.

Can I interest you in Star Traders Frontiers. It has a learning curve, but has everything you're requesting. It most definitely is a digital analog of PnP mechanics. Please let me know what you think.

Sent from my LGLS996 using Tapatalk

 

[Jacob]

JRPGs are infinitely superior to WRPGs. Compare this:



To this:

unironically agree, the scene below might be cheesy, but even it has some sweetness and subtlety to it, the DA:I scene is pure cringe.

 

[TemplarGR]

Why we always have to discuss what is an RPG on this forum?

An RPG (videogame) is a type of videogame where the human controls a player avatar through indirect means and strengthens the character prodecurally through character progression and items, to guide him through a story inside a certain world. Like Fallout 1

That's it.

Now some RPGs introduce some form of direct control, for example Skyrim, and thus they are considered ACTION-RPGs.

Plus many games introduce a strategy-tactics element to the game, and they become SRPGs... Like Tactics Ogre or Pathfinder Kingmaker, for example...

It is not fucking rocket science...

As to what Chrono Trigger is, it is DEFINITELY AND RPG. You control avatars INDIRECTLY through picking actions via a menu... There is a story and a unique persistent world to go through... There is character progression... It is as RPG as it can get...

 

[Butter]

Why we always have to discuss what is an RPG on this forum?

An RPG (videogame) is a type of videogame where the human controls a player avatar through indirect means and strengthens the character prodecurally through character progression and items, to guide him through a story inside a certain world. Like Fallout 1

That's it.

OK, great. Every Zelda game is an RPG.

 

[TemplarGR]

OK, great. Every Zelda game is an RPG.

In Zelda games, the player avatar is controlled directly, like an action game. It also has minimal progression (you can typically only upgrade Link's HP), but has a lot of items to upgrade his capabilities. He is guided through a story but the game world is typically with little interaction outside of fighting monsters, there are some cities and some NPCs though...

In short, while most Zeldas are like 90%-95% action adventure games, they do contain all the RPG elements in some limited capacity.

So yeah, Zeldas are borderline ActionRPGs, sure.

 

[a Goat]

I have better definition of RPG here, just for you:

IF I(username Sheep on prestigious discussion forum - RPGcodex.net) say Game X RPG it is so.

 

[JarlFrank]

This statement is objectively false because I played Chrono Trigger, and while it was an enjoyable adventure game, it definitely wasn't an RPG.

Is that a troll post or what? By any definition of RPG around here Chrono Trigger is one.

Please say YOUR definition that lead you to think CT is not a RPG.

Just so we could laugh at you.

- no character creation
- leveling up gives you specific bonuses for each character, you don't get to spend points at levelup yourself
- dialogs are completely static cutscenes, you don't get to pick your responses, not even fake choices, just linear cutscenes
- every character has specific abilities, rather than you being able to develop your party into the direction you want

Yeah it barely qualifies, even Wizardry 1 had stronger RPG gameplay than that.

It is a good action adventure game though.

The concept they follow, is that a strict "roleplay as that character in this story" method. By that method, the idea that you can change your character is out of place ( I dont say it's not fun, just not fit the concept). Same as changing dialog, or a fixed characters roster. It's like you roleplay Hamlet in Hamlet drama. Heresy and old school, I know, but there it is.

By the very root defintion of the words "role playing game" the concept followed by Chronos Trigger is the truer compared to the current concept of changing your character stats, dialogs...

You dont like that concept, I get that. Hell, I even understand why. And I agree that the changing stuffs in a game is funner, better, and more attractive to play.

But to say that is not RPG is just plainly wrong.

I often see this "in a theater play or a movie, the actors also play a role, but they only act out a role that has been written by the story's writer, they don't get to make choices either, and it's still called playing a role" argument used in the defense of JRPGs, but it's a terribly inappropriate argument in the context of video games, and especially the way JRPGs handle story delivery (completely hands-off, not even fake flavor choices for the player).

When you watch a theater play, you might say after the performance, "That actor played a really great Hamlet" or "That actor's Hamlet performance was rather lackluster". The actors have to perform the role actively, it is their job to deliver the lines, to put emphasis on each word and sentence, to express the character's movements and gestures and facial expressions. It is up to the actor to interpret the character. This can lead to vastly different portrayals of the same character, despite both performances following the original plot and dialogue to the letter, just because the actors put their own spin on the character. And nowadays in theater, directors can even put a twist on the story: one could turn Hamlet into a female character and have it be played by a female actor, and she portrays her Hamlet differently again, with her own personal spin. The story itself doesn't change, but it is the actor's interpretation of the character and the actor's skill at acting that defines a theater play. No Hamlet performance will be the same. Every acting troupe is a little different, and if you've seen the same piece several times in theater, each time with different actors, you know that the role of a character depends as much on the actor's performance as it does on the play's plot.

Now, let's go into movies and TV shows. There it is different, isn't it? Actors get their role written for them and act it out, and that's it. Movies are filmed once and released to the cinemas and then DVD. There are no multiple actors putting their own spin on a character in each performance. No, but there is such a thing as typecasting, writing roles specifically for a certain actor, and in TV shows even actors influencing the way their character is going to be developed. When Arnold Schwarzenegger started out, he was just an actor chosen because he would fit the role of a movie. But once he had gotten popular and well-known, the characters in movies were written to fit his acting style, rather than him being chosen because he fit a written character's style. In many of Arnie's movies he will just be Arnie. No matter what his character's name is, the character is primarily a vessel for Arnie to play the type of character he is good at. The actor shapes the role, not the role the actor, in the case of superstars like him. Could you imagine Commando with anyone other than him in the lead role? No, because the character was written for him.

In TV shows, due to their long run-time, an actor's influence on the development of a character is even stronger. Let's look at Star Trek - The Next Generation. First season was kinda crap, second became a little better but it only hit its stride from the 3rd and 4th seasons onwards. The plots became better, but also the characters - and they were shaped as much by the acting style and personality of the actors as they were by the writers. Let's look at Jonathan Frakes' character William Riker. He started out clean-shaven as all characters on the ship, but from season 2 onwards he had a beard. Why? Because during the break between seasons 1 and 2, he didn't bother shaving and appeared bearded for the first rehearsals of season 2 episodes. The film crew decided it looked good on him and it became part of the character. He also has a peculiar way of getting onto chairs: instead of sitting down normally, he swings his leg over the back of the chair in order to sit down. This was done to accomodate the actor's hip problems that makes it easier for him to sit down; incidentally it also looks smooth as fuck and fits to the character. Hey, that's already two visual elements of the character (looks, mannerisms) defined by the actor and not by the writers! It's almost as if the actor has some degree of choice over how to play his character! Later on, Frakes would even direct some of the Star Trek movies in which he also starred as a character, which meant he had even more of an influence on the story than when he was just an actor. And he obviously reached that position because he did a good job portraying his character in the show.

So yeah. The "actors also play a role and that's completely static, without them having any influence over how it plays out!" is an utter bullshit argument.

Theater, TV shows, and to a lesser extent movies are therefore closer to western RPGs, if we want to do this retarded and completely unfitting comparison (it's comparing apples and oranges, essentially), than they are to JRPGs. In JRPGs, the player does not get to put his individual spin on a character. The player just watches cutscenes and reads dialogues with zero player input. If we go with the theater/movie/TV show comparison again, in a typical JRPG the player is not the actor of the main character, the player is just a viewer sitting in the audience, passively watching the performance.

 

[Sigourn]

It would have been easier to say "the "playing a role" is bullshit because in pretty much every game with a character you are playing a role". Quake, Doom, Mario, Sonic, you are playing a role in all of those.

 

[laclongquan]

Roleplay is not starting with movies. It start first with stories when some old grizzled veterans tell at campfires with the teller maybe act it out and listeners immerse themselves in that. If the whippersnappers want to change details like the correct skills of main character, or change the dialog between MC and other char, either the teller or other listeners will snarl him down~

Then it advanced with stories on writing materials. Then movies.

Like it or not, jRPG follow the oldest definition of ropleplay, fun or not.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

DA:I is representative of anything other than soulless mediocrity

Not sure about that one cotton.