new PS3 RPG "Demon's Souls" scans

[Words Of Wisdom]

ookaze said:

Torillian said:
WRPG's are western made RPG's that usually revolve around the ability to customize your character, having alot of choice in how you play the game, and sidequests.

JRPG's are Eastern made RPG's that have a given main story that you have to follow to play through the game, rarely have customizable characters, and sidequests are minimal. 

What?

JRPG have tons of sidequests. Just because you don't do them doesn't mean they don't have sidequests.

I complete every JRPG I make, and most if not all have sidequests, sometimes they are even bigger than the main story.

Other differences between JRPG and WRPG are that WRPG are heavy on the munchkin way and gritty graphics.

Stories in WRPG are poor because of the customization of your character. There are so many possibilities that the developers have to reduce the story to basic things. Both WRPG and JRPG are radically different take on the true tabletop RPG.

The munchkin way and gritty graphics stuff is nonsense, but the bolded is true.

The further you stray from a well-defined character and the more story branches you create, the more you must accomodate player decision-making and in ways sacrifice for it.  If you have 100 hours to devote to a main quest that has no branches, you have 100 hours on that quest.  If you split the quest into a good/evil branch, suddenly you have maybe 25 hours per branch (with 50 hours common to both of them).  The more elaborate you make the pieces and the more decisions you give the player the less you can do overall.  If you ever take apart the dialog files for BG2, Fallout, or Arcanum you'll see that the actual scripts are simply staggering in size and the dialog trees get to be pretty insane for even what seems like simple things.

The idea that a WRPG is more customizable than a JRPG is true... to a point.  JRPGs are, in many ways, becoming more customizable as time passes.  Considering we started out with games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior as "classic" JRPGS, I'd say we've come a long way.  It seems like there's a middle ground that companies are looking for.  Final Fantasy I where you have one class and that's all you do is good for some but not so much for others.  Meanwhile, Final Fantasy VII where character differences were almost negligible and materia/items made up most all the customization worked for some but not others.  In my experience, people want a reason to use all the characters so too generic is bad yet they also want to use their favorites (so customization is good).  Hopefully we'll see a better merging of these desires in the future.