blaydcor said:
People meaning...you? JRPG's are the one genre where gameplay often takes a backseat to story, characters, and atmosphere. Who the hell slogs through thousands of tedious random battles for the fun of it? Why are JRPG's with lame gameplay like FF7 but intriguing, involved stories and well-loved characters so phenomeonally popular? Are Bioware games so damn good because of the, uh, gameplay or excellent writing and sharp plotting? If that's how you think RPG's work than I dont think you're really a true RPG fan. If games ever want to become art (which I think is incredibly possible in so many different ways), I think RPG's are the closest they've come yet. |
If we accept that games as art is indicative of a state of being that exists separately from the narrative tropes of theater and literature, then most RPGs (particular Japanese RPGs) are about as far as you can get. Even FFXII's narrative mode borrows heavily from European theater and fails to differentiate itself in meaningful ways. Games are not art because of their stories, games are art because they are games and because they can exist as things other than stories.
RPGs do not have "bad gameplay", nor is it less important for this genre than in any other. The texture of Japanese RPGs in terms of gameplay is very different, and to many they may seem subtle, but few games in the same genre play less similarly than do Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
