WRPGs vs. JRPGs: The Art of Story Telling

[shio]

ktchong said:

Gnizmo said:

WRPGs give the illusion of choice. In the end you get the same linear story 99% of the time though, with a bunch of side-quests. Maybe I just played the wrong ones, but every time I try one I get the same main story regardless of the "choices" I make plus or minus a few worthless dialogue changes. The story plays out ultimately in the exact same fashion regardless of which worthless side quests you have done. I would kill for a game that offered true choices and actually had a dynamic story.

The "illusion" of choice is better than a strictly linear gameplay with no choice.

Some WRPGs do offer some real choices.  Let's use Mass Effect as the  example again.  At one point, your main character has to sacrifice one of the two key characters: Ashley or Kaiden.  One of them has to die.  The two characters offer very different  independent plotlines -- and whoever you sacrifices will not appear in Mass Effect 2.  I think that is a very significant choice.

JRPGs often do NOT even let the players choose the main character's name, appearance, class, specializations, starting stats, diagloue and behaviors.  That's ZERO choice, absolutely no choices or whatever.

 

Actually Mass Effect is a terrible example. Mass Effect is an extremely linear RPG with very few choices, nowhere near the quality of the recent The Witcher or Dragon Age.