WRPGs vs. JRPGs: The Art of Story Telling

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

shio said:

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.

I'd just like to intercede here and say that a lot of people, who claim to be mega WRPG fans, will turn around and say that Dragon Age is nothing more than a flashy version of Baulders Gate with better graphics and less options (fewer classes and skills).  Note, I'm not saying this is my opinion, just what I'm hearing from a lot of WRPG fans.

As for the person you quoted, yet again there's another misconception of JRPGs lumped into an absolute.  There's multiple JRPGs that allow you to customize your characters attributes, from Phantasy Star to Dragon Quest.  Why in Dragon Quest III alone, way back in 1989, you could even change their mood, which would alter their stats while leveling.

If you haven't figured it out, Dragon Quest has a very WRPG styled engine.  Which did tons of things you keep praising WRPGs for doing...anywhere from 15-20 years ago.  All of you who keep lumping 'all JRPGs' into these absolute statements need to do some research.