Does Mass Effect bring RPG's back from nowhere land?

[loves2splooge]

Mass Effect isn`t any less of a RPG just because it has Gears of War-esque combat (apparently Valkyria Chronicles also has Gears of War-like combat. Mixed in with the SRPG template). Mass Effect has a great emphasis on role-playing (dialogue trees, choosing to act in good faith, choosing to be a evil dick, choosing to be diplomatic and adhering to the status quo, choosing to be a renegade, etc.) for a CRPG. Final Fantasy 4 on up pretty much has zero role-playing. Just because jrpgs are considered rpgs doesn`t mean that they contain much in the way of role-playing (well SOME do. ie. Shin Megami Tensei but the vast majority don`t). They are called rpgs because their origin lies with Wizardry and other early western dungeon crawlers. These games were considered rpgs because they borrowed table-top rpg mechanics (levels, experience, turn-based combat, die rolls, character classes and character sheets, hit points and other statistics, etc). They had little in the way of roleplaying though.

It`s not necessarily bad if a game doesn`t have roleplaying though. Diablo, Torchlight and other similar games have minimal roleplaying (moreso than most jrpgs because your avatar is basically you. You`re not there basically watching a cutscene with your avatar doing all the talking for theirself) All the roleplaying in Mass Effect isn`t going to do much for the fact that I don`t like the combat in that game. If Mass Effect was like Planescape Torment, where you could theoretically only fight a few times the entire game apparently, that wouldn`t bother me. But nope, you can`t do that.

I`d go as far as saying there is more roleplaying in sports games like UFC 2009 Undisputed and NHL 10 than jrpgs like Final Fantasy IV to XIII (minus XI since that had a bit of roleplaying). You create an avatar in career mode or Be a Pro and basically assume their role, leveling up their stats to boot. You don`t see your avatar in these games going to a cutscene whining up a big emo monologue about how they are afraid to get hurt so they push everyone away. Obviously you don`t have dialogue trees like, `fuck the ring girl yes or no` but theres certaintly more roleplaying in than than a standard jrpg like FF7 because you are that character just like you are Commander Sheppard or the Nameless One. But you aren`t Cloud or Lightning. They are completely divorced from the end-user. Sure you get to control them in combat and exploration but the same can be said for Bayonetta, Nathan Drake, Master Chief, etc. And obviously Bayonetta, Uncharted and Halo aren`t role-playing games.