| twesterm said: So I'm playing FFXIII and watching the opening cut scene. We have all this fantastic crap going on and I'm sitting there thinking damn that's cool, can't wait to do that! And then I get control and I get two basic attacks and whatever the hell blitz (which looks just like a basic attack). In the meantime the guy I'm not controlling is doing cool stuff, meanwhile, I'm not. So while I was bored tapping the X button picking auto-battle because there really wasn't much else to do I started thinking-- what would I be doing in a good game? I started thinking about Uncharted 2. In Uncharted 2, all that fantastic stuff going on in that cut scene at the start of FFXIII, I would be doing that shit instead of sitting there with my hands behind my head watching it happen and then doing boring stuff when I do get control. Now, so why do I say JRPG's are dead? They love to rely on those crazy cut scenes doing fantastic stuff because that was just stuff you can't do in games. Now, we can do that. That means we're sitting there watching Lightning be some sort of action hero asking ourselves why we aren't the ones doing that. Instead, I get to do auto-battle and then I'm greeted with 30 pages of a datalog? This is the best JRPG's have to offer me? JRPG's can't even tell me a story anymore, they have to have me read it in a datalog? |
Let me go back to the pen and paper roots of RPGs. In that game, you tell the DM (or GM/Game Moderator) what you want to do, and then the GM rolls the dice and that is the result. You are told what happened. Now, translate that to the cut scenes and you have what JRPGs are about. Now, if you want action for this, then you can go action-RPG. You get stuff like in Zelda, EXCEPT you build up your stats.
NO, JRPGs aren't dead. It is just that you aren't interested in them any longer. And that is how life works. I used to like baseball games, but I outgrew them. I do think Baseball Stars (NES) is still one of the best video baseball games I played.
I will also say the action genre consumes other genres and makes them their own. The action genre took over adventure games, so now that action games are less arcade style and more action-adventure with either a greater focus on action, or on adventure. And now, the action genre looks like it is moving in on the RPG genre. Mass Effect series is a step in that direction. And think for a second about multiple player Modern Warfare. The hook in that is a major hook involved in RPGs, which is stat building. I would also argue Red Dead Redemption had something similar. In Red Dead, you gain experience points, which unlock more stuff. And then I could bring up Borderlands, which does similar. People who make action games realize that the elements of adventure AND RPGs help make the action genre better, so they add them.
