richardhutnik said:
And, to me, the moving away from direct control sounds like making an RPG be more like an RPG. Back in the day, you controlled your allies, because the AI was as dumb as dirt. Now, AI work is supposed to advance, so allies should be able to function independently of you. You play a character in the game, with allies, rather than play a party of characters. This should, when done right, make it feel more like actual role playing, instead of a computer simulation of a role playing game. Take, for example, a game like Left 4 Dead, but where you could improve your stats. That would end up being more like a real roleplaying experience than what you would have with older stuff that goes under "RPGs". The central definition of role playing is playing a role. It is NOT commanding a party. People don't role play parties, they role play characters. |
Traditionally, yes. A role player only plays one character going back to pencil and paper RPG roots, but video game players have become accustomed to assigning actions to all party members (due to rock stupid AI as you mentioned) rather than have them act independently.
The typical party member command based system that's been used in JRPGs since the beginning makes them more like turn based combat strategy games, but regardless, when you change certain parts of an old formula (what players expect before playing the game), for some you end up with New Coke.
I prefer it personally because it speeds things up and I can more or less count on the AI to not screw things up, but obviously a lot of people don't.
Personally, I think it would have been an interesting experiment to see an MORPG that enabled up to three (or whatever max party size) players to independently control one of the six characters during combat, but due to the extreme linear nature of FFXIII, I don't think it would hold well in comparison to a full MMORPG.
