Bethesda: Western RPG “More Realistic” Than JRPGs

[Riachu]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

Khuutra said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

But I didn't read his point in the first place.  I was just replying to the typical 'WRPGs vs JRPGs' concept this thread was obviously made to propagate.

As for your claim that Japanese stories are more fancifal than Western....I would say that's not true at all.  Just look at the origin of 'Science Fiction' with HG Wells and Jules Verne.  Many Japanese novels and even Anime that have been made in the last 20 years are closer in style to the earlier works of Science Fiction than the 'grim realistic' stuff popular in the west.

Even products like Star Wars and Star Trek are a rare novelty now adays.  While in Japan, they are some of their major source of inspiration to this day.

Of course I'm not going to say Japan doesn't have its own post apocalyptic/grim take on Sci Fi as well.  In fact, quite a few of them have influenced the west in recent years (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion).  But at the same time, Japan is still producing a lot of Sci Fi works in that older style with flying airships in space and cybernetics that help people in the near future, etc.  If you're looking for where HG Wells and Issac Asimov live in the modern day, its in Japan, not the west.

No. No no no no no no.

You're arguign with me about scince fiction. That's fine. But your explanation of your understanding of the genre is almost solely based on its aesthetics. That's not the point.

To start it, Star Wars and Star Trek are anomalous in the canon of Western science fiction because they are not grounded in hard science in any respect. Star Wars in particular is the scifi most heavily influenced by Japanese traditions, not the other way around.

Your H. G. Wells comparison - and Verne, too - Christ, Verne - is particularly distressing. Wells I can almost understand in some capacity since his use of science fiction was as political allegory, but Verne actually sat down and did the cold hard math on every single story he ever wrote. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was almsot prophetic in how well it predicted the scientific advancemnt of the U-boat and Journey to the Center of the Earth, while scientifically inaccurate, was based on the best scientific understanding and theory of the day. Jules Verne is the father of hard science, of grounded fiction which flirts with the fantastic without ever lifting its skirt up.

The Wells problem is worse because "grim realism" is almsot exactly hat he was all about - War of the Worlds is one of the grittiest, darkest, starkest science fiction stories ever written, and even its more fantastical elements were grounded primarily in understanding of what was possible at the time. That's the differenc between Japanese and Western science fiction right there.

Read anny anthology of Japanese science fiction (you could just watc anime I guess but it's not the same) and you'll discover something surprising: Japanese science fiction is rooted in fantastical elements without the constraint of possibility. That's why so many elements of science fiction are prevalent in Japanese fiction and not western fiction: mecha, the space opera, "energy weapons", on and on and on.

I'm not saying that all western science fiction holds to hard science. Of course it doesn't. Star Trek and Star Wars are two examples of science fiction which throw the traditions of Verne and Wells out of the freaking window and never look back. That said, they are not the norm, and it's Wells and Verne who set the tone for Western scifi which has been held to since then.

You're not going to find echoes of Asimov's ruminations on artificial intelligence in Japanese games, but you can find it in the geth in Mass Effect.

You're not going to find Verne's adherence to the problem of pressure and heat in Japanese games, but you can find it squirreled away in the limitations of the Normandy.

You're not going to find Wells' grounded damnations in Japanese games, but you can find it in the claustrophobic halls of the vaults.

The point is that Western science fiction is gounded in physics, in mathematics, because that's the tradition on which we were raised and it's the tradition which we understand. Mecha don't appear in serious Western science fiction. It doesn't happen.

This isn't about setting.

This isn't about aesthetics.

It's not about politics.

It's not about tone.

It's about being grounded in our current understanding of the universe, about capitalizing the "science" in science fiction. Western scifi - and western games, born of the same traditions - do that. Japanese games, as a rule, don't.

Wow, you're going off on so many tangents, I don't know where to begin.  Or if I even want to.

I understand you're REALLY focused on this notion that Western Science Fiction (and by default games with a Science Fiction setting) are more based on 'logic' and 'reality'.  But I was trying to show you that everything is not as cut and dry as you make it out to be.  Plus the fact that you can't just simply look at ONE facet of a genre and say '[X] series is more realistic because it has more of [Y]'.  That's the short answer.

The LONG answer is that the Science Fiction genre has been evolving (much like the RPG genre has been evolving) for over 100 years.  And trying to claim that one whole subdivision of that genre (western science fiction) is more 'grounded in reality' while another subdivision (Japanese based Science Fiction) doesn't is just ignorance.  How is Mass Effect any more valid a Science Fiction work than Ghost in the Shell?  And by your own example, how is Star Trek LESS realistic than Mass Effect?  WHere are all these 'rules' coming from, especially since you're trying to totally ignore such things as setting, athstetics or tone.  What's left?  E=mc2?  I'm sorry buddy, but a big part of Science Fiction isn't about exact calculations or 'fortelling the future', its about telling a story with the 'atmosphere' of technology and the 'setting' that is beyond our time.  Or are you now going to say stuff like Blade Runner and Foundation and Empire are not Science Fiction now?

Also, as an aside, Jules Verne didn't just write technical dramas with depressing endings, as a lot of Science Fiction is today.  They were also functional stories with solid characters and most had happy endings that portrayed a positive outlook for both humanity and technology.  Once again, I point to how this is a common theme in Japanese Science Fiction (using Technology to help humanity, positive outlook on technology) whereas in contrast the opposite is true in Western media and Sci Fi (Technology is a tool, Technology is ultimately the tool of destruction).

The reason for the more cynical Western sci-fi is simple.  It's because we have a much higher crime rate and we have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Not to mention we are going through the worst economic downturn in history besides the Great Depression.  That makes it worrisome for many of technological advancements.  In Japan, the crime rate is very low and they usually depend on us in times of war so they have a cheerier deposition about the future.