| Torillian said: I am indeed the article writer. I apologize for the confusion but since gamrConnect and gamrReview are now separate entities it doesn't make a ton of sense for my forum nick to make an appearance on gamrReview. |
I was only somewhat irritated for a moment, that someone claimed to have written the article. Yes, it makes sense, but if you don't know that this nick and this name are the same person, it can be confusing at first.
| Torillian said:
You're right that the end result is the same whether you are getting increased stats or better equipment, and it's largely an arbitrary distinction, but I make it because it helps to define the genre in a way I find acceptable and doesn't include highly variant and off the wall games such as God of War. |
Hmm, Metroid was mentioned in the thread. Samus get's better items through the game. That doesn't fit your definition. If Metroid is not SF but Fantasy instead, Samus is a sorceress and instead of weapons to fire different shots and items like a grappling hook she has spells, that do the same. Anything else: gameplay, story and so on are unchanged. Would you call it a RPG then? Because the character develops (new spells) and in difference to weapons it is no equipment but part of the character. It seems in that case it would fit your definition. But it would basically be the same game.
| Torillian said:
To me player choice is secondary because it gets used in so many other genres. Adventure games often have a large amount of player choice throughout so it would be difficult to make a distinction between something like Heavy Rain where your choices dictate which characters remain alive throughout the story and skyrim or Fallout since both have a lot of player choice in their gameplay mechanics. |
Player choice for character development. I don't know Heavy Rain, but heard that it allows for slightly different stories based on your choices. (I really should try out that game sometime.) But as far as I know, your character doesn't develop. Skyrim and Fallout have character development and that is influenced by players choices.
And normal adventure games (Heavy Rain aside) usually don't have player choices. You usually have to find the trigger to let the story advance. But regardless what you do, the story will stay the same the second playthrough. So it is not really a player choice.
| Torillian said:
It doesn't make a massive effect, no. But that means you have to define between areas of grey like "which of these games has an acceptable amount of character development through the game to be an RPG, which is a situation I did my best to avoid. |
Yes, but there will be always grey areas, that is unavoidable.
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Torillian said: Yes I'd call Pandora's Tower an RPG even though you don't have any choices throughout the leveling process. I'd suggest that since you can craft and change your equipment that it fits your definition as well. I realize that my definition for RPG doesn't work for the table top iterations but I'm only trying to define the term as it pertains to video games. |
Yes, I'm aware of the weapon crafting. But you have a very limited number of weapons, that you get based on the progress of the game. The increase in weapon stats has only one way: better. That is not really a choice. It will not be much different on your second playthrough. And the customization through weapons is not big compared with the development of the character-stats, and these developments are games-choice.
