Why are JRPG's still being built the way they are? ( long read)

[Alphachris]

When I hear the word "Roleplay" the one thing that comes to my mind first is theatre. Even the ancient greeks had roleplay dramas. Back at school we had to read roleplays where you had to adopt a certain role.

One focus of roleplays has always been telling a dramatic story using variuos characters. The drama was not only there for pure entertainment... It should make the people think about the roles of the various characters. These dramas tried to display the deepest moral dilemmas that people are facing in their life. Many great JRPGs follow this form of storytelling. While there are many games, that try to portray human characters (like Heavy Rain, Uncharted, Assassin's Creed) and their story, a JRPG simply has the main focus on this aspect and portrays a much greater number of characters. Suikoden even managed to let you meet over 120 characters.

So, if may use this comparison: A great JRPG is like an interactive theatre drama for me while a WRPGs tries to be an interactive improvisational theatre. It is a form of theatre, but it surely is not the only way of roleplaying.

"Roleplaying means to carve your own story with your own character...". I think that this is a very limiting definition. It is ONE FORM of roleplaying (were you play a non-scripted role). Imagine you are going to play/read something like Hamlet. Are you not playing a role if you play hamlet according to the script? I mean, you are meant to play hamlet according to the script... not the hamlet you would like to be. But nevertheless you are playing a role (hamlet)... you are roleplaying, don't you?.

Thats why I think that JRPGs are RPGs... scripted RPGs. You can take control over given characters and live through the events the scriptwriter wants you to see. But not through the eyes of one (or 2,3,4) character like in an Action-Adventure... He wants you to see the events through the eyes of many characters and during the game you learn a lot of background information about each of these characters (feelings, motivations,etc.). You see the characters react and comment on what is happening. These comments and reactions are not only there for oneliners and entertainment, they are the main fokus of the game. During the dialogue scenes or cutscenes you are like a spectator in the theatre and you have to think about what is going on to fully comprehend the whole story.