Is there a need for JRPG and WRPG?

[Scoobes]

outlawauron said:

Scoobes said:

outlawauron said:

allblue said:

I agree with the soundtrack part but read my post above. I have yet to see one modern jrpg that has writing and voice acting as sophisticated as mass effect or dragon age. Unless jrpg break out of that anime/manga inspired mold with cheesy dialogues, generic plot and characters, they aren't going to make a come back in the west. They are merely surviving on their past glories now. 

I'm curious as to the term sophisicated. Moreso from Mass Effect (as I got bored with Dragon Age and never went back to it), because it's writing was terrible. The voice acting was fine, but that's a cause of it's expotentially higher budget than every JRPG not named Final Fantasy.

I guess this thread was going to eventually transform into a JRPG vs WRPG critique, might as well be now.

What was terrible about the writing in Mass Effect? The dialogue, characterisation and world building in the series are some of the most impressive examples in the industry.

I'll edit my post to remove the offending bits. I think ME is a case of style of substance, but I haven't played 3.

I didn't think it was particularly offensive, I was making more of a general comment as these threads always end up being JRPG vs WRPG rather than debating the how or why the genres do things differently.

Personally I thought Mass Effect handled some relatively mature themes fairly well for a video game (racism, morality of science/technology, politics, drug addiction etc.) and developed characters incredibly well over the course of the series. Off the top of my head, Liara goes from being a shy young scientist to running the largest digital information monopoly in the game, Tali goes from young nobody to near criminal to admired admiral, Mordin suffers from guilt for his actions and works to rectify them, Jack finally accepts her past and is able to psychologically move on... they each have a past and fully fleshed back story with moral themes in each.

If I was to make a complaint about the story or writing it would be that the over-arching storyline is fairly generic (save the galaxy/world/universe from the big bad x, y, z). The world building and the characters that are put into that world are what make the writing shine.