Silent Hill 2,3 producer says America ahead of Japan in terms of game dev

[rocketpig]

naznatips said:

Sorry Rocketpig but I completely disagree on the originality of Western devs... let's look at the RPG genre for example.

You sited Mass Effect, KOTOR, and Oblivion.

KOTOR was great, but it's a 5 year old game. Mass Effect is derivative of KOTOR, Oblivion is completely derivative of Morrowind (but with worse gameplay). A real Western advancement in the RPG genre hasn't been made in years... especially when we look at settings. Medieval world of demons and magic (directly ripped off of Lord of The Rings 90% of the time) or Sci-fi world (directly ripped off of Star Wars 100% of the time). The slight exception to this rule would be the Fallout franchise, but let's face it: Bethesda is currently working on raping that franchise beyond recognition.

If you look at the Final Fantasy Franchise alone they have gone from medieval to steampunk to sci-fi to whatever the hell FFX was. Star Ocean did Sci-Fi far before Western RPG devs (and far better IMO). JRPGs can also be based in mythology, even ancient Western mythology (Odin Sphere, Valkyrie Profile) and plots range from characters guided by Guardian Spirits (Baten Kaitos), to playing as a sexy super-human android (Xensoaga). Themes range from enslaving superpowered animals to do your bidding (Pokemon), to time travel (Chrono Trigger).

The genres simply don't compare in diversity of themes and styles. That said, Western devs certainly have their strong suits... but it's not in RPGs.

You say no real advancement has been made in 5 years... I disagree. The complete openness of Oblivion (to a fault IMO) and the cinematic nature & dialogue trees of Mass Effect added very different twists to the genre. Besides, you can't expect radical changes a la KOTOR to happen every year. It may be five years since KOTOR released, but when was the last time a JRPG radically altered gameplay style that much? 10 years? 15? Longer?

And you can pick on the storylines of WRPGs; I won't disagree with you. But stories don't greatly alter the overall gameplay. It's just a different story but the rest of the game progresses as it always has. Differing worlds and art styles are nice and all but when it comes to core gameplay mechanics, they really don't matter at all. I'm talking about real progression of the genre, not a few new shiny bells and whistles with a different style slapped on the top of it. And in that regard, JRPGs have been horribly stagnant since the transition to 3D. I still like many of the games and play them but I'm not expecting anything radically new when I purchase a JRPG nowadays. I expect it to be extremely formulaic and linear, just as those games were 12 years ago.