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Hynad on 14 April 2015
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sc94597 said:
Hynad said:

What it does, is takes many things that worked well and were greatly appreciated in other games of its genre and bring them all together in an extremely well crafted package.

I think the difference here is how you and I define "reinvented." I don't define it as, "doing something entirely new."  That is reserved for the word "invented" without the prefix "re." And that would mean Xenoblade would have created a new sub-genre/genre. I use the term "reinvented" as "to take something done priorly and change it so much that it seems new." (1) Xenoblade did that with its open-world gameplay. The games you mentioned went about their semi-open worlds differently from how Xenoblade had. Their worlds were segmented and seamed. Xenoblade's was much less segmented and seamed, or at least apparently it wasn't. If somebody says, I like Xenoblade what is another game like it? I can't honestly tell them that there is a JRPG like it. It is unique in its vastness and detail. No JRPG had as an entensive and detailed 1:1 (mono scale) world as Xenoblade's. Hence, it did something new within the JRPG genre in that its world was a seamless package. This has now become a standard for JRPG's. 

And before you mention my extreme bias for Xenoblade again, I just want to say that Xenoblade isn't even in my top five JRPG's (although it might be in my top ten.) 

 

(1) Meriam-Webster definitions of reinvent.

1:  to make as if for the first time something already invented <reinvent the wheel>

2
:  to remake or redo completely
3
:  to bring into use again
I think definitions 1 & 2 apply here. What are your opinions on this? 

I already told you I don't think Xenoblade has reinvented the wheel. I don't think it remade or redid completely anything either. And I don't think it brought anything into use again. So that's why I can't say it reinveted the genre.

I think I have already explained my stance on this well enough. But this better convey what you meant. I still don't see the game the way you do. I have played a lot of JRPGs. I never stopped playing that genre since the original DQ back in the NES era when I was around 8 years old. That may be the reason why I see things differently from you. I don't know. I enjoyed the scale of the world, and felt it handled the exploration aspect in the way I have always loved in JRPG. Something I always miss when it's not as present as it was when I first played that genre. But that feeling, I got it when I played Ni No Kuni, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, White Knight Chronicles... I felt those games did the JRPG genre justice, and brought back what I liked so much about them when I was younger. None of them reinvented the wheel. They all try to make the JRPG genre what it used to be, but in a modern fashion.