E3 2015: Horizon: Zero Dawn's incredible balance of action and RPG

[Torillian]

Acevil said:

Torillian said:

That's simply the line I've drawn that includes everything I intuitively consider an RPG and discludes everything I think isn't.  Had a lot of discussions with Naznatips about how you define what is and isn't an RPG and that one rule seems to work for just about everything.  If your character is getting better throughout the game because they gain new abilities or gain new equpment that goes against the core concept of RPG which is that you gain experience through battle and that experience is used to increase your characters' abilities.  If the equipment gained experience that would be one thing, but there is no such thing as experience in things like MH or Zelda and thus this seems like a good line to draw for an RPG definition.  

But wouldn't you thus argue that drops themselves could be seen as experience that you need to make your character stronger? Given you are correct that I truly need to see what they mean by leveling up system. In which case I could be so wrong on my assumption.

You could argue that grinding for equipment in MH is similar to grinding levels in any standard RPG, but just because something is very similar does not make a game an RPG.  Similar to how some think Zelda is an RPG simply because it has a lot of the trappings common to the genre.  To me genres are defined by key gameplay motifs and the key for RPGs is leveling base stats using experience.  

And yeah, it really depends what the quoted person means by "leveling up Aloy" because obviously that isn't a statement with a clearcut definition as you and I just proved.