| VersusEvil said: Only thing that makes an RPG is character creator, hence the role playing aspect. Witcher 3 is basically CPG or a Cosplaying Game. |
This cracked me up. Cosplaying is what many of this narrative RPGs are more akin to...though not entirely.
First ever RPG (to be documented) is David Wesley's Braunstein. In it you were given a character and a role, but it was up to you to go on and play that role pretty much however you like - there was very little mechanics in that one, but there was a referee, so more of a proto-RPG.
Dave Arneson et al. saw this, and went on to incorporate it with war gaming rules and started Castle Blackmoor campaign, which is basically D&D Ground Zero, and then went on to show that to Gary Gygax (they used his Chainmail for one part of rules), who codified whole ruleset and commercialized it, thus giving us D&D we know (well at least some of us, lot of folks know only WotC's D&D (3e and later), and not TSR's).
What I'm saying is premade characters are not fundamentally against RPGs, though they're quite scoffed at (with valid reasons).
But...there's fundamentally only one rule that matters in RPGs, that really makes them RPGs - you describe what you're doing, and GM adjudicates what happens using rules and systems of the game and world you're playing in. This rules and systems parts is what people keep forgetting. In video games this is code (still preprogrammed and fixed, unfortunately, but not for long).
In TW3, Geralt is not only premade character, but unlike games like Gothic or KCD where you get a bloke to play, but then you're free to evolve him however you like, Gerlat is pretty much fixed in most aspects, with very narrow possibilities of what he can do and what he is. This makes him great for writing and as protagonist for great adventure, but not so much for actual systemic role playing.
I can't go as far as saying he is completely adventure character, since there is some progression and interaction between systems and world, but for the most part this is very unimportant to overall interactions and choices, and if stripped of those rules and systems not much would change in the game. Hence why I would rate TW3 quite low on scale of RPG-ness (maybe 3/10, at best), but I still don't consider it as just an action-adventure.
P.S.
Actual Witcher RPG exists - tabletop, that is - it's based on Cyberpunks 2020 engine and it has all the stuff and plays as you would expect for RPG to play, with professions, races, attributes, skills and all the familiar stuff to anyone who ever played D&D, Runequest, GURPS or anything similar. That would be something I would love to see being made as VG RPG...though not necessarily by CDPR.
Last edited by HoloDust - 2 days ago
