In my opinion FF takes advantage of the medium "video game". If I simply watch a movie, i am just passively watching it. The video game combines the narrative with interaction, so that I reach a different form of concentration and focus. The difference is that I am not seeing the playable characters as "me in the game" and therefore I do not need to be able to alter the story or have choices, etc.

Most of the times Sidequests are just awful. Especially in WRPGs you have access to 500 sidequests, but in the end they are just the same "go there, kill this, fetch that and return" that offer almost no substantial narrative. The questgiver is just a random npc and after the quest(s) he is unimportant. The sidequests often do not have substantial effects on the world and they are simply there to lenghten the playtime.

Exploration is the next thing. I am not a fan of big landscapes... They often are just a filler and there is often not much to find in these areas. There were some old games that had a high encounter rate where you could get lost easily if you weren't focused. I do not feel that a large Landscape with open space offer something substantial. If the game has random encounters it is simply not important how big the area is, just which underground you stand on (like the overworld maps in early FFs). In games like FF 12 or White Knight Chronicles I also disliked the large areas because it takes so much time to search for everything... and running around is exceptionally funny.

Maybe I see the things a little different now than several years ago.  After I have graduated from university and am working 40h I just don't have the time to spend too many hours on a single game. I like games that are focused and that are somehow straightforward. There can be some sort of exploration, sidequests etc. but I do not want it to get too important since they are often just used to lengthen the game.

I just can't say much about Half-Life, since I despise Egoshooter. I do not think that I would like that game a single bit. Deus Ex... I played through the PS2 game and I found it simply boring. Now I got the PS3 Game for free through PS+ and regarding my huge backlog I really question if I should bother with the game. I didn't like the aestethics of the game and these Dystopian und multinational corporations topics are not really interesting for me. I do not think that these game are telling interesting stories. By using your character as a means of immersion you sacrifice a very important thing. A good JRPGs uses the party members to give you different point of views about the underlying moral issue. In that way you get a deeper insight into the topic. Since you often have an opinion about an issue you are somehow "forced" to see the problem from different points of view. That simply leads to more depth...

If I can make choices in the game I will often base them on my opinion and so I can see the game just like I want... But I will not witness a different point of view. In that way I just despise these moral and choice systems in RPGs because they promise to strenghten the game experience while they are actually taking something away for me.

But this are just matters of preference. We should never forget that the US, EU and Japan all have their own cultural backgrounds, storytelling traditions and moral dilemmas. Being from the EU and having grown up with Japanese Game from Square, Capcom and Konami I must say that I still prefer their games form western developers. There are some brillant games like Assassins's Creed 2, Heavy Rain or Heavenly Sword, but most Western games are putting their focus on violence and bloodshedding. In WRPGS you can slaughter civilians in the city... what does this add to the gamea actually?

The cutscenes have a big benefit over the dialogue systems of most WPRGs. The Characters in FF XIII really looked alive. Their animation, their facial expressions... For me they felt human. The dialogue system of WPRGs seems so akward. You have the character on screen and he is moving in an endless pattern. The voice acting doesn't feel real too.

Well, lets end this discussion. We have reached the level of personal taste and we just seem to like different forms of storytelling. I appreciate your point of view, but I lost faith in WPRGs to be immersive for me. I am still unsure what to do with my free copy of Deus EX... I will not renew my PS+ abo and given my backlog of 20 games I think that the year will have passed before I have time to play it.

For starters, it's one of the most expensive to acquire, and one of the most rigorously controlled licenses out there. Lucasarts will make damned sure it makes its money, but from the whispers I've heard I believe it may be more profitable for some publishers to devote their resources elsewhere.

Lol, I wondered what had happened!

Yep, our personal preferences are fairly different, lol.

With side quests and exploration, I would say that this heavily varies from game to game and person to person. I think some of the older Final Fantasy games and SNES/PS1 era JRPGs had a fantastic balance of main story, exploration and side quests. The Witcher games I feel also have a good balance as many are presented as "Witcher work" which can be fairly generic, but other feature small narratives that add to the overall experience.

I would also say that many WRPGs use party systems where you still have to see the POV of other characters, but you also have the option to react to those POVs and change your own opinions on certain matters. These choice systems are designed to force you to see opposing POVs on those topics. I'll mention the Witcher games again because they do a good job of presenting multiple POVs and all of them are morally valid. It makes it tough to decide whether to support one group over another or to stay completely neutral and observe how everything plays out.

Also, I don't think the move to more violent games is solely a Western thing. The trend has been going for a while it's just that a number of big Japanese titles are designed for a younger demographic. Even the aesthetic stylings of Final Fantasy is designed to appeal to Japanese teens.

Lastly, I would say to give Half-Life 2 and Deus Ex HR a go. Half-Life 2 is not so much an ego shooter (I assume you mean the likes of Halo and CoD) as an intellectual FPS. It paces action with dialogue, short puzzles and powerful story moments. As for Deus Ex, the gameplay has been modernised from the original so the stealth plays more like MGS or Splinter Cell whilst the storyline is in-line with top Sci-Fi novels/films.

Well, the exploration in older JRPGs was done in a special way. You got a hint that somewhere was a really special item (the strongest in the game)... and since the world map was simplistic, it didn't take long. you could fly over the world map in  1-2 minutes. And most things were not MISSABLE.

In the few WRPGs i played, I was always kind of stressed because I feard that I could miss anything important in the game and that I would have to restart. I started the Dalish Elves quest in Dragon Age and I had to choose, if I should let some strangers go, shoot one of them or shoot all of them... I didn't even know who I am, where I am, who they were etc... How am I supposed to make a good decision here without any suitable information. I just hated this game design and I was starting to look for a guide which choices I should take so that I would not miss anything important... which completely negates the sense of this game concept. For me, or my gaming habits, this game design simply feels broken.

I prefer my exploration to be "controlled"... like not missable and you have some sort of clear information where you should look. If exploration is relying to much on luck/randomness I just don't like it. Doing a Sidequest for the Ultimate Weapon/Spell/etc feels rewarding. But in games like Borderlands, where item drops are completely random, it feels more frustrating. You follow a secret path and at the end you find a random item that you just don't need because you got a better drop from a random enemy...

Some WRPGs mechanics are there to ensure that the game plays differently every time you play it... But I only do 1 Playthrough were I try to get as much as possible before I lose interest. I only play the game a second time after several years and by then I will have forgotten most details anyway. As I stated before, I hate missables because I just do not want to start over. This is a problem in JRPGS too, but some WRPGs just give to little help on what is missable...

I will certainly never play Half-Life 2, because I just can't deal with this damn first person view. I only played the Resistance franchise, because my brother wanted to play with me... and Borderlands, because my wife wanted to play with me. But I will certainly never play a first person view game solo if I have the choice.

Deus Ex... Hm, I might try it. I watched some videos on youtube and the gameplay seems to have evolved. But the whole Story simply feels not interesting to me. I just can't relate to technical Augmentation of Human. Secret Agents and High-Tech Thriller are also not really my cup of tea... Well, I might give it a try since it is for free, but at the same time I doubt that it is worth the time to reinstall... It is a bad situation... It is like I won two free tickets for the new James Bond Movie and I get something for free. But in the end I would just waste some time where I could have done something that I really liked to do.

Yea if you are afraid of missables then I can see why you wouldn't like most WRPGs as many of them are designed to try and let the player play out the role how they want to rather than for the player to just play out exactly what the designer has in mind, allowing you the player to feel in control (at least to an extent) of your own story. In games like Dragon Age there really isn't meant to be a best thing to do, every choice should be a valid one to make and the game is meant to reflect the choices that the player makes, rather than punish the player for making a bad decision and having a perfect path.

I think the fact that Lucasarts have said they aren't doing externally developed Star Wars games is more of a problem, and EA has had the license for a long time before that. Back in the day KotOR was pretty profitable, enough to get a quick sequel that killed the franchise with it's 13 month dev cycle anyway.

Huh. Khuutra's been indicating that KOTOR II is the better of the two, at least from a gameplay mechanics standpoint (whereas KOTOR just shits all over you if you don't choose a Melee class, KOTOR II is better about it, supposedly)

Well, the exploration in older JRPGs was done in a special way. You got a hint that somewhere was a really special item (the strongest in the game)... and since the world map was simplistic, it didn't take long. you could fly over the world map in  1-2 minutes. And most things were not MISSABLE.

In the few WRPGs i played, I was always kind of stressed because I feard that I could miss anything important in the game and that I would have to restart. I started the Dalish Elves quest in Dragon Age and I had to choose, if I should let some strangers go, shoot one of them or shoot all of them... I didn't even know who I am, where I am, who they were etc... How am I supposed to make a good decision here without any suitable information. I just hated this game design and I was starting to look for a guide which choices I should take so that I would not miss anything important... which completely negates the sense of this game concept. For me, or my gaming habits, this game design simply feels broken.

I prefer my exploration to be "controlled"... like not missable and you have some sort of clear information where you should look. If exploration is relying to much on luck/randomness I just don't like it. Doing a Sidequest for the Ultimate Weapon/Spell/etc feels rewarding. But in games like Borderlands, where item drops are completely random, it feels more frustrating. You follow a secret path and at the end you find a random item that you just don't need because you got a better drop from a random enemy...

Some WRPGs mechanics are there to ensure that the game plays differently every time you play it... But I only do 1 Playthrough were I try to get as much as possible before I lose interest. I only play the game a second time after several years and by then I will have forgotten most details anyway. As I stated before, I hate missables because I just do not want to start over. This is a problem in JRPGS too, but some WRPGs just give to little help on what is missable...

I will certainly never play Half-Life 2, because I just can't deal with this damn first person view. I only played the Resistance franchise, because my brother wanted to play with me... and Borderlands, because my wife wanted to play with me. But I will certainly never play a first person view game solo if I have the choice.

Deus Ex... Hm, I might try it. I watched some videos on youtube and the gameplay seems to have evolved. But the whole Story simply feels not interesting to me. I just can't relate to technical Augmentation of Human. Secret Agents and High-Tech Thriller are also not really my cup of tea... Well, I might give it a try since it is for free, but at the same time I doubt that it is worth the time to reinstall... It is a bad situation... It is like I won two free tickets for the new James Bond Movie and I get something for free. But in the end I would just waste some time where I could have done something that I really liked to do.

Huh. Khuutra's been indicating that KOTOR II is the better of the two, at least from a gameplay mechanics standpoint (whereas KOTOR just shits all over you if you don't choose a Melee class, KOTOR II is better about it, supposedly)