The picture of the black guy looked real... until I saw the eyes.

The eyes just look fake. Once the eyes look real, the characters will be insanely real.

Well, ignoring the heated debate, I'm certainly going to purchase Mass Effect* as one of my first titles on my soon to be acquired 360 (please let the price drop rumor be true), but that doesn't mean I want JRPGs to disappear or anything. I'm also quite looking forward to Dragon Quest IX, It's a Wonderful World, and the Final Fantasy CC games.

*That'll teach me to post at 3 AM. 

I wonder what Bioware is working on for the PS3?

Yeah, all games should start at one point, lead you to another, and then end the game. YEAH.

Chrono was a great game but RPGs have moved past that point. Far, far, far past that point. Deciding your own outcome IMO is far more interesting than having the story spoon-fed to you because you beat a boss/level/dungeon.

Mr. Stickball has far more patience to explain to the drones why they should play KOTOR and Oblivion than I do. Thanks again, Stickball.

It's interesting to play a character in a story that's been written for you. It's an entirely different entity to play a character where you make decisions and you think for a moment and go "Aw shit, what do I do?" before making an action because you know that the rest of the game depends on your decision. That's fun. Make one choice, your game veers in one direction; make another, it veers to the opposite.

That's immersive gameplay and I have yet to see it from a JRPG.

@ItsaMii

The reason you don't like Western RPG's is fallacious, wRPG's aren't complex for a player at all. The reason people think that is because they are overwhelmed by the amount of choices in they have in the game. The player only needs to think simplistically and do their choices accordingly, just decide what you want your character to be and just do it.

A perfect example is Fallout, the most revered computer RPG franchise and one of the most in the wRPG's.

Fallout is set in a 50's retro-futuristic world, a futuristic world based on what was perceived in the 50's. In the beginning you have probably 1 minute of linear story and then you are sent into the devastated world without almost no knowledge of what you'll encounter. After that, there is no more linear story, you can go anywhere and do anything you want, but anything you do in the game has consequences... in Fallout 2 you can be a porn star, a slaver, a mafia made-man, a gravedigger, a childkiller, but most npc's will start to hate for some things you do, and you might even be targeted by bounty hunters, while others will like your actions. You can kill anyone, or kill everyone, or not even kill anyone directly to finish the game.
Everything in the game is so well done, that is almost impossible for an hardcore RPGer not to enjoy it, because it is strictly following to what is an RPG... to roleplay.

Fallout may sound ambitious (and it is), but a player just needs to think simple... make the character you want and just simply do the actions you feel your character would do... your char is a good guy? then he does good things. Is he a bad guy? then he does bad things. Is he an opportunist? then just do things that would benefit him the most. Is he a pacifist/speaker? Then let him try talk his way out of things. Is he a dumb character? then tough luck, most npc's will just call you retarded and won't give a shit about what you want. (if the char has low int, he won't be able to talk properly, instead he will mostly do grunts and noises rather than proper dialogues)
The consequences of your actions comes later.

Has there been any rumor about them working on something for the PS3?  That'd be nice... 

Brillaintly said. Everyone who enjoys RPGs should give Fallout II a shot. It's probably my favorite RPG of all time (KOTOR is close.. both are brilliant).

The girl who is now my wife loved that game but got frustrated that she couldn't leave a city because she was a lesbian hooker who had so many STDs that she couldn't hook anymore and would die from disease the second she left the city...

Any game that gives you the choice to not only be a hooker but a lesbian hooker and contract STDs has to be brilliant. And Fallout II was. You could do damned near anything in that game.

The first time I played the game, I had to restart after 4 hours because I was hated by EVERYONE. I couldn't walk into a city because they'd all start shooting at me. In retrospect, I shouldn't have killed everyone in the three towns previous to that.

Great game. Nothing like choosing your own route through a game. Fallout gave that choice in spades.

If one thinks many WRPGs are complex, try the basis of some major genre-defining CRPGs (computer RPGs, after all, there were few, if any, console RPGs made in the west):

Try Betrayl at Krondor. It's freeware now. It's one of the best WRPGs ever made. It's basically point and click. It shares alot of similar traits with JRPGs. Its turn based, isometric, set characters with very little defining to do (aside from weapons, armor, and magic).

Despite this, it managed to implement alot of things in 1991 that made it an insanely great game:

3d travel system in First Person (Dhrakken had this too)
Open-ended traveling between major chapters (the world wasn't entirely free-roaming, but was quite open)
Isometric Combat
Cutscenes with Voice Acting
Weapon/Armor customization via enchantments
Weapon/Armor Degradation

And lots of other things. Again, go download a freeware copy of the game. It's around 30mb, and should give you about 50 hours of the most brilliant CRPG from the early 90s (1991).

Now, you might dislike FFXII, but I loved it, because it tried something different.

Im suprised that Square would copy an Enix game for sprite models however.

Trying something different is great, but only if it works.  I played that entire game on autopilot, which was pathetic and boring.  The best thing about FFXII was the no license board and 122334 challenges.  THOSE made the game worth the 30 bucks I paid for it, but Square didn't even make it to be played that way.  For the game to not be ridiculously boring and easy, people had to invent their own way to play it.  That's just sad.