I really like JRPGs and I recently purchased and started playing Tales of  Vesperia on the 360.  I've been playing it in my usual way and it dawned on me: i've never enjoyed exploring your standard JRPG town.

What I mean by that is the areas where theres really nothing to legitimately explore.  You walk around an area and talk to some NPCs who always say stuff like

• I hate the people in the poor part of town
• The people in the rich area think they're better than us
• My brother is mean to me
• My mom is mad at me
• Have you seen my cat?
• It's a beautiful day outside.
• I wonder if the King really has out interests at heart.
• I love the King, he is the best

Like all of this standard generic stuff.  It never really changes up.  The only thing to "explore" is finding a shop or inn, and go into houses and raiding crates.  Sometimes you have to back track to go from one house, have a preset conversation where you get an item that you really didn't have to do anything to earn, then go back to somebody else, etc, etc... does anybody actually like this aspect of JRPGs?

ToV, and alot of JRPGs, try to be very cinematic and it got me to thinking.  Most of this stuff isn't really important or even fun in game form, but if there was an anime or TV show, I could totally watch and enjoy all these little quirks in people and the story of getting two people to work out their differences.  I had the idea that this stuff might be better serviced if it was like a cutscene (in-engine or otherwise) where you would basically walk into a town and your characters interact with each other, they talk to people, there are some jokes here and there.  Maybe during the scene your characters are walking around and they pass a shop or an inn and they ask you if you want to go there.  Or you could have some simple way of interacting with the cutscene so that it did feel somewhat gamey.  For me, that would be like all the good things about a town without all of the bad things..

To me, that'd be alot more interesting.  I know it's less gameplay, but to me towns are often some of the worst gameplay in JRPGs and this would actually make towns kinda cool or at least interesting.  Plus, if you treated it like an "episode" you could have alot of interesting stuff going on and I think it'd be way better than the way JRPGs typically handle a town.

What are your thoughts/opinions?

i think thats a good idea

towns are indeed "empty" for the most part but taking control from the player is not something i like my games doing. you should play golden sun theres always things hidden in every town.

I think you should have played more SRPG and would have discovered that your "idea" was done already a long time ago.

The problem with JRPGs is that none of those NPC are voiced. Also, how about instead, when you are talking to NPCs, there should be a dialogue tree a la Fallout 3. It wouldn't affect the main story much if at all but atleast there would be some form of roleplaying in them. That way, you could help NPCs solve problems they much have or form some basic chit chat with them.