hmmm... I'm playing rpgs since the N.E.S. era...
My first ever RPG was Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest.

My last played Jrpg is Lost Odyssey.

I didn't know this thread was about making a strong impression with played games...
Yes, WRPGs, imo, are way more entertaining and immersive, but I also like the JRPGs fantasy and magic style sometimes.

It isn't, but Khuutra is challenging your knowledge of WRPGs so you gotta bring it dude.  Give him what for.

A great conversational thread..derailed *sigh*

So you've played Mass Effect and Jade Empire. And Fallout 3 I guess?

Jade Empire is a good game. Haven't played Mass Effect but I will do so in about three weeks.

Not the point, though. This thread isn't really about WRPGs. As I said: all the games mentioned in the quoted editorial are JRPGs, all the villains mentioned are from JRPGs, and the storytelling methods centered on in these conversations are primarily Japanese (except for FFXII, which borrows heavily from western theatrical traditions).

You are off-topic, sir.

Everyone that knows RPGFan knows the focus of the site is on JRPGs. While they review WRPGs, most of the news and editorials are based on JRPGs (as it should be, if I might add).

So, it's clear that the article is about JRPGs and not WRPGs, and not RPGs in general

This is a popular argument in all forms of entertainment. Whether the villians should be realistic (a la Macbeth) or clear cut and clearly evil (a la the emperor in Star Wars). On the one hand, we have Realism in it's effort to make a realisitic story that is believable to the participants. On the other, we have Romanticism which strives to represent a primal aspect of life in it's fairy-tale like stories.

I personally perfer the Romantic side. As games are similar to fairy-tales, I don't want to hear if the villian is somewhat justified or there is moral ambiguity around the whole situation. Fighting against a "bad person" is something that is immortal and should always be told. They even transcend specific time periods or cultural differences.

I prefer realistic enemies than evil murder machine monsters. Kinda like you had in VC when they were just fightning for diffrent cause and their own goals.

IMHO creation of ultra evil "I'll kill them all" type of villian is a shortcut taken by developer to avoid creating realistic character with his goals, wishes, emotions etc.

While I get what you say, no one is evil just for the sake of being evil. Having a very evil villain without any past or motivations whatsoever is a bad storytelling device, and one that for me makes no sense. Of course, you can have very evil villains that are really well developed, they lack any moral ambiguity but you don't feel like they're just "for the sake of being the evil villain". Case in point, Luca Blight had nary a redeeming feature, but it's not like he didn't have a reason, seeing his mother being raped in front of him as a powerless kid made him realize that only powerful men have success, thus he seeked power for that reason, because he understood that any powerful man has the right to crush any powerless one. That's a good reason  (in a nutshell, of course), and it doesn't feel like the character has no background.

I don't think the two "types of villain" as you put it are that mutally exclusive. It's just that sometimes developers don't realize they can use both sides. Personally, I'll always take a good developed villain, without caring if its a "totally evil one" or a "moral ambiguous one". Yet, most of the best developed villains are the moral ambiguous ones, that's a fault of RPG storytelling that can't develop well the "totally evil ones"

They just need to make another suikoden game as good as the second one.

Nice read.

    Ehh .. no. Saren is boring and predictable, there is nothing intriguing nor interesting behind his actions. A very straightforward type of villain, he is. 

   Bioware is capable of creating great villains, but Saren is just not the case. A good example of great villain in western-developed RPG would be Aribeth from original NWN (developed by Bioware). But overall, I really cant think of many great villains in western developed RPGs, even older ones. I guess western devs never concentrated on that.