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.jayderyu on 19 June 2009
Torillian said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
FaRmLaNd said:
@S.T.A.G.E. I'm well aware of the influence that early WRPG's had on JRPG's.

Anyway, judging a storyline purely by its references to other works is a simplistic way of judging something. Whilst its definetely fulfilling to allude to past works, since both sub-genre have done so makes it an irrelivancy. Since WRPG's generally feature more interactivity in their narratives they are arguably utilising the medium more effectively but again a more linear plot allows for a more focussed narrative so you could argue that linear storytelling has its own advantages.

At the end of the day most RPG's are crap and some are amazing. Both Sub-genre's have some truly masterful games in them so aruging whether insert genre is better is silly as it comes down to taste.

JRPG's are beyond a sub genre of RPG's. It should be renamed the 'Japanese battle-system aventure'. Take UFC undisputed for example; it uses experience points and it isn't an RPG. You don't have to use experience points to be an RPG. RPG's have a concept which just aren't followed by JRPG's. JRPG's is an altnernate universe in terms of gaming. Yes, there are some great games...but they aren't traditional RPG's. You can say all you want that linear storytelling has its advantages, but that doesn't take away from the fact that JRPG's are still not RPG's. Unless you're playing a role....you're not role playing. One can watch JRPG movies of all the cut scenes of say...the FF series and figure out what the whole game is about. You can like the characters and think they are cool, but there is no way to be the character. You feel like you're watching the character, rather than making decisions. That is not an RPG.

So then any game where you play a role would be an RPG?  When I made a character in Rock Band, or GTA: SA, or hell when I create a character in skate 2.

Very good. But no. It's difficult to explain until you realize what RPG is about. It's not about the advancement, which most RPG players push for. 

A Role Playing Game and I must emphasise GAME. Is about resticting options, but having them in game. It sounds wierd I know. When you design a character in a game like Fallout(any of the FO RPGs) you are defining how your characters capabilities interaction. What this comes down to is that the character you make will determine the experience you have during the game.

For example in FO if I make an idiot with lots of combat prowess I will end up with lots of fights and little social options. I will be unable to get most of the secret loot since I can't pick locks. I will need to take longer trips. I will have fewer allies. I will need to pay more and get less in trade. All of this influences my choices. At one point you can escort a lady from a russian guy to Rivet City. A combat expert will be able to succeed.

If I make a character that is poor combat, but highly socialable and good at electronics. I will end up with a very different experience. I will end up with more social choices, but if the social encounter goes bad I will be in trouble. But since this area of skills are higher I will take shorter trips, have more allies, pay less and get more in trade and see more other content. In the case of escorting the lady from the previous exmaple I may not succeed and she will die on the trip to rivet city.

If I make a sneaky character I can rob peoples pockets and homes to gain loot, but I may be unable to socialize. I will need to plan. If I need to get through a "dungeon" with my sneaky skill. I may be better off sneaking past the Super Mutants. While my combat partner will be better killing them. As you can see the design of characters changes how I would play the game. I can as a sneaky character assasinate them if I want. I my super fighter tries to pickpocket he will probably fail and piss of all of Megaton. Now my super fighter is Kill on Sight at Megaton. I now have changed the experience of the game.

That is what defines an RPG. It's not about advancement, but the character we play influence the experience of the game. In Rock Band, Monopoly, Chess.... I CAN ROLEPLAY, but the character will not influence the experience I have in regards to what will be open or closed.



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

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S.T.A.G.E. on 19 June 2009

Very good explanation Jayderyu.



pearljammer on 19 June 2009
S.T.A.G.E. said:
pearljammer said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
pearljammer said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Torillian said:
 

So then any game where you play a role would be an RPG?  When I made a character in Rock Band, or GTA: SA, or hell when I create a character in skate 2.

Um...no. Rockband music sim that allows you to create a character. You don't determine anything, besides enjoying the fun of playing music and hoping to get 100%. Skate 2 isn't an RPG. GTA from time to time tends to show bits and pieces of RPG action. The last GTA let you choose who you would align yourself with or kill. Even with all that it wasn't an RPG, because you weren't playing a role and you couldn't relate with the character.

I'm not sure I follow that last statement. I relate to characters in books all of the time, despite having no control of what their actions are.

 

I think an RPG is simply what we make it to be. We don't need these rigid definitions for genres. Certainly the genre of RPG has expanded since the 70's.

If we were to look at music, for better or worse is a matter of opinion, clearly the Rock genre has expanded and has accepted sounds that would never have been considered as rock if solely adhering at a strict, traditional definition.

You relate to characters in books, because the book stimulates the brain and the brain creates the image. Humans imagine things in their own perspective.

You're right that RPG's have expanded since the 70's, but RPG's don't have linear storylines that we cannot control. RPG's have influenced many non-rpg things, such as sports games, action games and any other game that involves some sort of growth. Career modes of most games are based off of your own personalized growth. RPG's are DM created stories that you influence and change based on the control your character posesses. That, my friend, will never change.

No, my point was that you can relate to characters regardless of genre. You don't need to be able to control actions to relate to a character.

But it has already. Millions of people, and the industry as a whole have accepted JRPGs as RPGs. But anyway, as mentioned several other times, this is just an issue of semantics. Really no need to go any further with it.


When I say relate, I mean feeling as the character does.

Yes, I would think that to be obvious



Johann on 19 June 2009

JRPGs are not all linear. Most of them are, but some aren't.
Chrono Cross has all kinds of paths to choose. And Star Ocean not only had a couple characters that you had to choose from, but had 80+ endings.

The only true RPGs are the table top ones, cuz you can truly be the character and do anything you want (I can spit, curse, or scratch my ass in the middle of a fight, if I want to). Doesn't matter how much freedom WRPGs give you, you're always bound to do only what the game allows you to do. That's no RPG.

So I see no problem in calling JRPGs RPGs.



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Qual é, Dadinho...?

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S.T.A.G.E. on 19 June 2009
Johann said:
JRPGs are not all linear. Most of them are, but some aren't.
Chrono Cross has all kinds of paths to choose. And Star Ocean not only had a couple characters that you had to choose from, but had 80+ endings.

The only true RPGs are the table top ones, cuz you can truly be the character and do anything you want (I can spit, curse, or scratch my ass in the middle of a fight, if I want to). Doesn't matter how much freedom WRPGs give you, you're always bound to do only what the game allows you to do. That's no RPG.

So I see no problem in calling JRPGs RPGs.


Yes, a lot of people have told me that Chrono Cross was one of the very few actual RPG's that the Japanese have created. Thats still no excuse that the majority of RPG's don't follow the rule. JRPG's are mainly their own genre. They created a genre that actually told a story rather than letting you become the role. They took something from RPG's that didn't define what an RPG was and ran with it. JRPG's that follow the RPG rule should be called JRPG's...like Chrono Cross; the rest should've been called something else.



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Peterisyum on 21 June 2009

baldurs gate is THE greatest rpg ever. so i'd say wrpg for that, and your character is more customisable, so it doesn't allways have to be a whiny emo teen



MaxwellGT2000 on 21 June 2009
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Johann said:
JRPGs are not all linear. Most of them are, but some aren't.
Chrono Cross has all kinds of paths to choose. And Star Ocean not only had a couple characters that you had to choose from, but had 80+ endings.

The only true RPGs are the table top ones, cuz you can truly be the character and do anything you want (I can spit, curse, or scratch my ass in the middle of a fight, if I want to). Doesn't matter how much freedom WRPGs give you, you're always bound to do only what the game allows you to do. That's no RPG.

So I see no problem in calling JRPGs RPGs.


Yes, a lot of people have told me that Chrono Cross was one of the very few actual RPG's that the Japanese have created. Thats still no excuse that the majority of RPG's don't follow the rule. JRPG's are mainly their own genre. They created a genre that actually told a story rather than letting you become the role. They took something from RPG's that didn't define what an RPG was and ran with it. JRPG's that follow the RPG rule should be called JRPG's...like Chrono Cross; the rest should've been called something else.

This made me kinda laugh especially when there wasn't a a big RPG until Final Fantasy and really established RPGs in gaming, then WRPGs rode the title wave with things like Ultima gaining popularity and such.  Don't get me wrong RPGs have been on both sides for a long ass time you could say WRPGs started with D&D and you can still see the D&D influence today, RPGs in Japan have been epic tales most likely derived from Japanese folklore as you can see a huge presence in that folklore in many games. 

But games like Final Fantasy made a name for RPGs as a whole and really established the RPG fanbase, sure these fans evolve and now the guys that swore they'd never play D&D are now doing it with Oblivion and Fallout 3, but it's all still the same genre in the end just two styles of story telling.



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Riachu on 21 June 2009
MaxwellGT2000 said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Johann said:
JRPGs are not all linear. Most of them are, but some aren't.
Chrono Cross has all kinds of paths to choose. And Star Ocean not only had a couple characters that you had to choose from, but had 80+ endings.

The only true RPGs are the table top ones, cuz you can truly be the character and do anything you want (I can spit, curse, or scratch my ass in the middle of a fight, if I want to). Doesn't matter how much freedom WRPGs give you, you're always bound to do only what the game allows you to do. That's no RPG.

So I see no problem in calling JRPGs RPGs.


Yes, a lot of people have told me that Chrono Cross was one of the very few actual RPG's that the Japanese have created. Thats still no excuse that the majority of RPG's don't follow the rule. JRPG's are mainly their own genre. They created a genre that actually told a story rather than letting you become the role. They took something from RPG's that didn't define what an RPG was and ran with it. JRPG's that follow the RPG rule should be called JRPG's...like Chrono Cross; the rest should've been called something else.

This made me kinda laugh especially when there wasn't a a big RPG until Final Fantasy and really established RPGs in gaming, then WRPGs rode the title wave with things like Ultima gaining popularity and such.  Don't get me wrong RPGs have been on both sides for a long ass time you could say WRPGs started with D&D and you can still see the D&D influence today, RPGs in Japan have been epic tales most likely derived from Japanese folklore as you can see a huge presence in that folklore in many games. 

But games like Final Fantasy made a name for RPGs as a whole and really established the RPG fanbase, sure these fans evolve and now the guys that swore they'd never play D&D are now doing it with Oblivion and Fallout 3, but it's all still the same genre in the end just two styles of story telling.

Exactly, they are the same genre.  They are just different storytelling methods and gameplay mechanics to appeal to the tastes of Japanese and Western gamers.



 

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griffinA on 21 June 2009

What became very clear to me while rereading is that the WRPG fans clearly haven't played a lot of good JRPGs and the JRPG fans havent played a lot of good WRPGs. But is it wrong to expect them to play genres they are clearly not fans of?



"Pier was a chef, a gifted and respected chef who made millions selling his dishes to the residents of New York City and Boston, he even had a famous jingle playing in those cities that everyone knew by heart. He also had a restaurant in Los Angeles, but not expecting LA to have such a massive population he only used his name on that restaurant and left it to his least capable and cheapest chefs. While his New York restaurant sold kobe beef for $100 and his Boston restaurant sold lobster for $50, his LA restaurant sold cheap hotdogs for $30. Initially these hot dogs sold fairly well because residents of los angeles were starving for good food and hoped that the famous name would denote a high quality, but most were disappointed with what they ate. Seeing the success of his cheap hot dogs in LA, Pier thought "why bother giving Los Angeles quality meats when I can oversell them on cheap hotdogs forever, and since I don't care about the product anyways, why bother advertising them? So Pier continued to only sell cheap hotdogs in LA and was surprised to see that they no longer sold. Pier's conclusion? Residents of Los Angeles don't like food."

"The so-called "hardcore" gamer is a marketing brainwashed, innovation shunting, self-righteous idiot who pays videogame makers far too much money than what is delivered."

S.T.A.G.E. on 21 June 2009
MaxwellGT2000 said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Johann said:
JRPGs are not all linear. Most of them are, but some aren't.
Chrono Cross has all kinds of paths to choose. And Star Ocean not only had a couple characters that you had to choose from, but had 80+ endings.

The only true RPGs are the table top ones, cuz you can truly be the character and do anything you want (I can spit, curse, or scratch my ass in the middle of a fight, if I want to). Doesn't matter how much freedom WRPGs give you, you're always bound to do only what the game allows you to do. That's no RPG.

So I see no problem in calling JRPGs RPGs.


Yes, a lot of people have told me that Chrono Cross was one of the very few actual RPG's that the Japanese have created. Thats still no excuse that the majority of RPG's don't follow the rule. JRPG's are mainly their own genre. They created a genre that actually told a story rather than letting you become the role. They took something from RPG's that didn't define what an RPG was and ran with it. JRPG's that follow the RPG rule should be called JRPG's...like Chrono Cross; the rest should've been called something else.

This made me kinda laugh especially when there wasn't a a big RPG until Final Fantasy and really established RPGs in gaming, then WRPGs rode the title wave with things like Ultima gaining popularity and such.  Don't get me wrong RPGs have been on both sides for a long ass time you could say WRPGs started with D&D and you can still see the D&D influence today, RPGs in Japan have been epic tales most likely derived from Japanese folklore as you can see a huge presence in that folklore in many games. 

But games like Final Fantasy made a name for RPGs as a whole and really established the RPG fanbase, sure these fans evolve and now the guys that swore they'd never play D&D are now doing it with Oblivion and Fallout 3, but it's all still the same genre in the end just two styles of story telling.


It's quite obvious that JRPG's have been more popular than WRPG's in console gaming for a long time. The fact of the matter is that they aren't RPG's.