I keep hearing good things about Resonance of Fate, but I've yet to see any gameplay footage that sold the game well. Mostly I've just seen a lot of jumping and grey steel everywhere.
Honestly, I think the best RPGs find the right balance between freedom and story telling. I like the Elder Scrolls a lot, but I prefer Mass Effect or Fable. I honestly think Dragon Age II was better then it's predecessor, the fact that it had a protagonist who spoke certainly helped me relate to the character a lot better.
That's another thing: I really hate silent protagonists. A lot. Gimme Geralt of Rivia over the Dovahkiin anyday.
Talking about the AAA budgets and production values: VA budgets hit RPGs a lot harder then other genres, especially if they're actually trying to make an active effort into putting in some C&C. I bet the middle tier cRPG devs wouldn't be nearly as empty if it weren't for this silly insistence on voice acting everything, even incidental NPCs who don't even have names.
Honestly, I think the best RPGs find the right balance between freedom and story telling. I like the Elder Scrolls a lot, but I prefer Mass Effect or Fable. I honestly think Dragon Age II was better then it's predecessor, the fact that it had a protagonist who spoke certainly helped me relate to the character a lot better.
That's another thing: I really hate silent protagonists. A lot. Gimme Geralt of Rivia over the Dovahkiin anyday.
Talking about the AAA budgets and production values: VA budgets hit RPGs a lot harder then other genres, especially if they're actually trying to make an active effort into putting in some C&C. I bet the middle tier cRPG devs wouldn't be nearly as empty if it weren't for this silly insistence on voice acting everything, even incidental NPCs who don't even have names.
Also, 3d graphics :P
It's hard for me to role play with a silent cast. I might as well just re-read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell then. Or go back to writing my own book.
The only silent protagonist I ever liked was the Dragon Knight in Ego Draconis. That cad is so delightfully smug.
This generation has been interesting with the rpgification of many new and exciting genres. Hell the big success of the COD franchise didn't happen until they basically put in skill trees and leveling.
Western RPGs have seen a massive upswing because of traditional PC developers deciding enough was enough and developing on consoles first. Skyrim was the successor of an early ship jumper to consoles and did millions more then series norms. A cross between an unlicensed BG 2 clone and FF XII did a few million and its sucky successor didn't even do too bad.
This also happened a lot in the NES era with games like Baseball Stars and River City Ransom where some crazy developer would put traditional RPG mechanics in a non traditional RPG type game.
JRPGs took a dive...if you're only paying attention to home consoles. RPG is a great fucking game format to have on the go as long as the game is designed for it. Hell I've been playing Pokémon in a pick up and play for ten minutes, do something else, come back to it for over a decade now and it was amazing to see in the late GBA era and beyond how many other JRPGs joined them in portable heaven. Even ports of traditional save on the world map or save points games are refreshed with the lovely invention known as the suspend save.
3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
problem there is you're only playing console games, which indeed have slacked
handhelds have no shortage of good jRPGs, including ones that follow classic models
I had a DS as well, but I was looking only at apples to apples. Not apples with oranges. Another of my favourite genres, turn based strategy games, is really absent on consoles but are prevalent on handhelds. I don't really have an interest in owning a 3DS or Vita as I am happy with my iPad 2 for mobile games when I require it so I'm only thinking about the main console JRPGs. Which have both declined in number and general quality compared to last generation (IMO).
I personally have no problem with text-only RPGs. Hell, terrible VA is what turns me off the big console JRPGs these days. And yes, this complaint of mine also extends to the Japanese VA.
I actually think that RPGs should scale back on the production values, and add more substance. That's what makes handheld RPGs much more compelling to me, they're actually more substantial than their console counterparts, which seem to put an overemphasis on grafix and awesome voiceacting. The reason why older games like BG2 were able to have so much that you could do was because they were less restricted by technology, in a sense. Instead of putting the manhours and budget into cutscenes and celebrity voice actors, all of that effort was put into making the actual game bigger and better.
This is strictly my opinion, but really, if you can't do cutscenes and VA properly, the effort that's put into implementing them should be used on better things.
Granted, this is a complaint I have on gaming in general, but it seems to have impacted the RPG genre the worst.
How much was the budget for the IE era games anyway?
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yeah I am not sold on fully voiced games being better (DA2 being the prime example). I would rather have more dialog and more meaningful dialog, than have half the dialog just read by someone semi-famous who (sadly) half asses their performance into the game anyway (because they really don't give a shit). Planescape Torment doesn't have a whole lot of VA, but when it does it always has a great impact and is on something deserving of it. VA for a peasant saying a tiny variation of the same thing as some other peasant, just doesn't seem all that worth it. Plus it's got the problem in Skyrim especially, where every filthy peasant sounds the same as every other filthy peasant (because one VA voices tons of them). I find that far more verisimilitude breaking than just having to make up what these guys sound like in my head.
Unless you can skip line by line and also skip the entirety of the speech I find it to usually be the inferior option.
I hate it when to pause or speed up a conversation I have to stop the talking completely ala older MGS games or a few RPGs. I also hate it when its an hour long cutscene that you can't skip AT ALL.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yeah Dungeon Seige 3 is one of the worst games for that. One really irritating (and very long to beat) boss has an incredibly annoying 5 minute (or so) speech before you even fight him. That you cannot skip (of course). Minding that game has almost every single one of my "Bad RPG design conventions that I utterly hate" in it, like teleporting your main character right into the face of a boss during a cutscene, clunky combat mechanics that only barely work, unskippable cutscenes, moronic companion AI you have no control over and completely linear on rails level design. So incredibly disappointing.
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
I like it when the skip line button is the same as the select dialogue one, with a response line coming in preselected. Skip, skip, skip, oh chose a response that I didn't want or even saw. Gee thanks, Mass Effect.
Something interesting happened with that regarding Wasteland 2. They specifically made the decision not to make it voice acted for precisely those reasons (makes the story far less flexible whilst taking a lot of resources), and this is something their community actually wanted. They wanted the game to have lots of dialogue and lots of options, and that to actually have meaningful effect on proceedings.
The drive for everything being AAA budget in scope and trying to rake in 10 million sales or else it's just not worth it is a daft one, and a major reason that we've got so many awesome games coming out of the more independent developers at the moment. They're free to make those smaller scale games without publishers looking to score mega big.
No voice acting doesn't mean you completely eschew cinedesign
see: Zelda
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Personally I think the aim to sell 10 million copies actually backfires on them more often than not. It's interesting to see the various kickstarted RPGs that did well, all aren't doing things publishers today would demand: Like voiced protagonists (if you're EA anyway), full voice acting on dialog and similar things. I don't want to imagine what Planescape Torment would have looked like if it was made today and dialog had to be cut so everything could be fully voiced. I doubt it would have half the depth that it actually has.
Minding, a game in Planescape's setting with actually decent combat I would be all over so badly, even without the depth in dialog...
Personally I think the aim to sell 10 million copies actually backfires on them more often than not. It's interesting to see the various kickstarted RPGs that did well, all aren't doing things publishers today would demand: Like voiced protagonists (if you're EA anyway), full voice acting on dialog and similar things. I don't want to imagine what Planescape Torment would have looked like if it was made today and dialog had to be cut so everything could be fully voiced. I doubt it would have half the depth that it actually has.
Minding, a game in Planescape's setting with actually decent combat I would be all over so badly, even without the depth in dialog...
PS:T had about as much text as a freaking novel. If it was voice acted (and a lot of that would actually have to be narration), I'd probably end up reading it and speed-skipping the voice acting.
It would have also come on about 3000 CD's.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yeah I find that with many VA games, even ones I like a lot like Skyrim and Witcher 2, that I don't really listen to a lot of the VA. Hell even in ME3, which has some of the best VA I can think of, I still skipped through a huge chunk of dialog simply because I wasn't that interested in what they had to say beyond "Give me my XP and stuff for this quest" (the side stuff basically). Part of this is because I read really fast and so I usually get what the NPC is saying well before they get through it. So I get bored and want to move onto the next thing. As I can't always play games since getting married at a high volume, subtitles have become rather required and so this problem isn't as easy to avoid (before, I would just turn off subtitles).
Even when VA is skipped, it does greatly add to the experience... when done right. It's a shame there are so little games that do it right. Really though, it's difficult to implement VA properly since good VA and good writing goes hand in hand. You could get the best voice actor in existence who's giving their all into delivering their lines perfectly, but it doesn't mean jackshit if the writing is terrible(which sadly seems to be the case more often than not). The same applies vice versa.
On another note, it blows my mind that there never have been any attempts to marry the pros of WRPG design with JRPG design. The freedom, complexity and writing of cRPGs with JRPG combat ala the SMT series just makes me hot and bothered.
Now that would be a good attempt in 'westernizing' games that seems to be all the rage these days. But then again, cRPGs have been dying off in the west so..
Even when VA is skipped, it does greatly add to the experience... when done right. It's a shame there are so little games that do it right. Really though, it's difficult to implement VA properly since good VA and good writing goes hand in hand. You could get the best voice actor in existence who's giving their all into delivering their lines perfectly, but it doesn't mean jackshit if the writing is terrible(which sadly seems to be the case more often than not). The same applies vice versa.
Makes me interested to see just how Bioshock Infinite turns out with its story, since they seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on both the VA and the story, where development is being a much more fluid experience with the former and the latter feeding into each other more.
On another note, it blows my mind that there never have been any attempts to marry the pros of WRPG design with JRPG design. The freedom, complexity and writing of cRPGs with JRPG combat ala the SMT series just makes me hot and bothered.
Now that would be a good attempt in 'westernizing' games that seems to be all the rage these days. But then again, cRPGs have been dying off in the west so..
Are CRPG's dying off in the west? I mean compared to previous generations?
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
A lot of the pleasure gleaned from PS:T is because the text wasn't just dialogue, but also prose, making it read more like a novel. Which makes me think how that game would be remade as Aegeri suggested. Talking about a hypothetical, no-expense-spared treatment. You could VA everything out the wazoo and adapt the text as on-screen cinematics with detailed characters rippling at every pore, but would that necessarily be a more compelling experience? I'm not convinced it would guaranteed to be. Stirring imagination is a powerful tool. It's a reason why text adventures/interactive fiction haven't died, but lives on as amateur-created modules.
On another note, it blows my mind that there never have been any attempts to marry the pros of WRPG design with JRPG design. The freedom, complexity and writing of cRPGs with JRPG combat ala the SMT series just makes me hot and bothered.
Now that would be a good attempt in 'westernizing' games that seems to be all the rage these days. But then again, cRPGs have been dying off in the west so..
Are CRPG's dying off in the west? I mean compared to previous generations?
Well, the correct answer is that they're already virtually dead I guess lol. People keep saying that the Adventure genre is dead, but the cRPG genre is much deader than the Adventure genre.
But with Shadowrun and Wasteland 2 we might see a cRPG renaissance in the near future.
edit: i'm a dumbass. You can ignore the part where I say cRPGs are dead.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
On another note, it blows my mind that there never have been any attempts to marry the pros of WRPG design with JRPG design. The freedom, complexity and writing of cRPGs with JRPG combat ala the SMT series just makes me hot and bothered.
Now that would be a good attempt in 'westernizing' games that seems to be all the rage these days. But then again, cRPGs have been dying off in the west so..
Are CRPG's dying off in the west? I mean compared to previous generations?
Well, the correct answer is that they're already virtually dead I guess lol. People keep saying that the Adventure genre is dead, but the cRPG genre is much deader than the Adventure genre.
But with Shadowrun and Wasteland 2 we might see a cRPG renaissance in the near future.
I personally don't think they are dead, they have just evolved.
Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, Fable series (for good or ill), Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls.
Though if you are referring to the classic party based, isometric view of the Good ol' Days, then yeah I suppose those are pretty dead.
I too am quite excited to see what else might come our way through Kickstarter, cRPG renaissance indeed.
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A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
I disagree that CRPGs are dead, they've just moved beyond just being on computers and onto traditional consoles. Skyrim no matter what faults the game does have, is still a very large, absorbing and great game with a lot to do. I like to compare it with Morrowind, because in terms of scope and design it manages to hit all the main aspects that I liked about Morrowind (while I feel Oblivion didn't). Fallout New Vegas was a great Fallout game, very true to the originals and was every bit a continuation of those games. Bear in mind that DA:O was a spiritual successor to BG2 and was designed more or less the same on the console versions to the PC version.
So they are hardly dead, just different and spreading to a wider audience. That's not a bad thing.
Games like Skyrim, Mass Effect ect., those are what I call WRPGs. The RPGs with isometric, turn-based combat, abundance of dialogue and choices with consequences of the past is what I call cRPGs. See, they're called 'classic' RPGs, not... wait...
Oh fuck, I found out just now that cRPG was an acronym for computer RPGs, not classic RPGs. In that case, you're right, they haven't died at all, they just evolved. My misguided definition of cRPGs are virtually dead though.
Yeah I really can't agree that CRPG's are dead. They've diversified their forms, where at a guess what you're looking for something only in the lines of the old Black Isle games or similar.
I mean I don't understand why Skyrim or the Witcher wouldn't count for example.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Games like Skyrim, Mass Effect ect., those are what I call WRPGs. The RPGs with isometric, turn-based combat, abundance of dialogue and choices with consequences of the past is what I call cRPGs. See, they're called 'classic' RPGs, not... wait...
These games exist on consoles as well actually and especially on handhelds you can find turn based, isometric games. But just being isometric and turn based doesn't mean that you're an old school computer game, because old CRPGs included more than just Baldurs Gate (which was real time, it should be noted) and Fallout. For example you have the old Wizardry games, which were first person party based games with turn based combat (something like this is what I want most actually) and Stonekeep. Plus you had your original Elder Scrolls games, like Daggerfall which was just as ambitious for its time.
Lots of purists will tell you those older games were superior, but that's not always true. Baldurs Gate 2 is a fantastic, deep game with plenty of great tactical combat - but in terms of choices with consequences it's actually not that amazing. While Witcher 2 isn't as long in scope or content, in terms of storytelling and giving you important choices that affect the narrative it's superior to many of those old games. Plus it's also on consoles now, so that shows you that consoles do not make games less deep or similar: Publishers do.
Classic RPGs are still alive in smaller devs, though. There are Spiderweb Software (Avernum series, Avadon, Geneforge), Soldak Entertainment (Din's Curse, Depths of Peril), Basilisk Games (Eschalon series).
No voice acting doesn't mean you completely eschew cinedesign
see: Zelda
Remember Super Mario RPG? It was entirely text-based in terms of dialogue, and also featured a silent protagonist. The fact that Mario never said a word was great, because it gave them the opportunity to turn it into part of the game's charm: whenever he needed to convey a message to someone, Mario would literally act out the scenes of the story. It was awesome!
I'm glad folks have already pointed out that JRPGs are still great on handhelds (Pokemon's sales show this) but I doubt that will be the case much longer except for Pokemon. As handhelds get closer to true console experiences, the simple top down RPG will probably disappear as well.
To me, the appeal of JRPGs ended with 3d rendered graphics. When we went from short, squat characters in tile based landscapes to weird looking, superthin, emo looking characters in prerendered, linear worlds the games became much less appealing. A side note to that folks probably won't agree with either but to me that's also when I lost interest in the console Zelda games - until Wind Waker came along.
Whoa there. Pokemon games are rpgs? I was under the impression that pokemon games are a genre themselves. I agree with you that handhelds have awesome jrpgs, just think your example is weird
Pokemon has all the elements of a classic JRPG - epic storyline culminating in a huge battle, characters that have fairly ridiculous dialogue, turn based combat, party management, level grinding, and treasures to find. I think it's one of the last pure JRPGs out there.
Whoa there. Pokemon games are rpgs? I was under the impression that pokemon games are a genre themselves. I agree with you that handhelds have awesome jrpgs, just think your example is weird
Uh yeah, Pokemon has always been an RPG. Just because you can recruit new party members and cast off old ones doesn't mean it's not a pretty traditional JRPG. Plot, dungeons, treasure chests, side quests, leveling, abilities...all of that.
If it's the scale of the party that's throwing you off, think of the Suikoden series with its 108 party members per game.
I'm glad folks have already pointed out that JRPGs are still great on handhelds (Pokemon's sales show this) but I doubt that will be the case much longer except for Pokemon. As handhelds get closer to true console experiences, the simple top down RPG will probably disappear as well.
To me, the appeal of JRPGs ended with 3d rendered graphics. When we went from short, squat characters in tile based landscapes to weird looking, superthin, emo looking characters in prerendered, linear worlds the games became much less appealing. A side note to that folks probably won't agree with either but to me that's also when I lost interest in the console Zelda games - until Wind Waker came along.
To be fair, the concept art for a lot of the squat characters was superthin and emo looking. It was just hard for them to convey that at much lower resolutions and with sprites and all. :P
That said, 3d did kind of take a bit of the appeal of jRPGs away from me too, since it took away a lot of the imagination (imo). Since you're being told everything, a lot of games just aren't as engaging.
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“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Whoa there. Pokemon games are rpgs? I was under the impression that pokemon games are a genre themselves. I agree with you that handhelds have awesome jrpgs, just think your example is weird
Uh yeah, Pokemon has always been an RPG. Just because you can recruit new party members and cast off old ones doesn't mean it's not a pretty traditional JRPG. Plot, dungeons, treasure chests, side quests, leveling, abilities...all of that.
If it's the scale of the party that's throwing you off, think of the Suikoden series with its 108 party members per game.
But you're not playing the pokemon, you're playing the character that uses the pokemon like tools. It's more like a tactics game (where you employee dozens of evolving, generic resources to engage in battle) than a regular jrpg (where your party members are each unique and of limited supply). Besides, by your description of the elements that make up an rpg we can start classifying things like MW as an rpg :P
Whoa there. Pokemon games are rpgs? I was under the impression that pokemon games are a genre themselves. I agree with you that handhelds have awesome jrpgs, just think your example is weird
Uh yeah, Pokemon has always been an RPG. Just because you can recruit new party members and cast off old ones doesn't mean it's not a pretty traditional JRPG. Plot, dungeons, treasure chests, side quests, leveling, abilities...all of that.
If it's the scale of the party that's throwing you off, think of the Suikoden series with its 108 party members per game.
But you're not playing the pokemon, you're playing the character that uses the pokemon like tools. It's more like a tactics game (where you employee dozens of evolving, generic resources to engage in battle) than a regular jrpg (where your party members are each unique and of limited supply). Besides, by your description of the elements that make up an rpg we can start classifying things like MW as an rpg :P
MW has dungeons, items to cure status effects and warp out of dungeons, that "go anywhere" exploration feel, side quests?
I already mentioned Suikoden as a traditional JRPG with a ton of potential party members too, it's the same concept. They're both JRPGs, plain and simple.
It'd be like trying to put Final Fantasy Tactics (party members can be recruited endlessly, small scale fights) and Fire Emblem (limited number of unique members, large scale fights) in separate categories. They're both SRPGs.
Whoa there. Pokemon games are rpgs? I was under the impression that pokemon games are a genre themselves. I agree with you that handhelds have awesome jrpgs, just think your example is weird
Uh yeah, Pokemon has always been an RPG. Just because you can recruit new party members and cast off old ones doesn't mean it's not a pretty traditional JRPG. Plot, dungeons, treasure chests, side quests, leveling, abilities...all of that.
If it's the scale of the party that's throwing you off, think of the Suikoden series with its 108 party members per game.
But you're not playing the pokemon, you're playing the character that uses the pokemon like tools. It's more like a tactics game (where you employee dozens of evolving, generic resources to engage in battle) than a regular jrpg (where your party members are each unique and of limited supply). Besides, by your description of the elements that make up an rpg we can start classifying things like MW as an rpg :P
MW has dungeons, items to cure status effects and warp out of dungeons, that "go anywhere" exploration feel, side quests?
I already mentioned Suikoden as a traditional JRPG with a ton of potential party members too, it's the same concept. They're both JRPGs, plain and simple.
It'd be like trying to put Final Fantasy Tactics (party members can be recruited endlessly, small scale fights) and Fire Emblem (limited number of unique members, large scale fights) in separate categories. They're both SRPGs.
No, no I don't mean frag refills. I mean does CoD have antidote, burn heal, and paralyze heal? Does it have repel and escape rope?
And we have nailed it. Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and Suikoden are JRPGs. Call of Duty is not a JRPG. Primarily because it was not produced in J, but also because it lacks every standard feature of a JRPG created in the past few decades.
It's one of those things that's often extremely easy to define with a cursory examination and people pretend its' difficult because they want to be argumentative.
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handhelds have no shortage of good jRPGs, including ones that follow classic models
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Also, 3d graphics :P
the worst is when some things are voice acted and some things aren't, that drives me up the wall
It's hard for me to role play with a silent cast. I might as well just re-read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell then. Or go back to writing my own book.
The only silent protagonist I ever liked was the Dragon Knight in Ego Draconis. That cad is so delightfully smug.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Western RPGs have seen a massive upswing because of traditional PC developers deciding enough was enough and developing on consoles first. Skyrim was the successor of an early ship jumper to consoles and did millions more then series norms. A cross between an unlicensed BG 2 clone and FF XII did a few million and its sucky successor didn't even do too bad.
This also happened a lot in the NES era with games like Baseball Stars and River City Ransom where some crazy developer would put traditional RPG mechanics in a non traditional RPG type game.
JRPGs took a dive...if you're only paying attention to home consoles. RPG is a great fucking game format to have on the go as long as the game is designed for it. Hell I've been playing Pokémon in a pick up and play for ten minutes, do something else, come back to it for over a decade now and it was amazing to see in the late GBA era and beyond how many other JRPGs joined them in portable heaven. Even ports of traditional save on the world map or save points games are refreshed with the lovely invention known as the suspend save.
I had a DS as well, but I was looking only at apples to apples. Not apples with oranges. Another of my favourite genres, turn based strategy games, is really absent on consoles but are prevalent on handhelds. I don't really have an interest in owning a 3DS or Vita as I am happy with my iPad 2 for mobile games when I require it so I'm only thinking about the main console JRPGs. Which have both declined in number and general quality compared to last generation (IMO).
I actually think that RPGs should scale back on the production values, and add more substance. That's what makes handheld RPGs much more compelling to me, they're actually more substantial than their console counterparts, which seem to put an overemphasis on grafix and awesome voiceacting. The reason why older games like BG2 were able to have so much that you could do was because they were less restricted by technology, in a sense. Instead of putting the manhours and budget into cutscenes and celebrity voice actors, all of that effort was put into making the actual game bigger and better.
This is strictly my opinion, but really, if you can't do cutscenes and VA properly, the effort that's put into implementing them should be used on better things.
Granted, this is a complaint I have on gaming in general, but it seems to have impacted the RPG genre the worst.
I hate it when to pause or speed up a conversation I have to stop the talking completely ala older MGS games or a few RPGs. I also hate it when its an hour long cutscene that you can't skip AT ALL.
The drive for everything being AAA budget in scope and trying to rake in 10 million sales or else it's just not worth it is a daft one, and a major reason that we've got so many awesome games coming out of the more independent developers at the moment. They're free to make those smaller scale games without publishers looking to score mega big.
see: Zelda
Minding, a game in Planescape's setting with actually decent combat I would be all over so badly, even without the depth in dialog...
Also, sometimes I just wish that cRPGs were just full on VNs rather than fiddling around with filler combat
PS:T had about as much text as a freaking novel. If it was voice acted (and a lot of that would actually have to be narration), I'd probably end up reading it and speed-skipping the voice acting.
It would have also come on about 3000 CD's.
On another note, it blows my mind that there never have been any attempts to marry the pros of WRPG design with JRPG design. The freedom, complexity and writing of cRPGs with JRPG combat ala the SMT series just makes me hot and bothered.
Now that would be a good attempt in 'westernizing' games that seems to be all the rage these days. But then again, cRPGs have been dying off in the west so..
Makes me interested to see just how Bioshock Infinite turns out with its story, since they seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on both the VA and the story, where development is being a much more fluid experience with the former and the latter feeding into each other more.
Are CRPG's dying off in the west? I mean compared to previous generations?
Well, the correct answer is that they're already virtually dead I guess lol. People keep saying that the Adventure genre is dead, but the cRPG genre is much deader than the Adventure genre.
But with Shadowrun and Wasteland 2 we might see a cRPG renaissance in the near future.
edit: i'm a dumbass. You can ignore the part where I say cRPGs are dead.
I personally don't think they are dead, they have just evolved.
Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, Fable series (for good or ill), Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls.
Though if you are referring to the classic party based, isometric view of the Good ol' Days, then yeah I suppose those are pretty dead.
I too am quite excited to see what else might come our way through Kickstarter, cRPG renaissance indeed.
So they are hardly dead, just different and spreading to a wider audience. That's not a bad thing.
Oh fuck, I found out just now that cRPG was an acronym for computer RPGs, not classic RPGs. In that case, you're right, they haven't died at all, they just evolved. My misguided definition of cRPGs are virtually dead though.
I mean I don't understand why Skyrim or the Witcher wouldn't count for example.
These games exist on consoles as well actually and especially on handhelds you can find turn based, isometric games. But just being isometric and turn based doesn't mean that you're an old school computer game, because old CRPGs included more than just Baldurs Gate (which was real time, it should be noted) and Fallout. For example you have the old Wizardry games, which were first person party based games with turn based combat (something like this is what I want most actually) and Stonekeep. Plus you had your original Elder Scrolls games, like Daggerfall which was just as ambitious for its time.
Lots of purists will tell you those older games were superior, but that's not always true. Baldurs Gate 2 is a fantastic, deep game with plenty of great tactical combat - but in terms of choices with consequences it's actually not that amazing. While Witcher 2 isn't as long in scope or content, in terms of storytelling and giving you important choices that affect the narrative it's superior to many of those old games. Plus it's also on consoles now, so that shows you that consoles do not make games less deep or similar: Publishers do.
Remember Super Mario RPG? It was entirely text-based in terms of dialogue, and also featured a silent protagonist. The fact that Mario never said a word was great, because it gave them the opportunity to turn it into part of the game's charm: whenever he needed to convey a message to someone, Mario would literally act out the scenes of the story. It was awesome!
To me, the appeal of JRPGs ended with 3d rendered graphics. When we went from short, squat characters in tile based landscapes to weird looking, superthin, emo looking characters in prerendered, linear worlds the games became much less appealing. A side note to that folks probably won't agree with either but to me that's also when I lost interest in the console Zelda games - until Wind Waker came along.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Uh yeah, Pokemon has always been an RPG. Just because you can recruit new party members and cast off old ones doesn't mean it's not a pretty traditional JRPG. Plot, dungeons, treasure chests, side quests, leveling, abilities...all of that.
If it's the scale of the party that's throwing you off, think of the Suikoden series with its 108 party members per game.
To be fair, the concept art for a lot of the squat characters was superthin and emo looking. It was just hard for them to convey that at much lower resolutions and with sprites and all. :P
That said, 3d did kind of take a bit of the appeal of jRPGs away from me too, since it took away a lot of the imagination (imo). Since you're being told everything, a lot of games just aren't as engaging.
But you're not playing the pokemon, you're playing the character that uses the pokemon like tools. It's more like a tactics game (where you employee dozens of evolving, generic resources to engage in battle) than a regular jrpg (where your party members are each unique and of limited supply). Besides, by your description of the elements that make up an rpg we can start classifying things like MW as an rpg :P
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
MW has dungeons, items to cure status effects and warp out of dungeons, that "go anywhere" exploration feel, side quests?
I already mentioned Suikoden as a traditional JRPG with a ton of potential party members too, it's the same concept. They're both JRPGs, plain and simple.
It'd be like trying to put Final Fantasy Tactics (party members can be recruited endlessly, small scale fights) and Fire Emblem (limited number of unique members, large scale fights) in separate categories. They're both SRPGs.
http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Equipment
You mean like frag refills and stuff? It also has leveling, instanced battles, classes...and instead of recruiting npcs, you recruit people!
No really. If defining an rpg was easy someone would have nailed it by now.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
And we have nailed it. Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and Suikoden are JRPGs. Call of Duty is not a JRPG. Primarily because it was not produced in J, but also because it lacks every standard feature of a JRPG created in the past few decades.
It's one of those things that's often extremely easy to define with a cursory examination and people pretend its' difficult because they want to be argumentative.
nope.avi