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A discussion of the RPG Genre (Fanboy bile from all sides highly likely! :D )
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I'll always be able to read stories about the shadow wars and the return of the Hopeslayer, and remember fondly about how I was there when it happened. Being able to experience the story as a member of a society living through dark times...a society that ultimately prevails...is a lot more endearing to me than the usual run-of-the-mill single player "save the world all by yourself or with a small band of friends" type of game. I guess because it's something I can relate to better - being a small part of a huge conflict, rather than the "chosen one".
Two exceptions are Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 which are fantastic RPGs. Every game should have a Berserker with a miniature giant space hampster as a pet. :^:
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Yes, but there's only about 2 hours of gameplay content in the game.
Maybe an example would be better. Picture FF7 crossed with a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The plot isn't locked into place, but instead there are several different major plot lines as well as a number of minor variations within major plot lines. One thread might be similar to the actual FF7 we have now (albeit a lot shorter), another story thread might have Cloud teaming up with Shinra instead of Barret's group, and so on.
EDIT: 3 hours I think would be plenty of time to tell a good story if you cut out most of the BS (keep combat to story battles, only do dungeon exploration when it makes sense instead of turning everything into a dungeon to pad out the game). Plus, keep in mind that there would be recurring elements & characters in the various plotlines so in one story path, you might learn something about a character that you wouldn't have known from the other paths.
And I'm not saying that this is the way all RPGs should be. I just think that RPG developers are too set in their ways regarding the way RPGs should be formatted (currently they're either town, dungeon, plot, repeat or mostly pointless sandbox games) and that some new ideas on structure would help drastically. Persona 3/4 & TWEWY were a step in the right direction.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
I'm sorry to disagree but this sounds like a terrible idea. It would be impossible to pull this off without being incredibly redundant. Replayability is great and all, but the goal should be to make a good game first and worry about replayability second. Also, it's hard enough to get a good plot in a 2 hour motion picture that is 100% hands-off, let alone a 3 hour interactive experience in which you would hope for SOME semblance of gameplay. Unless the RPG is "Jim's Crazy Trip to the Grocery Store," you could never fit the story into such a short time span.
Pretty much what you are advocating is a graphical choose-your-own-adventure book, as you reference. I'm sure you've read one - they are excessively shallow, short and frankly scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of artistic merit. A 3 hour choose-your-own-adventure RPG would not remotely have the effect that some of the classic RPGs have on gaming culture - everyone remembers Chrono Trigger, FFIV, XI and XII, KOTOR, the Baldur's Gate series, etc. They are a shared experience. Making a 3 hour RPG with countless unavoidably shallow plot choices would take the heart and soul out of it. You can't become emotionally invested in a character in such a short amount of time.
I challenge you to name 1 choose-your-own-adventure book that has obtained classic status. There are surely a few that are memorable as a gimmick, but definitely not as a representation of art. You'll never see one made into a film, for instance. Pretty much what you want is Graphical Zork 2010.
People complain about games that last only 8 hours, regardless of replayability. It's good to be abstract in thinking about the progression of the modern RPG, but I contend that you've gone a bit too far in your suggestion.
I wouldn't want to see all RPGs end up like his idea but I don't think it would be entirely bad for a developer or two to try it. Hell, if they're that short and small in size they could be sold on XBLA or PSN and regardless of that they could be sold on the PC. Don't charge $50-60 for it, just maybe $15-30 and market it as a graphical choose-your-own-adventure book or something (to use your term). It would be interesting at any rate and I don't think I'd mind trying something different and if it really is as awful as you think it would be then they'd fail and people would stop making them.
I kinda think he's simply labled too short of a time frame. 2-3 is stupidly short, but a 12-16 hour RPG with most of it's self-proclaimed "100 hours of content!" being put into branching storyline is something that could peak my interest.
The fact that no RPG yet does (or even matches BG2) is a failure of the genre, and, to me, no number of gameplay tweaks will make up for that.
As a general rule, the JRPG tends to be worse at actual well-written dialogue than WRPGs (even in their current malnourished state), but sometimes better at atmosphere and setting (very few WRPGs have a world that isn't generic fantasy or sci-fi, though I have hopes for Alpha Protocol)
I can't think of many JRPGs outside of Persona that aren't generic fantasy or sci fi.
Pretty much every FF title fits this qualification.
And I agree that an indie download game would probably be the best venue for this sort of thing. In fact, I'm planning to do something along these lines sometime after I finish the XNA Community Game that I'm working on.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Leaving aside the modern-day SMT series, JRPGs not set in a dungeons-and-dragon rip-off fantasy world or star wars rip-off sci-fi include:
TWEWY, Shadow King Okage, Baroque, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VIII, Chrono Trigger, BoF: Dragon Quarter, Shadow Hearts, Koudelka, Steambot Chronicles, Disgaea and arguably the Mario RPGs.
In fact, only Star Ocean, Dragon Quest and Tales tend to be in generic settings much.
I'd be all over that. An RPG with say, 30 hours of gameplay, but it takes place over the course of playing the game half a dozen times with wildly varying events/characters/etc based on your decisions.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Bioware and Bethesda are solid but they have some extreme annoyances that they haven't fixed even after doing the same stuff for more than a decade.
I would call the games from small dev houses flawed gems (that work better with rose-colored glasses) whereas the B/B stuff are polished turds but that is being extremely unfair to B/B because their games are superb in their own right, in my opinion. Still kind of a useful analogy for the PC RPG industry in the last 15 years though if you understand what I'm trying to say. There just haven't been a lot of heart-fluttering amazing things from B/B/etc. in a while, "merely" great RPGs.
I don't know about you guys, but I don't really remember many times in the past when you could get 4+ excellent RPGs in just over a year apart. And I'm only talking about 2 of the 6 systems out.
It's a pretty dam good time to be an RPG lover.
It's a similar experience with Baldur's Gate, without a GM, if you play co-op. My favorite hours spent playing RPGs are with my significant other, winding and weaving through Infinity Engine games or NWN, playing through the stories with our bizarre characters. Playing the stories themselves meant less than the fact that we were playing through the stories together.
That being said, there are only pitiful handful of games that allow you to do this, and none of them are JRPGs. The co-op modes are typically paltry combat-oriented affairs where the second controller is just control of a second character in combat, with no input on character development or story progress.
Unsure about Phantasy Star, but the others are good points.
If you're going as far back as FF8 and including the Chrono Trigger remake, you should include titles that DO fit the stereotype, such as FF4,5,6,9,Tactics; Xenosaga, Fire Emblem. Thos are the ones that come to mind for me.
However, I don't care about generic setting. All that matters is good story and good gameplay.
Agreed, although I think many games using generic settings still can be good/interesting.
Breath of Fire 1-3 are all pretty generic fantasy, but the worlds are robust and enjoyable.
Exactly.
We really need a game with the strengths of both genres.
What's wrong with Tolkienesque fantasy?
There's nothing inherently wrong with it, it's just that it's been copied so many times in books, movies, and games, that it's become cliche.
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Next, I think many of the game's stories tend to just not be very good. Now, you can also say this about even some of the best WRPGs (in fact, I believe only Torment can pride itself upon having a somewhat decent story to tell), but then, the writing in JRPGs can be downright atrocious sometimes. Back on the SNES, I don't think the stories were any better, but I think they were of far less importance in these game, and silly (and hours-long, badly dubbed) cutscenes weren't yet invented. The general immatury of the genre - well, I recall reading that they're mainly produced for the Japanese kids, while also having to attract a 'certain range of customers' (catgirls, anyone?) that happens to be an significant part of the market there - doesn't exactly help it either.
Now, something that applies to both WRPGs and JRPGs, I think that these types of games generally go on for far too long (sandbox games excluded). There's so much junk and unnecessary filler material in there that needs to be cut in order to improve the general quality of these games (getting rid of random battles was a good start). I rather have a tight and fun 20-hours experience than suffering through 60+ hours of tedious grinding and boredom. It also is a huge road block for me to start a new game that I know I'd probably not even finish because it'd drag on forever.
On the discussion of open vs. linear adventures, I'm fine with either, just make sure there'll always be something interesting to do in the former while keeping me hooked with a good storyline in the later (idealy, both).
Well, kind of. I mean, if I want to make a story that doesn't revolve around its setting, why should I reinvent the wheel? It may be cliche, but when you really think about it, every story has already been told. We're just looking for good ways to tell them.
Though, if it's an interesting and fresh setting you're looking for specifically in a game, well I can see where you're coming from loud and clear
I mean, I can very easily point out generic fantasy: elves, dwarves, European style knights and castles and kings, dragons, evil wizards, basically anything like Tolkien
But 'generic sci fi' is a little harder for me because it seems like there are so many different kinds of sci fi. There's the 'used future' like OT Star Wars or Firefly, where it's dusty and dirty and robots exist but they're made of scrap parts, and there's the shiny future like Mass Effect and Star Trek where everything is sleek and high-tech, and there's still stuff like post apocalyptic and cyberpunk with that gritty edge that might not necessarily be considered sci fi by some, but I'd lump them under that umbrella. There isn't really that re-use of races like elves and dwarves and orcs in fantasy. Most sci fi with aliens that I've seen has all unique races of aliens every time.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Torloks: "WE ARE A PROUD RACE OF WARRIORS."
Starploids: "Man, we're greedy."
Xx'chk'yxth: "We are the embodiment of evil."
The fact that Sci-Fi equates with Space Opera to most folks can probably point a generic Sci-Fi theme. Most science fiction literature focuses on extrapolations of existing concepts rather than "Pigs in SPAAAAAAACE!", but that's what people think of when they think "Sci-Fi".
You're forgetting primitive but fuzzy (Ewoks), alien space babes (asari), ...musicians? (the Star Wars Cantina dudes.. Bith?), awesome (elcor), weird and overly religious (hanar)
To be fair, Star Wars has like 8 million races and you never really get to know a lot about them since they're mostly in the background, but I thought the elcor were pretty cool in Mass Effect
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Case in point:
Morrorwind - Oblivion
I still regard Morrowind as one of the most immersive video games of all times (and I only touched like 40% of the game's content, doh!), while Oblivion left me completely cold. Man, who'd think that running through the barren landscape during a sand storm, in the mids of fucking nowhere, could be such an experience.
Had Morrowind contained anyone who actually talked like people, I'd agree with you.
True, but something like Xenosaga really doesn't fit that at all. I suppose Star Ocean does, if only because of the degree of influence Star Trek has had on sci-fi, and the absurd degree to which SO copies Star Trek.
Morrowind was a great example of what you can accomplish when you take the traditional fantasy RPG gameplay elements and stick them in a notably un-traditional environment. I mean through my years as a PC gamer I've made my way through virtual dungeons aplenty (both in text and later in pixel), and didn't so much as blink an eye. But you'd never have seen me so nervous as I was the first time I stepped into a dwemer ruin, or got stuck in the middle of a storm in the ashlands. Part of that raw fear and exhilaration, was in part because of the fact that I didn't have traditional frames of reference to rely on. I didn't know what around me was lethal and what was harmless.
Man, I have a really hard time trying to place what I enjoy in a good RPG. I enjoy the sense of being the hero in an exciting story. I enjoy when wonderful music or graphics really pull me in. I enjoy goofy dialogue trees. I enjoy games that let me forge my own destiny just as much as I enjoy games with canned, linear stories. (I like Chrono Trigger just as much as Fallout.) I like getting cool loot. I even enjoy number crunching in a D&D-based game every now and then.
I think the things that I hate the most are when an RPG says "okay bitch, listen up, and listen good because it will be the only time you get to hear it: today's lecture is on the historical background of your starting village, even though you, the player, don't give two shits about it yet."
Or maybe the FF8 syndrome, where you are run through ten really long tutorials that make basically zero sense, and are left trying to figure the game's incredibly unwieldy menu and mechanics on your own.
A trait peculiar to JRPG's is sometimes it will feel like the character designer is trying way too hard. Case in point, I just happened to acquire Baten Kaitos, and, in addition to exemplifying the aforementioned endless walls of text about bullshit not even the writer could have possibly cared about trait, you are immediately introduced to a main female character wearing motherfucking hideous bloomers.
I still haven't finished BG2 even though it's awesome because my inventory management has gotten to be a fucking nightmare, and I have no idea what any of the spells in my spellbook do and keep getting unexpectedly wasted in fights by spells I don't recognize or know how to counter and having to reload constantly. Also, I am OCD. The difficulty involved in having every interaction with every character in the game bugs the shit out of me. I don't want games making 100% completion a bitch, as someone wished for in this thread. It would kill me, and I wouldn't play them. (And I'm not even medically OCD - I'm just talking about the little touch of OCD that most people have in regards to something or other. For me, well, I'm a perfectionist, and I don't like to feel like I'm missing out on good stuff.)
It should also be mentioned that most computer or video RPG's don't let you do any fucking role-playing at all; the term "RPG" hardly applies. For example, Chrono Trigger is really just like a story book strung together by a fairly fun battle system and music and pixel art that somehow makes you start caring and feeling involved, even though you are just going through the motions laid out by the developers.
Setting aside the whole concept of a linear story-book "RPG", here are my thoughts on the best way to set up an actual RPG, given that it is impossible for any team of developers to ever program in all the rules of the real world into a game:
I think the best example of how to handle the problem is Fallout. Create a series of very general challenges, which a multitude of game mechanics can then be employed to overcome. A game like this will tend to feel very open-ended, even if the actual story is not. (Bethesda take note: not having to do the main quest is only a selling point because your main quests always suck.) One of the things I always enjoyed in Fallout is the game would give you a general goal, e.g. get such and such an item from someone, and it was up to you how you wanted to fucking make that happen. You could just as easily walk up to the guy and blow his head off as chat him up and get on his good side. And it never made me feel like I'd miss out if I chose one way over another. Throw in some good dialogue trees (because how else are you going to do conversations? and they are fun!), and that's a fucking gold CRPG.