Time for some fighting words, methinks.
For many years past, Square Enix has been the reigning king of RPG titles. From Final Fantasy to Kingdom Hearts, these guys have enjoyed many eons atop the RPG heap, reveling in their great successes and enjoying all of the accolades (and bling) that goes along with such a thing. However, in recent years, you could say there has been a bit of a changing of the guard in some ways. Not because Square Enix has gotten bad or anything, but simply because their releases are less frequent, and this period of time has come with the rise of many Western RPG developers: namely, Bioware.
So, how does the Bioware Writing Director feel about Final Fantasy XIII? He explains in a recent interview with Strategy Informer.
Well, before I address the main point I just want to take a slightly more controversial route: You can put a ‘J’ in front of it, but it’s not an RPG. You don’t make any choices, you don’t create a character, you don’t live your character… I don’t know what those are – adventure games maybe? But they’re not RPG’s.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with him, though he has a point about a role-playing game in the literal sense of the term. What do you guys think about what he said? To you, what constitutes an RPG experience? Go!
Source- Strategy Informer
Well that’s funny.
To me, I think of RPG in the more literal term, a game which you play a role. E.g. FF would be RP because you are essentially playing a role 😛
I think he’s meaning the traditional term. Gaming communities describe an RPG as being a near completely customizable game where the player makes his/her own experience. I think you need to take a step back and see how these games have evolved and how we really define a genre nowadays.
That’s really something to think about 😉
Well I think I must agree with him, since it is a ROLE playing game. Maybe it’s just me but I like decision and great characters in my RPG’s, not some teenage boys with two ton swords where you question their gender every step of the way. I don’t know, maybe I’m a little biased. Also, I think Bioware has kicked Square off the throne of RPG King, 300-style. I mean Last Remnant, Star Ocean, and Dissidia don’t really show their talent. Whereas Bioware makes less frequent games, they almost always release instant classics such as Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and KOTOR. Sure Square used to churn out JRPG epics, but look at them lately. They are becoming more of a publisher (Just Cause 2, Kane and Lynch 2, etc.) and less of a developer.
Role Playing game means that you’re playing a role. You don’t necessarily have to create a character to play the role of a hero. Then again, when you don’t create your own character, you’re playing of a role is a bit different, as you don’t play a role in the story, but follow the story instead. I haven’t played Final Fantasy 13, but I would have to agree with him, that Fantasy isn’t a role playing game theoretically, and is more of a story-following game. Of course, people consider games like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts Role Playing Games even though the role is played by a pre-defined character that the player controls and not a character necessarily representative of the player himself/herself so unless gamers come up with a new category for story-following games (or maybe character-ghosting games would be a better term), games like Final Fantasy will continue to be accepted as RPGs.
? You’re always playing a “role” in any game that you control a character!
To me, RPG means turn based battles (usually), a leveling system, and an enormous catalouge of items.
Of course, take away one of the three and get something different, i.e. Fallout 3… Which is kind of a blend of RPG and FPS I guess. A successful blend indeed.
I like how this guy decides that what an RPG is only what fits the games he makes.
Personally, I never have a connection to a silent protagonist or self-rolled character like in Dragon Age or KoToR.
I get more attached to premade characters like in Final Fantasy and other RPGs. Or even other party members like Morrigan.
FF 13 is an RPG.
Funny how the best RPG’s arent turn based.(See the World ends with you)
RPG is a broad term. It’s where your characters have stats and level up and that whole spiel.
BioWare is just a cesspool of racists. 😛
[quote comment=”11328″]I like how this guy decides that what an RPG is only what fits the games he makes.
Personally, I never have a connection to a silent protagonist or self-rolled character like in Dragon Age or KoToR.
I get more attached to premade characters like in Final Fantasy and other RPGs. Or even other party members like Morrigan.
FF 13 is an RPG.[/quote]
I find it a bit strange to say that you’re playing the role of a person playing a character playing the role. I might possibly be too focused on the literal meaning of the phrase role-playing but say, for example, that role-playing on forums was done with Final Fantasy’s style of storytelling. If that were the case, everyone would be, say, Cloud or Tifa, say the things that Cloud and Tifa say, and act like Cloud and Tifa, because Cloud and Tifa are pre-determined characters with pre-determined characteristics. Also, every thread on that forum would be the same story, because no one would be able to change it, seeing as Final Fantasy’s story is ultimately pre-determined and linear. I would say Zelda games are a bit more like RPG’s than Final Fantasy games, because Link doesn’t talk for himself and doesn’t have a set personality (or, technically, a set name), so players can role-play themselves being heroes through him, VS. Final Fantasy, where Cloud is already a predetermined hero, so the hero is really Cloud, not you, and you’re just moving the hero around and following the story.
[quote comment=”11337″] Personally, I never have a connection to a silent protagonist or self-rolled character like in Dragon Age or KoToR.
I get more attached to premade characters like in Final Fantasy and other RPGs. Or even other party members like Morrigan.
FF 13 is an RPG.[/quote]
I find it a bit strange to say that you’re playing the role of a person playing a character playing the role. I might possibly be too focused on the literal meaning of the phrase role-playing but say, for example, that role-playing on forums was done with Final Fantasy’s style of storytelling. If that were the case, everyone would be, say, Cloud or Tifa, say the things that Cloud and Tifa say, and act like Cloud and Tifa, because Cloud and Tifa are pre-determined characters with pre-determined characteristics. Also, every thread on that forum would be the same story, because no one would be able to change it, seeing as Final Fantasy’s story is ultimately pre-determined and linear. I would say Zelda games are a bit more like RPG’s than Final Fantasy games, because Link doesn’t talk for himself and doesn’t have a set personality (or, technically, a set name), so players can role-play themselves being heroes through him, VS. Final Fantasy, where Cloud is already a predetermined hero, so the hero is really Cloud, not you, and you’re just moving the hero around and following the story.[/quote]
I am officially confused.
[quote comment=”11339″]
I am officially confused.[/quote]
Simply: When a person plays with a character like link who doesn’t have a set personality or style of doing things (or, technically, a name in some games), they have to imagine a play style and persona based off of themselves and their interactions with NPC, hence, Role-Playing, or playing the role of the hero, in links case.
When a person plays with a character like Cloud who has a set personality and style, they can’t imagine themselves into the game, but instead must follow the persona of cloud through his adventure, hence, story following.
It’s sort of like the difference between writing a story and reading one, to use an overly simplified generalization.
[quote comment=”11344″][quote comment=”11339″]
I am officially confused.[/quote]
Simply: When a person plays with a character like link who doesn’t have a set personality or style of doing things (or, technically, a name in some games), they have to imagine a play style and persona based off of themselves and their interactions with NPC, hence, Role-Playing, or playing the role of the hero, in links case.
When a person plays with a character like Cloud who has a set personality and style, they can’t imagine themselves into the game, but instead must follow the persona of cloud through his adventure, hence, story following.
It’s sort of like the difference between writing a story and reading one, to use an overly simplified generalization.[/quote]
Even more simple: With games like Zelda, you get the feeling that it’s your adventure, not Links. With games like Final Fantasy, you get the feeling that it’s Cloud’s adventure, and you’re following it. What I’m assuming the developer was saying was that games that give you a choice ultimately require you to put more of yourself into the game, whereas games that do not simply require you to follow along with the story.
But I get more involved in FF games than Zelda games. Link has personality. No connections to people.
Cloud does and his relationship with Aeris and Tifa affects me emotionally. So I enjoy playing in his role more than Link’s.
This discussion is good, but it seems to be moving away from what an RPG is. Are we saying that emotional engagement is what defines an RPG? Because I wouldn’t necessarily say that. Dragon Age > FF13 in my mind as both an RPG and a game, but FF13 still engaged me a little more emotionally, I feel like, even though I was fairly invested in Dragon Age. Mass Effect 2 > both of those, and it had a character that spoke but was still controlled by me. Seems like a hybrid of the two.
[quote comment=”11335″]RPG is a broad term. It’s where your characters have stats and level up and that whole spiel.
BioWare is just a cesspool of racists. :P[/quote]
Yeah i know, i was just saying that the more innovative ones tend to be better.
Also i personally prefer games where you can customize your character, and thats where KOTOR takes the cake
Is this the part where I say something about American hubris?
Wait, Bioware’s Canadian. Okay, “Western” hubris?
You do “play a role” in FF13, you play the role of the character assigned to you. I feel way more invested in Lightning as a character than I did in my character in Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights. Not really a fair example, since NN didn’t have the same narrative depth as the Baldur’s Gate games or the new Bioware games, but rpgs don’t all have to be a network of branching dialogue trees to make them live up to the “role playing” title.
A recent podcast pointed out something I’ve always thought was true about rpgs: Western rpg design grew out of pc based games and Japanese rpg design is based on console rpgs. Both styles reflect the very specific strengths and weaknesses of their respective hardware. PC games could always have more interactive worlds because they had the memory capacity to do so, but console games were better at providing fast paced combat interfaces (which were necessarily streamlined by the limitations of the gamepad). It’s only been in the last generation of consoles that they’ve been able to provide the experience of PC rpgs.
But I would not expect Bioware to say anything different. It is a PC developer that has made rpgs based on classic PC design philosophy for well over a decade. These guys grew up playing the gold box SSI D&D games on their Commodore 64s and their 286 mHz processor PCs. Of course they don’t think Final Fantasy is an rpg; it looks nothing like those old-school computer games. But there’s a whole generation of gamers who grew up with games like Final Fantasy thinking of them as rpgs.
The term “rpg” is vague and arbitrary anyway; why should this be such a problem? I’ve been playing games for, what, probably 25 years? I’ve played plenty of computer rpgs and plenty of console rpgs and at no point in time did I pause to ponder whether or not it was accurate to classify both as rpgs. As far as I know, nobody else thought this was weird either until these games went multiplatform (such as FF7 & 8 on PC or Elder Scrolls 3 on Xbox) and you suddenly started hearing things like “jrpg” and “western rpg” in the game media. Maybe people felt like we needed further distinction when it became technically possible to do both styles on either consoles or PCs?
I’m still not sure why this is a problem for people. Are rpgs something that we have to make a scale for now? Does it mean that Mass Effect 2 is less of an rpg than Mass Effect 1 because the interface and combat system is streamlined? Or that Neverwinter Nights or KOTOR is less of an rpg than Dragon Age because your character is more or less a bland avatar with no real personality? If it’s all about “making choices” and “living a character,” does that mean that Grand Theft Auto is an rpg now?
Now I’m confused too.
Eddy, this is one of the best threads ever.
[quote comment=”11352″]This discussion is good, but it seems to be moving away from what an RPG is. Are we saying that emotional engagement is what defines an RPG? Because I wouldn’t necessarily say that. Dragon Age > FF13 in my mind as both an RPG and a game, but FF13 still engaged me a little more emotionally, I feel like, even though I was fairly invested in Dragon Age. Mass Effect 2 > both of those, and it had a character that spoke but was still controlled by me. Seems like a hybrid of the two.[/quote]
Well, I don’t believe that emotional engagement defines an RPG, not necessasrily. I think that what defines an RPG is how much character personality and story you have to create for a game VS how much is created for you.
[quote comment=”11349″]But I get more involved in FF games than Zelda games. Link has personality. No connections to people.
Cloud does and his relationship with Aeris and Tifa affects me emotionally. So I enjoy playing in his role more than Link’s.[/quote]
I understand. I didn’t get as emotionally involved with the story of Jack in Bioshock as I did with, say Marcus Fenix and Delta Team, but if both Bioshock and Gears of War fell under the genre of RPG, I would consider Bioshock to be more of an RPG than Gears of War (even though GOW might have been more emotionally stimulating) because in Bioshock, in some ways, you are Jack, figuring out where you are and what your purpose is, saving or killing little girls, developing your own personality. In Gears of War, Marcus Fenix has his own personality, he’s a warrior and a killer. He runs up and chainsaws Locusts. If you were to run around the whole game with a sniper, trying to be tactical, creating your own style, it wouldn’t change the fact that Marcus isn’t the tactical, sniping type. Then again Anthony, something about what your saying does ring true a bit, because while I believe that an RPG means that you’re role playing a type of character, such as a hero, villian, etc. You could also be playing the role of a person, such as Marcus Fenix or Cloud, who is the hero, or the villian.
Do think that the choice factor makes an RPG.
[quote comment=”11366″]
Edit:
I do think that the choice factor makes an RPG.[/quote]
I think at the end of the day, we are looking at story too much.
FF 13 has enemies that give you experience when you kill them, which is used to upgrade your character.
Mass Effect 2 only gives you EXP when you complete a mission.
To me, those types of things make up an RPG more than player choice.
Mass Effect 2 is still an RPG, but they took a lot of those elements that appeal to RPG players out of the game.
I think one of the main issues for me is that video game rpgs are the spiritual (or bastardized, depending on how you look at it) children of pen and paper rpgs like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Traveller, etc. The mechanics of all video game rpgs are roughly based upon the rules mechanics and basic aesthetics of these pen and paper games (statistics that affect the probabilities for success of any action, turn-based or pseudo turn-based combat, etc).
You can more or less strip the details of these games away to reveal two foundations: Narrative based characterization and statistics based characterization (or, if you prefer, fluff vs. crunch). Some players choose to define their character by the choices they make and the interactions they have with other characters within the context of the narrative. This player says, “My character is so and so, son of such and such” and goes on to list the character’s affiliations and accomplishments. For other players, their character is literally the sum of their stats. This player says, “My character is a level 14 fighter with a +9 sword of ruthless disembowelment” and goes on to list his quantifiable skills and abilities.
Console rpgs generally fall into the latter category. Anthony, Eddy, and I might all play through FF 13, but we will all make different choices when we build our party.
While computer rpgs definitely still have this emphasis on crunch, the Bioware games in particular place a heavy emphasis on narrative based choices. If we all play the Mass Effect games, we will make different choices within the game’s narrative that fundamentally affect the development of our respective Sheppards.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying that both styles of “role playing” in video games are firmly rooted in the same pen and paper rpg tradition and so both should be accepted as true “rpgs.”
[quote comment=”11370″]I think one of the main issues for me is that video game rpgs are the spiritual (or bastardized, depending on how you look at it) children of pen and paper rpgs like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Traveller, etc. The mechanics of all video game rpgs are roughly based upon the rules mechanics and basic aesthetics of these pen and paper games (statistics that affect the probabilities for success of any action, turn-based or pseudo turn-based combat, etc).
You can more or less strip the details of these games away to reveal two foundations: Narrative based characterization and statistics based characterization (or, if you prefer, fluff vs. crunch). Some players choose to define their character by the choices they make and the interactions they have with other characters within the context of the narrative. This player says, “My character is so and so, son of such and such” and goes on to list the character’s affiliations and accomplishments. For other players, their character is literally the sum of their stats. This player says, “My character is a level 14 fighter with a +9 sword of ruthless disembowelment” and goes on to list his quantifiable skills and abilities.
Console rpgs generally fall into the latter category. Anthony, Eddy, and I might all play through FF 13, but we will all make different choices when we build our party.
While computer rpgs definitely still have this emphasis on crunch, the Bioware games in particular place a heavy emphasis on narrative based choices. If we all play the Mass Effect games, we will make different choices within the game’s narrative that fundamentally affect the development of our respective Sheppards.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying that both styles of “role playing” in video games are firmly rooted in the same pen and paper rpg tradition and so both should be accepted as true “rpgs.”[/quote]
I took the stat crunching for granted, but then again, if you take the idea of playing a role literally, stat crunching has nothing to do with that (sort of like how survival horror doesn’t really have anything to do with puzzles, but RE had them anyway). Zayven, your D&D example is great. Some names are that; names.
[quote comment=”11369”]I think at the end of the day, we are looking at story too much.
FF 13 has enemies that give you experience when you kill them, which is used to upgrade your character.
Mass Effect 2 only gives you EXP when you complete a mission.
To me, those types of things make up an RPG more than player choice.
Mass Effect 2 is still an RPG, but they took a lot of those elements that appeal to RPG players out of the game.[/quote]
They did take a lot of the traditional elements found in RPG’s out of the game. It seems that genre’s meaning has evolved to them since the days of D&D, imagining worlds over the playing board, and stat crunching.
The funny thing about all of this is that I don’t think that most gamers really worry too much about these distinctions. Like I said before, most of us are accustomed to thinking of Square rpgs and Bioware rpgs as “rpgs,” even though they’re very different in execution. To cite the oft-used comment regarding obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”
I blame marketing. Much like the record industry, game publishers are so preoccupied with separating their products from the herd that they seize upon any discernible differences to create a new genre or subgenre so they can advertise their game as a trailblazer. That’s how we get copy on the back of back of the Borderlands box that calls the game a “Role Playing Shooter.”
I don’t know about that. I may just be a slave to the marketers. But, there was a part of me that was dissappointed that FF XIII didn’t live up to my definition of RPG.
To me, a game genre is based upon its objective. I’ve always viewed RPG objectives as
Character Build -then-> Plot progression
You build up your character or party’s stats until you are strong enough to make it to the next part of the story. Then repeat. An exceptional RPG would have a lot of freedom when it came to developing your characters or party, and a deep immersive world.
The difference between an RPG and any other game was that where most other games focused on completing goals and tasks, RPGs were more focused on building your character.
This is where FFXXIII diverged for me. Because, the character build progression was capped at certain levels, and the level design was so linear that the gameplay became much more based on completing the level and progressing the story, than building the characters and improving their stats. It felt much more reminiscent of a side-scroller with cutaway fight sequences. And, it also made me wonder if it really fit the RPG genre.
I see your point about FF XIII (don’t know about FF XXIII, though), but for me the Final Fantasy series (as with most console rpgs) has always been about it’s combat system. It’s very crunchy and watching damage values increase as you boost your abilities is a fundamental draw of the series.
I agree that it feels too linear and sometimes I feel like they emphasized the combat system at the expense of the rest of the game. I still really like it, but I think they’ll go in another direction for FF XV (remember, FF XIV is an MMORPG).
I don’t know that I’ve played enough PC RPGs to make the comparison myself. But, should the genre of the game not be determined by its underlying objectives?
Is it so bad to market a game as a Role Playing Shooter, so long as it is plot driven, and focuses on leveling your character and shooting things? If it were not marketed as a RPS, would people not refer to it as a Shooter with RPG elements anyway?
Or is it perhaps, that marketing is abusing the cross-genre labeling- creating sub-genres where there are none simply to boost sales?