BioWare: Final Fantasy XIII is Not an RPG

[tendo82]

FFXIII is a cut scene and a combat system. Don't get me wrong, several FF's prior had been trending that direction, but Square still believed players wanted agency in their games. JRPGs, though they may have been more linear than western RPGs, always presented the player with both actual freedom and the illusion of freedom.

So in recognizing that FFXIII is largely devoid of any player control over direction, pacing and even order in which the storyline occurs, I would say Bioware is not incorrect in saying FFXIII is neither an RPG nor a JRPG.

 

[Greennight]

Im sorry, I love Bioware and all, but they need to shut up.

Square might have missed the bullseye on ff13 a bit, but its still a awesome game with a awesome story.

Dont insult your elders, if you get what i mean.

Okay I was going to go read on before I replied but I have to reply to this guy. They're not saying that FF13 is a bad game, they're just saying that it's not raelly an RPG. And quite frankly I can't deny that, I haven't played it but from what I heard its not so RPG like. And by the description of "customising and leveling up" someone mentioned above that'd make games like God of War and Wolverine Origins RPGs. No one's saying that it's a bad game, and no one is trying to degrade the name of FF13, just saying that it's not really an RPG. So calm down before you lunge at Bioware with a buster sword.

EDIT: (felt I didn't say enough ) FF series is RPG at the barest level, and like Bioware games; Final Fantasy and Fantasy Star were designed to give the feeling of table top Role Playing like D&D. There's a lot I could go into, but you have to understand that Bioware is coming from the point of view that there games more closely resemble games like D&D in that you can affect how people respond to you and have some choice of doing certain mission or not, where as FF13, while having evolved in character customisation, it's still just as linear as it was when Square soft was saying "Well here goes nothing" with the release of the first game. Bioware doesn't see that as RPG, don't be offended but western RPG developers got into the game a decade or two later, and so they started with the technology to more replicate table top gaming where as the JRPGs, unfortunately, still bogged down with the old mind set. And don't let it be said that you have to have a purely linear story to make it great, Mass Effects 1 and 2 blew my mind with their stories and I'm waiting for the 3rd blowing with Mass Effect 3.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I'd say it's an RPG. It's the bare minimum one could get away with while still being called an RPG, but still an RPG.

 

[Greennight]

Let's take Mass Effect for example. While the game presents you with many choices throughout the game play, most of these are in fact irrelevant. Based on cracking open a savegame editor for Mass Effect 2 and analyzing an imported save, only 70 decisions are recorded, from Mass Effect 1, of those a number such as (Citadel: The Fan) chew up multiple (in this case 4) entries to express the possible outcomes, so, out of your forty hours playing Mass Effect, only about 20-30 decisions you've made are even recorded. Only, when you load up Mass Effect from an imported save (not an edited one) the result will always be the same, the game assumes you ended the quest in the same way regardless of what the save game tells it.

While the Fan unlocks an additional mission which takes about ten minutes to play through, in most other cases such as the Noveria and UNC missions these flags only trigger bits of text that are emailed to Shepard through the course of the game, or cause pieces of background audio to play. But, at no point is there any substantive change in the game. If you killed the Council or saved them, the only difference will be if they talk to you when you return to the Citadel in 2.

If it seems like I'm harping on this, its because Mass Effect told you you'd be able to change the galaxy based on your decisions, but when the time came, Bioware backed out. The player doesn't really have any independent agency, you're still going to play out the same story that Bioware wants you to, regardless of your choices.

Where all this is going is, I'm sorry, you've been blinded by an illusion. It's a well constructed one, but Bioware games have no real freedom, at all. Games exist that do give the player more agency, often at the expense of the plot, for example Oblivion, but, the Bioware games are very strictly regimented experiences that run on rails you cannot escape, where any control over your path is an illusion.

Yes and no. First off, Bioware is kind of saying that, at least they are giving you an illusion of control, alot more so than FF13. And acutally, second time through I decided to save the council, and I heard alot less people saying how much they hate humans.

But mostly, you have to wait for the third game. Unfortunately when you're making a trilogy like Bio Ware is, and you want to give the illusion of control, you can't have 4 or 5 different endings because then you'd need even more for the 2nd one because of difference in endings of the first game. However with the third game, being the ending, they're going to be able to have a much larger difference in endings. Are there going to be? I don't know. But I do hope so.

And besides, when on my second playthrough I saved the colonists of Zhu's(spelling?) Hope and this time they weren't defacing my monument, it made me happy. Sure it's a subtle thing, but it's still appreciated and it still makes me feel like the game appreciates me. I understand that it's an illusion but it still makes you feel that you're in that conversation, that you're the one who's in the firefight and you're the one who's saving the world. Face it, every time you play Ocarina you're helping Link towards the final and that's how it feels, but while you're helping Sheppard save the galaxy it feels like YOU are doing it, and thus makes you feel in the role of galactic savior and THUS it is a ROLE PLAYING GAME.

(as a side note: if you didn't feel like you were acutally sheppard disregard all that )

 

[Starke]

Let's take Mass Effect for example. While the game presents you with many choices throughout the game play, most of these are in fact irrelevant. Based on cracking open a savegame editor for Mass Effect 2 and analyzing an imported save, only 70 decisions are recorded, from Mass Effect 1, of those a number such as (Citadel: The Fan) chew up multiple (in this case 4) entries to express the possible outcomes, so, out of your forty hours playing Mass Effect, only about 20-30 decisions you've made are even recorded. Only, when you load up Mass Effect from an imported save (not an edited one) the result will always be the same, the game assumes you ended the quest in the same way regardless of what the save game tells it.

While the Fan unlocks an additional mission which takes about ten minutes to play through, in most other cases such as the Noveria and UNC missions these flags only trigger bits of text that are emailed to Shepard through the course of the game, or cause pieces of background audio to play. But, at no point is there any substantive change in the game. If you killed the Council or saved them, the only difference will be if they talk to you when you return to the Citadel in 2.

If it seems like I'm harping on this, its because Mass Effect told you you'd be able to change the galaxy based on your decisions, but when the time came, Bioware backed out. The player doesn't really have any independent agency, you're still going to play out the same story that Bioware wants you to, regardless of your choices.

Where all this is going is, I'm sorry, you've been blinded by an illusion. It's a well constructed one, but Bioware games have no real freedom, at all. Games exist that do give the player more agency, often at the expense of the plot, for example Oblivion, but, the Bioware games are very strictly regimented experiences that run on rails you cannot escape, where any control over your path is an illusion.

Yes and no. First off, Bioware is kind of saying that, at least they are giving you an illusion of control, alot more so than FF13. And acutally, second time through I decided to save the council, and I heard alot less people saying how much they hate humans.

But mostly, you have to wait for the third game. Unfortunately when you're making a trilogy like Bio Ware is, and you want to give the illusion of control, you can't have 4 or 5 different endings because then you'd need even more for the 2nd one because of difference in endings of the first game. However with the third game, being the ending, they're going to be able to have a much larger difference in endings. Are there going to be? I don't know. But I do hope so.

And besides, when on my second playthrough I saved the colonists of Zhu's(spelling?) Hope and this time they weren't defacing my monument, it made me happy. Sure it's a subtle thing, but it's still appreciated and it still makes me feel like the game appreciates me. I understand that it's an illusion but it still makes you feel that you're in that conversation, that you're the one who's in the firefight and you're the one who's saving the world. Face it, every time you play Ocarina you're helping Link towards the final and that's how it feels, but while you're helping Sheppard save the galaxy it feels like YOU are doing it, and thus makes you feel in the role of galactic savior and THUS it is a ROLE PLAYING GAME.

(as a side note: if you didn't feel like you were acutally sheppard disregard all that )

First, I'll grant you there are some nice touches. You've mentioned a few. Another one is the mention of new Normandy class ships going into service based on how you handled the "surprise" inspection. The problem is, these are at best aesthetic with a handful of very specific spolierific cases.

Or, put it this way. Regardless of if the council is right now becoming one with the nebula or sitting happy in the doom room, you will still get the no fly list quest, with the aasari who are trapped on the citadel, who still hate humans, and still blame them and their presence in c-sec for screwing life up for them. (Also, war on terror commentary in 2010? So cutting edge, guys.)

Anyway, the biggest aesthetic is the one I alluded to. It's the council choice. Ideally this should change the setting of Mass Effect 2 at least at some level. In practice we get some different dialog with people hating humans a little more. At a conceptual level however, this should have been massive. You've effectively chosen to replace the council with a human run fascist state at the end of 1. Where's the payoff, guys?

You're kinda right. The real influence of some of the choices won't be felt until ME3. But, when they've dropped the ball this egregiously in 2, that makes me more than a little suspicious as to their ability to salvage the third.

I can agree with your final point, up to a point. According to bioware you're supposedly running around in your own story. But, that's not what's happening. What's happening is: you're running around in Bioware's story, and no matter how much you try to fuck it up, it will still go off flawlessly. There's no divergence in the story, it's a set linear path Bioware has laid out for you. Your only options are how much of a jackass you'll be to your crew and the galaxy and if you'll succeed at a task, or succeed at a task enough to earn a bonus.

 

[rjou]

I don't know what defines an RPG. Haven't known for some time, especially considering the direction of JRPG's these days. Usually it meant for me that it was a story driven game with character development but it's a feature that's implemented in nearly every game now. However, what I do know, is that I've been a huge Final Fantasy fanboy since FFIV and JRPG's were nearly the only genre I played on PSX back in the day. Granted, some were worse than others.

That's the keypoint I'm focusing on FFXIII as well. I have no clue what _my_ role in the game is. I don't care if I have to be AN ADVENTURER (cheers, Grandia) or as sublimely annoying teenager forced to grow up. But who exactly am I in FFXIII? I feel like a viewer without anything to add to the game, even opinions seem futile. That's partyly because of the poor characters and an uninteresting and childish plot. Someone mentioned heavy rain in the early posts and I'd never call it anything but an interactive story, although a superb one.

The only thing that resembles me of being something else than an action-adventure in FF13 is the battle system. And as a personal opinion, it's the worst crap I've seen in years (yes I also tried out Infinite Undiscovery). I gave up around 20 hours and probably never will finish FF13. As for an RPG or JRPG, I don't see the connection anymore either.

 

[TelHybrid]

To be honest the only Final Fantasy game I class as being close to an RPG is the original. In that you got to choose your classes.

 

[Fidelias]

I believe that FF13 was an RPG, if barely... just that it was a BAD RPG. I mean, I stopped playing it to play Mechwarrior 4. Which was made in 2000. FF13 was that bad...

 

[Pingieking]

Well, RPGs aren't really RPGSs anymore. "Role-playing-games," in the strictest sense of the word, are games that you play to vicariously live through the main character. In that sense, Final Fantasy has never been an RPG, and the only real RPGs are The Elder Scroll series, Fallout, and Bioware games. Even games like Fable are very iffy. The more widely accepted definition is any game with stats and levels, which is a niche that Final Fantasy fits very much into.

I guess he reason that Final Fantasy is an RPG is that there's not better word for it.

This. So much this.
Not taking anything away from FF, since it is a great series of games. But a lot of what are called RPGs don't really let the player role-play, rendering them closer to adventure games than role playing.

 

[sanzo]

Wikipedia - Role Playing Video Game

Role-playing video games (RPGs) form a loosely defined genre of computer and video games with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, borrowing much of their terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one or several adventuring party members fulfilling one or many quests. The major similarities with pen-and-paper games involve developed story-telling and narrative elements, player character development, complexity, as well as replayability and immersion.

Both Final Fantasy 13 and Bioware's third-person shooters fit into this category. I don't care for this man's definition and see no reason to consider his opinion one of value.

This. I agree fully

 

[Greennight]

First, I'll grant you there are some nice touches. You've mentioned a few. Another one is the mention of new Normandy class ships going into service based on how you handled the "surprise" inspection. The problem is, these are at best aesthetic with a handful of very specific spolierific cases.

Or, put it this way. Regardless of if the council is right now becoming one with the nebula or sitting happy in the doom room, you will still get the no fly list quest, with the aasari who are trapped on the citadel, who still hate humans, and still blame them and their presence in c-sec for screwing life up for them. (Also, war on terror commentary in 2010? So cutting edge, guys.)

Anyway, the biggest aesthetic is the one I alluded to. It's the council choice. Ideally this should change the setting of Mass Effect 2 at least at some level. In practice we get some different dialog with people hating humans a little more. At a conceptual level however, this should have been massive. You've effectively chosen to replace the council with a human run fascist state at the end of 1. Where's the payoff, guys?

You're kinda right. The real influence of some of the choices won't be felt until ME3. But, when they've dropped the ball this egregiously in 2, that makes me more than a little suspicious as to their ability to salvage the third.

I can agree with your final point, up to a point. According to bioware you're supposedly running around in your own story. But, that's not what's happening. What's happening is: you're running around in Bioware's story, and no matter how much you try to fuck it up, it will still go off flawlessly. There's no divergence in the story, it's a set linear path Bioware has laid out for you. Your only options are how much of a jackass you'll be to your crew and the galaxy and if you'll succeed at a task, or succeed at a task enough to earn a bonus.

Well once again, yes and no. Don't get me wrong I understand what you're saying, but what I'm saying is that from Bioware's standpoint on what an RPG is and isn't. And by their standards FF13 is not, because it doesn't seek to make it seem like it's your story. I didn't say it was your story, but it makes a stong effort to make you feel like it's your story. That's all I'm saying.

And besides with the fact that you're running around in biowares story; playing D&D (which Bioware strive to copy in their games, heck they MADE a D&D game) you're not playing your story either, but the dungeon masters story. They just make you feel like it's your story. I enjoy Bioware games, I enjoy FF (although I haven't played 13) and in the end it's what bioware considers a RPG game that's the reason they claim it's not an RPG.

Although I'm just getting a vibe you don't like Bioware.

 

[Starke]

Well once again, yes and no. Don't get me wrong I understand what you're saying, but what I'm saying is that from Bioware's standpoint on what an RPG is and isn't. And by their standards FF13 is not, because it doesn't seek to make it seem like it's your story. I didn't say it was your story, but it makes a stong effort to make you feel like it's your story. That's all I'm saying.

We're kind of back at that pot/kettle situation with the Bioware Story from a couple months ago here. In a way, Bioware's going after the low hanging fruit here. As Tom Goldman observed:

I just find it strange that even Square Enix wants to bring Final Fantasy XIII away from being considered an RPG... when there are twelve games before it with most at the top of the RPG game. It's weird!

When the developer/publisher doesn't want to label it an RPG, Bioware coming in and commenting that its not feels a bit redundant.

As for Mass Effect being your own story? I really end up in X-Files territory here. I want to believe, but there are way too many instances in the game where you are presented with a choice, and regardless of your selection, you don't actually get to have any effect. Your first dialog on the Normandy after Eden Prime comes to mind. There are precisely three dialog nexus you can have an influence on (of those one is just a question set, and another lets you choose to badmouth the Doctor at random, the final one is a standard investigation nexus). The other four (I believe) all funnel you to either say identical things or provoke Captain Anderson to say the same thing regardless of which choice you made. While I would accept that what you say to Anderson in the Medlab shouldn't radically alter the game (though, it could, theoretically), that the game presents you with a choice that you quite literally cannot make says volumes about the game in a larger context. If it were an isolated example, I could forgive it, but it really becomes endemic of the design philosophy of the larger game.

By changing the dialog system so that it reflects your/Shepard's gut reaction to things, it makes it much harder to realize your freedom of choice the game is presenting you with is actually much more of an illusion than it appears to be.

And besides with the fact that you're running around in biowares story; playing D&D (which Bioware strive to copy in their games, heck they MADE a D&D game) you're not playing your story either, but the dungeon masters story. They just make you feel like it's your story. I enjoy Bioware games, I enjoy FF (although I haven't played 13) and in the end it's what bioware considers a RPG game that's the reason they claim it's not an RPG.

As a slightly pedantic aside: depending on how you count, Bioware's made either 3 or 4 D&D based games. Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal and Neverwinter Nights. For that matter KOTOR used the D20 Star Wars system making it literally D&D in space with Lightsabers.

There's multiple kinds of campaigns a GM can run. They can run you on rails, as FF does, they can run you on rails and give you the ability to shift the rails around a bit, off hand Deus Ex comes to mind, or they can simply turn you loose the Fallout or TES games are good examples of this. Now, Bioware keeps claiming they're on rails with the ability to shift, but, from where I'm standing, shifting around doesn't really result in any change. So they're saying their on Rails with Change, when they're really on rails.

Although I'm just getting a vibe you don't like Bioware.

Its not that. I wouldn't be able to discuss the games in depth if I hadn't played through them numerous times, Mass Effect in particular. I do dislike their writing, and the praise it's been getting, because, for me, Bioware's writing 12 years ago was better than the stuff they're turning out today. It could be the industry as a whole has gotten better, but I don't think that's the case.

Jade Empire, for example is fucking brilliant. The writing's kinda campy, the characters are cliche, but it all works because it's supposed to be a sort of martial arts melodrama.

I love a lot of the background touches in Mass Effect, and I played through it a shitload of times (that is the technical term (but seriously, I've got at least five endgame files for ME1 (all of them completionist))).

The problem is, starting with Dragon Age and to an even greater extent in Mass Effect 2, their writing is... well... bad. Especially when held up to the hype they've put into the games.

Dragon Age has an egregious disparity between the hype it received, "an innovation in dark low fantasy," and all that bullshit, and a product that ends up, on the whole as a (relatively) kid friendly high fantasy version of Lord of the Rings.

With Mass Effect 2 they were comparing themselves to Aurthur C. Clark in their prerelease material. Saying how the game would be deep science fiction and examine the nature of man versus machine. And... it's not. It doesn't raise any serious issues the way science fiction does, it certainly doesn't ascend to the throne of one of the big three of Sci-Fi. It's a fun, light space opera, and that'd be neat, if they weren't plugging it as some kind of masterpiece that it isn't.

Sorry, I started rambling, but, there's the crux of a lot of it.

 

[Browbeat]

Mechanically, the game fails on many of the checks that define a game as a role-player. The truest RPG's, though (like the Gothic series or even the recent Risen) are fascination - but often lack some presentation polish in favor of some serious role-playing.

On the other hand, slapping an RPG or JRPG tag onto a game triggers a genre recognition nerve among gamers that urges them to spend some dollars on a game that is supposed to be representative of a genre; you know, like Sports, First-Person Shooter, Action-Adventure, or Real-Time Strategy, many of these having seen recent releases that challenge the traditional format of these games... looking at you, C&C 4

Then again, Nier (a recent Square-Enix-published, Cavia [Drakengard] developed title) is an interesting adventure that also tries to come off as an RPG and doesn't succeed on the merits of expected features for the format.

Square Enix itself is undergoing such engrossing structure changes that its existing RPG-heavy lineup is going to be bolstered by products from developers like Gas-Powered-Games and former publishers like Eidos...

What I'm gettin' at is as global development and rebranding progresses, many existing game notions will be altered, and many fanboys will weep tears of concentrated angst.

 

[Cloned Commando]

My check list for what makes things an RPG (keep in mind this is just IMO)

-Character Development (leveling up, skill up, ect.)
-Role selection (Can I chose to be Fighter, Mage, Rogue, ect)
-I make decisions (meaning I as a player actually get to choose how my character acts, beyond just choosing a weapon/armor/item and deciding when to swing it)

These 3 points to me are the core foundation of what an RPG really is because they all lead to the all important immersion. So by these merits FFXIII is not a RPG to me nor are most JRPGs to me they are just action games. (there are exceptions of coarse... not many but there are some out there)

In the end though I don't see how some guy who happens to work for bioware saying FFXIII is not an RPG causes much of debate, I like the final fantasy games for what they are but... FFXIII sucked... and it sucking had nothing to do with it not being a RPG ... the endless hallways, horrid combat system, unlikeable characters, and retarded story did that.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

An RPG essentially uses numeric stats for skills in and out of combat. It's essentially a tabletop RPG in video game form. I'm sorry but not being able to make choices and create your own character doesn't make FFXIII a non -RPG. So Bioware by their definition has called UFC Undistputed, Fight Night, or any sports game with a create a character feature an RPG. That's asinine.

 

[AndreyC]

"RPG" has acquired multiple meaning throughout the years. The discussion revolves around choosing which of these meanings is the most valid one.

For me, it is the historical and cultural meaning, which pretty much sets apart WRPGS from JRPGS completely. This meaning is pretty much independent from the literal meaning of the expression (role playing game), because the expression is totally vague. Pretty much every action-adventure videogame has you role-playing someone else. If you try to take things literally, tell me: where in those 3 words does it say you have to roleplay a character you have created? Where does it say how deeply you have to roleplay him/her? Where does it say controlling the charcters movements is not roleplaying, but controlling his moral choices is? How much role playing is enough for an RPG? The more role-playing, the more RPG the game is? I'm sorry to inform but, with that line of thinking, The Sims would be the ultimate RPG experience. And if anyone seriously sees The Sims as an RPG, there's something very wrong.

EVERY GAME IS AN RPG if you just take the literal interpretation, so you have to understand the history of the term before defining something as an RPG. And if you do some research about the history of the term, you'll find out it has different meanings in different places. Who are you to say which one is correct? For western people, RPGs can be both pen-and-paper or eletronic games with a huge amount of freedom. For a japanese person, RPG is a videogame genre, with a vague name, used to describe games that follows the root of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and other old games. If you stop to think about it, genre names don't have to completely describe all of the games that are part of them. There is no objective definition. If you think about it, there's a genre called "Shoot 'em up", which defines "games inspired by Space Invaders, where the screen scrolls vertically or horizontally and has the player shooting projectiles against a set of enemies". If you just take the "Shoot 'em up" literally, without analyzing the history of the term, then all FPS and TPS would be "Shoot 'em ups" too. But they're not.

Same thing happens to RPGs. Role Playing Game means nothing, so the correct meaning is the one acquired with the time. And, in their time, no one questioned that Final Fantasy, Disgaea, Grandia, Breath of Fire, Persona, Secret of Mana, Legend of Dragoon, Terranigma, Soul Blazer etc were RPGs. They are all heavily inspired by the first japanese RPGs, everyone calls them RPGs, they're on the RPG section of every place they're listed. They give meaning to the once vague term RPG, and not the other way around.

Now, I've read some people saying no JRPG is a true RPG. The fact is: you've taken the cultural meaning of RPG from the western culture as a standard. So, you're basicly saying that JRPGs are not WRPGs, which is pretty obvious IMO. If your argument is among the lines of "only WRPGs deserve to be called WRPGs, because they have more roleplaying", then there you go agreeing that The Sims is the ultimate RPG (it has more roleplaying than any bioware game so far...). If you say RPGs are only RPGs when they have more roleplaying than JRPGs and less roleplaying than The Sims, you should realize you're being arbitrary as hell.

After all of this: it all comes down to realizing that, altough FFXIII deviated from the previous instalments of the series, it didn't deviate enough to say it's not a JRPG. There are some JRPGs that don't even let you control any character outside of the battle, not even for the linear road everyone says FFXIII is. Yes, in some games, you go from text boxes to battles (see Valkyria Chronicles, for example). And that doesn't make them less "JRPG". It might make them less similar to WRPGs and, consequently, to pen-and-paper RPGs, but who can say those are the best definitions for RPG (as vague and meaningless as the term can be)?

TLDR: RPG by itself doesn't mean anything, add cultural context and you have something.

 

[longbowgr]

Finally someone notices.
None of the FF series games was an RPG.
RPG is about roleplaying - see Oblivion / Fallout 3 etc.

 

[Pink_Pirate]

uh ...funny.. i never remember making any choices, creating any characters, or living them for that matter, in any Final Fantasy. The media doesn't have its knickers in a twist denouncing their RPGness. I wonder why that is? I don't get why are people getting so excited about genre lables? It's the quality of the game that matters, not its classification.

For the record i though FFXIII was mediocre at best, a solid combat system with a decent story in a fantastic setting lead by uninteresting characters. TBH after FFXII it was more then what i was expecting, so I'm happy regardless. The reason its turning away old fans are the reasons above, e.g. its just not that good of a game, not a lack of inherent RPGness.

 

[bladeofdarkness]

completely agree with them

 

[Aurgelmir]

Oh I stopped considering Final Fantasy games as a Role Playing Game a loooong time ago.
JRPGs are usually Story Playing Games, rather than Role Playing Games.

Because what you do in FFXIII is to play a story, and not a Role.

So I here by motion for the term SPG to be more used.