NinjaDeathSlap said:
The answer is complicated, and one that starts even more arguements.
At the core is the simple nature of what makes an RPG. Whether anyone LIKES it or not, RPGs are all about using numbers and stats to simulate actions, giving the player the abillity to control a character very much unlike himself. To begin with RPGs were very simple combat simulators and a game consisted of little more than a trip into a dungeon to see how deep you could get. The same basic fomula applies to early computer RPGs like "Rogue", or Wizardry: "Proving Ground Of The Mad Overlord". It's those stats that make an RPG an RPG. There is no doubt that having a good storyline improves something a thousandfold, but that can be said of anything from a Platformer to a Shooter, story is somehing that you add to a game not something that defines it's genere.
Now, there is some confusion about this among computer game players, largely because RPGs have generally had the best storylines of all game geners for so long. That's because people took huge amounts of time and effort to create these elaborate world settings. Looking at say "The Forgotten Realms" or "Grayhawk" you'd never guess that they basically build themselves up around what amounted to a giant money pit for simulated battles. They pretty much moved from guys going into dungeons to going "well, now that we have some treasure, what if we leave and go and spend it?" so someone built towns around the dungeons, which lead to kingdoms, and then eventually entire worlds. Some settings like The Forgotten Realms have been detailed don to local micro brews and cheeses and things. With all that detail of course comes all of the politics, personalities, and storylines. Even when not using an established RPG setting these kinds of things have gone with the territory when other games were not worrying about storyline. Today's computer gamers have little or no awareness of things like "Rogue" or the early "Wizardry" games, there just were not many gamers then.
At any rate, the point here is that you can have the most epic storyline in the world and that doesn't make something an RPG. All that does is make it like a book or movie, and to be honest it hardly takes a genius to listen to someone tell them a story. Mass Effect's storyline is decent, but no more intellectual than say "Star Wars" or "Battlestar Galactica" and you hardly need two brain cells to run together to get those shows, as drooling fanboys constantly demonstrate to us all.
The thing to understand is that Mass Effect is supposed to be an RPG series, and still bills itself as one. The problem is that all of those menus, stats, and other things are what RPG gamers play RPGs for. Any moron can aim a sight and hit a fire button, and really that's what RPGs are trying to get away from, especially seeing as it winds up relying on the player's reflexs rather than those possesed by the character being controlled, and once that happens any pretensions of something being an RPG go out the window.
The reason why Bioware has made the changes are twofold. For one, it's really hard to develop an RPG game and a consistant set of mechanics. For a lot of it's history Bioware has been doing it's products under liscence, usually with the Dungeons and Dragons engine of the time. Even "Knights Of The Old Republic" used the D20 engine, which is third edition Dungeons and Dragons. "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age" are their first major projects without using someone else's engine. I think the work involved kind of hit them, especially seeing as they got bought out by EA, and can no longer focus on one project like they used to, they are expected to keep all these balls up in the air at once. It also doesn't help that they are working on an MMO which is the most expensive project in EA's history along with their other franchises and they doubtlessly are being told to make that their primary focus. Secondly, gaming on computers is no longer dominated by nerds or smart people, a lot of time and effort has gone into drawing the mainstream into gaming. Looking at all those charts, numbers, and stats tends to go over the head of the average person who just wants to watch things blow up. Basically despite wanting to be called smart, and associated with RPGs, your typical Joe does not want to have to learn a set of mechanics. Not to mention the idea of indirect control is a bit too over the head of your average gamer, and a bit abstract. Given that shooters are easier to produce, and that there is a larger audience of mainstream gamers than the more intelligent RPG gamers (who are still pretty numerous), it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Bioware is dumbing everything down. It become easier for them, and draws in a bigger market. Of course when your looking at millions of actual RPG gamers who represent a pretty substantial market on their own (even if not as big a one), you have to understand there is going to be some noise. Especially seeing as Bioware made it's lumps as a producer of computer RPGs, being one of the best companies for telling a good story, while remaining true to, and consistant with, established game mechanics. Basically Bioware wouldn't be in the position they are now, if their fans hadn't supported them, the very same fans Bioware is increasingly unwilling to support with it's products, this leads to a lot of anger and bad blood, with Bioware acting like an indie rock group that simply used it's fans as a springboard to land a major record deal and now just wants to product bubblegum pop and spend money: insisting that they don't owe the people who made them what they are anything... and like every other time that happens, it slots people off.
The exact definition of RPGs can be difficult, but once you understand that distinction, the rest is pretty simple. From a regular Joe's perspective, an RPG *IS* defined by all that faffing about. He'd prefer to line up a dot and hit the "immediate gratification" button. The RPG gamer takes a satisfaction from arranging those stats and numbers and watching the results.
See at it's core the point of an RPG is that we, the nerds of the world, can't fight with swords, shoot guns, or bench press massive weights. Other than the physical, we also tend to be outcasts... you know as nerds, who have trouble talking to people and lack anything that could be called charisma.
The point of an RPG is that anything you do is represented by numbers, you can for example in an RPG have a conversation with an NPC, played by the GM, or in the computer, and it's not your actual dialogue that matters, so much as the intent. You might be an awkward studdering idiot in front of the live GM, but once your intent is clear the dice come out, and if your stats are high enough and bad luck does not occur you get the results of James Bond, because your character said something along the same lines, but much more persuasively, or whatever. In Combat, real world olympic fencers and regular Medieval Weapons Society fighters can't perform the feats of say D'artaneon or Conan, but a fantasy character can. The point here being that by having stats to represent your character's relative level of skill and abillities, the character can do things that a regular player cannot.
The problem with say "Mass Effect 2" is that it's no longer an intellectual exercise. In an RPG a guy like Steven Hawking should be able to play the greatest marksman to ever live. Admittedly ME1 had some issues here (and was critiqued for them, the whole "shooter RPG" is an oxymoron), all Steven Hawking should have to do is pretty much convey his attempt to shoot and let the numbers do the rest. Who Steven Hawking is in real life does not matter in an RPG (and conversely if his character is a Barbarian named "Bongo" with an IQ in the single digits, Steven Hawking's vast intellect will not apply, because skill rolls and intelligence checks will be forced if he tries to do something too smart fo the character... Bongo isn't exactly going to be writing essays on Astrophysics with an Intelligence stat of 5, but a character with an 18 intelligence on the D&D scale might very well do that, and if the guy playing that character IRL happens to be borderline retarded, all he has to do is say "I'm going to write an essay on Astophysics!"). With Mass Effect 2, that twitchy fingered kid has an advantage over an older person with slower fingers like me, never mind someone like Steven Hawking who would play the game with special controls to begin with in all likelyhood. That means it ceases to be an RPG, and that's why it, and the attempt to condense mutally exclusive generes like shooters and RPGs are slotting off the core RPG fan base.
