Role-Playing Games

[The_ModeRazor]

Ah... a refreshing breeze of arrogance and brutal honesty. Even if it was kinda lacking in content. And funny.
But just to avoid seeming unfanboyish: I still love ZP. (not the place with the same name around here where other underaged arsefaces go on saturdays to get drunk)

 

[Kazedarkwind]

i would like to think ive grown up and out of the childish style of anime

I'll just set aside the bit where you imply FF8 is good while 9 and 12 are not and focus on this.

YOU CANNOT OUTGROW AN ENTIRE MEDIUM OF FICTION. Anime is not a genre, it's just cartoons made in Japan. They can be horror, action, romance, comedy, ANYTHING.

They can even be this: http://www.hulu.com/baccano

heh, its my personal opinion buddy

ff8 had a good story and bad gameplay and i kept falling asleep during 9 and 12 had the whiniest main character of them all, my opinion

im not saying all anime falls into this category but most do and they all have very, VERY similar plots. (not all but most can be even formulated) regardless of content in the actual story

 

[TitsMcGee1804]

borderlands is a dull game, but it gets exponentially more fun with each friend you have playing it....btw i mean REAL friends, not randoms, 4 mates playing together is a fucking blast, just like l4d

also, how come i have never had a problem with all the clicking in diablo and torchlight? How hard is it to click a mouse all the time, surely its harder to like, walk for a prolonged perioud of time, but we still manage that!

 

[Tiamat666]

To me, a Role Playing Game is a game where you can play any or at least multiple different roles and practically choose your own adventure, as in the old pen and paper RPGs. Bethesdas games like Oblivion and Fallout are RPGs in this sense. In Oblivion there is a main storyline and sidequests, but the game engine doesn't limit you to that. You can spend the whole game running in the forests and being a hunter if you desire. Or you can be a thief, an explorer, a tomb raider, a merchant etc. I can have fun and -roleplay- my own adventures in Oblivion without completing a single official quest.

Dragon Age: Origins is NOT a RPG in this sense. The engine doesn't allow the freedom and flexibility to choose your own adventures. In Dragon Age you are tied to the plot and your possibilities are limited to what the designers envisioned for the plot to make sense.

Diablo is even less an RPG as your options in Diablo are severly limited. All you can do in Diablo is kill stuff and sell loot. The GTA games are more RPG than Diablo is. In GTA you can be a racecar driver, a taxi driver, a policeman, a thug (naturally), a casino player, an assassin...

A few of the best RPGs in this sense are Ultima 7 and Morrowind. In these games you have a free, open world were you could go almost anywhere right from the start and completely ignore the main storyline to just enjoy the game in a custom -roleplayed- experience to your liking.

 

[Plurralbles]

as it's free we have no weight. What a thought guys. What a unique concept... ha.

I haven't played Borderlands but after the Unskippable, I don't really see I have a need either.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Yahtzee dear your seething hate and arrogance is showing....

An RPG has main 3 elements alot of interchangeable equipment,a skill progression system that's unlocked realtivly slow, and a large item inventory system, this is "RPG".

An action game is where you are always fighting/moving,ect.

A shooter is a an action game where you mostly fight/interact at a distance with everything.

A FPS is well a shooter that's in first person perspective.

3rd person is like first person but stuck in butt cam mode....

A simulation has a very deep or hard real world like mechanic to it.

An adventure game IMO is an action game that may or may not have RPG elements game that focuses more on exploring or progressing from A to B more slowly than a an action game(RE,Onimusha,Castelvina,Eternal darkness,Indigo prophesy,ect more adventure than action or RPG ).

A action RPG is an action game with RPG elements like Zelda ....or ME and dragon age .

A FPS RPG is a first person action game with RPG elements...only in FO3's case (or bioshocks) it dose not have alot of those elements........damn cheap under deved game........grrrrrr

Puzzle: A puzzle game uses puzzles or games to interact with the game world.

RTS: real time strategy , an action game made out of a prime and proper strategy game.

TBS: turn based strategy the right way to make a bloody strategy and RPG

*snickers*

Sorry ....ahem

Strategy game: A strategy game focus on army vrs army where you can control people,units,armys,economies and countries depending on how small the micromanaging gets.

RTS: real time strategy , A strategy game played in real time

TBS: A strategy game played in turns.

As you can see there is nothing wrong with grenes its people unable to slow them is the problem...which is probably due to the fact the review/mag industry has bent over and been brain washed by the publishers....

Give me some titles and see if I can not slot them properly!!

 

[Kazedarkwind]

i would like to think ive grown up and out of the childish style of anime

I'll just set aside the bit where you imply FF8 is good while 9 and 12 are not and focus on this.

YOU CANNOT OUTGROW AN ENTIRE MEDIUM OF FICTION. Anime is not a genre, it's just cartoons made in Japan. They can be horror, action, romance, comedy, ANYTHING.

They can even be this: http://www.hulu.com/baccano

heh, its my personal opinion buddy

ff8 had a good story and bad gameplay and i kept falling asleep during 9 and 12 had the whiniest main character of them all, my opinion

im not saying all anime falls into this category but most do and they all have very, VERY similar plots. (not all but most can be even formulated) regardless of content in the actual story

...When did Zidane or Asche (and it is Asche, not Vaan) whine?

But putting that aside... yeah there's plenty of formulaic anime, BUT THERE'S PLENTY OF FORMULAIC EVERYTHING. It's the derivative cash-ins in any medium or genre that make the truly worthwhile stuff stand out. Take that show I linked to. It's creative, fast pasted, well written, has loads of unique characters, a gorgeous jazz soundtrack, and AN AMAZING DUB (for once).

Vaahn is the main character in my mind, but i would of had basche (pirate guy however you spell his name) be the main if i wrote the story

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Yahtzee, your opinion is so similar to mine that it is scary. I sometimes wonder if you are in fact my future self in a host body mimicing a British accent.

Here is something I wrote earlier:

I belong to an extremist philosophy that believes that the level up system should be kept out of video games period.

Experience points and stats are something that came out of Pen and Paper RPGs. Since everything was imaginary there was no other way to give elements of danger and variables that happen with those games.

But in the video game, we can simulate everything, regardless of the level up system. We increase our stats as the player gets adjusted to the game through the real experience of playing it! After carefully aiming a shaky sniper rifle to strike a target in the head, why would the bleeding target fly backwards bleed and show a zero over his head to denote a miss? It doesn't make a shred of sense. Experience should come with experience.

I understand the game designer desire to reward the player and not overpower the player character from the beginning. Under powering Batman in Arkham Asylum definitely made the game more challenging. It still doesn't make sense. Although it is one of my favorite games of the year, the developers couldn't seem to make up their minds on how the game worked. In some parts of the game items are unlocked through picking them up in sections of the story. In others you simply unlock them through experience points.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came up with an innovative method of handling player character progression. Every single action would eventually add up to their physical look and power. Run around, swim, and ride a bike a lot and Carl Johnson becomes slimmer and faster. Drive everywhere, eat a lot of fast food and sitting alot makes him grow fatter. Exercising makes hand to hand combat easier, and fighting regularly in general makes it better. Instead of assigning a stat through experience as a whole, the game took into account every individual action and assigned it to the appropriate place.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

To me, a Role Playing Game is a game where you can play any or at least multiple different roles and practically choose your own adventure, as in the old pen and paper RPGs. Bethesdas games like Oblivion and Fallout are RPGs in this sense. In Oblivion there is a main storyline and sidequests, but the game engine doesn't limit you to that. You can spend the whole game running in the forests and being a hunter if you desire. Or you can be a thief, an explorer, a tomb raider, a merchant etc. I can have fun and -roleplay- my own adventures in Oblivion without completing a single official quest.

Dragon Age: Origins is NOT a RPG in this sense. The engine doesn't allow the freedom and flexibility to choose your own adventures. In Dragon Age you are tied to the plot and your possibilities are limited to what the designers envisioned for the plot to make sense.

Diablo is even less an RPG as your options in Diablo are severly limited. All you can do in Diablo is kill stuff and sell loot. The GTA games are more RPG than Diablo is. In GTA you can be a racecar driver, a taxi driver, a policeman, a thug (naturally), a casino player, an assassin...

A few of the best RPGs in this sense are Ultima 7 and Morrowind. In these games you have a free, open world were you could go almost anywhere right from the start and completely ignore the main storyline to just enjoy the game in a custom -roleplayed- experience to your liking.

Um no....the more actiony stuff you can do in a game dose not make it more RPG.......
THo both are clearly action RPG or action adventure titles.

 

[shoootme]

if you think that RPG's need redefined then how about mech games which could be a FPS or TPS with the option to change load out and stats before a mission which by convenshnal standers would make it a FPS or TPS with a RPG element.

i have found a "new" way of classifying games "good" and "shit"

 

[LordSphinx]

Games usually have a focus, and this is what defines their genre. Then comes some qualifier, like the camera or its world type. For instance, a "Steampunk third person shooter" is pretty clear to me: The focus is "Shooting stuff", and it has an external camera.

Some of these focus are indeed ill named though, like "RPG", which should be "CDG": Character Development Game. (Think of it, this is the only point that ALL RPGs have in common).

Other ill named "focus": action (which are always about combat situation) and adventure (which are about exploration/progression in the story).

As for "simulation" games, it doesn't mean anything anymore. Some say GTA is a simulation game, while others say that Roller Coaster Tycoon is a simulation game... It's just something people say about a game when they don't know how to describe it. Also, strategy games should be renamed "management", as this is their real focus. There is as much strategy implied in Team Fortress as there is in Warcraft 3.

On the other hand, the term "video game" itself doesn't represent at all the medium, and "virtual experience" would fit better if we wanted them to be seen as a mean of expression rather than just toys for kids and immature adults.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I think games are just getting to a place where the genre label is meaningless because all of them blend so many elements.
Back with the nes your games were primarily platformer, shooters (of the R-type type), rpgs, sports, puzzles, but even those sometimes blended elements (Simon's Quest, Blades of Steel). Now every game has rpg, or shooter, or strategy elements. I even hesitated to call Burnout games racing games until recently: now that it seems like they want their games to be like any other racing game.

We shouldn't be too surprised, much music hasn't been easily categorized for as long as I can remember: can you think of a type of music Tom Waits can be categorized as; the question gets even harder when you want to describe his whole catalog.

What's the solution? Ditch them except in those rare cases where it fits: usually just sports and puzzle games.

I hope he does get a chance to review Borderlands. I love it when he tears apart games I enjoy.

 

[Tiamat666]

Um no....the more actiony stuff you can do in a game dose not make it more RPG.......
THo both are clearly action RPG or action adventure titles.

To me it does. The more possibilities I have to play "my own game", the more RPG a game is.
The "ultimate RPG" in this sense it to close your eyes and let your imagination do everything.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Games usually have a focus, and this is what defines their genre. Then comes some qualifier, like the camera or its world type. For instance, a "Steampunk third person shooter" is pretty clear to me: The focus is "Shooting stuff", and it has an external camera.

Some of these focus are indeed ill named though, like "RPG", which should be "CDG": Character Development Game. (Think of it, this is the only point that ALL RPGs have in common).

Other ill named "focus": action (which are always about combat situation) and adventure (which are about exploration/progression in the story).

As for "simulation" games, it doesn't mean anything anymore. Some say GTA is a simulation game, while others say that Roller Coaster Tycoon is a simulation game... It's just something people say about a game when they don't know how to describe it. Also, strategy games should be renamed "management", as this is their real focus. There is as much strategy implied in Team Fortress as there is in Warcraft 3.

On the other hand, the term "video game" itself doesn't represent at all the medium, and "virtual experience" would fit better if we wanted them to be seen as a mean of expression rather than just toys for kids and immature adults.

Meh boil it down an RPG is about alot of interchangeable equipment, huge item inventory, slow skill progression.

the whole role play aspect of it has been blured due to games slwoly having better writing and interaction with the game world.

 

[Zaydin]

I've actually come to decide that JRPGs aren't RPGs at all. For starters, the player rarely, if ever has an impact on the story or the characters choices. The one JRPG I've seen that has a degree of that is the Shin Megami Tensei games. JRPGs rail-road you down one and only one possible story path. Western RPGs like Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age let you choose how your character acts and what they do; role-playing. JRPGs only real RPG element is the party building and stat building. And again, western RPGs let you customize how your character looks, acts, etc etc, versus JRPGs where you are forced to play a stupid idiot like Neku from TWEWY (Don't get me wrong, TWEWY is fun, but it's still overall a traditional JRPG, story wise)

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Um no....the more actiony stuff you can do in a game dose not make it more RPG.......
THo both are clearly action RPG or action adventure titles.

To me it does. The more possibilities I have to play "my own game", the more RPG a game is.
The "ultimate RPG" in this sense it to close your eyes and let your imagination do everything.

Mmmmmmmmm but that dose not fit into what RPG games are