What can be done to improve the JRPG?

[WeepingAngels]

So the final boss is just a regular Joe who worked out alot and you (or anyone one else in the world) can defeat him if you eat your veggies and work out too? Sounds epic.

Ah, not quite.

The BBEG is just using the easy way of getting power. Say, simply buying it, or something. The PC and crew are doing it the hard way: tracking down ancient texts, or seeking out old masters, or something like that which will require them to put a lot of effort into gaining access to this power.

But the PC and crew are not "Chosen Ones", they just happened to be the only ones willing to stand up and fight. Or maybe, like the first Mass Effect, they were just collectively in the right place at the right time. Now, they're doing everything they can to track down the villain while using their adventures as a way to train up and learn how to use the ultimate power that will allow them to end the villain for good.

So how did shops get the power for the final boss to purchase and if anyone can purchase it then why doesn't just anyone purchase it? The worlds military is too poor...ya know what. No thanks.

The chosen one trope exists for a reason. Why could only Luke Skywalker defeat Vader? Why not any Joe Jedi #4789? Maybe you could do one story like that every once in a while but it won't work very often. It's about motivation, why does the main character drive on through all the tough fights and general BS? Well it's because only the chosen one can do this and if the chosen one quits his journey, the world as they know it will be destroyed.

Imagine during an exposition scene where the hero just decides to stop, get married and raise a family because anyone can save the world.

 

[American Tanker]

*SNIP*

I don't know about you, but I'd think that the imminent destruction of all existence would be a pretty powerful motivator to get me to go out and do something, ANYTHING, to try to stop it.

So that's why our heroes don't stop. They know what's at stake, and they fight on because they know that they're just as likely to die as any of us if the villain has their way. They choose to fight because they know that THEIR LIVES are on the line too.

And perhaps we play into that. The rising hope that the heroes will succeed. As such, have the party steadily grow as the story progresses, and show greater numbers of allied troopers fighting at the heroes' side as the story reaches its peak. The final ultimate battle will be two massive armies battling against each other, as the heroes lead the charge, fighting their way into the villain's chambers.

And when it comes down to it, only the player's party survives to meet the villain. But the sacrifices of those brave allied soldiers further empowers the heroes, to strike down the evil once and for all.

 

[WeepingAngels]

*SNIP*

I don't know about you, but I'd think that the imminent destruction of all existence would be a pretty powerful motivator to get me to go out and do something, ANYTHING, to try to stop it.

So that's why our heroes don't stop. They know what's at stake, and they fight on because they know that they're just as likely to die as any of us if the villain has their way. They choose to fight because they know that THEIR LIVES are on the line too.

And perhaps we play into that. The rising hope that the heroes will succeed. As such, have the party steadily grow as the story progresses, and show greater numbers of allied troopers fighting at the heroes' side as the story reaches its peak. The final ultimate battle will be two massive armies battling against each other, as the heroes lead the charge, fighting their way into the villain's chambers.

And when it comes down to it, only the player's party survives to meet the villain. But the sacrifices of those brave allied soldiers further empowers the heroes, to strike down the evil once and for all.

Maybe it will improve one JRPG but that can't become the norm.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Better writing.

JRPG writing hit it's stride in the 90s, maybe early 2000s. What's happening with writers is no different from what happens with western devs, the Japanese aren't an alien race, they can go from competent and brilliant to incompetent or crazy just like westerners do, maybe they just hit their stride back then.

The writing was better during the time of bad translations. I think that happened because the bad translations added to a mediocre Japanese script. It made the story seem more strange/alien than it was really intended. The anime heavy stuff may not have made it through the localisation process. Well, that's what I think.

That is one of the most utterly fucking idiotic things I ever heard, it was not mistranslation. Mistranslations do not by coincidence make a good story. Though it's a spoiler now, in Final Fantasy 7 Cait Sith's "death" scene was a deliberate ruse to trick the player into thinking death would be meaningless and wouldn't take, then Aeris died and it was permanent. That was not a mistranslation, that was deliberate. "This guy are sick" was a mistranslation.

It was just my opinion you Spoony Bard. I have nothing more to say but low content posts are a thing on this board so I will say more. I believe the limited tech kept the older RPG's from being as wordy and therefore some of the awful tropes didn't come through. I was disappointed to learn that the makers of the Final Fantasy games really wanted to be making movies. That went well.

 

[Bad Player]

Might be going back a bit, but what's "Y0" in the OP?

 

[balladbird]

FF XV a flop? First I've heard of it. Both critically and commercially it seems to be doing fine, and while it has a passionate hatedom, most of that group's members were itching to hate it for a long while before it released. *shrug*

As to "improving" JRPGs, it's not really a question of the formula being unpopular in Japan, or anything. The reason Japanese studios have been making fewer JRPGs is because japanese stuidos have been making fewer games for consoles or PCs, period.

Over in Japan, for many years, players have gradually and increasingly been abandoning their consoles and PCs in favor of their phones, and developers have taken the hint. It bums me out, because 90 percent of the games I enjoy playing are japanese, if not straight-up JRPGs, and while I could follow the JRPGs to a certain console, or even to the PC, most japanese mobile games will never make it stateside, so the future could find me without new games to fill my niche, alas.


At the very least, there's no immediate fear for JRPGs. 2017 has already seen the release of Tales of Berseria, which has been tragically overlooked... seriously, that game blew me away with how much I enjoyed it and the conflict it presented. Easily the best "tales" game I've played... probably since "Abyss" We also have P5 coming out, and we'll likely get our annual Atelier game, a few NIS titles, the final Trails of Cold Steel game, and Dangan Ronpa 3, as well.

 

[gsilver]

Music, story, characters, not over-filled with stereotypes, and combat/worlds that don't take too long to get through.
If a game is going to demand 10+ hours of my time, it had better be worth it.

//Has found some good stuff in the sub-10 hour indie RPG. The epic RPG has its place... but too many long JRPGs are long because of padding, rather than needing their exorbitant runtimes.

 

[Story]

A speed button for animations. Sometimes things can be so slow whenever you grind in JRPGs. Currently playing Ni Nu Kuni and I'm relectant to have more than in familiar team because training them takes so long to do.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

I never played many jRPGs (as I didn't own Nintendo consoles growing up and what consoles I did own I had very few games for), I'm only seriously getting into them now (particularly older ones and their PC releases and remakes). As someone not accustomed to the subgenre, my one and only issue that makes me drop them all the time is the grinding. That's it for me; find a way around that and I'll personally be all over them.

Also, always include Japanese audio in western releases. Even utter narrative shit like FFXIII become infinitely more tolerable with the original Japanese audio.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Might be going back a bit, but what's "Y0" in the OP?

Probably Yakuza 0.

 

[loa]

And dropping any semblance of a Chosen One plot.

As opposed to what? The strength you need to beat the final boss comes from where if you aren't the chosen one? Teamwork? Willpower? The power of love? It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other. The only reason I can learn Ultima is because.....I am in love with one of my team members?

Is that all you can come up with? The limit of your imagination? That's what a compelling story is to you?
Either you are specialsnowflake superdude or some other cliche?

 

[WeepingAngels]

And dropping any semblance of a Chosen One plot.

As opposed to what? The strength you need to beat the final boss comes from where if you aren't the chosen one? Teamwork? Willpower? The power of love? It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other. The only reason I can learn Ultima is because.....I am in love with one of my team members?

Is that all you can come up with? The limit of your imagination? That's what a compelling story is to you?
Either you are specialsnowflake superdude or some other cliche?

You may want to learn to read. I said this:

It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other.

Check it out though, if I wrote stories for video games then and only then would you be able to hold me accountable to 'wrte a better story' and if that were the case, I wouldn't be posting it publicly.

I don't understand people who say you can't criticize unless you can do better. I don't need to be a world class movie director to criticize a movie.

 

[Bad Player]

Might be going back a bit, but what's "Y0" in the OP?

Probably Yakuza 0.

I wouldn't call that JRPG but... yeah, that's probably what it is. Thanks.

 

[loa]

And dropping any semblance of a Chosen One plot.

As opposed to what? The strength you need to beat the final boss comes from where if you aren't the chosen one? Teamwork? Willpower? The power of love? It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other. The only reason I can learn Ultima is because.....I am in love with one of my team members?

Is that all you can come up with? The limit of your imagination? That's what a compelling story is to you?
Either you are specialsnowflake superdude or some other cliche?

You may want to learn to read. I said this:

It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other.

Check it out though, if I wrote stories for video games then and only then would you be able to hold me accountable to 'wrte a better story' and if that were the case, I wouldn't be posting it publicly.

I don't understand people who say you can't criticize unless you can do better. I don't need to be a world class movie director to criticize a movie.

I'm not "holding you accountable", I question your imagination based on the first thing that came to your mind.
Your argument is that anything that doesn't follow the "chosen one" trope is "cheesy as hell" because you can't imagine something that isn't.
Which is sad because of course you can have engaging stories which are not all about the chosen one saving the world.

 

[WeepingAngels]

And dropping any semblance of a Chosen One plot.

As opposed to what? The strength you need to beat the final boss comes from where if you aren't the chosen one? Teamwork? Willpower? The power of love? It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other. The only reason I can learn Ultima is because.....I am in love with one of my team members?

Is that all you can come up with? The limit of your imagination? That's what a compelling story is to you?
Either you are specialsnowflake superdude or some other cliche?

You may want to learn to read. I said this:

It's all cheesy as hell and none of it is better than the other.

Check it out though, if I wrote stories for video games then and only then would you be able to hold me accountable to 'wrte a better story' and if that were the case, I wouldn't be posting it publicly.

I don't understand people who say you can't criticize unless you can do better. I don't need to be a world class movie director to criticize a movie.

I'm not "holding you accountable", I question your imagination based on the first thing that came to your mind.
Your argument is that anything that doesn't follow the "chosen one" trope is "cheesy as hell" because you can't imagine something that isn't.
Which is sad because of course you can have engaging stories which are not all about the chosen one saving the world.

Of course, like the story you tol....

 

[loa]

Of course, like the story you tol....

Seriously? You need examples?
Do you not read books or watch movies? Jeez.

Alien is not an engaging movie because ripley is the chosen one who saves the world and the movie would be less if it widened the scope of the story to that level. Instead it keeps it focused and personal without losing track of what is important.

Games can have focused stories too, in fact there are a number of very succesful jrpgs that do that and I don't even think you like your favorite jrpg because "you are chosenguy who saves life", you like it because of the characters and interactions along the way.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Of course, like the story you tol....

Seriously? You need examples?
Do you not read books or watch movies? Jeez.

Alien is not an engaging movie because ripley is the chosen one who saves the world and the movie would be less if it widened the scope of the story to that level. Instead it keeps it focused and personal without losing track of what is important.

Games can have focused stories too, in fact there are a number of very succesful jrpgs that do that and I don't even think you like your favorite jrpg because "you are chosenguy who saves life", you like it because of the characters and interactions along the way.

I have already addressed this. Sure, you can do the everyday Joe protagonist sometimes but you can't replace the chosen one protagonist, not even most of the time. Sometimes tropes exist for good reasons.

 

[loa]

Of course, like the story you tol....

Seriously? You need examples?
Do you not read books or watch movies? Jeez.

Alien is not an engaging movie because ripley is the chosen one who saves the world and the movie would be less if it widened the scope of the story to that level. Instead it keeps it focused and personal without losing track of what is important.

Games can have focused stories too, in fact there are a number of very succesful jrpgs that do that and I don't even think you like your favorite jrpg because "you are chosenguy who saves life", you like it because of the characters and interactions along the way.

I have already addressed this. Sure, you can do the everyday Joe protagonist sometimes but you can't replace the chosen one protagonist, not even most of the time. Sometimes tropes exist for good reasons.

How is that?
The difference boils down to an oracle saying it's the chosen one.
Both can do the same, one of them with considerably less cringe.