Nobody's going to take a crack at this? Nobody? Fine...
Zeckt said:
You know what? I'll respond to the people who quoted by telling you exactly how I feel. Jrpg's for years have taken zero risks, to the point where you know everything about the character from the first moment it is introduced to the player. It's like a type of book. Every hunch about a plot twist you get always happens and right away you will know which character will betray you, which female will be the love interest and which female is there for eye candy and which character will be loyal to you because its a type of book you've read for years and years.
There is never anything of interest happening because its always "good vs evil" with NOTHING inbetween, and how whiney emotional teenagers can easily beat the scruffy strong men (which is the WORST thing to be in ANYTHING from that country). It's so easy to know EVERYTHING about a jrpg just by looking at the characters. And your going to argue to me that this method of tried and true happily ever after story is interesting? If jrpg's have such good stories, then WHY are they so predictable? and that is BORING and the reason that the jrpg genre has stagnated completely. They don't take any risks with their stories anymore.
Most of us are simply tired of boring as hell pre 20 year olds with fancy hair and big boobs and ridiculous clothing. It's not a good story if you already know what is going to happen! I don't see how a "kill the bad guy, get the girl with no personality" story can be interesting when you put up with it OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
Theres never any tough choices, any risks. Just white and black predictable characters with happily ever after endings because anything but is too risky for japan. And THAT is a boring, uninteresting story. I will never understand how you can simply say that wrpg's are awful for bad stories as if it justifies you for trashing them as if jrpg's are any better when they absolutely refuse to be anything but a textbook of cliche's.
EDIT : hell, the only recent jrpg I can think of that broke away from the formula and having a story I actually cared about was Nier. And it was AWESOME!!! and it *GASP* took actual risks with the story! the main character's a middle aged adult and the love interest is a trash talking hermaphrodite. And to me it was memorable, which is something jrpg's have completely forgotten to be.
1. jRPGs do take risks, just not always the same ones. Persona 4 addresses sexuality in a pretty risky way for instance. Shifting battle styles in Final Fantasy is a risk. Making a game like Eternal Sonata, which's plot is fucking crazy in many ways, that's a risk. The risks don't have to be venturing away from the hero versus villain formula that has served us well for ages, but I suppose some games still do that. If you want somewhat ambiguous endings, well Fire Emblem Path of Radiance winds up ending with you leaving a whole nation in relative devastation after going to war with them. In the next game you start out playing as a group of characters fucked over by the "good guys" from the last game. You also learn the real villains are the nation you tried to get help from last game, and the main villain was among your biggest supporters. Ending of the second game, not quite as ambiguous I suppose, but spending the whole game informing the player how their actions in the last game fucked everything up, that's pretty risky to me.
2. Wow, there is never anything in between. Oh, just, oh wow. No, every single jRPG I have ever played has at least one villain that is more than just sympathetic, they're downright admirable. Though not every jRPG I've played has had a more ambiguous hero among them, I will once again fall back to the Fire Emblem series as proof that some do, considering the number of recruitable thieves, assassins, and crazy people. As for the whole it is always good versus evil thing, yeah, most games are like that. Most games of all genres. Even Bioware and Obsidian games, when you break it down, in most of their endings you will be the hero and there will be a far worse villain. A villain who is kitten eatingly bad.
3. So everybody in every jRPG is going to be absurdly young. Once again the entire series of Fire Emblem would like to say hello. Sure, many characters are younger, but the majority aren't.
4. No tough choices eh? Pretty certain the MegaTen games had some tough choices, and Fire Emblem will always ask whether it is worth it to let one of your characters die forever or if you should just go on without them since it isn't like you have to use them. Should have added that one to the risk part, but considering they've been doing that for the entire franchise it probably doesn't matter. OH, and FF13 isn't happily ever after in the end. Pretty damn depressing in some ways if you ask me, not that I plan on actually beating it any time soon.
5. I love games that are and aren't jRPGs and am very unfamiliar with the genre as a whole. So do not interpret this as the best list a true sage of the genre could come up with, nor as a list of reasons why wRPGs suck and jRPGs are better, especially considering I'm probably a bigger fan of the former given my Obsidian fanboy status. I just wanted to point out that there is more to every genre of story telling than their cliches. You can go ahead and dislike them all you want, but do not dismiss them.
