Mass Effect 2 I do not deny being part RPG, but that is not all that it is. For it to be purely an RPG, it should play as a pure RPG does. It plays as a shooter - an action game sort of thing - with dialogue between fights.
Defining the character arc I'll agree with, but making major decisions is not a necessity. It makes it far more interesting, but it is by no means necessary. I guess it really comes down to what you think a major decision is, and to what extent 'defining the character arc' becomes 'acceptable' for it to be Role Playing.
But almost every RPG is half RPG and half whatever it's combat system is; Mass Effect 2 is shooting, Skyrim is 1st-person hack and slash, Final Fantasy is turn-based combat, Kingdom of Amalur is 3rd-person hack and slash, etc.
I don't get how you missed that half the game was jumping from platform to platform. Yeah, it was almost always obvious where you had to jump to, but so it has been in games like the Original Mario. There were timed jumps, jumps between two moving platforms, and also jumps that involved Portals mixed with timed jumps between moving platforms.
There was only one point I remember where you had to make some timed jumps in Portal.
This comes down to good role playing as much as good writing of characters. If you choose to go against who your character is for fun or something, you aren't really roleplaying. However, it is always best for devs aiming to allow free play of their character to make the dialogue somewhat neutral so that that character can be played freely without being contradictory. That or give the player no voice. It isn't being nice, it isn't being evil. Its up to you to interpret their actions.
And what is this part in the Omega apartments. I never came across it as far as I know.
Keeping the dialog neutral means keeping the dialog bland and uninteresting to me. Choosing to be a hard ass or nice in Mass Effect really made the Shepard character for me.
The part in the Omega apartments is after you first talk to Mordin. I believe it was in the demo even. From a GFaqs walkthrough:
7 - Kokomo Plaza
In the next area you will find the Blue Suns fighting the Blood Pack, a rival
mercenary group. The Blue Suns had been in charge of protection for the
district, but the Blood Pack has used the plague as an opportunity to move in
on their turf. They will bring a lot of reinforcements to this fight, so be
careful not to get surrounded. The pyros are excellent Overload targets
because the tanks on their backs will explode. Most of the troopers are not
too dangerous, but there are a few krogan and varren to be concerned about as
well. When the fighting dies down, check out the room on the left side to
find some refined element zero and a couple of human looters. You can
persuade them to stop, fight it out with them, or leave them alone.
The ability to do a beat down in the stealth sections, however, provides you a way to have control over your Batman. Yes, Batman will choose stealth over fighting, but now we come to role playing a fixed role as opposed to making your own.
I really don't think being able to beat down enemies in the stealth sections was an option purposefully allowed for by the devs. I don't think Rocksteady realized how powerful Batman is with all those quick-shot gadgets. In Arkham Asylum, you'd be dead if you tried to fight your way through the stealth sections.
Adventure games are very well defined, they are games where you just go around talking to people, maybe solve some puzzles, while going on an adventure...
So... similar to your definition of an RPG? Walk around and engage in conversations with people, with any gameplay. Adventure games are... Somewhat iffy in their definition. There are a lot of games where you travel around and talk to people, and go on an adventure. What you are saying is that it needs something more than that to classify as an adventure game. Same sort of thing to what I'm saying about RPGs needing more than a dialogue system (Among a broader array of Role Play enabling mechanics) to be an RPG.
Similar to a RPG but yet very different. In an adventure game, everything your character says is scripted, you have no choice in what your character says. I said role-playing in a RPG should be the 1st prerequisite, not the only prerequisite. Role-playing involves deciding in some way what your character says (even like choosing an attitude like in Alpha Protocol) and well being able to choose how you act as well. A RPG should have a way to build you character to allow for different playstyles as well. I'd say pretty much all the rest of the game can be up for grabs.
Sims are a classification. They tell you that a game will be as realistic as possible.
Where you have said it is a subgenre of a million different genres can also be applied to the likes of RPGs.
RPG-Shooter
RPG-Fighter
RPG-Tactical
RPG-Sports
Under your definition, all these need to be 100% valid as an RPG is to have a dialogue conversation that changes an event or two in the story. Saying it is a subgenre of every other game genre simply because it can be a part of any game genre does not make a lot of sense.
Mass Effect is a RPG with shooting as the combat system, not a shooter with RPG elements. I don't mind it being called a RPG-Shooter. Once you have all the RPG elements, you can fill in whatever gameplay you want like I just stated a bit earlier.
During the short campaign it has a story, though an incredibly generic one. The majority of the game, however, is played in online competitive matches with no story other than "You're all at war". The game's story is mostly a basic tutorial on different styles of fighting, whilst undergoing generic plot of space revenge with surprise character from the past #3. Playing a DS RTS, a lot of what you would do would be the campaign. In PC RTSs, the campaign is generally 1/50th of your time with the game - MAX (Unless you quit because you don't like the game).
There are many RTS, however, that don't have a story, as are there many 4X and such. They all end up playing quite differently to FF style battles.
In the older ones, FF was turn based combat, and walking on square tiles (Which weren't necessarily labelled, but you can tell that they walk across square tiles) to explore a dungeon/town/w.e whilst following a story of your group.
In RTS, the square tiles doesn't apply. Generally you will be moving across a grid, but allowed to stay in places between grid slots centres and such (Imagine walking in DA:O). Combat happens real time with micro and macro management taking a big role, as does resource gathering and base construction. Don't construct a good base, or don't have a good enough economy, and you end up with a lost match.
4Xs are more similar. Generally you will move across a square tiled grid, and combat happens in an auto decided turn based fashion, with the stats of each unit coming into play to automatically resolve a battle for you. Base building, however, and land management, are a large part of the game. You will improve the land around your cities, and improve your cities themselves, in order to gain an edge on your opponent.
In both game styles resource management and base building are large players in how things play out.
If you played FF with 60 units v 60 units (About how big most battles in Starcraft are, dependent on the player it may reach 100 v 100, but generally there are lower amounts), it would still play like FF. You would have no base building, no real resource management (Money don't count), and those older games would still be turn based. The newer, more real time ones might fit in better, but they still miss a large part of the point in RTS, 4X and strategy games in general. Your job isn't to explore around a world completing quests and continuing a story, your job is to command the units at your disposal to victory in one battle, before being told what happens on the way to the next one. Imagine FF as only its combat sequences. Now you have a strategy game.
I know kinda what RTSs are like, I'm just not a big fan of them. They are like chess but with a million more things going on. I wouldn't mind playing them if it was just 40 troops/units vs 40 troops/units but you have to do resource management and a bunch of other stuff I just don't care to do.
Role Playing and LARP have existed in one form or other for a fair amount of time, they aren't simply recent events. Note how it is not called Live Role Playing. The action is added there for a reason. It is the fact that it is your actions that do things that count, and you are not just a place holder. If you dressed up as the characters from your RP, and talked IC and everything ect. whilst deciding what happens in the game based off RPG mechanics, that's not LARP. You may be role playing your character to the almost max, but you aren't carrying out any of their actions.
According to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_role-playing_games], RPGs started in the 16th century. I think it's safe to assume these early RPGs involved player skill to a degree. The reason why there is no player skill in table-top gaming is because of the inherent limitations of the medium. Just because no player skill was involved in table-top RPGs doesn't mean ALL RPGs have to have NO player skill involved. Table-top RPGs weren't the first RPGs so why should what a "real" RPG is be based off them?
Really, a lot of positioning stuff can also be done in real time. Most just don't bother with it as the effort for advanced positioning stuff is more than their budget is for. Menus are a choice, I personally don't like them, but there is a reason they are used; some people do like them. Some people enjoy going through menus, and having the ability to take their time with their plans and tactics instead of being rushed by a game being in real time.
You would not be able to be effectively battle vs the CPU in a video game RPG that was based exactly on the DnD fighting system in real-time where every party member is controlled by you. Now I could see a co-op DnD game played in real-time where one player controls just one party member.
Ich, ten years old and probably not a personally designed to last rig would probably have problems with ME in the end. Personally I can't stand control sticks for movement, and prefer the controls the keyboard grants, as well as all the buttons available for hotkeys to abilities and such over the few buttons a controller has. As you put it, you shouldn't have to go through menus if you don't have to, and the hotkeys eliminate the need for many menus. With a 10 year old PC you might experience issues, but unless you've done something horribly wrong there shouldn't be an issue with a computer that you have to deal with.
This really shouldn't turn into some kind of PC v Console thing like it has the potential to if I go on for much longer, but I personally prefer the PCs controls and capabilities, though I understand why others prefer consoles.
I understand needing the keyboard hotkeys to play certain games, but the majority of games don't require that many buttons. I hate the keyboard because it's digital, and character movement should be analog. You can map all movement to a single analog stick; walking, normal movement speed, and running can all be mapped to a single analog stick. Whereas, on the keyboard, you need a run and walk button because of its digital input. I personally hate that almost every damned shooter has L3 as a fucking sprint button, just map it so that my character sprints when I press the stick all the way forward. 1st-person leaning is a staple in PC FPS games, but leaning is not on the console version of shooters for some reason when in actuality there is no reason not to have leaning in a console FPS. Leaning, in fact, can be better on a gamepad because of the analog button. For example, Metal Gear Online is a 3rd-person shooter that has 1st-person shooting in which you can lean left and right when pressing left or right on the d-pad, and the d-pad on the PS2 and PS3 controller is analog so just slight pressure on the button will lean my sights just slightly whereas full pressure will lean my sights even more. It's not that I hate PC gaming, it's that I hate using the keyboard for most games; however, the keyboard is better for some games like MMOs and RTSs.
Almost everyone thinks the gameplay of ME2 is better, the shooting/combat is better, that is the majority sentiment I've seen pretty much everywhere; reviews, forums, and even here in these forums. What I see that people didn't like was the streamlining of other things like inventory and stuff. I was rarely hiding in cover in ME2, I was usually out in the open shooting most of the time. I played the game on whatever the Hard setting was called (like Veteran maybe) and I didn't feel like I was sitting behind cover waiting for the enemy to poke their heads out.
Well, maybe its different on a console, but ramp it up to the max difficulty. You cast an ability from behind cover, you can die whilst casting it, even when in almost full cover. It is rediculous. On Normal, Veteren, ect. up till that point, you technically can stay out of cover for a while, but without Vanguard or very quick disposal of enemies without being ambushed, you're in a bit of trouble. Thankfully ME has the Skyrim problem of being pathetically easy, except 2 on the highest difficulty.
The shooting was reported to be improved, and that is a personal choice (Apparently ME1 was clunky. Never felt that. Wasn't a smooth modern FPS shooting experience, but neither was it meant to be. I'm growing to hate modern 4 bullet death shooters.), but the vast majority still had major problems with it with having to stay in cover 90% of the game. Its why Bioware is adding in all the new features to make exiting cover actually a viable option in combat. In ME2, it was designed as a cover shooter for god knows what reason.
Here's some gameplay footage of Mass Effect 2 on insanity. The first clip is a "no guns" run as an Adept. The 2nd clip is the Infiltrator on Insanity as well. You don't have to stay in cover for that much time even on Insanity difficulty.
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