an RPG, or 'Rocket Propelled Grenade', is a shoulder mounted Anti-Tank weapon, or 'Anti-Armor' weapon since it's pretty effective an taking out more then just tanks. The version we know as the iconic RPG was actually Soviet in manufacture,(RPG-7 case anyone is wondering), but it has roots in the German Panzerfuast, and the American Bazooka of WWII as well, taking elements from both to make the weapon we know today. I could go into more detail, but ya know, the info is easy to get man, no need to make a video asking about it. UNLESS you mean the other type of RPG, in which case, yeah I can see a video discussing that working. Though I can't imagine the potential visual aids being quite as fun as watching some one blow something the fuck up. and no, in this case, I couldn't stop my self, thanks for asking though.
The one thing I agree in this entire video is that genres describe a lineage, but I'm not sure if the lineage is fully grasped here. Everything goes back to D&D, which inspired the earliest CRPGs including Ultima, and Ultima inspired everything else from Dragon Quest (Yuji Horii was deeply inspired by Ultima and Wizardry) to Elder Scrolls (was based on Ultima Underworld). A RPG is defined by this lineage, and in this lineage are stats, leveling up, and customization. And by customization, I don't mean full on character customization, but some kind of customization. I want to correct this, especially since this video implied that D&D didn't influence DQ and FF when they did. FF even has some enemies (ie. Sahagin) that comes straight from D&D. One thing I want to add is that JRPGs have huge amounts of customization/character building (let's divide "character building" from "character creation"), just not the same kind of customization. JRPGs focus on having weird (in a good way) character building mechanics. Think the orbment system in Trails in the Sky, the Job System in FF5, and all the little systems in DQ9/DQH2. I honestly think this should be seen as a defining factor for what a "JRPG" is because you can find a "weird" character building system in almost every game. On the terms JRPG and WRPG being bad names: JRPGs used to be called "console style RPGs". JRPG was actually a derogatory term that somehow became the genre name, not too different from how PC Master Race was actually used as a derogatory term when it was first conceived. The open world thing is a big misconception in my opinion and comes from a lack of experience in the genre. DQ2 for the NES invented a system where it begins linear, opens up more, and then turns open world. A lot of NES and SNES and even PSX games followed this formula, so there are a ton of open world JRPGs. It was only the PS2 era that introduced the idea of more linear games, so I consider this a huge misconception spread by bad information. I don't like your argument for dividing WRPG from ARPG. I don't see why the two need to be in conflict. In fact, I think the entire idea of the WRPG is a vague notion, just as is the JRPG term. For example, Deus Ex and Human Revolution have small hub areas, but are not open world. The early Fallout games are not exactly open world games. The first two Witcher titles are not really what i'd call open world, and even the third has some specifics that may keep it from being called open world. But to get to the main point, you're argument was that you could beat Dark Souls at level 1, and that defines it as an ARPG. But really, you could do that with a lot of game with enough skill. The first two Paper Mario games can be beaten at level 9, and they're turn based. It's possible to do 9999 damage at level 1 in Bravely Default if you have highly upgraded jobs. Kingdom Hearts is often beaten at level 1 (with the keyblade kept bare, even). Chrono Trigger can even be beaten around level 10 if you know what you're doing. Don't get me wrong, I get what you're trying to say in that Dark Souls is kind of different from say, Elder Scrolls, but I just don't like the way you went about it. Another reason I think the term WRPG is so strange is because it feels like the qualifiers feel like they're describing a Bethesda game and not all WRPGs in particular. Pillars of Eternity and many of the Infinity Engine-style games, for example, don't fit the same qualifiers at all. Bringing up the issue of having a party, plenty of WRPGs have them, even going back to the old 80s CRPGs. In fact, this gets to the bigger question as to what separates CRPGs from WRPGs, as it often feels like the name change was to accommodate more RPGs like Elder Scrolls being put on consoles. The 80s CRPGs were all turn based and had 4 to 6 man parties. The Infinity Engine games are their descendants. These games have made a comeback recently after Bethesda-style RPGs dominated the market for awhile. Also, Mass Effect uses a party, and that was a big one for awhile. Even the idea that JRPGs focus on characters and a strong plot isn't always completely true. Dragon Quest focuses more on the adventure, the hero's journey, and city based storytelling. Also, many of them do break out into open worlds with quite a few things to do. SaGa is also focused a lot more on the adventure and having open world(s). The Etrian Odyssey games and other first person RPGs (if I may count them) focus more on building a party and how you customize your characters, and this genre has been making a HUGE comeback. The Mystery Dungeon games (again, if I may count them even if they are Roguelikes) are all about preparing for all the evil ways the dungeon is trying to screw you over. The other thing I agree with is that more RPGs need more genre terms/descriptors. But as my above statements note, you don't go far enough. Oh, and uh, sorry for the rant, I guess?
"The Etrian Odyssey games and other first person RPGs (if I may count them) focus more on building a party and how you customize your characters, and this genre has been making a HUGE comeback" The way I describe them (games like EO or Legend of Grimrock) is "Dungeon Crawler RPG" or DRPG. I'm not saying you have too, but that's what I call it, and I've seen many others call it the same as well. But this was a good read, m8.
Good post dude. I had to turn it off after a few minutes since it was clear neither one really knew what they were talking about. Love you Digi, but you should really have a better understanding of the thing you're talking about if you're going to try to break it down like this.
ZerogunRivale good post mate you said everything I wanted to say Ultima is clearly the grand pappy of WRPG'S and I would say that Wizardry is the JRPG version with DQ and FF are its children. And D&D is the great grand father of RPG'S wich in it self is a child of pen and paper stratagy games. I would recommend people watch clanofthegraywolfs video's history on RPG'S if you want more details they explain everything
Discussing any single genre of video games would get you to a lot of places, really. Just like anime, the many genres has been diverged, deconstructed and reconstructed many times over. Welcome to the new frontier. Welcome to video games.
Now? Yes. But most people who aren't deep into something probably didn't expect how far they would drown. That aspect alone can make-or-break a person's interest in the subject, and Digi's gradually getting into video games the analytical way. He really needs to play a lot more games, though. If he's really serious into video games. But I think anime is already too much for him, let alone handling two of those himself.
Miselus they're not really useless. They have a function in describing the bigger, main themes of the game. Still, due to the development in the games, genres became incapable of describing the whole games to the intricate details.
Is Earthbound set in Japan? I thought it was set in Smallville, USA. The main character wears a baseball cap and wields a baseball bat, he lives in a 50s house with a white picket fence... If you put it in as your favorite food, you could literally make it about "mom, apple pie, and the girl next door." >_>
Dark Souls descends from the Monster Hunter school of combat. I don't know what game inspired Monster Hunter's combat specifically or if it was made with that series but Dark Souls didn't birth the concept of killing the toughest enemies in starting armour through pure skill. It is an interesting question and I think Digi started on the right path by identifying East and West. Naturally there will always be exceptions like the 'Tales of' series but Japanese RPG's are usually turned based. In terms of aesthetic design- the look and feel, it's about some kind of team effort. The idea that everyone can be useful. You'll always get a bunch of characters that specialize in something and is usually about working within your means to pull off something the individual cannot. Conversely, western games are usually more individualistic in nature, you create your character, you have the choice, you can conquer the world by yourself. Ally characters are never gonna be the deciding factor in a battle. This is your story. While two unique camps, I think they both have the same rationale and why only the games you guys normally think of as RPGs get said genre tag. They are uniquely about player expression. Yes, Japanese games are pre-determined in that they have a more strict story focus but the types of characters you will lean toward and develop reflects the player much in the same way the stats of the western RPG reflect that player. JRPGs love to take the magikarp to Gyarados path where a seemingly weak character can be made strong if just given the right amount of attention and growth- it's not about the individual but what the individual can add to the group, what one person can contribute to their society. I'm sure I'm skipping over a few steps within the tail end of that last paragraph but something is there to be taken methinks.
In terms of Alternative wRPGs I would recommend Planescape: Torment. It breaks alot of the typical conventions of the genre. You don't make your character, Death is not the ultimate failiure state, You don't save the world from a BBEG. etc. Plus its a great game in its own right, apart from the deconstruction.
This is a topic that is pretty interesting to me. altRPGs: I think that Shin Megami Tensei serves as a good counterpoint to traditional JRPGs, maybe not really in the same ways that Earthbound/Undertale do, but the series has always played tropes uniquely and has been around as long as Mother. The series has developed it's own formulas I suppose. But monster negotiation, team building, and fusing is still mostly unique in the genre. Pokemon obviously has monsters and Undertale has monster negotiation, but I don't know if there are any series that really run with its ideas outside its own subseries. The stories are fairly unique too since they deal with this weird mishmash of philosophy, religion, folklore, and ethics. I'm not sure where the series would fit in with the exact type of "alt" Davoo proposed but its an interesting topic of discussion I think. Hopefully the series' growing popularity in the West will add some items to its lineage in some way or another. on ARPGs you can play without leveling: Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix has a great system almost built for a Level 1 run. you do gain moves from bosses but your stats do not increase. Pretty similar to Dark Souls where in a Level 1 run you will typically level up your weapons and armor. I'm not sure what other ARPGs have the mechanic done well.
@ErebusArchon - Seriously, I hate when SMT fans live in a kind of bubble. Monster negotiation and monter fusing are everywhere now, especially the latter, and especially in mobile RPGs like Puzzles and Dragons.
I mean obviously the mechanics are more prevalent now but they definitely aren't making it into many commonly discussed games. I don't live in some fantasy world where no game has ever used, changed, or refined mechanics from Megaten games or that the mechanics haven't become increasingly prevalent, I just figure the mechanics and stories the series helped to pioneer are interesting to look at in the context of genre lines and this altRPG list thing.
Commonly discussed games is a very subjective term. Puzzles and Dragons, for example, is huge in Japan, far beyond anything SMT has ever accomplishd popularity wise. I don't even consider the stories to really be all that out there, it's just doing its own thing. DQ's stories are nothing like Final Fantasy's which are nothing like MegaTen which are nothing like SaGa which are nothing like Nier. They're all just doing stories in their own way and have things that set them apart strongly.
What I find interesting is if you look at the progenitor games of both traditions - western & Japanese - you find remarkably similar games. Ultima I & Wizardry are not too dissimilar to Final Fantasy 1 & Dragon Quest 1. Though the seeds of later divergences are still there - you definitely see a common point of origin. They both were heavily based on D&D - and in the case of FF & DQ both were heavily inspired by the western RPGs as they came a few years prior. It's also worth mentioning there were a handful of important JRPGs before Dragon Quest although DQ was definitely the codifier.
A lot of how you've been describing your game genres are based off the dynamics of what makes up the core gameplay, while the core emotional appeals could be better described as the game aesthetics. This is the type of academic discussion on game genres and appeals I'm looking to focus on for grad school, and one of the first pieces o saw on the topic so many years ago was Extra Credits video on Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics on game design. Definitely check it out.
I like this. It's a nice, chill discussion about something I'm interested in but never gave this level of thought. And in podcast format, which I don't take advantage of nearly enough. Not used to the kind of video I can just keep running in a tab to listen to while doing something else.
I hate to be this guy because it makes literally NO SENSE, but in circles I travel (neogaf and the like) Kingdom Hearts and Dark Souls are not considered Action RPGs. This is dumb, but try and stick with me. The genres were defined by game release and not mechanics. Action RPG refers to the lineage formed by Diablo, so Path of Exile and Torchlight and the like are action RPGs while games like Dark Souls are considered JRPGs with real time action combat. It's extremely dumb, but since we are getting pedantic in this discussion I figure I should jump in and clarify. I'll add that it's also important to clarify real time action combat and not just real time combat because those are two different lineages. The Giant Bomb guys, in particular Jeff Gerstman has done a lot of work on defining genres and I think he remains the foremost expert on defining various genres
I've had this argument many times with my friends. They classify games usually by just one term and use RPG very loosely. I think it started when they recommended Mass Effect Andromeda to me when I mentioned I was looking forward to a lot of JRPGs this year like Tales of Berseria and Persona 5. I saw ME more as a 3rd-person shooter with heavy RPG elements. We settled on something similar to taxonomic rank labeling "RPGs" based on, in no specific order: setting, perspective, and a multitude of gameplay elements. I would love to see TPC create a taxonomic rank for labeling games. Maybe in lecture form of as a PCP.
So .... are the Persona games, and some of the SMT games this Alternative RPG genre? They take place in modern day setting often and you go on to kill some sort of god but there is a lot more of a character and/or philosophy focus. Edit: Oh its mentioned nevermind.
RPGs predate video gaming and started as table top games in the 70s. Games like Ultima and Wizardry in the early 80s were some of the first actual RPG video games, which were heavily inspired by D&D. A little bit later we got things like DQ and FF, but the Japanese took a different approach to RPGs by streamlining the shit out of role playing mechanics while keeping the leveling mechanics. By the 90s, we ended up with two very different styles of games both calling themselves RPGs. The only thing they really had in common was that you typically level up after fighting things. The problem is that the term RPG has pretty much never been clearly defined. Over 30 years later and we still can't decide what is or isn't a RPG.
I mean, even tabletop games wildly differ sometimes. There's an RPG that I believe is called fiasco which is more like doing an improv show than playing D&D.
I really like Rogue-like and Rogue-lite as genre names, since they immediately give you an idea of what game or family of games something is inspired by, and the degree to which it follows the conventions of those games. It's pretty easily applied to other games in other broad genres, and we have seen new terms of that template crop up over the last few years, such as Souls-like, obviously referring to games influenced by the Souls series. For Undertale and games like it, given that the Mother series has clearly influenced more than just a few games, I'd suggest the term Mother-like for those closer to the genre originator (e.g. Undertale, based on the heavy influence of Mother on that game's creator), and Mother-lite for those which take select elements from it but don't stick to the conventions (e.g. Off, a French-language game which has a similar look and attitude, but which doesn't follow the template or reference Mother in quite the same way Undertale does.) It can be applied to nearly anything. You could have Doom-like games, which stick to the same visual and gameplay limitations the original had, and Doom-lite games, which make less effort to match it in look and gameplay, but which are inspired by its level of gore and twitch-shooter gameplay. On the other hand, you might have a game that's a love letter to classic Final Fantasy, in which case it would be a Final Fantasy-like, or a game which takes select elements of that series without adopting all of it, in which case it's a Final-Fantasy-lite. Any game that's unique enough or has been influential enough on other games can get its own genre, and this way of defining genre immediately gives a sense of a game's lineage and how much influence it takes from it. The best part is that you can combine that with classic genre names and any number of additional influences for a more nuanced definition. Bioshock could be defined as simply an FPS, which tells you little except that it's first person and you can expect to shoot things, but call it a System Shock-like FPS and you get a more specific idea of what its gameplay might be like, what its lineage is, and how it's likely to approach the fundamentals of the FPS genre. Add in the detail that its setting is heavily influenced by steampunk and art-deco and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect from Bioshock. Other games, especially niche and indie titles, can benefit even more from the -like/-lite system than something as straightforward as Bioshock, and I generally find it a more useful way of describing where a game fits in the overall world of gaming, since it tells me what games it's like, not just which vague genre box it fits in.
Always interested in this kind of genre talk with video games, but if you're taking requests, if you have the time could you do some vlogs about music genres? I'm not really into any music, and while I know general music genres like rock, metal, rap, hip hop, etc., I don't really know shit about the sub-genres. What defines classic rock? Is heavy metal a different thing from metal? Just a topic idea if you're looking to talk about music. I tend to skip most of your music videos because I don't care too much about your thoughts on individual albums, but knowing more about these broad topics would be great if you feel up to it (and are even still reading comments a couple days after this video came out).
Just to get this out of my mind. I think when it comes to making a game, I think the possibly best way of doing so is by making without thinking of a game genre, because by doing so you can go beyond the "barrier" of conventional thinking and make something that might make your game stand out. Nothing really stops a Turn-based RPG of having a stealth mechanics, a shooter of having turns, etc, etc.
If genres were all broad but well defined like first person and/or shooter I personally think they would actually be a great way of determining if you may like a game before playing it so long as the important genres were all listed instead of just one.
I've always categorized Western vs. Japanese RPG as boiling down to how the creator interprets the word 'role' in 'Role Playing Game'. Like Digi says, the lineage of western RPGs comes from the tabletop history, and the central conceit of stuff like D&D is that you can make any character you want and have them interact with the world, fulfilling any sort of 'role' you want them to. JRPGs, however, have you taking on a pre-determined 'role' in a pre-determined story. Thus, by my own vernacular, I'd say Dark Souls SQUARELY sits within the Western RPG camp, while Kingdom Hearts is a JRPG through-and-through. Both of them are action RPGs, but that's entirely separate from the "Western" vs. "Japanese" elements. I find it to be a pretty helpful distinction, honestly, because there's such a distinct difference in the experiences of taking up a pre-defined role to experience an interesting story vs. being able to create your own identity within a larger world. Using that vernacular, much like the 'comfy' games categorization, it lets me know what sort of an experience I'm in for in a broad sense in terms of the way the story and the universe is gonna be presented to the player, but really has no other prescriptive elements to me. RPG in general is a really broad nomenclature; Action, turn-based, tactical, whatever, if you just take it at a literal face value, it mostly just means a story-driven game that focuses on character progression and growth, which can take on so many forms that it becomes, as you guys said, kinda useless for determining any actual values or qualities, but breaking down distinction like 'western' and 'JRPG', being applied in terms of lineage and storytelling style, as opposed to specific country of origin or superficial/mechanical details, can help cement what sort of experience the game leans towards (at least in some ways), and actually provide some use for determining whether or not said experience is going to be what I'm looking for in any given game.
I love genres, and their distinctions. You can really readily know a lot about a game through the words "action RPG." Sure, it's a broad and partially inaccurate term, but it makes it easier to understand what that game is, because if you've played a bunch of games from different genres, and are aware of those distinctions, they are more helpful than any sort of subjective adjective slung together in a sentence. Granted, I am a scholarly type of person, so I'm more aware of what these distinctions mean through learning about the history of games, but that does not make these specified distinctions unhelpful or worthless.
I believe that there is already a term for RPGs like _Pokemon._ TV Tropes just refers to them as Mons series, in which the point of it is the collection of monsters. Are there other "Massive Party" RPGs that don't involve monster collecting?
I think the major distinction between the two was summed up nicely by Extra Credits. JRPG is about the Narrative. And to give you that narrative it usually clamps down on customization. WEstern RPGs are about Expression. Story often takes a backseat in order to accommodate how players make their character. This is why Dark Souls is considered largely a Western "style" RPG because it gives the player agency on whether to do something or not. Lots of optional content. But games like Lisa or Undertale are more Japanese "style" RPGs because it largely focuses on narrative, though of course all three examples have some overlap. But thats the major distinction.
Have you guys seen the Extra Credits 3-part video on Western vs Eastern RPGs. They go into quite a bit of depth, and it might help you guys a bit. I would like to see more diatribes, Digi. Keep up the good work.
Since you asked for suggestions I'd be interested in hearing you talk about suspension of disbelief digi, i.e. why people are ok believing gandalf can do magic spells with little explanation but they'll always ask 'why didn't he just ride the fucking eagles to mordor?' or how Superman can fly and shoot laser beams but people take huge issue in his disguise only being a pair of glasses
I think there's more to it though, the reason I even brought it up is because I was watching that movie from 2016 Your Name and one of my friends got really smug about how the time travel didn't make sense and how it wouldn't work (which is a terrible mindset to be in when you're consuming fiction). So it got me thinking that it's interesting that people are willing to take almost anything for granted in fiction but if something betrays the immediate narrative that's when they start to think it's dumb
Hate to be pedantic, but I do believe games like Shin Megami Tensei, Pokemon, Yokai Watch, Monster Rancher already have a genre descriptor, it's called "Mons" at least by Tv Tropes, for taming/raising monsters to do battle with.
As a fan wprgs I thought about whether there is such a thing as alternative "wrpgs" and I don't really think there is, because the boundaries aren't so strict. The only thing that trully fits every rpg would be the fact that the character develops and you have some control over that, which is the same with rpgs. I don't mean control in the sense that you can choose what stats to give points to, but rather that you can at one point focus just on fights to get stronger and have it a bit easier later on, or you could just go forward and how you will by strong enough or be able to apply some tactic. The other parts digibro mentioned aren't universal, not all wrpgs are linear and a lot of them are, lots of them have predefined characters, and with lots of them you don't get customization. Some of them have meta elements related to the medium but it's hard to really call that "alternative rpg". Since meta is something any game can use. With jrpgs I think the boundaries are more strict. It's kind of how with anime, people will call Yuasa's style avant garde or alternative, since it differs a lot from most anime. But in the states you couldn't have an alternative style of animation, since there isn't a predefined animation style there.
I'd say the terms "JRPG" and "Western RPG" are pretty much obsolete since the two styles have blended so much over the years of globalized influence. A new JRPG can still exist, but only if it was created in the likeness of what JRPG's were like admidst that specific era of the genre, i.e. I Am Setsuna. Vice versa for western. But otherwise, I think it's either turn based or action these days, and those are the two main distinctions... anything else is too great a variable to take into account for individual games. I suppose you could throw text-based and dungeon-crawler in there too, simply because those might not fall into turn based or action, but they are still pretty much RPG, considering the genre came from text-only DnD-esque interactions online back when the net was fresh outta the box. Genres to me are useful as a starting point. Most games I like are RPGs. I know I'm more likely to enjoy an RPG than a FPS, so if you tell me a game is one or the other, right off the bat I know whether or not its something I want to know more about. I think that's the same for most people. You tell me its an RPG, I know I like more turn based RPGs than I do action RPGs, so if you say it's one or the other, my level of interest may vary. Tell me its an action RPG, I'll probably ask about the mechanics, since that's more of a determining factor in what I like from that subcategory of the genre. Tell me its turn based, I'll probably ask about the art and the story. It's useful academic information, sure. But it's basic problem solving for your average consumer such as myself. Of course there's more information than basic intrigue that will determine whether or not you like something, but it helps with time management to be able to sort information in the context of personal tastes. Those are valuable distinctions for people who don't get paid to lounge around rethinking social constructs like genre and don't have the time to dig through a hundred different descriptive categories to see if something has what they want. The whole point of genre is to make broad distinctions and be as inclusive as possible to identify macro-variations. If it becomes obsessed with micro-variations, it'd be like how djent was considered a genre of its own in metal for a few years, despite only describing a specific technique used with rhythm guitars. At that rate we'd define metal by whether or not a track has blast beats, double kick bass drums, pinch harmonic squeals, gutteral vocals or clean melodic singing. It would be even more of a nightmare. The RPG genre has so many unique variations, common mannerisms and tendencies, it'd be far worse than metal if they became obsessed with defining and differentiating everything.
Made from scratch characters, Stat manipulation, In-Game decisions to change the course of the story. To a lot of people this is all you need, which essentially means that even "Create a Wrestler" campaigns in WWE games are RPGs. "RPG" means nothing these days. You've gotta add further descriptors to it like "Tactical" or "Turn-Based" for it to mean anything, and even then some of those descriptors like "Action" and "Open World" could be applied to too many games that should fall outside of it's purview that they are too vague to be useful too. The problem is that, working a game store, people ask for certain genre recommendations all the time and RPG is so vague yet, to whoever asks, it's so specific.
Coming into this convo late. but to me Western vs JRPGs are about their differences in mechanics. Western RPGs place emphasis on checks, whether your statistical information will allow you to overcome an obstacle as determined by the creators. JRPGs de-emphasize stats and place more emphasis on player input. For example, Elder Scrolls has the player building stats to pass various checks and player skill has very little bearing on resolving conflicts. Dark Souls in contrast has simplified stat building and is entirely about getting good.
to me western style rpgs are rpg of many choices where your character is a blank slate ready for customization- the story or themes are sacrificed alot for the sake of opening up choices. *fallout, Elder Scrolls,Mass Effect/dragon age, Ultima, ect As where Jrpgs Love a really strong narrative so alot of the time youre not even namable because customization would require sacrificing parts of the story *final fantasy/kingdom hearts, Persona,Earthbound,Paper Mario,Dragon Quest, ChronoTrigger,ect From there you decide if its Action or turn based, a focus of strategy or skill. from there you decide if its Puzzle heavy, or Dialog heavy. usually decided by the previous choice. than finally you decide on aesthetic, Medieval,Modern,occult,fantasy,Scifi. these terms and mechanics are sourced from RPGs but theyre never limited to them. The focus is its genre. the game play is its attributes, and the aesthetic is its element.
Another one of my Favorite games is Azure Dreams for PS1. its a Dungeon Crawler/Linear Town Building/ Turn Based-Strategy / Monster Collecting(Large Party) RPG. and i wish i was making that up... it has all of those elements
Action RPGS are focused the combat system which is good (hopefully) where you have to time your attacks and dodges with good reaction timing. Games like SoulsBorne and Ys series. While a Strategy RPG doesn't have that kind of combat where you have to time stuff and react on reflexes. Instead it demands the player to think more ahead of time. Stuff like classic turn based JRPGs.
game genres have been bent and appropriated so many times that they've become practically useless on their own. I think steam's tag system is a much better way to approach providing newcomers with a quick, holistic understanding of a game.
What I see as RPG is a story driven game, where the entire premise of the game is based on the storyline itself. Leveling up and character development is all for the story of the character, one piece of the puzzle. Many, many games are based in storyline, which is why there are many subtypes of RPGs, like the two mentioned in this video, as well as MMORPGS and FPSRPGS. What excludes games from the RPG genre is their focus. For example, Overwatch is not an RPG. It's storyline is outside the game.
i feel the difference between an rpg and a jrpg party is in a western rpg the party more often then not controls themselves in combat where jrpgs you control them all in some form
I think a point to be made here is that the exceptions shouldn't make the rule. Genre descriptions for the most part are very helpful for consumer recommendations for most things. However, there are always exceptional pieces which should be treated on their own merits. For example, I absolutely hate horror. I'm a complete scaredy cat. For most movies and games, you don't have to go into an in depth description of the elements, emotions, and techniques of any given horror movie, it's probably sufficient to just tell me it's horror and I'll know to avoid it. But then there's something like The Shining, which is loosely a horror film, but it doesn't quite fit with the rest and is actually a movie I really liked. But we're talking about a classic, something that was exceptionally well made and kind of did its own thing. An exception deserving of its own description. Going back to gaming, you talked about where to place Dark Souls. For me, Dark Souls is another example of an extreme outlier rather than something that could be fit into a specific genre/sub genre. While I sort of liked RPGs a lot as a kid, I hadn't really found an enjoyable single player one in a long time until I discovered Dark Souls. The Souls games (with the exception of DS2) stand out as a few of the only single player RPGs I've actually completely beaten. And since then it's been hard to find something that's filled that itch in the same way even though quite a few studios have been trying. There's also something to be said for how well a particular genre tag describes a thing as well as whether or not we have a word that adequately describes certain genres. There are some that are pretty easy. I think things like Action blockbuster movies, FPS, side scrolling platformers, etc, all have pretty well defined elements which people who consume them would recognize as something they want, whereas other genres don't quite have the same definition to them. What do people want out of RPGs? Is it a well developed story? World? Characters? RP potential? Stat progression? Character customization? To what extent does the actual control of the gameplay matter? Etc. For example, would someone who likes games like Diablo and PoE, enjoy games like Darksiders 2 or Borderlands? They have very similar loot systems, but very different gameplay styles, levels of character customization, worlds, and story progression. It's a bit hard to say.
Do this for "survival horror" or horror games in general because they have some of the worst defined genre trappings. Like, most gaming genres are defined by mechanics like FPS, RTS, RPG, but horror is more of a "theme".
I always felt that JRPG's had a higher chance of being about characters and a story while western RPGs had a higher chance of being about player choice. having not played elder scrolls or dark souls though, i hadnt actually taken mechanics types into account before.
Indeed. RPG has become such a vague term that its practically useless; more so now that games are reaching a point were a single game can carry elements of ten different genres that even simple descriptions can be a paragraph of its own. Mulling it over for a while at best I can only really come up with a hand full of descriptions for a game that actually relate useful information First being "Drive" Or the thing that pushes the game forwards and informs the players perspective of the game and its events. (player, narrative, or world) The second would be the games focus ( combat, stat/resource/ party management, exploration, questing) The third being the battle system speed ( real time, active, turn based.) Fourth being the level of stat and level importance or game-play impact (( core, important, active, passive )). And I think a qualifier for whether is a parody, satire, alt, and what else should also be tacked on as well. Issue is is "Narrative drive, resource and party management focused real time combat with active stats used in a third person setting and a moral choice system for dialog, Drama" is certainly more descriptive than just calling it a "RPG it still doesn't fill in enough information to get an idea of what the game actually is with . Any more descriptives about the game and it honestly feels like yous have a better time talking about the game in relation it has to other games. Also just for shits and giggles any one got a guess about the game I was referencing
one big western game i can think of that would fall into the alt category so to speak is planescape torment but that doesn't have any earthbound in it's dna, it hits on a lot of the same concepts as those kind of games, but yeah i don't know, i guess i'm just saying i don't like the term alt only referring to earthbound inspired games maybe
RPG is an English colloquialism that comes from shortening the words 'Role Playing Game'. For the most part in English, RPG is synonymous with Role Playing Games of any kind, just as in Japanese JRPG is virtually synonymous with Japanese Role Playing Games of any kind. On a technical level there is no inherent distinction between RPGs and JRPGs, but on a cultural level these words have different connotations.
Here's how I view it: If it has experience points and level ups that are a cause of obtaining said experience points, then it is an RPG, it it doesn't have experience points or level ups, then it's not an RPG, simple as that... That said though, RPG doesn't necessarily have to be the primary genre of the game in question, it only is the primary genre when the core gameplay revolves around acquiring experience points and leveling up, like is the case with the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games for example, but a game can be anything and still be an RPG, if you put Experience Points and Level Ups in your First Person Shooter, guess what? That's an RPG too! If you put it in your platformer? It's an RPG! Put it on your puzzle game? It's a freaking RPG alright! With that in mind, Zelda 2 the Adventure of Link is an RPG, the whole rest of the Zelda series is NOT... Zelda is an Action Adventure series, the action comes from the Combat and the Adventure comes from the Puzzle-Solving... Now Secret of Mana on the other hand is an Action RPG, because even though it has a similar gameplay to Zelda, it is an RPG because it involves Exp and Level Ups, it's as simple as that!
From my own point of view as a very amateur game designer, role playing games are not defined by what the players or their characters do, but rather by how the setting reacts to their presence. An RPG in essence is not a game where you play a role, it is a game where you define your role within a setting. Stat management, character building, and leveling systems are not game mechanics that define an RPG, freedom of choice, dynamic NPC's, and lasting consequences for your actions are. To best show this lets look at the Fallout franchise, as it has iterated on itself, the Fallout franchise has moved steadily away from being an RPG at all (1&2) to an FPS with moderate role play elements (3 & NV), to an open world adventure FPS with character building (4), as of the latest installment. In each game your ability to play a specific character and affect the state of the game world has grown steadily more limited, thus restricting your ability to define your role in this world and forcing you to instead play a specific role as determined by the developers. A great example of a very non-traditional RPG is The Stanley Parable, which features a wide array of options and choices for you to explore and a dynamic world that reacts to those choices, lacking almost all of the traditional mechanical trappings of RPG's past.
I knew he did Chrono Trigger but the designs in Blue Dragon and Dragon Quest seem like a bit of a departure from what I know him for. thx btw *thinks Akira Toriyama is really into dragons*
If you can count killing Smithy as killing God then you are clearly use that terms looser then what I was thinking. I mean from an Archetype standpoint you can say he's like a Hephestus or Sauron figure. But he's not worshiped or the creator of the world or anything.
To me, an RPG is a game that encourages you to *role play* (hence the name). The game must present you with opportunities to act in alignment with the thoughts and goals of your character, generally via dialogue or moral choices. Examples of this genre would be Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas. Also Planescape: Torment, and to a lesser extent the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter franchises.
The way people use genres is stupid. We shouldn't be trying to define all art with one label. Good art generally goes across different labels and it's even more unhelpful to then make a new label for that. Take Space rock, alternative rock, psychedelic rock or Post-rock for example. I think the average person today would have no idea what any of that entailed beyond that it's kinda like rock, but different somehow for whatever reason, but if I instead told them "this song is like soul and rock combined" or "it's rock influenced by jazz" or "it merges rock and electronica" then I'm pretty sure most of the population would have a pretty good grasp of what I was talking about. Now in cases like for example "rap rock" the creators of the term where only half insane because it's much easier to get a grasp of what the term means, but it's also pretty useless as a term because not only is most rap rock a combination of hip hop and rock and not rap as you might have suspected, but it's also just two genres separated with a space. It would have been more versatile and helpful to just say that the music was either "a combination or rap and rock" or "a combination of hip hop and rock" instead of trying to establish a whole new genre.
OI. the hell do you mean DS borrows from CoC. CoC mechanically is fucking weird and wouldn't really have anything to do with DS, bloodborne maybe but at that point one could really point to the works themselves as inspiration rather than the CoC translation because methodologically CoC has a very different game feel.
Trying to argue over whether something is in a certain genre is getting more and more vague every year. RPG is so vague at this point when it covers things from Breath of Fire to Underrail to Dark Souls. Even the subgenres are barely useful at this point when both Skyrim and Diablo are described as action rpgs, and if you go "well Diablo's a hack and slash" then you get to how many people would call things like Devil May Cry hack and slash games.
RPG games are games where you play a role. Games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 are action-adventure games. They might have RPG elements, like skills and levels and whatever, but so does Call of Duty which sure as hell isn't an RPG. Also, most western games that I would actually call RPG games, like Baldur's Gate, like Fallout 2, are either turn-based, or can become.
asd asd Exept that in Elder Scrolls anf Fallout you create your own characters and make decicions that affect the story. Also, CoD can have rpg elements. Technically, you play a role of a soldier in CoD.
So rpg should be broken down into its individual mechanics. Mass effect would be a light stats, light abilities, and dialog choices 3rd person shooter Darks souls would be a heavy stats, inventory management, skill-based 3rd person action game Zelda would be a very light stats, item based puzzles, 3rd person action game How do you put that in english?
I really cant understand this need to create a subgenre for games like Earthbound and Mario and Luigi Saga. The only thing that seperates these games from games like Final Fantasy is the lighthearted tone, and nothing else. Its not like this shift in tone creates a completely seperate gameplay experience, its just using the medium to make fun of the tropes and be meta. Earthbound is different from Final Fantasy, the same way Final Fantasy is different from Chrono Trigger, the same way Chrono Trigger is different from Persona, and so on. The combat is simply a variation of what came before. There is absolutely nothing "alternative" about those games, so why the hell should we need to seperate them from all the other RPGs that have the Dragon Quest template? This is the same bullshit as people who say Madoka and Evangelion are deconstructions of their respective genres and should be treated differently because of that, and if im remembering correctly, Digi hates when people do that. The deconstruction is relevant sure, but it shouldnt be the way we define those specific games. This is why you end up reaching the point about Mario RPG for the SNES not really being like the Mother series, even if it is lighthearted. Thats cause its still just a turn based RPG just like all the other ones you guys mentioned. Where does Pokemon stand in this? Is it an alternative RPG? Or is it a normal JRPG? What a pointless conversation.
Why not just call all these games that are made in a similar style to Earthbound and Mother Earthbound-like or Mother-like or something similar? That's how we ended up with Rogue-likes when people started to make games similar to Rogue. Unless you feel like that would lead us toward a similar situation to the whole MetroidVania debate.
I think you're missing the point. genres are used for advertising it's too hard to make a definition for each genre as you either have to be too specific or too general
an RPG, or 'Rocket Propelled Grenade', is a shoulder mounted Anti-Tank weapon, or 'Anti-Armor' weapon since it's pretty effective an taking out more then just tanks. The version we know as the iconic RPG was actually Soviet in manufacture,(RPG-7 case anyone is wondering), but it has roots in the German Panzerfuast, and the American Bazooka of WWII as well, taking elements from both to make the weapon we know today.
I could go into more detail, but ya know, the info is easy to get man, no need to make a video asking about it.
UNLESS you mean the other type of RPG, in which case, yeah I can see a video discussing that working. Though I can't imagine the potential visual aids being quite as fun as watching some one blow something the fuck up.
and no, in this case, I couldn't stop my self, thanks for asking though.
word of God
Fun fact, in that case RPG is actually a backronym
I had a blast with this pun.
The one thing I agree in this entire video is that genres describe a lineage, but I'm not sure if the lineage is fully grasped here. Everything goes back to D&D, which inspired the earliest CRPGs including Ultima, and Ultima inspired everything else from Dragon Quest (Yuji Horii was deeply inspired by Ultima and Wizardry) to Elder Scrolls (was based on Ultima Underworld). A RPG is defined by this lineage, and in this lineage are stats, leveling up, and customization. And by customization, I don't mean full on character customization, but some kind of customization. I want to correct this, especially since this video implied that D&D didn't influence DQ and FF when they did. FF even has some enemies (ie. Sahagin) that comes straight from D&D.
One thing I want to add is that JRPGs have huge amounts of customization/character building (let's divide "character building" from "character creation"), just not the same kind of customization. JRPGs focus on having weird (in a good way) character building mechanics. Think the orbment system in Trails in the Sky, the Job System in FF5, and all the little systems in DQ9/DQH2. I honestly think this should be seen as a defining factor for what a "JRPG" is because you can find a "weird" character building system in almost every game.
On the terms JRPG and WRPG being bad names: JRPGs used to be called "console style RPGs". JRPG was actually a derogatory term that somehow became the genre name, not too different from how PC Master Race was actually used as a derogatory term when it was first conceived.
The open world thing is a big misconception in my opinion and comes from a lack of experience in the genre. DQ2 for the NES invented a system where it begins linear, opens up more, and then turns open world. A lot of NES and SNES and even PSX games followed this formula, so there are a ton of open world JRPGs. It was only the PS2 era that introduced the idea of more linear games, so I consider this a huge misconception spread by bad information.
I don't like your argument for dividing WRPG from ARPG. I don't see why the two need to be in conflict. In fact, I think the entire idea of the WRPG is a vague notion, just as is the JRPG term. For example, Deus Ex and Human Revolution have small hub areas, but are not open world. The early Fallout games are not exactly open world games. The first two Witcher titles are not really what i'd call open world, and even the third has some specifics that may keep it from being called open world. But to get to the main point, you're argument was that you could beat Dark Souls at level 1, and that defines it as an ARPG. But really, you could do that with a lot of game with enough skill. The first two Paper Mario games can be beaten at level 9, and they're turn based. It's possible to do 9999 damage at level 1 in Bravely Default if you have highly upgraded jobs. Kingdom Hearts is often beaten at level 1 (with the keyblade kept bare, even). Chrono Trigger can even be beaten around level 10 if you know what you're doing. Don't get me wrong, I get what you're trying to say in that Dark Souls is kind of different from say, Elder Scrolls, but I just don't like the way you went about it.
Another reason I think the term WRPG is so strange is because it feels like the qualifiers feel like they're describing a Bethesda game and not all WRPGs in particular. Pillars of Eternity and many of the Infinity Engine-style games, for example, don't fit the same qualifiers at all. Bringing up the issue of having a party, plenty of WRPGs have them, even going back to the old 80s CRPGs. In fact, this gets to the bigger question as to what separates CRPGs from WRPGs, as it often feels like the name change was to accommodate more RPGs like Elder Scrolls being put on consoles. The 80s CRPGs were all turn based and had 4 to 6 man parties. The Infinity Engine games are their descendants. These games have made a comeback recently after Bethesda-style RPGs dominated the market for awhile. Also, Mass Effect uses a party, and that was a big one for awhile.
Even the idea that JRPGs focus on characters and a strong plot isn't always completely true. Dragon Quest focuses more on the adventure, the hero's journey, and city based storytelling. Also, many of them do break out into open worlds with quite a few things to do. SaGa is also focused a lot more on the adventure and having open world(s). The Etrian Odyssey games and other first person RPGs (if I may count them) focus more on building a party and how you customize your characters, and this genre has been making a HUGE comeback. The Mystery Dungeon games (again, if I may count them even if they are Roguelikes) are all about preparing for all the evil ways the dungeon is trying to screw you over.
The other thing I agree with is that more RPGs need more genre terms/descriptors. But as my above statements note, you don't go far enough. Oh, and uh, sorry for the rant, I guess?
"The Etrian Odyssey games and other first person RPGs (if I may count them) focus more on building a party and how you customize your characters, and this genre has been making a HUGE comeback"
The way I describe them (games like EO or Legend of Grimrock) is "Dungeon Crawler RPG" or DRPG. I'm not saying you have too, but that's what I call it, and I've seen many others call it the same as well. But this was a good read, m8.
this is more that digi doesn't know what the fuck the history of the genre is than you being obnoxious.
Good post dude. I had to turn it off after a few minutes since it was clear neither one really knew what they were talking about. Love you Digi, but you should really have a better understanding of the thing you're talking about if you're going to try to break it down like this.
This post needs more upvotes
ZerogunRivale good post mate you said everything I wanted to say
Ultima is clearly the grand pappy of WRPG'S and I would say that Wizardry is the JRPG version with DQ and FF are its children.
And D&D is the great grand father of RPG'S wich in it self is a child of pen and paper stratagy games.
I would recommend people watch clanofthegraywolfs video's history on RPG'S if you want more details they explain everything
Earthbound definitely does not start in a "suburban town in modern Japan". It is Americanized as fuck
Discussing any single genre of video games would get you to a lot of places, really. Just like anime, the many genres has been diverged, deconstructed and reconstructed many times over.
Welcome to the new frontier. Welcome to video games.
* jurassic park theme plays *
Now? Yes. But most people who aren't deep into something probably didn't expect how far they would drown. That aspect alone can make-or-break a person's interest in the subject, and Digi's gradually getting into video games the analytical way.
He really needs to play a lot more games, though. If he's really serious into video games. But I think anime is already too much for him, let alone handling two of those himself.
Miselus they're not really useless. They have a function in describing the bigger, main themes of the game. Still, due to the development in the games, genres became incapable of describing the whole games to the intricate details.
Is Earthbound set in Japan? I thought it was set in Smallville, USA. The main character wears a baseball cap and wields a baseball bat, he lives in a 50s house with a white picket fence... If you put it in as your favorite food, you could literally make it about "mom, apple pie, and the girl next door." >_>
I mean it is in a place called "eagleland" and has things like the not blues brothers so it's PROBABLY not japan at least.
It was inspired by the creator's excursions to America.
Wasn't it their a clear influence from the Peanuts?
It's set in a fictional version of the US called Eagleland, although its predecessor, Mother, is set in the United States.
Pokemon came after SMT, just for clarity everyone.
Maybe he just slipped up when he said it, but Mother 2/Earthbound takes place in Eagleland which is heavily based off of the USA, not Japan.
WTF does America have to do with eagles.
I see Dragon Quest and i click no matter what
Nice profile of edrick.
Gotta love him
RPG is the genre of games that RPG fans like.
And an RPG fan is someone who likes RPG games.
RPG is an acronym for the word role-playing game which defines the genre of games people like to define as RPGs.
RPG is the genre of games that RPG fans hate and are never satisfied with but buy anyways.
JRPGs have developed from early dungeon crawl-like games like ultima, might and magic, wizardry and the likes. They took the concept and ran with it.
This!
"There's no reason to say RPG"
There's no reason to say video game.
Madness theres no reason to live :(
There's no reason to lose all hope.
I love me some Persona and SMT. RPG's are by far my favorite video game genre.
Paladin Joe and digi continues to not acknowledge either
An rpg is a game that
1)Lets you roleplay
2)Lets you control probabilities instead of actions
Dark Souls descends from the Monster Hunter school of combat. I don't know what game inspired Monster Hunter's combat specifically or if it was made with that series but Dark Souls didn't birth the concept of killing the toughest enemies in starting armour through pure skill.
It is an interesting question and I think Digi started on the right path by identifying East and West. Naturally there will always be exceptions like the 'Tales of' series but Japanese RPG's are usually turned based. In terms of aesthetic design- the look and feel, it's about some kind of team effort. The idea that everyone can be useful. You'll always get a bunch of characters that specialize in something and is usually about working within your means to pull off something the individual cannot.
Conversely, western games are usually more individualistic in nature, you create your character, you have the choice, you can conquer the world by yourself. Ally characters are never gonna be the deciding factor in a battle. This is your story.
While two unique camps, I think they both have the same rationale and why only the games you guys normally think of as RPGs get said genre tag. They are uniquely about player expression. Yes, Japanese games are pre-determined in that they have a more strict story focus but the types of characters you will lean toward and develop reflects the player much in the same way the stats of the western RPG reflect that player. JRPGs love to take the magikarp to Gyarados path where a seemingly weak character can be made strong if just given the right amount of attention and growth- it's not about the individual but what the individual can add to the group, what one person can contribute to their society.
I'm sure I'm skipping over a few steps within the tail end of that last paragraph but something is there to be taken methinks.
Earthbound doesn't take place in Japan, Digi. Eagleland is America, Foggyland is Europe, and Dalaam is Asia.
In terms of Alternative wRPGs I would recommend Planescape: Torment. It breaks alot of the typical conventions of the genre. You don't make your character, Death is not the ultimate failiure state, You don't save the world from a BBEG. etc. Plus its a great game in its own right, apart from the deconstruction.
kingdom hearts has an ability where you can't get experience and can beat the whole game at level 1, like the souls series
I'm so proud of you Digi, letting your guests speak without interrupting them, they grow up so fast. :')
This is a topic that is pretty interesting to me.
altRPGs:
I think that Shin Megami Tensei serves as a good counterpoint to traditional JRPGs, maybe not really in the same ways that Earthbound/Undertale do, but the series has always played tropes uniquely and has been around as long as Mother. The series has developed it's own formulas I suppose. But monster negotiation, team building, and fusing is still mostly unique in the genre. Pokemon obviously has monsters and Undertale has monster negotiation, but I don't know if there are any series that really run with its ideas outside its own subseries. The stories are fairly unique too since they deal with this weird mishmash of philosophy, religion, folklore, and ethics. I'm not sure where the series would fit in with the exact type of "alt" Davoo proposed but its an interesting topic of discussion I think. Hopefully the series' growing popularity in the West will add some items to its lineage in some way or another.
on ARPGs you can play without leveling:
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix has a great system almost built for a Level 1 run. you do gain moves from bosses but your stats do not increase. Pretty similar to Dark Souls where in a Level 1 run you will typically level up your weapons and armor. I'm not sure what other ARPGs have the mechanic done well.
@ErebusArchon - Seriously, I hate when SMT fans live in a kind of bubble. Monster negotiation and monter fusing are everywhere now, especially the latter, and especially in mobile RPGs like Puzzles and Dragons.
I mean obviously the mechanics are more prevalent now but they definitely aren't making it into many commonly discussed games. I don't live in some fantasy world where no game has ever used, changed, or refined mechanics from Megaten games or that the mechanics haven't become increasingly prevalent, I just figure the mechanics and stories the series helped to pioneer are interesting to look at in the context of genre lines and this altRPG list thing.
Commonly discussed games is a very subjective term. Puzzles and Dragons, for example, is huge in Japan, far beyond anything SMT has ever accomplishd popularity wise.
I don't even consider the stories to really be all that out there, it's just doing its own thing. DQ's stories are nothing like Final Fantasy's which are nothing like MegaTen which are nothing like SaGa which are nothing like Nier. They're all just doing stories in their own way and have things that set them apart strongly.
Certian Castlevania games have a hard mode max level 1.
The issue is more that the lineage of rpgs is brought up as a big deal. And most of the rpgs in japan have been influenced by megaten in some way.
Definitely wanna hear more long discussions about genre, for some reason it's a thing I especially love to hear thoughts
What I find interesting is if you look at the progenitor games of both traditions - western & Japanese - you find remarkably similar games. Ultima I & Wizardry are not too dissimilar to Final Fantasy 1 & Dragon Quest 1. Though the seeds of later divergences are still there - you definitely see a common point of origin. They both were heavily based on D&D - and in the case of FF & DQ both were heavily inspired by the western RPGs as they came a few years prior. It's also worth mentioning there were a handful of important JRPGs before Dragon Quest although DQ was definitely the codifier.
A lot of how you've been describing your game genres are based off the dynamics of what makes up the core gameplay, while the core emotional appeals could be better described as the game aesthetics. This is the type of academic discussion on game genres and appeals I'm looking to focus on for grad school, and one of the first pieces o saw on the topic so many years ago was Extra Credits video on Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics on game design. Definitely check it out.
Digibro + a discussion on my favorite video game genre? This is a must watch
RPG is a Japanese Colloquialism...
Now in my defense, when I posted this nobody else had.
And I am still the only one who spelt it corakdley.
I like this. It's a nice, chill discussion about something I'm interested in but never gave this level of thought. And in podcast format, which I don't take advantage of nearly enough. Not used to the kind of video I can just keep running in a tab to listen to while doing something else.
For the 'Pokemon Lite' tag you discussed near the end, I think you are thinking of 'monster collection' or even 'monster breeding' type games.
I hate to be this guy because it makes literally NO SENSE, but in circles I travel (neogaf and the like) Kingdom Hearts and Dark Souls are not considered Action RPGs. This is dumb, but try and stick with me. The genres were defined by game release and not mechanics. Action RPG refers to the lineage formed by Diablo, so Path of Exile and Torchlight and the like are action RPGs while games like Dark Souls are considered JRPGs with real time action combat. It's extremely dumb, but since we are getting pedantic in this discussion I figure I should jump in and clarify. I'll add that it's also important to clarify real time action combat and not just real time combat because those are two different lineages. The Giant Bomb guys, in particular Jeff Gerstman has done a lot of work on defining genres and I think he remains the foremost expert on defining various genres
I've had this argument many times with my friends. They classify games usually by just one term and use RPG very loosely. I think it started when they recommended Mass Effect Andromeda to me when I mentioned I was looking forward to a lot of JRPGs this year like Tales of Berseria and Persona 5. I saw ME more as a 3rd-person shooter with heavy RPG elements. We settled on something similar to taxonomic rank labeling "RPGs" based on, in no specific order: setting, perspective, and a multitude of gameplay elements.
I would love to see TPC create a taxonomic rank for labeling games. Maybe in lecture form of as a PCP.
Earthbound takes place in Eagleland. That isn't contemporary Japan, Digi.
So .... are the Persona games, and some of the SMT games this Alternative RPG genre? They take place in modern day setting often and you go on to kill some sort of god but there is a lot more of a character and/or philosophy focus.
Edit: Oh its mentioned nevermind.
RPGs predate video gaming and started as table top games in the 70s. Games like Ultima and Wizardry in the early 80s were some of the first actual RPG video games, which were heavily inspired by D&D. A little bit later we got things like DQ and FF, but the Japanese took a different approach to RPGs by streamlining the shit out of role playing mechanics while keeping the leveling mechanics. By the 90s, we ended up with two very different styles of games both calling themselves RPGs. The only thing they really had in common was that you typically level up after fighting things.
The problem is that the term RPG has pretty much never been clearly defined. Over 30 years later and we still can't decide what is or isn't a RPG.
I mean, even tabletop games wildly differ sometimes. There's an RPG that I believe is called fiasco which is more like doing an improv show than playing D&D.
I really like Rogue-like and Rogue-lite as genre names, since they immediately give you an idea of what game or family of games something is inspired by, and the degree to which it follows the conventions of those games. It's pretty easily applied to other games in other broad genres, and we have seen new terms of that template crop up over the last few years, such as Souls-like, obviously referring to games influenced by the Souls series.
For Undertale and games like it, given that the Mother series has clearly influenced more than just a few games, I'd suggest the term Mother-like for those closer to the genre originator (e.g. Undertale, based on the heavy influence of Mother on that game's creator), and Mother-lite for those which take select elements from it but don't stick to the conventions (e.g. Off, a French-language game which has a similar look and attitude, but which doesn't follow the template or reference Mother in quite the same way Undertale does.)
It can be applied to nearly anything. You could have Doom-like games, which stick to the same visual and gameplay limitations the original had, and Doom-lite games, which make less effort to match it in look and gameplay, but which are inspired by its level of gore and twitch-shooter gameplay. On the other hand, you might have a game that's a love letter to classic Final Fantasy, in which case it would be a Final Fantasy-like, or a game which takes select elements of that series without adopting all of it, in which case it's a Final-Fantasy-lite. Any game that's unique enough or has been influential enough on other games can get its own genre, and this way of defining genre immediately gives a sense of a game's lineage and how much influence it takes from it.
The best part is that you can combine that with classic genre names and any number of additional influences for a more nuanced definition. Bioshock could be defined as simply an FPS, which tells you little except that it's first person and you can expect to shoot things, but call it a System Shock-like FPS and you get a more specific idea of what its gameplay might be like, what its lineage is, and how it's likely to approach the fundamentals of the FPS genre. Add in the detail that its setting is heavily influenced by steampunk and art-deco and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect from Bioshock. Other games, especially niche and indie titles, can benefit even more from the -like/-lite system than something as straightforward as Bioshock, and I generally find it a more useful way of describing where a game fits in the overall world of gaming, since it tells me what games it's like, not just which vague genre box it fits in.
Always interested in this kind of genre talk with video games, but if you're taking requests, if you have the time could you do some vlogs about music genres? I'm not really into any music, and while I know general music genres like rock, metal, rap, hip hop, etc., I don't really know shit about the sub-genres. What defines classic rock? Is heavy metal a different thing from metal? Just a topic idea if you're looking to talk about music. I tend to skip most of your music videos because I don't care too much about your thoughts on individual albums, but knowing more about these broad topics would be great if you feel up to it (and are even still reading comments a couple days after this video came out).
Just to get this out of my mind. I think when it comes to making a game, I think the possibly best way of doing so is by making without thinking of a game genre, because by doing so you can go beyond the "barrier" of conventional thinking and make something that might make your game stand out.
Nothing really stops a Turn-based RPG of having a stealth mechanics, a shooter of having turns, etc, etc.
Video: What's an RPG?
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If genres were all broad but well defined like first person and/or shooter I personally think they would actually be a great way of determining if you may like a game before playing it so long as the important genres were all listed instead of just one.
I've always categorized Western vs. Japanese RPG as boiling down to how the creator interprets the word 'role' in 'Role Playing Game'. Like Digi says, the lineage of western RPGs comes from the tabletop history, and the central conceit of stuff like D&D is that you can make any character you want and have them interact with the world, fulfilling any sort of 'role' you want them to. JRPGs, however, have you taking on a pre-determined 'role' in a pre-determined story. Thus, by my own vernacular, I'd say Dark Souls SQUARELY sits within the Western RPG camp, while Kingdom Hearts is a JRPG through-and-through. Both of them are action RPGs, but that's entirely separate from the "Western" vs. "Japanese" elements.
I find it to be a pretty helpful distinction, honestly, because there's such a distinct difference in the experiences of taking up a pre-defined role to experience an interesting story vs. being able to create your own identity within a larger world. Using that vernacular, much like the 'comfy' games categorization, it lets me know what sort of an experience I'm in for in a broad sense in terms of the way the story and the universe is gonna be presented to the player, but really has no other prescriptive elements to me.
RPG in general is a really broad nomenclature; Action, turn-based, tactical, whatever, if you just take it at a literal face value, it mostly just means a story-driven game that focuses on character progression and growth, which can take on so many forms that it becomes, as you guys said, kinda useless for determining any actual values or qualities, but breaking down distinction like 'western' and 'JRPG', being applied in terms of lineage and storytelling style, as opposed to specific country of origin or superficial/mechanical details, can help cement what sort of experience the game leans towards (at least in some ways), and actually provide some use for determining whether or not said experience is going to be what I'm looking for in any given game.
I love genres, and their distinctions. You can really readily know a lot about a game through the words "action RPG." Sure, it's a broad and partially inaccurate term, but it makes it easier to understand what that game is, because if you've played a bunch of games from different genres, and are aware of those distinctions, they are more helpful than any sort of subjective adjective slung together in a sentence. Granted, I am a scholarly type of person, so I'm more aware of what these distinctions mean through learning about the history of games, but that does not make these specified distinctions unhelpful or worthless.
I believe that there is already a term for RPGs like _Pokemon._ TV Tropes just refers to them as Mons series, in which the point of it is the collection of monsters. Are there other "Massive Party" RPGs that don't involve monster collecting?
I think the major distinction between the two was summed up nicely by Extra Credits. JRPG is about the Narrative. And to give you that narrative it usually clamps down on customization. WEstern RPGs are about Expression. Story often takes a backseat in order to accommodate how players make their character.
This is why Dark Souls is considered largely a Western "style" RPG because it gives the player agency on whether to do something or not. Lots of optional content. But games like Lisa or Undertale are more Japanese "style" RPGs because it largely focuses on narrative, though of course all three examples have some overlap. But thats the major distinction.
Have you guys seen the Extra Credits 3-part video on Western vs Eastern RPGs. They go into quite a bit of depth, and it might help you guys a bit. I would like to see more diatribes, Digi. Keep up the good work.
Extra Credits is pretty gay though. I'd rather have Digi just play an RPG before talking about RPG's next time.
The eternal madman doesnt stop keep making it happen
Turn based RPGs are my favorite game genre. Persona and Final Fantasy are two of my favorite game series (with the other being Silent Hill).
Since you asked for suggestions I'd be interested in hearing you talk about suspension of disbelief digi, i.e. why people are ok believing gandalf can do magic spells with little explanation but they'll always ask 'why didn't he just ride the fucking eagles to mordor?' or how Superman can fly and shoot laser beams but people take huge issue in his disguise only being a pair of glasses
Because the eagle thing and the glasses disguise depicts the characters as being stupid.
I think there's more to it though, the reason I even brought it up is because I was watching that movie from 2016 Your Name and one of my friends got really smug about how the time travel didn't make sense and how it wouldn't work (which is a terrible mindset to be in when you're consuming fiction). So it got me thinking that it's interesting that people are willing to take almost anything for granted in fiction but if something betrays the immediate narrative that's when they start to think it's dumb
Ryan shandification
Hate to be pedantic, but I do believe games like Shin Megami Tensei, Pokemon, Yokai Watch, Monster Rancher already have a genre descriptor, it's called "Mons" at least by Tv Tropes, for taming/raising monsters to do battle with.
The image is from Dragon Quest X for anyone curious.
As a fan wprgs I thought about whether there is such a thing as alternative "wrpgs" and I don't really think there is, because the boundaries aren't so strict. The only thing that trully fits every rpg would be the fact that the character develops and you have some control over that, which is the same with rpgs. I don't mean control in the sense that you can choose what stats to give points to, but rather that you can at one point focus just on fights to get stronger and have it a bit easier later on, or you could just go forward and how you will by strong enough or be able to apply some tactic. The other parts digibro mentioned aren't universal, not all wrpgs are linear and a lot of them are, lots of them have predefined characters, and with lots of them you don't get customization. Some of them have meta elements related to the medium but it's hard to really call that "alternative rpg". Since meta is something any game can use.
With jrpgs I think the boundaries are more strict. It's kind of how with anime, people will call Yuasa's style avant garde or alternative, since it differs a lot from most anime. But in the states you couldn't have an alternative style of animation, since there isn't a predefined animation style there.
there is an excelent series of video from ectra credits talking about Jrpg and Wrpg, I highly recomend it!
I'd say the terms "JRPG" and "Western RPG" are pretty much obsolete since the two styles have blended so much over the years of globalized influence. A new JRPG can still exist, but only if it was created in the likeness of what JRPG's were like admidst that specific era of the genre, i.e. I Am Setsuna. Vice versa for western. But otherwise, I think it's either turn based or action these days, and those are the two main distinctions... anything else is too great a variable to take into account for individual games. I suppose you could throw text-based and dungeon-crawler in there too, simply because those might not fall into turn based or action, but they are still pretty much RPG, considering the genre came from text-only DnD-esque interactions online back when the net was fresh outta the box.
Genres to me are useful as a starting point. Most games I like are RPGs. I know I'm more likely to enjoy an RPG than a FPS, so if you tell me a game is one or the other, right off the bat I know whether or not its something I want to know more about. I think that's the same for most people.
You tell me its an RPG, I know I like more turn based RPGs than I do action RPGs, so if you say it's one or the other, my level of interest may vary.
Tell me its an action RPG, I'll probably ask about the mechanics, since that's more of a determining factor in what I like from that subcategory of the genre. Tell me its turn based, I'll probably ask about the art and the story.
It's useful academic information, sure. But it's basic problem solving for your average consumer such as myself. Of course there's more information than basic intrigue that will determine whether or not you like something, but it helps with time management to be able to sort information in the context of personal tastes. Those are valuable distinctions for people who don't get paid to lounge around rethinking social constructs like genre and don't have the time to dig through a hundred different descriptive categories to see if something has what they want.
The whole point of genre is to make broad distinctions and be as inclusive as possible to identify macro-variations. If it becomes obsessed with micro-variations, it'd be like how djent was considered a genre of its own in metal for a few years, despite only describing a specific technique used with rhythm guitars. At that rate we'd define metal by whether or not a track has blast beats, double kick bass drums, pinch harmonic squeals, gutteral vocals or clean melodic singing. It would be even more of a nightmare. The RPG genre has so many unique variations, common mannerisms and tendencies, it'd be far worse than metal if they became obsessed with defining and differentiating everything.
Digi when talk about Fallout do you mean the turn based ones or the skyrim like ones?
Made from scratch characters, Stat manipulation, In-Game decisions to change the course of the story. To a lot of people this is all you need, which essentially means that even "Create a Wrestler" campaigns in WWE games are RPGs.
"RPG" means nothing these days. You've gotta add further descriptors to it like "Tactical" or "Turn-Based" for it to mean anything, and even then some of those descriptors like "Action" and "Open World" could be applied to too many games that should fall outside of it's purview that they are too vague to be useful too.
The problem is that, working a game store, people ask for certain genre recommendations all the time and RPG is so vague yet, to whoever asks, it's so specific.
Coming into this convo late. but to me Western vs JRPGs are about their differences in mechanics. Western RPGs place emphasis on checks, whether your statistical information will allow you to overcome an obstacle as determined by the creators. JRPGs de-emphasize stats and place more emphasis on player input. For example, Elder Scrolls has the player building stats to pass various checks and player skill has very little bearing on resolving conflicts. Dark Souls in contrast has simplified stat building and is entirely about getting good.
to me western style rpgs are rpg of many choices where your character is a blank slate ready for customization- the story or themes are sacrificed alot for the sake of opening up choices. *fallout, Elder Scrolls,Mass Effect/dragon age, Ultima, ect
As where Jrpgs Love a really strong narrative so alot of the time youre not even namable because customization would require sacrificing parts of the story
*final fantasy/kingdom hearts, Persona,Earthbound,Paper Mario,Dragon Quest, ChronoTrigger,ect
From there you decide if its Action or turn based, a focus of strategy or skill.
from there you decide if its Puzzle heavy, or Dialog heavy. usually decided by the previous choice.
than finally you decide on aesthetic, Medieval,Modern,occult,fantasy,Scifi.
these terms and mechanics are sourced from RPGs but theyre never limited to them.
The focus is its genre. the game play is its attributes, and the aesthetic is its element.
There's plenty of western turn based strategy games for example the Heroes series and the Civilization series.
Another one of my Favorite games is Azure Dreams for PS1. its a Dungeon Crawler/Linear Town Building/ Turn Based-Strategy / Monster Collecting(Large Party) RPG. and i wish i was making that up... it has all of those elements
JRPG is just as diverse and unique as Anime.You can't just define it and contain it as a genre.
How does exactly musou not fall into arpg genre?
Action RPGS are focused the combat system which is good (hopefully) where you have to time your attacks and dodges with good reaction timing. Games like SoulsBorne and Ys series.
While a Strategy RPG doesn't have that kind of combat where you have to time stuff and react on reflexes. Instead it demands the player to think more ahead of time. Stuff like classic turn based JRPGs.
On another note I think Dark Souls has a very Japanese philosophy to it
goddamn i love this channel
game genres have been bent and appropriated so many times that they've become practically useless on their own.
I think steam's tag system is a much better way to approach providing newcomers with a quick, holistic understanding of a game.
What I see as RPG is a story driven game, where the entire premise of the game is based on the storyline itself.
Leveling up and character development is all for the story of the character, one piece of the puzzle.
Many, many games are based in storyline, which is why there are many subtypes of RPGs, like the two mentioned in this video, as well as MMORPGS and FPSRPGS.
What excludes games from the RPG genre is their focus. For example, Overwatch is not an RPG. It's storyline is outside the game.
This is a silly opinion.
i feel the difference between an rpg and a jrpg party is in a western rpg the party more often then not controls themselves in combat where jrpgs you control them all in some form
I think a point to be made here is that the exceptions shouldn't make the rule. Genre descriptions for the most part are very helpful for consumer recommendations for most things. However, there are always exceptional pieces which should be treated on their own merits. For example, I absolutely hate horror. I'm a complete scaredy cat. For most movies and games, you don't have to go into an in depth description of the elements, emotions, and techniques of any given horror movie, it's probably sufficient to just tell me it's horror and I'll know to avoid it. But then there's something like The Shining, which is loosely a horror film, but it doesn't quite fit with the rest and is actually a movie I really liked. But we're talking about a classic, something that was exceptionally well made and kind of did its own thing. An exception deserving of its own description.
Going back to gaming, you talked about where to place Dark Souls. For me, Dark Souls is another example of an extreme outlier rather than something that could be fit into a specific genre/sub genre. While I sort of liked RPGs a lot as a kid, I hadn't really found an enjoyable single player one in a long time until I discovered Dark Souls. The Souls games (with the exception of DS2) stand out as a few of the only single player RPGs I've actually completely beaten. And since then it's been hard to find something that's filled that itch in the same way even though quite a few studios have been trying.
There's also something to be said for how well a particular genre tag describes a thing as well as whether or not we have a word that adequately describes certain genres. There are some that are pretty easy. I think things like Action blockbuster movies, FPS, side scrolling platformers, etc, all have pretty well defined elements which people who consume them would recognize as something they want, whereas other genres don't quite have the same definition to them. What do people want out of RPGs? Is it a well developed story? World? Characters? RP potential? Stat progression? Character customization? To what extent does the actual control of the gameplay matter? Etc.
For example, would someone who likes games like Diablo and PoE, enjoy games like Darksiders 2 or Borderlands? They have very similar loot systems, but very different gameplay styles, levels of character customization, worlds, and story progression. It's a bit hard to say.
weird fact,here in brazil table top RPG try to imitade JRPG,just look at 3D&T
I tend to lean towards action RPG's. More "traditional" ones are a bit to slow paced for me.
Digi, you're saying that the mushrooms punching you are "a japanese kind of creativity", but Myconids have been a monster in D&D since 1977.
Do this for "survival horror" or horror games in general because they have some of the worst defined genre trappings. Like, most gaming genres are defined by mechanics like FPS, RTS, RPG, but horror is more of a "theme".
If you guys need another example of an action RPG; The Witcher
jrpg's like Persona 5 are fucking amazing
If anyone hasn't seen it, I'd recommend ClanoftheGrayWolf's video on the history or RPGs.
I always felt that JRPG's had a higher chance of being about characters and a story while western RPGs had a higher chance of being about player choice. having not played elder scrolls or dark souls though, i hadnt actually taken mechanics types into account before.
Digi anytime you wanna rant about generas I'm here to watch
Souls Like is another. which bleeds into rogue like also at times..
Indeed. RPG has become such a vague term that its practically useless; more so now that games are reaching a point were a single game can carry elements of ten different genres that even simple descriptions can be a paragraph of its own. Mulling it over for a while at best I can only really come up with a hand full of descriptions for a game that actually relate useful information
First being "Drive" Or the thing that pushes the game forwards and informs the players perspective of the game and its events. (player, narrative, or world) The second would be the games focus ( combat, stat/resource/ party management, exploration, questing) The third being the battle system speed ( real time, active, turn based.) Fourth being the level of stat and level importance or game-play impact (( core, important, active, passive )). And I think a qualifier for whether is a parody, satire, alt, and what else should also be tacked on as well.
Issue is is "Narrative drive, resource and party management focused real time combat with active stats used in a third person setting and a moral choice system for dialog, Drama" is certainly more descriptive than just calling it a "RPG it still doesn't fill in enough information to get an idea of what the game actually is with . Any more descriptives about the game and it honestly feels like yous have a better time talking about the game in relation it has to other games.
Also just for shits and giggles any one got a guess about the game I was referencing
Don't even get my started about roguelikes and rougelites...
one big western game i can think of that would fall into the alt category so to speak is planescape torment
but that doesn't have any earthbound in it's dna, it hits on a lot of the same concepts as those kind of games, but yeah i don't know, i guess i'm just saying i don't like the term alt only referring to earthbound inspired games maybe
RPG is an English colloquialism that comes from shortening the words 'Role Playing Game'. For the most part in English, RPG is synonymous with Role Playing Games of any kind, just as in Japanese JRPG is virtually synonymous with Japanese Role Playing Games of any kind. On a technical level there is no inherent distinction between RPGs and JRPGs, but on a cultural level these words have different connotations.
Here's how I view it: If it has experience points and level ups that are a cause of obtaining said experience points, then it is an RPG, it it doesn't have experience points or level ups, then it's not an RPG, simple as that...
That said though, RPG doesn't necessarily have to be the primary genre of the game in question, it only is the primary genre when the core gameplay revolves around acquiring experience points and leveling up, like is the case with the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games for example, but a game can be anything and still be an RPG, if you put Experience Points and Level Ups in your First Person Shooter, guess what? That's an RPG too! If you put it in your platformer? It's an RPG! Put it on your puzzle game? It's a freaking RPG alright!
With that in mind, Zelda 2 the Adventure of Link is an RPG, the whole rest of the Zelda series is NOT... Zelda is an Action Adventure series, the action comes from the Combat and the Adventure comes from the Puzzle-Solving...
Now Secret of Mana on the other hand is an Action RPG, because even though it has a similar gameplay to Zelda, it is an RPG because it involves Exp and Level Ups, it's as simple as that!
Is an RPG without gear/level progression possible?
Only if it's a cRPG.
Oh my, its always fun when about games talk ppl without knowledge about games.
From my own point of view as a very amateur game designer, role playing games are not defined by what the players or their characters do, but rather by how the setting reacts to their presence. An RPG in essence is not a game where you play a role, it is a game where you define your role within a setting. Stat management, character building, and leveling systems are not game mechanics that define an RPG, freedom of choice, dynamic NPC's, and lasting consequences for your actions are. To best show this lets look at the Fallout franchise, as it has iterated on itself, the Fallout franchise has moved steadily away from being an RPG at all (1&2) to an FPS with moderate role play elements (3 & NV), to an open world adventure FPS with character building (4), as of the latest installment. In each game your ability to play a specific character and affect the state of the game world has grown steadily more limited, thus restricting your ability to define your role in this world and forcing you to instead play a specific role as determined by the developers. A great example of a very non-traditional RPG is The Stanley Parable, which features a wide array of options and choices for you to explore and a dynamic world that reacts to those choices, lacking almost all of the traditional mechanical trappings of RPG's past.
love me some Hippocrit
*sees thumbnail*
*thinks there's probably a connection between the Dragon Quest artist and the Blue Dragon artist*
Aghost uhhh. you didn't know?
Akira Toriyama has done art for Dragon Quest, Blue Dragon, and Chrono Trigger. Not to mention he wrote a little manga called Dragon Ball.
I knew he did Chrono Trigger but the designs in Blue Dragon and Dragon Quest seem like a bit of a departure from what I know him for. thx btw
*thinks Akira Toriyama is really into dragons*
Aghost to Toriyama everything is dragons
If you can count killing Smithy as killing God then you are clearly use that terms looser then what I was thinking.
I mean from an Archetype standpoint you can say he's like a Hephestus or Sauron figure. But he's not worshiped or the creator of the world or anything.
To me, an RPG is a game that encourages you to *role play* (hence the name). The game must present you with opportunities to act in alignment with the thoughts and goals of your character, generally via dialogue or moral choices. Examples of this genre would be Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas. Also Planescape: Torment, and to a lesser extent the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter franchises.
"RPG is a Japanese colloquialism ... "
Wow Xau Ling is in the picture.
The way people use genres is stupid. We shouldn't be trying to define all art with one label. Good art generally goes across different labels and it's even more unhelpful to then make a new label for that.
Take Space rock, alternative rock, psychedelic rock or Post-rock for example. I think the average person today would have no idea what any of that entailed beyond that it's kinda like rock, but different somehow for whatever reason, but if I instead told them "this song is like soul and rock combined" or "it's rock influenced by jazz" or "it merges rock and electronica" then I'm pretty sure most of the population would have a pretty good grasp of what I was talking about.
Now in cases like for example "rap rock" the creators of the term where only half insane because it's much easier to get a grasp of what the term means, but it's also pretty useless as a term because not only is most rap rock a combination of hip hop and rock and not rap as you might have suspected, but it's also just two genres separated with a space. It would have been more versatile and helpful to just say that the music was either "a combination or rap and rock" or "a combination of hip hop and rock" instead of trying to establish a whole new genre.
OI. the hell do you mean DS borrows from CoC.
CoC mechanically is fucking weird and wouldn't really have anything to do with DS, bloodborne maybe but at that point one could really point to the works themselves as inspiration rather than the CoC translation because methodologically CoC has a very different game feel.
OH GOD PLEASE DO MORE RPG TALK
RPG is a G where you RP
Trying to argue over whether something is in a certain genre is getting more and more vague every year. RPG is so vague at this point when it covers things from Breath of Fire to Underrail to Dark Souls. Even the subgenres are barely useful at this point when both Skyrim and Diablo are described as action rpgs, and if you go "well Diablo's a hack and slash" then you get to how many people would call things like Devil May Cry hack and slash games.
RPG games are games where you play a role. Games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 are action-adventure games. They might have RPG elements, like skills and levels and whatever, but so does Call of Duty which sure as hell isn't an RPG.
Also, most western games that I would actually call RPG games, like Baldur's Gate, like Fallout 2, are either turn-based, or can become.
asd asd Exept that in Elder Scrolls anf Fallout you create your own characters and make decicions that affect the story. Also, CoD can have rpg elements. Technically, you play a role of a soldier in CoD.
So rpg should be broken down into its individual mechanics.
Mass effect would be a light stats, light abilities, and dialog choices 3rd person shooter
Darks souls would be a heavy stats, inventory management, skill-based 3rd person action game
Zelda would be a very light stats, item based puzzles, 3rd person action game
How do you put that in english?
I really cant understand this need to create a subgenre for games like Earthbound and Mario and Luigi Saga. The only thing that seperates these games from games like Final Fantasy is the lighthearted tone, and nothing else.
Its not like this shift in tone creates a completely seperate gameplay experience, its just using the medium to make fun of the tropes and be meta.
Earthbound is different from Final Fantasy, the same way Final Fantasy is different from Chrono Trigger, the same way Chrono Trigger is different from Persona, and so on. The combat is simply a variation of what came before.
There is absolutely nothing "alternative" about those games, so why the hell should we need to seperate them from all the other RPGs that have the Dragon Quest template?
This is the same bullshit as people who say Madoka and Evangelion are deconstructions of their respective genres and should be treated differently because of that, and if im remembering correctly, Digi hates when people do that.
The deconstruction is relevant sure, but it shouldnt be the way we define those specific games. This is why you end up reaching the point about Mario RPG for the SNES not really being like the Mother series, even if it is lighthearted. Thats cause its still just a turn based RPG just like all the other ones you guys mentioned.
Where does Pokemon stand in this? Is it an alternative RPG? Or is it a normal JRPG?
What a pointless conversation.
Why not just call all these games that are made in a similar style to Earthbound and Mother Earthbound-like or Mother-like or something similar? That's how we ended up with Rogue-likes when people started to make games similar to Rogue. Unless you feel like that would lead us toward a similar situation to the whole MetroidVania debate.
I never played the Dark Soul franchise. I thought it was a western game.
Akira Toriyama is a genius
I think you're missing the point. genres are used for advertising it's too hard to make a definition for each genre as you either have to be too specific or too general
comfy chart sauce