The Japanese should not make RPGs.

[MKSheppard]

That is all. I am playing Deus Ex 2 on my X-Box (hey, it was $3.99 at gamestop), and while it may not be up to the originals impossibly awesome standard of awesomeness, it's pretty atmospheric, and well, you can't beat that price.

Anyway. As for the title:

I just broke into a gun manufacturer's HQ to find the designs for a weapon, and the hippie religious people want me to kill the designer of the weapon, to teach the gun maker that making stuff that causes "suffering" has consequences, etc etc Meanwhile, the government wants me to get them the plans.

Gee...I wonder which I'm gonna pick

If this were a Japanese RPG, i would be locked eternally into the Hippie peacenik path because of course, the big bad corporations and governments are evil! Nevermind that Shinra in FFVII stopped a war that had been going on for years and created a cheap power source....it was being ripped from the core of the planet, and was an affront to Gaia!!!

No spoilers for Deus Ex 2 Invisible War, pls, kthx.

[Tanasinn]

Spoilers: the war is happening, but it's invisible.


Moving on...

I prefer choice-driven RPGs no matter what; it is, after all, called an RPG, not an interactive storybook. It does seem that such games are more common to European and American developers. I've always wondered if there was some root cause to blame for the usually-linear style favoured in jRPGs.

[Darksider]

Gee...I wonder which I'm gonna pick

If this were a Japanese RPG, i would be locked eternally into the Hippie peacenik path because of course, the big bad corporations and governments are evil! Nevermind that Shinra in FFVII stopped a war that had been going on for years and created a cheap power source....it was being ripped from the core of the planet, and was an affront to Gaia!!!

No spoilers for Deus Ex 2 Invisible War, pls, kthx.

The whole "Oppose shinra because they're killing the planet" thing got old for me real quick. I just opposed them because the Shinra Higher ups were evil bastards who did evil shit (Scarlet torching barret's hometown for no reason, Heiddeger and Shinra dropping the plate on sector seven, Rufus's Mua ha ha i'm so evil speech.) That being said, I was rolling my eyes throughout the whole mission to retrieve the Huge materia from the rocket. I mean, they were going to use it to destroy Meteor and save the fucking planet, and Avalance just fucking ganks it. Talk about stupid.

[Cao Cao]

The whole "Oppose shinra because they're killing the planet" thing got old for me real quick. I just opposed them because the Shinra Higher ups were evil bastards who did evil shit (Scarlet torching barret's hometown for no reason, Heiddeger and Shinra dropping the plate on sector seven, Rufus's Mua ha ha i'm so evil speech.) That being said, I was rolling my eyes throughout the whole mission to retrieve the Huge materia from the rocket. I mean, they were going to use it to destroy Meteor and save the fucking planet, and Avalance just fucking ganks it. Talk about stupid.

You can fail to retrieve the Materia and let it hit the Meteor for the exact same effect. Shinra's plan was half-assed to begin with.

[Stark]

Great another 'storybook vs sandbox' thread yay.

There are, of course, rigid storybook games that lock you into the brutal asshole storyline too...

Just don't get me started on Metal Gear Whining. I hear, nukes are bad and war is brutal. That's what I hear.

[General Zod]

The Deus Ex series are rpgs now? Huh.

[Vympel]

That's what I hear.

On the battlefield, there's no time to "hear".

[Stark]

There so is - even after being shot dozens of times you have time to explain your youth in Czechoslovakia and how this frames your experiences in the dehumanising machine of war.

The Deus Ex games might not be RPGs, but they're about as close as FPS's ever came to it. Pretending to be flexible isn't as hard as it seems?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Deus Ex 2 sucked for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that you could piss off a faction to no end, and they'd still be like "but we'll give you missions still".

[Darth Raptor]

Nevermind that Shinra in FFVII stopped a war that had been going on for years and created a cheap power source....it was being ripped from the core of the planet, and was an affront to Gaia!!!

There isn't a rolling eyes emoticon big enough for this shit. The SEPC didn't stop the war, they won the war. The war was fought between Shinra and Wutai. And before they became the de facto government of Midgar, they were an arms manufacturing company and supplied the war. Such campions of peace! Also, nevermind that the "cheap" power source was really, actually rendering their planet uninhabitable. Nah, the anti-Shinra types are just militant hippies. Whatever. I'd be more worked up about this if I wasn't so fucking sick of FFVII.

[GuppyShark]

The Deus Ex series are rpgs now? Huh.

Of course they are. What made you think they weren't?

Oh, and for what it's worth, I concur - Japanese console RPGs are largely responsible for the stat-builder brainbug that infests the RPG genre.

[NeoGoomba]

The Deus Ex series are rpgs now? Huh.

Of course they are. What made you think they weren't?

Oh, and for what it's worth, I concur - Japanese console RPGs are largely responsible for the stat-builder brainbug that infests the RPG genre.

The first one, maybe. But the second? Not nearly as much. Without the proficiencies, the game lost a LOT of depth.

And lets not even discuss the wussy main character and the *snort* universal ammo

[General Zod]

The Deus Ex series are rpgs now? Huh.

Of course they are. What made you think they weren't?

Oh, and for what it's worth, I concur - Japanese console RPGs are largely responsible for the stat-builder brainbug that infests the RPG genre.

It simply struck me as more of an FPS with a very flexible interface and something resembling a storyline. I haven't played the second one though.

[Molyneux]

Hey, the Nippon Ichi games have a variety of paths, don't they?

[Spearfish]

On a similar note, a problem with many RPGs (for example, KotOR) is that one is shunted towards an extreme end of the moral spectrum. It's either "I'm a freakishly nice person who would do anything for anyone!" or "I will kill everything for virtually no reason, and generally act like a 1960s Bond villian." and very little in between.

It's very hard to walk a path of "I'll act for the good of all people, but frankly I'm not above the use of morally questionable tactics to achieve this, and I don't see why I can't line my pockets at the same time."

[Vendetta]

It's very hard to walk a path of "I'll act for the good of all people, but frankly I'm not above the use of morally questionable tactics to achieve this, and I don't see why I can't line my pockets at the same time."

And even when you do try it it feels disjointed due to the binary nature of most choice resolutions, so that rather than coming out neutral your character is simply capricious, helping or harming on a whim. Also, there are no rewards for doing so.

KotORII had a character who tried to encourage a "neutral" path, but with it being blatantly unfinished the payoff from that was absent.

[Stark]

The KoToR system did indeed have that problem - many of the 'bad' choices were not 'bad for profit' or 'bad for ideology', but simply 'bad for bad's sake'. Unless the plot is PROPERLY flexible (ie, not just 'a few dialog options change and a little score changes) it's very difficult to put ACTUAL moral choices into a game.

[CaptHawkeye]

It seems that Mass Effect is out to fix that problem. But we'll see won't we?

[Stark]

It seems that Mass Effect is out to fix that problem. But we'll see won't we?

It helps that the whole idea of Mass Effect is built around difficult decisions with consequences (rather than 'stab man for 6 bucks' or 'pat him on the head'). If you get easy, 'obvious right answer/funny answer/cackling evil answer' stuff, it'll be stupid and lame. And I finally won't hate a cross-platform game for the 360 controls.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I stopped playing Japanese RPGs years ago because of the fact i realized something: i wasnt PLAYING them i was watching polygon-based anime movies where i was (rarely) asked to inject some actions i learned by route into it to, basically with the purpose of what ammounts to a fancy way of unlocking the movie's alternate endings.

That basically describes most of these RPGs, example--Xenosaga.


Another thing, and this is all too present in most post-Evangelion anime too, is that the stories are just...breathtakingly lame is the only word for it.

I mean most of the plot points make NO SENSE, and the characters go on and on and on endlessly, cod-philosophizing about stuff i dont even remotely care about. Most of it based on some traumatic experience the writer suffered, like cracking up, or some shit it appears. It's insane.

I know that a lot of folks, for whatever reason, think "opaque plot"="sophisticated intellectual drama!!!" nowadays but i always like a story with a clear plot that i could follow. Fuck there are movies by David Lynch that he wrote while droping acid that make more sense than some Japanese RPGs...most of them just throw out idiotic buzz words that only make sense in the world it's set in. I understand this is supposed to be some kind of faux lingo used by these people on the Planet Anime where it takes place or whatever but, for the love of God, could you just translate it into plain English?

[rhoenix]

I stopped playing Japanese RPGs years ago because of the fact i realized something: i wasnt PLAYING them i was watching polygon-based anime movies where i was (rarely) asked to inject some actions i learned by route into it to, basically with the purpose of what ammounts to a fancy way of unlocking the movie's alternate endings.

That basically describes most of these RPGs, example--Xenosaga.


Another thing, and this is all too present in most post-Evangelion anime too, is that the stories are just...breathtakingly lame is the only word for it.

I mean most of the plot points make NO SENSE, and the characters go on and on and on endlessly, cod-philosophizing about stuff i dont even remotely care about. Most of it based on some traumatic experience the writer suffered, like cracking up, or some shit it appears. It's insane.

I know that a lot of folks, for whatever reason, think "opaque plot"="sophisticated intellectual drama!!!" nowadays but i always like a story with a clear plot that i could follow. Fuck there are movies by David Lynch that he wrote while droping acid that make more sense than some Japanese RPGs...most of them just throw out idiotic buzz words that only make sense in the world it's set in. I understand this is supposed to be some kind of faux lingo used by these people on the Planet Anime where it takes place or whatever but, for the love of God, could you just translate it into plain English?

Though I will grant that games have tended in this direction, there are notable exceptions to the above.

One, for the PSX, is Vagrant Story. Yes, it is a bit anime-ish, but nothing too overt. The story is excellent, makes sense, and has evocative characters.

Even with that exception to the rule named, however, it seems that most RPG's are falling into the style-over-substance trap.

[Darth Ruinus]

On a similar note, a problem with many RPGs (for example, KotOR) is that one is shunted towards an extreme end of the moral spectrum. It's either "I'm a freakishly nice person who would do anything for anyone!" or "I will kill everything for virtually no reason, and generally act like a 1960s Bond villian." and very little in between.

It's very hard to walk a path of "I'll act for the good of all people, but frankly I'm not above the use of morally questionable tactics to achieve this, and I don't see why I can't line my pockets at the same time."

Jade Empire for the Xbox (yeah its old now, but still cool) was kinda like this, in that game there isnt an evil or good way, but what they call a open palm and closed fist way, which when you actually read the responses and reasoning for, (that you select) its more like "Im going to let this town die, because it will let the stronger people live and that will strengthen the town as a whole" instead of "ill let them die cuz its fun"

[DPDarkPrimus]

On a similar note, a problem with many RPGs (for example, KotOR) is that one is shunted towards an extreme end of the moral spectrum. It's either "I'm a freakishly nice person who would do anything for anyone!" or "I will kill everything for virtually no reason, and generally act like a 1960s Bond villian." and very little in between.

It's very hard to walk a path of "I'll act for the good of all people, but frankly I'm not above the use of morally questionable tactics to achieve this, and I don't see why I can't line my pockets at the same time."

Jade Empire for the Xbox (yeah its old now, but still cool) was kinda like this, in that game there isnt an evil or good way, but what they call a open palm and closed fist way, which when you actually read the responses and reasoning for, (that you select) its more like "Im going to let this town die, because it will let the stronger people live and that will strengthen the town as a whole" instead of "ill let them die cuz its fun"

Except that 90% the Closed Palm choices were still "I'm going to be a dick" choice, rather than what you actually said.

[Molyneux]

One anime where the whole philosophical stuff turned out OK: Ghost in the Shell. But maybe that's just me.

The lack of even a proper Evil storyline was annoying to me in Neverwinter Nights; if you want to play, say, a Blackguard or a Pale Master, you can't really be anything other than psychotically evil, because pretty much all of the fun quests involve shifting your alignment towards Good - and it's tough to find things to do that can keep you towards neutral.

[Cao Cao]

A prime example of no choice RPGs would have to be Suikoden V (which is a great game mind you).
You play a Prince in a country that only has Queens, at one point you're given the option to declare yourself King in a rebellion instead of following the plot.
Except if you do.. the game ends right there, your character apparently gets assassinated. So this game not only doesn't give you choices, it punishes you for thinking it does.