Are NPCs required in RPGs?

First off, I don't want opinions I want the truth! (yeah I know I can't handle it) Here's the scenario - I'm playing Final Fantasy 20th Aniversay Edition, with a guide, and didn't talk to any of the NPCs as I battled through different missions. Now I know most of them tell you how their day went, or how their feeling, but for the lucky few who do provide useful information is it relevant to the story? I'm thinking of restarting the game and developing close relationships with the town drunk..

Not required, but the reason why I mostly play RPGs are that I want to feel like I'm in and experiencing a living world. For the most part NPCs really help build up that feeling.

Even though their dialogue is pretty pointless most the time, they make the game world seem much more lively. Walking through a town with no NPCs except those that are required would make the world seem pretty lonely. Take Mass Effect for example. Even though the Citadel has a lot of people in the areas you are aloud to go, you wouldn't think it was the major city in the galaxy unless you really looked around at the background & see the sprawling cities & flying cars below etc. Actually, a better example would be Assassins Creed. Now it isn't an RPG, & most the NPCs do play a role as their physical obstacles, but just think of AC without the city streets full of people. It just seems weird.

Basically, a town with even just character models of people & no dialogue would be better then one with no NPCs at all.

Unless you get your quests via inanimated objects or come up with them on your own, you're going to need someone to give them to you, so yes.muthsera666

This. An RPG with no NPCs cannot exist lol. :|

required? no. but they really do help the experience, sometimes. but going through a game without talking to them shouldn't matter unlessthey could sell or trade you, or give you quests.

Yes because they add life, feeling, and emotion to the game, even if what they are saying are pointless.

Whenever I play an RPG, I always make sure that I talk to every NPC I pass by. Some would even give you something. :)

It's also nice for an adventure game to have NPCs like Okami.

Well, you can't have everyone in the game be a PLAYABLE character...

Yes they're required! Who else would populate the world and make it feel alive? Not to mention who the heck would you be saving the world from-- the giant overgrown black berry bush that took over your cave?

Call me crazy, but I'm an rpg player who talks to every single NPC, often times twice or more, depending on if they have changing dialogue.
Sure, sometimes I get sick of reading about how so-and-so went off to be a knight and hasn't written to dear old Ma, but on the whole I think it adds vim and vigor to the game world. Not to mention juicy gossip.
;)

no NPC's is roleplaying by yourself which is a bit boring. NPC aren't required if it was MMO but then who would give quests to gain levels to do more quests to get shiny items and weapons?

While you can have an RPG without NPCs, it really defeats the basics of an RPG, what makes an RPG has never really been stats, or equipment, but the interaction with the world around you, and its people.

Thus you see the world in your actions, it reflects the decicions you take, and comments on that is or is not done.

So an RPG without NPCs you can reflect yourself in, and convery the world to you, it will have a hard time being a real RPG, but rather something (adventure/esque in nature).

It is possible if they created the RPG from the ground up, with the story being the questions of where why, and what happened, in those cases, the Envioment takes over the role of an NPC, so it is possible.

Best thing would to have Pc's only so everyone was a living breathing person, but that always gets messed up, since most people have a hard time filling a role, and stay in that role (most people want to assume the role of a hero and a villan, nad it doessnt work, if all in the world is those two things (shopping will be a bi*ch, when the shopkeeper is the dark lord nr. 33 when he is not working.

I am an avid RPG player (both real life, and Pc/console), and I have indeed once created an RPG where the only truely living things in the world was them, and everything else was a grayied out reality, stuck in time, and enemies (altho you can consider those npcs when you think about it).