@CanYouDiglt said:
@lilseb93 said:
If it's made in Japan, it's a JRPG. It's that simple to me.
Then there would be no reason to have the J in the front and not classify jrpg or western rpg but instead just say rpg. The reason jprg had their own group was because of the style not location. You would not call Bioware games CRPG for Canada or The Witcher PRPG for Poland. You call them western rpg because of the style.
The thing is, it used to be that styles were very much synonymous to the region of origin for RPG games. That is to say with RPG's made in Japan you could almost always count on;
* anime influenced art direction
* pre-designed characters with limited or no customization
* exploration for finding treasure/loot within hubs, but in primarily linear world and quest structure with some optional quests, players role is assigned
* combat derived in turn based or tactical strategy
And with WRPG's you could generally expect
* medieval influenced art direction (Camelot style knights, wizards, etc...), or in many cases futuristic sci-fi
* extensive character customization; assemble from gender, race, tweak facial appearance, and over the course of the game evolve outward appearance in fashion, both visually & functionally (armor stats and bonuses)... instead of preconfigured character, player can create their own unique avatar to represent themself in the world
* play style diversity through class and skill builds
* wide open world for more exploration and quest freedom, go anywhere with enough side quests to derail from main for great lengths, freedom to define your own role in adaptive story
* while some stat based combat based on virtual dice rolls, now more predominantly realtime action based combat for direct action sword swinging, spell casting, or other weapon based combat (shooting), though even these still factor in proficiency skills and weapon stats for damage calculations, the hit base is more player driven than determined by dice
But as I said, that's more of a trend both sides of the pond at one time held to as their distinct genre identities, with far fewer exceptions. It's not that anything "forced" one side or the other into their own tropes, it was just a comfortable familiarity they more often chose to keep back then.
The Western side has more or less continued it's tradition as it's been shown to be the more successful formula. While Japan suffered stagnation, so more recently broadened its design repertoire as seen in games like the Souls series and Dragon's Dogma. There may be some eastern influence seen in western made games, but not nearly as much as we've seen as the shift found in Japan, who had more of a need to adapt.
But as design and aesthetic styles are no longer unilaterally held to regional development as they once were, the use of regional prefixes becomes less and less useful for identifying the kind of experience you can expect from the subset of RPG styles, which is why they were attached in the first place. Just look at the Witcher games, which does evoke a "western" style, both aesthetically and from design mechanics of adaptive play style (skill builds and world interaction) but it's made in Poland, neither West or East.
For some time I've been examining ways of identifying RPGs more from their design and style structure, that helps categorize them by experience, apart from region which isn't as indicative of those other attributes. I don't have anything solid yet, but just playing around with ideas to get exposed on the internet to make the push of spreading the new concept, seeing if it catches from a seed here;
+++++
So this is a TLDR summary, of my idea on how to better identify RPG by experience, not synonymous with regional development....
Uniform RPG (URPG) - encompassing all or most of; fixed character design with little or no customization, limited skill building, scripted interaction maybe with limited choices (including scripted cut scenes), characters/players role is assigned, exploration within set hub network, environments more closed in, linear story progression
This is where we get the mostly linear narrative, from which the direction comes that determines the players experience in an assigned role
Dynamic RPG (DRPG) - encompassing all or most of; flexibility of character creation as the players own avatar, customizable character build and play style, freedom to define their own role in the universe (interaction, choice & consequence), open world with quest freedom, non-linear story progression
This follows that the player can create their own experience of self expression and self representation, to varying degrees of course
Let's see if we can make this catch on, beginning here ?
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