I prefer actual role playing games, like Fallout or Arcanum. JRPGs aren't really RPGs at all; they are just action-adventure games with some character building.
But you know, when you think about it, there haven't been many true role playing games, Western or otherwise. There are so many hybrids and bastardised off-shoot genres that the label "RPG" has lost all of its meaning and the life of the genre's core is all but exhausted, as it barely manages to hang on through various indie development communities.
Hell, the term 'RPG' is used to describe games like 'Mass Effect' these days, and most people think that's just ****ing dandy.
jethrovegas
I know where you're coming from. But that is taking things from a quality point of view, how we judge which are better RPGs than others. And yeah, few electronic games mirror the gameplay of the P'n'P counterparts they are taken from. But from an industry genre classification point of view, what they have to go by are the gameplay mechanics.
Just because your main character in the game is armed with guns, doesn't make it a shooter. It's about the aiming mechanics which brand a game as a shooter and not just a more general action game. Thus why GTA4 isn't a shooter, and Halo 3 and Resistance 2 is. In the case of RPGs the criteria is characters defined by numeric stats and level categories. Some people have said it's how immersed your are with your connection to the character you play, like maybe as Link in the Zelda series, yet Link has never had levels or stats for abilities and attributes (hp, mp, str, stam, wis, int, etc...).
I'm just saying, the industry needs a clear method of categorizing games, and gameplay mechanics are the only consistent factor. How close an electronic game emulates the freeform gameplay of the P'n'P roots becomes debatable.
But as far as I'm concerned, Mass Effect and KOTOR IS substantially close to those roots. You not only customize your characters abilities to suit your play style (brute force, stealth, magic, etc...) but you are given choices in how you interact with the world around you and it's inhabitants. This leads to diverse outcomes in how the cinematics play out as well as story development.
Instead of playing prescripted characters who will always deal with a given situation in the exact same way each time, YOU have a say in how you do it. You aren't just pulling the strings of someone else's designed persona, you are imbuing the main character with YOUR OWN traits, so their behavior reflects YOU. And that is the heart of RPGs of the old.
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