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RPGs are definitely my favorite type of game. Nothing wrong with RTS or FPS or any other acronym but nothing draws me into a gaming experience like story. Game play is a strong second, of course. God of War 1 & 2 had pretty weak stories but the gameplay was strong enough to keep me interested. The same, in a lesser sense, could be said of Borderlands. Conversely, I've yet to see a game that had such a strong story line or character arcs that I could forgive it truly atrocious game play. So that's the first frame of reference for this post: I love RPGs but not so much that I'd rather be watching a movie than playing a game.

Enter the contemporary JRPG. This genre really stretches the limits of how little interactivity you can get by with and still call something a "game." Almost all of these games have plenty of long cutscene sequences. In most Western games, cutscenes function as a kind of plot-device-cum-reward. The story moves along and you get treated to some nicer graphics of your character(s) doing extraordinary things. While the latest generation of consoles has pretty well eliminated the idea that cutscene graphics will be all that much better than the in-game graphics, the point remains that they are used to illustrate pivotal story development. This usually means that the story develops in some way that the player is not allowed to control. In the word of RPGs, this means that a linear story is encroaching on the player's ability to make divergent choices. Western RPGs have handled this by making cutscenes the focus of NPC actions (Martin's final battle in Oblivion, for example) rather than main character development (think of any God of War cut scene). But the JRPG still uses cutscenes to take the choices out of the player's hands. You don't get to decide who the characters are.

Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like the idea of playing a character that I don't get to make up myself. In fact, this emphasizes an important aspect of roleplaying, i.e., assuming the personality and viewpoint of someone who is not you. And it does allow for soap-opera-esque sturm und drang. In FFVII, for example, players left to their own devices might have quickly chosen to focus their romantic intentions on either Aeris(th) or Tifa. But the script that we were forced to play had Cloud very slowly falling for both of them. And as the plot develops these feelings, to the extent that the player internalizes them, become central to the emotional experience of the story. So the JRPG trope of granting the player less control in favor of a possibly more angsty story is a viable and even valuable technique.

But sometimes the culture-gap yawns a bit too wide. I am currently playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope (International) or, for short, SO4. The amount of times that the characters take each other the "wrong way" is astounding. I realize that these emotional interactions are rooted in Japanese rather than American culture. But that realization doesn't make the interactions any less awkward or more compelling. This isn't a problem particular to SO4. All JRPGs "suffer" from it. The same can be said of anime (or what little I've seen of it), actually. The trouble is when your strongest points are your storyline and character arcs, these elements need to be very powerful. And I find myself having a difficult time taking a lot of it seriously. Let's go back to the world of FFVII for another example, this time to Advent Children. The first time I saw the movie was in the original Japanese with no subtitles. Despite not being able to follow the plot at all, I thought it was okay. I guess I assumed that when a character reacted strongly to another character's line it was because that line was meaningful. But then I saw the movie with subtitles and thought it sucked egregiously. Turns out that no one had anything interesting or insightful to say throughout the entire picture. It sure was pretty, though.

Now SO4 isn't that bad. The main character makes a pretty stupid decision at one point (with you yelling at the TV "no moron!") that has truly catastrophic consequences. And then he's unsurprisingly filled with despair and self-loathing for a significant period thereafter. This is excellent. So often in games, the meaning and consequence of character choices are nearly meaningless. Mass Effect 2 is a recent example of this failure among Western RPGs. Dragon Age: Origins is an even more atrocious example by the same perpetrator. I was pleased therefore that SO4's main character's bad choice, though seemingly trivial when made, dogged him for a long time afterwards and actually made the character *gasp* change and develop! Now there's something that almost never happens in a Western game. I only wish that his path wasn't so melodramatic. The character comes off as far too timid and even insipid for a strong protagonist much less main character. And a lot of this as to do with the the zany anime tropes that crowd this game and other JRPGs to the point of suffocation.

On that note, when are we going to see a well-developed female character in one of these games? There was promise with the disappointing FFXII with Ashe but Vaan, a clone character that stars in virtually ever JRPG, crowded her out--and then there were the rest of that game's problems, problems which are endemic to JRPGs as a whole: uninspired, repetitive combat; lack of wardrobe changes (it's 2010!!!); bafflingly overcomplicated mechanics that aren't rewarding after you've taken the effort to work them out; etc, etc. My criticism in these regards boils down to one sentence: this kind of game might be impressive on the PSP but not on the PS3. FFXIII does present us with a female lead but she looks to have the typical male personality repackaged into a body with boobies. And there are no signs that FFXIII will shed any of the other worn out mainstays of the JRPG genre. SO4 is only a year old. It was released first for xbox260 and now for PS3. But it plays no better than FFIV or DragonQuest V. While the JRPG genre continues to comfort fans used to the stereotypical aspects I've discussed above, it's not doing enough to move forward. I know that Square-Enix did not invest nearly as much into SO4 (although it was a pretty big release and was ostensibly the last in the Star Ocean franchise) as they have on FFXIII, but I have no reason to believe that the expenditure will result in anything more than the next super-opaque interface dressed up in graphics that would have impressed me around the time that it was originally supposed to have released.

I'm going to respond to your intelligent post with a comparatively succinct one. Console RPGs aren't meant to be games and haven't meant to be for a while. There are only so many times you can choose Fight and Cure before it becomes abundantly clear that you aren't playing for the deep, tactical game mechanics. My brother beat FF7 without knowing what any of the stats were except HP and MP. He didn't even know how Materia worked really, he just kept grinding when he couldn't beat someone and equipped weapons that raised his stats. Games like Fire Emblem at least pretend to be games at the same time. That being said, FF games aren't "good games," they're slightly interactive ebooks.

I'm not sure how much depth of strategy is needed to make something a "game" in your sense. I also don't know which party the duty in upon: on the developer to furnish the depth and make it essential to the experience or upon the player to not simply grind but take advantage of the system. But I see your point and agree that tactics isn't an essential part of most console games. Frankly, I kind of like that. I'm not in the camp that thinks it a shame that games have gotten easier. I traded in Demon's Souls for SO4--and however simply ok SO4 is, at least I can play it. Demon's Souls was such a nutbuster that it was pointless to even own.

Your description of FF games as "slightly interactive ebooks" is pretty spot on (although I would have gone with "interactive film" myself) but the same can be said for ME2. RPGs, whether Western or Japanese in origin, need to do something new. I see the Western developers trying (especially Bethesda and, at least seven years ago, BioWare) but Square-Enix is not doing anything. At all. I don't think that the answer lies in making the games harder. They're no more fun on higher difficulty levels, after all.

The mechanics of the system itself aren't going to make the game better by itself unless a multi-player mode is included. The only games I play are ones that challenge me with problems to solve, that push my reflexes to the max or have the ability to face human opponents. I get bored otherwise, though I realize that people play games for different reasons (god forbid, relaxation! ). Part of what hurts games is the stupid AI which seems to plague them. The graphics are so spiffy yet that grunt is running straight at the wall and is now stuck. Raising the difficulty in the case of an FF game would traditionally mean raise all the enemy's stats 10 points. I say make the enemy's smarter. Maybe the monsters shouldn't randomly switch between their magic attack and regular attack, or maybe they should aim their magic attack at the sword-fighter looking guy instead of the mystical-looking girl. In keeping the "interactive film" (better said) format, it might be nice to see leveling and XP done away with. Your characters change stats slightly by equipment choice and gain powers at set intervals in the story's advance, if the story is what everyone is claiming to be interested in. It would make things a little more tactical, but wouldn't have to be overly so. Either way, I think Pokemon has done more for the console RPG genre than anything else in recent years.

So are you suggesting that instead of level/skill gain being an abstraction necessary for the game that is built around the story, they become factors built in to the story? On the surface it sounds like a cool idea, but taking that out of the players hands would pretty much leave you with a reskinned Heavy Rain (as I understand it). Whether that's desirable or not I can't say for sure.

Could you expand on what you mean, D-note?

I think I misinterpreted Cannerus' statement a little:

In keeping the "interactive film" (better said) format, it might be nice to see leveling and XP done away with. Your characters change stats slightly by equipment choice and gain powers at set intervals in the story's advance, if the story is what everyone is claiming to be interested in.

My original thought was that taking away level/skill gain from the player would leave you with only combat and story advancement - you'd have something akin to a choose-your-own-adventure book. In the case of JRPGs, you'd have an interactive film, as Cannerus said. Now I'm thinking that could be a good idea.

Skill gain in RPGs that I've played is largely abstract. It has no link to the story - you could try and link it by suggesting that the gameplay of a FF game (for example) is exactly what happens in the story, but then your story includes a bit where you ran around in a field for half an hour fighting giant rats when you should have been rescuing the girl. If events in the story caused skill gain, that would link the two together better. But then in our literal interpretation of events, you still have grinding for levels. If there are no levels to gain, and combat relies on skillful fighting rather than brute application of stats, then you've got the ideal union of gameplay abstraction and story.

I haven't really played a lot of RPGs, so I guess I've got tired of them yet. Personally I'm looking forward to FFXIII - it won't really bother me if it does nothing new, 'cause it'll still seem new to me.

@the Dreadnote: You seem to be talking about RPGs like they should be more like action adventure games. For example, only having combat and story advancement. Or, again, gaining new skills being reflected in the story. (. . . I just realized that Legend of Zelda has never been an RPG . . . how have I missed that for so long . . . ?) I'd rather see the progression of RPG characteristics. RPGs all boil down to one concept: character development. That concept is dual faceted. On the one hand you have development of the character's personality and on the other hand you have development of the characters abilities. The first is fluffy, the second is crunchy. Ideally, they should seem to have something to do with each other. So your example of the countless fights upon the fields of Final Fantasy is a great example to show how the JRPG has not done anything on this front for the last twenty five years. Meanwhile, Oblivion deals with this nicely by leveling skills as you successfully use them. All those rather trivial battle now become sword practice. And you start to feel like a swordsman! This is the kind of ingenuity that the JRPG genre is starving for, IMO.

As to FFXIII being new to you: rest assured, if you have played ANY JRPG (especially any made by Square Enix in the last five years) you've already played an uglier version of FFXIII. All that we can hope for is that the story is good and the Western reviews of the Japanese release don't look too promising on that account.

I guess I am; as I said, little experience of the genre. Your example with Oblivion makes sense - I'll defer to you in RPG-centric matters in future

Re: FFXIII, as long as it hasn't actually gotten worse since FF7-9 (haven't played any of the newer ones) I'll be happy enough. And the only way for me to judge that properly is to try it myself.

I used to think that FF was downhill after VII . . . but then I played I - IV and found that VII was when FF started to go downhill. I'm not sure if VII was the first JRPG to be huge in the US but it was the first one I ever played. Since then I have played a couple (no FFs between VIII and XII, however) and have not seen anything outside of graphics that made me think the genre was going anywhere that FFVII hadn't already done. Now I'm not playing dozens of them a year. I don't have any kind of love for Japanese pop culture (although I don't have a particular aversion, either) so I don't know about the hundreds of games that don't show up on these Shining American Shores. I don't even know very much about anime (I just ask LunaHound when something in particular confuses me). So there's really no need to defer to me since my opinion is just . . . well, an opinion after all. And in my opinion, FFXII sucked hard compared to VII or even VIII (which I didn't like at all). I do know that the Japanese and American press loved it, however, to put my opinion in perspective.

Manchu wrote:(. . . I just realized that Legend of Zelda has never been an RPG . . . how have I missed that for so long . . . ?)

Yes, it was

Manchu wrote: In FFVII, for example, players left to their own devices might have quickly chosen to focus their romantic intentions on either Aeris(th) or Tifa. But the script that we were forced to play had Cloud very slowly falling for both of them. And as the plot develops these feelings, to the extent that the player internalizes them, become central to the emotional experience of the story.

It's more of a shove than forced. It's actually possible to romance Aerith, Tifa, Yuffie or even Barret.
It just takes more effort to date Barret and Yuffie.


I think most RPGs have the illusion of control over the story, some greater than others.
I'd hate to use Fable as an example, but evil or not, you still had to kill the same final boss(es). And after that, the game offers you a choice between your sister or the sword. You chose your sister and she leaves anyway. And if you want to keep playing the game after that, you have to be evil to do more than walk around aimlessly.

In Oblivion, you don't get the option of joining the Mythic Dawn and get to try and kill Martin.

I don't think every choice you can think of needs to be left up to the player. There really is no meaningful comparison (as opposed to contrast) between the amount of choices you make regarding character development in Oblivion and the amount you make in the standard JRPG. This is because you make very nearly no choices in the standard JRPG. Even the romance "options" you bring up regarding FFVII are very nearly meaningless (at least regarding Yuffie and Barret) only coming to any sort of expression in one scene.

FF VII was the first JRPG that broke through to a western audience in a big way.

I agree it was probably the high tide of the genre.

I played several of the earlier editions, and by the end of the game found I was doing fights by reading a book an pressing the X button with my other hand. That isn't the hallmark of a great game.

As you said, these games suffer from attention to pettifogging and pointless detail -- many hours of Chocobo breeding and the like. Training up with 27 different types of swords because each one gives you a very slightly different spell or something.

FFVII made a big breakthrough because of several factors.

Mainly, it had the advantage of being the first really good 3D graphics RPG (we forget now how revolutionary games like Ridge Race, Tekken and Tomb Raider looked in 1996...)

Secondly it had the advantage of really good looking cut scenes (same comment for the old MPEG1 video on original PlayStation.)

That rant aside...

I wonder if Japanese drama sometimes suffers in western eyes by being derived from a completely separate dramatic tradition.

In the west we can trace our history of dramatic development back to ancient Greek drama, and perhaps even to older Sanskrit texts such as the Baghadvita (spel?)

Japan has a separate history of dramatic development. Perhaps this accounts for differences in the apparent logical progression of some of their plots.

OTOH Some of the most ancient Japanese stories, ranging from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon to the Tales of the Taira to the 47 Loyal Ronin, embrace universal themes of human emotion such as love, jealousy, rivalry and vengeance.

Despite the exotic settings, these stories are fully understandable by modern westerners.

Going back to FFVII, I played the game for over 70 hours, yet I gave up at the start of Disc 3. I realised my party wasn't tough enough to beat Sephiroth, and I got bored with the grinding necessary to level up high enough.

The only FF game I have played since was Final Fantasy Tactics on Gameboy Advance and I gave up on that because I could not be fethed to collect all the different fething swords and axes.

All computer based RPGs are an illusion.

It simply isn't logically possible to design and program an open ended scenario for the player(s). The variety of options is limited by the amount of production effort required.

You have to have to force the players through a series of gates (nodes) where they are brought back on to the main line of the plot. In between the nodes you give them several optional paths.

In case you think this is just me talking, it actually comes from a lecture by Charles Cecil at Revolution Software. But when you think about the logic you will see that it is true.

There you go, I am drunk.

Zelda II doesn't count :p it was a side-scroller and top view action game with an experience element. I also agree that FFVII was nothing special. I have a special place for FFVI (the characters won me over and the story actually made me care about what happened) and Super Mario RPG (mainly because my father and I used to play it together and I didn't have to worry about "magic" or "demons" bothering him). I guess I don't understand what the modern JRPG is trying to do other than tell a story involving lots of meaningless battles. If they had a clear goal or vision for it it would be easy to see how to improve upon it.

Very, very eloquent contribution for drunk but that's Kilkrazy for you.

I'm not sure whether traditional Japanese forms of drama have much of an effect on pacing or plot in modern Japanese pop culture but I can't back that up with any kind of meaningful analysis outside of saying that kabuki isn't totally unintelligible like Noh and Noh was never really "popular" in the sense that it is much more about stylization than the story. My main problem with anime-style storylines is that the character often act in what seems to me to be an infantile way. So the multi-million dollar JRPG ends up being about as compelling as watching preschoolers play, only in ridiculously high definition CGI.

About the illusion part, I'm not sure I get what you mean. I'm not expecting a genuine model of IRL freedom but rather some signs of significant progress in a subgenre that's been largely stagnant for over a decade now.

Manchu wrote:Turns out that no one had anything interesting or insightful to say throughout the entire picture. It sure was pretty, though.

Even w/o watching a lot of anime you already understand it. As for women not being represented, that is becuase the male lead usually plays that role, going by art design. The cheat sheet is if it looks like an adult woman, it is the male lead, and if it looks like a little girl is the adult female lead.

Kilkrazy wrote:FF VII was the first JRPG that broke through to a western audience in a big way.

Sadly that is true.

Kilkrazy wrote:I agree it was probably the high tide of the genre.

You are dead to me.

The main formula behind almost every genre remains unchanged. Shooters have developed to where the enemies are smart enough to take cover, driving games get more realistic in appearance and if they want to they get realistic physics, fighting games get different ways to break your opponents face, and sports games get....well I don't play them so I don't know. Yes RPG's have needed better stories with better plots for a while now. The last RPG I played that kept me playing all the way through was Lost Odyssey (such a sad story ). Yes RPG's can stand to get overhauled but so can almost every other genre. The industry has fallen to "why make great when good sells better" and its causing problems. I know gaming is a business but one can always hope for something great. As for FF13 I have decent hopes for it. It has the elements I personally enjoy from RPG's and after all the recent games falling so horribly short its scary to have hope for a game. If it turns out to be another FF8 I will be a sad little moo cow.

Ahtman wrote:

I lold. My older brother is playing that game right now, and I kept shuttering at how feminine the characters were. I think Auron is the last manly character there was.
Anywho I dont understand why people would play a game that is so boring youd be doing something else WHILE playing it. When I first played FFVII I was blown away. It was such an awesome game. Now I recently played it on the PC as a fun throw back. And I was bored to tears, it doesnt grab me the way I remembered it. Obviously my tastes have moved on, but I can assure you, I probably wont be playing FF games of any sort for some time. Ok I lied a little, Im playing FF4(number 2 in real order) on my DSi and its been fun, but that is also a much older game lol