I'm talking about the definition of an RPG, video game doesn't matter as an RPG is an RPG regardless of medium. Obviously that definition fails because every video game is an RPG with that definition.
What does any of that stuff have to do with video games?
You said I come from a tabletop RPG perspective and expect video games to adhere to them, which I totally don't.
Far Cry 3's moment to moment gameplay doesn't change all that much based on how your character progresses. Sure he will shoot better with certain guns, but most of those guns behave extremely similar to each other and the main character can still use other weapons proficiently.
As far as claiming Bayonetta has more play options than Dark Souls proves to me that you either didn't play it or didn't understand the depth of the options available to you. It's interesting that I only ever see your name come up in topics complaining about Dark Souls in one way or another. Even when you create threads about entirely different games (Amalur), it always comes back to saying that game is better than Dark Souls in one way or another.
Far Cry 3 has a stealth system whereas Dark Souls doesn't and the invisibility ring doesn't count. I couldn't play as a stealthy rogue in Dark Souls whereas I actually can in Far Cry 3 because Far Cry 3's AI is so much better than Dark Souls. Melee combat isn't very different at all in Dark Souls from playing as a thief with a light shield (as I could block pretty much every enemy's attack) to playing as with a great sword with heavy armor and a big shield, you're just slower or faster really. Then, magic in Dark Souls is pretty disappointing as well. At least the AI in Far Cry 3 isn't so braindead that they don't move when you shoot them from afar like Dark Souls. Bayonetta's playstyles based on equipment vary more than Dark Souls.
Yeah, it is. If shooting is not the most important part of a shooter, then Mirror's Edge is a fucking shooter. Hell, Dark Souls is a shooter too. Why would RPGs be any different?
weirdo8977 said:
if i have to be honest i wouldn't really consider games like the "Longest Journey" and "Mass Effect"(or most games really) rpg's. Instead, games like Mount and Blade are rpg's. games where your thrown into the world to do as you please. Not have a set story line to follow.
The Longest Journey is pretty much the ideal point and click adventure game. My point is that would The Longest Journey be considered an RPG if the main character (April Ryan) had to fight enemies every few steps like say a typical Final Fantasy game?
Yeah, it is. If shooting is not the most important part of a shooter, then Mirror's Edge is a fucking shooter. Hell, Dark Souls is a shooter too. Why would RPGs be any different?
weirdo8977 said:
if i have to be honest i wouldn't really consider games like the "Longest Journey" and "Mass Effect"(or most games really) rpg's. Instead, games like Mount and Blade are rpg's. games where your thrown into the world to do as you please. Not have a set story line to follow.
The Longest Journey is pretty much the ideal point and click adventure game. My point is that would The Longest Journey be considered an RPG if the main character (April Ryan) had to fight enemies every few steps like say a typical Final Fantasy game?
Sure and CoD is a great TPS as we're free to ignore a third of words describing a genre. How your role mechanically affects a portion of the game as in classes stats is not important to making a RPG. Good to know we're finally on the same page and completely ignoring arguments.
Yeah, it is. If shooting is not the most important part of a shooter, then Mirror's Edge is a fucking shooter. Hell, Dark Souls is a shooter too. Why would RPGs be any different?
weirdo8977 said:
if i have to be honest i wouldn't really consider games like the "Longest Journey" and "Mass Effect"(or most games really) rpg's. Instead, games like Mount and Blade are rpg's. games where your thrown into the world to do as you please. Not have a set story line to follow.
The Longest Journey is pretty much the ideal point and click adventure game. My point is that would The Longest Journey be considered an RPG if the main character (April Ryan) had to fight enemies every few steps like say a typical Final Fantasy game?
ok fine. but my Mass Effect point still stands. you can't have a liner story with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end but still have elements of serious RP.
Phoenixmgs said:
I spent more time role-playing in Mass Effect than I did shooting. You spent more time dungeon crawling than role-playing in DS.
however, player skill is indeed involved in live-action RPGs and those existed before tabletop RPGs. Player skill is also involved in tabletop RPGs to how your character talks and converses among player characters and NPCs; if you want your character to be funny, you can't just say "my character says something funny", you have to think of something funny to say so your character can't be funny unless you're funny.
Ri-i-i-ight. So that's why characters have social skills and attributes in PnP and (at least some) LARPs. Because in order for your character to speak, say, German, you yourself have to know German, and in order for your ultra-good-at-talking character to bamboozle somebody with a conversation about spoons, you yourself have to be an avid spoon enthusiast. I always wandered why would I need to put points into Language or Speechcraft, or Knowledge: Spooons on the character sheet - it turns out, I was merely rating myself. And I suppose we roll the dice and do some arithmetic based on those numbers because...we like the sound of dice and we are addicted to maths. That really clears it up for me.
Say, what's the custom when you have a character that knows Alchemy or similar? Do you bring your alchemy beakers, materials, and stuff to the game, or is the GM supposed to supply you with them?
ok fine. but my Mass Effect point still stands. you can't have a liner story with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end but still have elements of serious RP.
You still have a good deal of control over your Shepard. You can only have a story so open-ended in a video game, just the amount of writing to have 2 branching paths is double the writing, and it just keeps going up exponentially the more branching paths you keep adding in. Even in pen and paper RPGs, the DM does lead you down a set path. Of course, the nature of pen and paper games allows for dynamics with the story, plus the DM is able to alter things based on what happen in the previous session(s), which you can't do in a video game. Mass Effect gives you important side choices because you can't really have several major choices that greatly change the main storyline. My friends and I discussed many decisions in Mass Effect for hours, I still argue to them that killing...
Mordin was the ethically right choice.
DoPo said:
So that's why characters have social skills and attributes in PnP and (at least some) LARPs. Because in order for your character to speak, say, German, you yourself have to know German, and in order for your ultra-good-at-talking character to bamboozle somebody with a conversation about spoons, you yourself have to be an avid spoon enthusiast. I always wandered why would I need to put points into Language or Speechcraft, or Knowledge: Spooons on the character sheet - it turns out, I was merely rating myself. And I suppose we roll the dice and do some arithmetic based on those numbers because...we like the sound of dice and we are addicted to maths. That really clears it up for me.
Say, what's the custom when you have a character that knows Alchemy or similar? Do you bring your alchemy beakers, materials, and stuff to the game, or is the GM supposed to supply you with them?
I know there's a diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, etc. skills. But each player's speech ability does come into play even with those kind of skills. To properly bluff, you need to make a series of semi-believable lies that lead into a rather unbelievable lie instead of just coming out with that unbelievable lie.
ok fine. but my Mass Effect point still stands. you can't have a liner story with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end but still have elements of serious RP.
You still have a good deal of control over your Shepard. You can only have a story so open-ended in a video game, just the amount of writing to have 2 branching paths is double the writing, and it just keeps going up exponentially the more branching paths you keep adding in. Even in pen and paper RPGs, the DM does lead you down a set path. Of course, the nature of pen and paper games allows for dynamics with the story, plus the DM is able to alter things based on what happen in the previous session(s), which you can't do in a video game. Mass Effect gives you important side choices because you can't really have several major choices that greatly change the main storyline. My friends and I discussed many decisions in Mass Effect for hours, I still argue to them that killing...
Mordin was the ethically right choice.
DoPo said:
So that's why characters have social skills and attributes in PnP and (at least some) LARPs. Because in order for your character to speak, say, German, you yourself have to know German, and in order for your ultra-good-at-talking character to bamboozle somebody with a conversation about spoons, you yourself have to be an avid spoon enthusiast. I always wandered why would I need to put points into Language or Speechcraft, or Knowledge: Spooons on the character sheet - it turns out, I was merely rating myself. And I suppose we roll the dice and do some arithmetic based on those numbers because...we like the sound of dice and we are addicted to maths. That really clears it up for me.
Say, what's the custom when you have a character that knows Alchemy or similar? Do you bring your alchemy beakers, materials, and stuff to the game, or is the GM supposed to supply you with them?
I know there's a diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, etc. skills. But each player's speech ability does come into play even with those kind of skills. To properly bluff, you need to make a series of semi-believable lies that lead into a rather unbelievable lie instead of just coming out with that unbelievable lie.
Well looking through my AD&D books ill just have to disagree with you. There was never a limit put on what you could or couldn't do. In Dark Souls there are great limits and restraints put on the player that make any kind of "role playing" impossible other than stat build and weapon choice.
What kind of restraints? they give you several covenants with different alignments to choose from. You can decide to play offline, invade others for your profit or help others. You can decide to recreate virtually any enemy in the game and roleplay as them. The only limit is your own imagination
You can't do EVERYTHING but that constraint applies to any video game.
I don't see where you roleplay as anything, you just fight as someone, the covenant choices are little more than that of a perk that you have to unlock by meeting some requirement or another. Playing offline, co-op or invading are no different than options available in many non-rpg games. As far as limitations...well what are your options in the game? Well there is fight...and that's pretty much it, combat, its the point of the game and its done by design. I would say its more along the line of a create you own character castlevania game which is the most accurate comparison I can come up with. I feel it falls well short of an rpg but many rpg claims do. I could say free roaming action game with jrpg elements at best.
How has this argument gone on for 5 pages? Do people really care that much about whether a game holds a mostly meaningless genre label or not, or is this really just 5 pages of everyone quibbling over their individual definitions of what constitutes an RPG and why their specific definition should be the one everyone else uses.
Even the people agreeing with each other on whether the game qualifies as an RPG or not, are operating of different definitions and arguments, this entire topic seems to have degenerated into a contest into seeing who can have the most pedantic definition of an RPG.
Even if one side wins, nothing actually changes about Dark Souls itself, the game is completely unaffected whether we call it an RPG, an action RPG, a plain old action game, a hack-and-slash, hell, we could call it an adventure game and proceed to have an equally pointless and empty debate about whether that label applies or not.
I don't mean to sound judgmental, I really don't care whether Dark Souls is an RPG or not, but I am curious why people here seem to care so much about the game being called an RPG. If we are going to start trying to specify the definition of RPG, it would be far more useful to start with things like JRPGs and RPG mechanics in other genres, rather than trying to single out specific games and working our way from there.
Like a hell of a lot of games out there now days it takes ideas from multiple genres, it's an RPG, with punishingly hard twitch reaction based action gameplay and the bleak general feel of crushing loneliness that is typical of a survival horror or at least survival game.
So, I in short, I disagree, it's not that dark souls isn't an RPG, it's that it's not just an RPG, but like I said, in today's market a multi-genred game is hardly unique or even surprising. Is it?
Well looking through my AD&D books ill just have to disagree with you. There was never a limit put on what you could or couldn't do. In Dark Souls there are great limits and restraints put on the player that make any kind of "role playing" impossible other than stat build and weapon choice.
What kind of restraints? they give you several covenants with different alignments to choose from. You can decide to play offline, invade others for your profit or help others. You can decide to recreate virtually any enemy in the game and roleplay as them. The only limit is your own imagination
You can't do EVERYTHING but that constraint applies to any video game.
I don't see where you roleplay as anything, you just fight as someone, the covenant choices are little more than that of a perk that you have to unlock by meeting some requirement or another. Playing offline, co-op or invading are no different than options available in many non-rpg games. As far as limitations...well what are your options in the game? Well there is fight...and that's pretty much it, combat, its the point of the game and its done by design. I would say its more along the line of a create you own character castlevania game which is the most accurate comparison I can come up with. I feel it falls well short of an rpg but many rpg claims do. I could say free roaming action game with jrpg elements at best.
RPGs are not what you think they are. Is it a hybrid? Maybe Zelda is action RPG now called CRPG, Lulzrim falls under that category as well. But more often than not that just describes the game play while something like Survival Horror is more how deep the mechanics go. Dead space and the first few RE games are SH but I would not lump them under the action game banner.
So that's why characters have social skills and attributes in PnP and (at least some) LARPs. Because in order for your character to speak, say, German, you yourself have to know German, and in order for your ultra-good-at-talking character to bamboozle somebody with a conversation about spoons, you yourself have to be an avid spoon enthusiast. I always wandered why would I need to put points into Language or Speechcraft, or Knowledge: Spooons on the character sheet - it turns out, I was merely rating myself. And I suppose we roll the dice and do some arithmetic based on those numbers because...we like the sound of dice and we are addicted to maths. That really clears it up for me.
Say, what's the custom when you have a character that knows Alchemy or similar? Do you bring your alchemy beakers, materials, and stuff to the game, or is the GM supposed to supply you with them?
I know there's a diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, etc. skills. But each player's speech ability does come into play even with those kind of skills. To properly bluff, you need to make a series of semi-believable lies that lead into a rather unbelievable lie instead of just coming out with that unbelievable lie.
I know you are trying really hard, but you could at least lay off the outright misinformation. If I make a character who is a good singer, I don't want to sing myself - I suck at that, I just want to say "my character sings a moving melody" and that's it. I do not play characters because I can do what they can - in fact, it's just the opposite - I want them to do what I cannot. Therefore we have skills and skill checks in place - they allow us to do exactly that - say "my character does X" and then roll the dice.
I know there's a diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, etc. skills. But each player's speech ability does come into play even with those kind of skills. To properly bluff, you need to make a series of semi-believable lies that lead into a rather unbelievable lie instead of just coming out with that unbelievable lie.
I've played a lot of table top RPGs in my life, and I have never met a DM that actually required you to act out every social skill check in a belivable manner, or at all. At most, you may be required to come up with a summary or outline of what you want your character to do, if it's something really off the wall you may get a penalty to your roll, but I've yet to meet a DM that will deny an attempt at a social skill check just because the player can't come up with a good lie, song, or speech themselves, that's like requiring the bard in your party to write actual lyrics to all his songs..
Now, most good DM's I've played with do reward bonus XP for actually acting out a conversation in a believable manner, as an incentive for roleplaying well, but again, I've never seen it actually required as part of the attempt, especially if the player is relying heavily on skills and dice rolls.
Is it a game in which you are given responsibilities or the choices of a man/woman, and made to play their role as the main form of storytelling?
If so, it's an RPG.
Zelda falls into "RPG" sometimes, due to the mostly frea-roaming and many, many sidequests in the games. Just don't call it an RPG on a forum (or at least get some popcorn) because the fans who are willing to discuss the term "RPG" on the internet aren't the kind of people you'd want to meet in real life anyway.
Dark Souls is, yes, a very interesting mix of survival horror and RPG. I'd imagine, if Silent Hill ever gets good again *fingers crossed* then it'll probably incorporate RPG elements, such as weapon types or specific levels (because everyone else's doing it).
For the whole secondary RPG elements aspect... RPG elements can add a lot into a game, such as Bioshock - even if it was tiny - and Skullgirls also has a few (the game tracks what characters you play as and how good you are, and uses this system to pit you against certain players) but all in all, they're usually mercilessely thrown in because fuck yeah XP.
if i have to be honest i wouldn't really consider games like the "Longest Journey" and "Mass Effect"(or most games really) rpg's. Instead, games like Mount and Blade are rpg's. games where your thrown into the world to do as you please. Not have a set story line to follow.
RPG is kind of a nebulous term to begin with. You usually play some sort of role in ANY given game. Call of Duty? You play the role of a soldier. Chrono Trigger? Play play the (primary) role of Chrono (and his friends)
Perhaps instead of labelling a game "RPG" and "Not an RPG" we should just affix a sliding scale of "Amount of Player Agency" and "Player character progressions depth".
Well looking through my AD&D books ill just have to disagree with you. There was never a limit put on what you could or couldn't do. In Dark Souls there are great limits and restraints put on the player that make any kind of "role playing" impossible other than stat build and weapon choice.
What kind of restraints? they give you several covenants with different alignments to choose from. You can decide to play offline, invade others for your profit or help others. You can decide to recreate virtually any enemy in the game and roleplay as them. The only limit is your own imagination
You can't do EVERYTHING but that constraint applies to any video game.
I don't see where you roleplay as anything, you just fight as someone, the covenant choices are little more than that of a perk that you have to unlock by meeting some requirement or another. Playing offline, co-op or invading are no different than options available in many non-rpg games. As far as limitations...well what are your options in the game? Well there is fight...and that's pretty much it, combat, its the point of the game and its done by design. I would say its more along the line of a create you own character castlevania game which is the most accurate comparison I can come up with. I feel it falls well short of an rpg but many rpg claims do. I could say free roaming action game with jrpg elements at best.
Where did I say that? I only said your options are limited as to what you can do no matter what you create your character to be. All the role play things you make up in your head can never be reflected in the game-play of Dark Souls. Aside from the occasional you-tube video showcasing Dark Souls players creativity in trying to escape the confines of a limited game.
I view it as an action adventure, and a damn good one at that, It mostly reminds me of games like Shifters, Warriors of Might and Magic and Deathtrap Dungeon only a bit more polished and well thought out (understatement of the year!).
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
