RPGs

[Silver]

Calling The Sims an RPG seems a bit of a stretch, NOT calling it an RPG is just as much of a stretch though. It's a perfect example of playing a role.

And I haven't played the Final Fantasy games, admittedly, from my understanding though, characters react depending on what you do, what you say, and can be affected by your choices, albeit very limited choices. If that's true, then it would qualify as interactivity both ways.

As long as the world reacts, I don't care if it's linear or not (I might not like it, but that's another subject), as long as the world interacts back, I'd say it fulfills the requirements to be an rpg. Wether that is via a linear script or a variable AI doesn't matter. But a completely static world, with no consequences, no response, and just a few linear quests, with no interactivity and no stepping out of line, is not, and can not be an RPG.

Final Fantasy, I suspect, would fall in the former cathegory, and so would The Sims, San Andreas or WoW on the other hand would fall in the second one.

 

[Fightgarr]

And I haven't played the Final Fantasy games, admittedly, from my understanding though, characters react depending on what you do, what you say, and can be affected by your choices, albeit very limited choices If that's true, then it would qualify as interactivity both ways.

The closest thing you get to a choice in Final Fantasy that will have ANY reaction from the gameworld is who is in your party. And even then its EXTREMELY scripted and those occasions are few and far between.

 

[DJKyRo]

A lot of good points here - but I have to say that, with the way I see RPGs, there actually are a stunning amount of games that fall into that category. The way I see it, if you play someone doing something, you're in an RPG.

 

[Silver]

Fightgarr, in that case I wouldn't call Final Fantasy an RPG, no. I was of the understanding that the player could have more of an effect through dialogue or other stuff, but if not, I'd call it something else. Something with the words tactical, levelling and story in it, I think, possibly add turnbased too since it seems popular to classify games by.


Kyro, how does that work out for you?

 

[Toner]

Story driven games are usually the basis for which I define what is or is not a RPG. GTA does have a focus on a story but the main appeal is the driving and shooting. Mass Effect is the opposite. Sure you get some decent action but the main appeal is the story and interaction with other characters.

Just thought I'd have a say on this bit in particular...

Recently there has been a new NWN2 expansion; Storm of Zehir.

Now, the story in the game has generally been seen as a relatively weak element, and also character interaction is rather minimal (due to the fact that 4 out of 6 of your party members can be created by you from scratch). So as the story takes a rather back-seat, and that character interaction is relatively small too, should this be defined as an RPG?

Yes.

The problem that has existed with the 'RPG' genre, is that it's so damn broad. A hell of a lot of games feature some sort of RPG-element to them, regardless of their main genre. The difficulty comes in defining the games that have that RPG-element as a CORE part to the game, instead of just a side-effect of requiring a character for the story to progress through the game.

 

[DirkGently]

Well, typically in a RPG, you pick a role and play it. Whether the game acknowledges this, like Oblivion does, or doesn't, like Fallout, it's still there, defined by your skills, spells, equipment and all that stuff. Under a broad terms one could consider Assassin's Creed and GTAIV RPGs in that you play a role, but they aren't RPGs on the same scale as Fallout or the Elder Scrolls or Final Fantasy. I feel that to qualify as an RPG, there has to be atleast some choice in the roles you can play. Whether you're a big hulking melee guy, a long range attacker, light and quick thief, spell caster or what have you, then it's a RPG. As such, COD4 and other tactical shooters are RPGs, albeit your success depends less on your stats and more on your own reflexes.

 

[Silver]

Toner, the interesting part to know is why. WHY should NWN2 be classified as an RPG?

We COULD make a complete list of all the games that have ever been created and say "this is an rpg" and "this is not an rpg", but it'd take forever, especially with new releases, and it'd be quite a chore.

Just like a mathematician CAN memorize what every number multiplied by every other number in the world becomes.

But instead, just like the mathematician, we should focus on the reason behind it, if the mathematician knows how to multiply they only need to memorize one item, the how. Just like we do, but with classifying RPG games.

And just like with the mathematician, saying 10x10 is 100 is much easier than explaining why, this just takes it a lot of steps further.