What makes a game a RPG?

[walrusaurus]

It can't be a story, a moral choice or an open world, because some RPG games don't have any of those (like Final Fantasy XIII . Stats (statistics) you say? The ability to customize the character you are playing? Nope. Mass Effect 2 is a RPG (an action RPG, but still), but it rarely has customization apart from choosing a class.

Thats some backwards reasoning. Your saying ME2 is a RPG. ME2 didn't have character choice. Therefore character choice cannot define rpgs.
When it is much more logical to claim that RPGs have choice. ME2 didn't have choice, therefore ME2 is not an RPG.

In both your making an assumption. But in the first your assuming a definition of RPG that inherently doesn't have X in order to prove that rpg's don't have X. There's a name for that but its been 5 years since i've taken a logic course so i don't remember what it it.

 

[Thaius]

A game that is deep and involved (both in story/world and gameplay), and allows player customization over one or more elements of its design.

That is to say, both Mass Effect and Final Fantasy have deep and involved stories/worlds. Final Fantasy has intense player customization of the battle system, and thus is an RPG. Mass Effect has intense player customization of the protagonist and, by extension, the story, and thus is an RPG.

The idea of an RPG is that you get to play a role in a deeper way than most games; you don't just control movement, you control details. It is not required that it be a specific type of details, or all details, just a specific type of details beyond controlling the movements and actions of the character.

Keep in mind the existence of genre mixing; so while I would classify, say, Bioshock as a first-person shooter before an RPG, the RPG elements are certainly there and make it a deeper experience than your average shooter.

 

[4RM3D]

The term RPG refers to gameplay elements borrowed from DnD and other tabletop games, the only element of said games that could be fully replicated in video games. It was originated by Richard Garriot's Ultima series, and the Wizardry series, which later inspired the first true "JRPG' as we know it, Dragon Quest. Therefore, games that continue from that lineage, and share that gameplay- level ups, epic quests, character growth and story, customization, etc., are RPGs. Not all games that HAVE those elements are RPGs, but the culmination of all these elements do. That's why Final Fantasy is an RPG, and why Skyrim is an RPG, and why Call of Duty or Gran Turismo are NOT RPGs.

Thanks for pointing that out.

*snip*

An interesting read... thank you for elaborating. While I do not disagree with your standpoint, it does make me wonder one thing. You refer to the past and how RPG games came into being. But don't you think that definition might be outdated with the new(er) generation of games; that maybe we have altered the meaning to a new acceptable standard?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yes, some people do still define ME2 as an RPG when it's most clearly not.

More like a third person shooter with experience points and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of talking.

The Mass Effect series is one of the few series that ARE RPGs. A RPG is about making dialogue and story choices, not leveling up characters. A RPG doesn't even need a combat system or leveling. A RPG is all about choosing what to do and where to go outside of combat. JRPGs aren't RPGs because there are no decisions to be made that do not pertain to combat.

A role-playing game(RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development.

Uh, no.

A role-playing game must have some sort of leveling and experience. That's part of it. In fact, that's a big part of it. Besides, according to your definition, JRPG's are not actually RPG's and I would beg to differ on that one a great bit, even though I'm not a big fan of JRPG's.

Mass Effect 2 does have that leveling and experience but ultimately the game is driven by two things 1) Talking and 2) Shooting.

Let me say something about these "choices" you claim the game has. Oh, it has them alright, but it's a poorly veiled illusion. You essentially have a plot map that Bioware laid out for you with a few different branches for the choices you made and... that's it. These choices have no real impact on changing the way the narrative plays out, except for the ending of ME2. So what if you chose to let everyone but Shephard die in ME2 and carried that save over to ME3? Again, I doubt it will have much impact on the story line of the next game beyond some different details and different characters in different spots.

Shooting, just to say something about it, depends far more on the players' third person shooter skill than it does on the player's current level of experience. Even after playing the game for a good amount of time, I cannot tell you if experience has any real impact on your character at all.

Mass Effect is in no real way a full RPG. It's got some of those elements, but it is most definitely an action game with lots of talking.

A RPG does NOT need character leveling or experience. There are several pen and paper one-shot RPGs (like Ninja Burger) that obviously don't having leveling as it's one play session and you're done. And yeah, JRPGs are not RPGs as every story point and line of character dialog is predetermined (you have no choices to make in JRPGs). I like a good JRPG better than a good WRPG because giving you dialog and story freedom in a video game is harder than creating a game with a completely pre-defined story and characters.

Yeah, Mass Effect doesn't have a great deal of choice in the main storyline (because that is hard as hell to do in a video game) but you get pretty big choices to make in the side stories (mainly loyalty missions). Plus, you get heaps of dialog choices to define your character (your Commander Sheppard). Have you ever played a pen and paper RPG? Because there is more talking than combat. Deciding what your character says is a core component of a RPG.

Combat is not nearly as important to a RPG as you make it out to be, combat is not even a requirement for a RPG. Also the combat system can literally be anything from turn-based combat with swords and magic (standard DnD) to straight shooting (like Mass Effect). RPGs are so flexible, they can have any type of gameplay; a RPG could be a platformer. Heavy Rain would be a great example of a RPG if it had dialog choices as there was a decent amount of story choices but the dialog was pretty much all pre-determined, and you couldn't go anywhere you wanted either.

Both authors and major publishers of tabletop role-playing games consider them to be a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling. Events, characters and narrative structure give a sense of a narrative experience, and the game need not have a strongly-defined storyline. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player at a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story.

 

[Stemer]

Once I played a really great RPG.
I could chose what kind of person I wanted my character to be, I could be a pacifist, a warmonger, a bully, a bigot, a peacekeeper, a diplomat, a scientist, a crazy man, hell anything I wanted. The best bit was that I was free to write my own story rather than follow a pre-determined path.

It was stat heavy from the start, and even on the lower difficulty settings you still had to keep loads and loads of figures and percentages in check every turn. Stats affected every part of the game, from shooting and stabbing to negotiating.

It was a bit sparse on NPCs but it made up for it by tracking not only my relationship with them, but also the relationships they had with each other, and this affected game play significantly, with them fighting amongst themselves, or forming there own alliances.

In fact I think I might go play some CIV4 right now

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

You seem slightly angry.

What you described, by the way, seems more like a feature of a game than the game itself. What is the ultimate goal in such a video game? Certainly combat isn't necessary to make a game, though I admit that my enjoyment of any game often leans toward how fluid the combat and movement is.

No, I have not played pen-and-paper RPG's. Any of them. I could have sworn that we were talking about video games, though. While video game RPG's did descend from tabletop RPG's, they are at this point their own entity, similar to how rock music descended from gospel.

And if how you put it is so, then Bioshock is an RPG. So is any game with multiple endings that depend on your choices throughout the game, presence of other common role-playing elements (XP, leveling) be damned. Star Wars The Force Unleashed would also be one as there's a choice in that one as well.

It's just that if your definition is true, then the term "RPG" encompasses so much that it almost becomes irrelevant. Instead of being a genre, like it has been considered since it became part of video games, it becomes a feature of a game. You could say "RPG" all day and by your definition, no one would have any idea what to expect with the gameplay.

Regardless of yours or my own opinions, Mass Effect 2 leans far more toward being a third person shooter with lots of talking than being anything akin to an RPG like Dragon Age or Baldur's Gate or whatever else you count as an RPG (a video game one).

I guess here I should also note that I know that Baldur's Gate was a DnD inspired RPG before you blurt that in your retort.

I get slightly irritated when people say Mass Effect isn't a RPG, it's a shooter. Bioware is one of the few devs that actually try to incorporate actual role-playing into their games.

How can you get my definition of a RPG so wrong? I even stated that a game like Heavy Rain is NOT a RPG because there is no (very little) dialog choice plus you can't go wherever you want. The game has a pretty decent amount of story choice and multiple endings and I said it's not a RPG. So, how do you get that I consider any game with multiple endings a RPG? Bioshock is pretty much the complete opposite of a RPG because there's an actual plot point that ensures the game is not a RPG.

Any game that emphasizes dialog choice and story choice is a RPG. The gameplay can be literally anything. I would say the game would need to have an open world feel to it so you have the ability to choose where to go as well.

The term RPG refers to gameplay elements borrowed from DnD and other tabletop games, the only element of said games that could be fully replicated in video games. It was originated by Richard Garriot's Ultima series, and the Wizardry series, which later inspired the first true "JRPG' as we know it, Dragon Quest. Therefore, games that continue from that lineage, and share that gameplay- level ups, epic quests, character growth and story, customization, etc., are RPGs. Not all games that HAVE those elements are RPGs, but the culmination of all these elements do. That's why Final Fantasy is an RPG, and why Skyrim is an RPG, and why Call of Duty or Gran Turismo are NOT RPGs.

Games weren't complex enough to have allowed for much story and dialog choice. Games have come much further along that you can now have role-playing elements like dialog choice and story decisions. Something like Alpha Protocol where you can choose to kill the weapons dealer is a great example of role-playing; do you kill him and lose the ability to buy guns from him or do you let him live so you can get better guns but the enemies also will have better guns. That one decision alone hinges on what type of character you are playing as (are you a killer?) and the playstyle of your character (are you focused on using guns or stealth/melee?), both factor into your decision.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

So an RPG is a game where you have both dialog choice and you have some choice as to where to go next?

I am sorry, but that is far too broad to be anywhere near correct or even relevant to anything. Anything at all. Either make something far more specific and concrete or this little debate is over (and Mass Effect stays a shooter!)

How is that too broad when very few games would be considered RPGs under my definition?

More talking than shooting, which is what makes Mass Effect a RPG. Plus, you don't even need to shoot much if you pick the Biotic or Engineer class.

 

[Bad Jim]

It's all about roll play. Stats maketh the RPG. A good RPG player is one who understands the game mechanics and creates his character with them in mind. Throw RPG elements into action games and the best players will still be the ones with the fastest reactions.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I understand what you're saying, but what does the game entail? If you say a game is a 3D action game, you can be guaranteed that you'll be doing a good amount of melee fighting with a 3D camera angle in fairly closed in spaces. If you say a game is a first person shooter, then I'd be willing to bet that you'll be using guns to shoot things from a first person perspective. If you're playing a puzzle game...

According to your definition, an RPG is a talking simulator with choices as to where you're going to go to talk to people. The brief definitions I gave of genres above is quite broad - "puzzle game" covers everything from Bejeweled to Portal - but at least you've got a good idea of what it entails. Solving puzzles. No RPG, video game RPG, that I know of is completely dialogue and traveling, ergo it's not a very good descriptor of what playing an RPG involves. Emphasis on playing - what is the game part of this going to include? Not that picking lines of dialogue from a list can't be engaging, as Bioware themselves have proven time and time again, but that's not really fully playing a role, it's just telling your character what to say.

The RPG genre is currently much more broad than my definition. Current RPGs have quite a broad range, and you have no idea how each game will play just based on the fact that the game is a RPG. The following games play nothing like each other: Final Fantasy XIII, Disgaea, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dark Souls, World of Warcraft, Persona, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, etc. None of those games really play much like each other and they are all RPGs. The only constant is that they all feature leveling up your character(s) and being able to go where you want to a degree (tackle side quests and whatnot), but that doesn't describe the gameplay at all; the gameplay could be 1st/3rd-person shooting, standard or strategic turn-based combat, deep hack and slash mechanics (Dark Souls), simplistic hack and slash combat (Skyrim), etc.

At least under my definition, you can go into the game expecting dialog and story decisions being emphasized, and then the gameplay is up for grabs. And, as I've shown, the role-playing (dialog and story choices) AND the gameplay are already both up for grabs in RPGs nowadays; if you only know that a game is a RPG and nothing else, you literally have no idea of how it'll play, Dark Souls and Mass Effect couldn't be more different (and if you played Mass Effect, you wouldn't be able to infer the type of gameplay Dark Souls has just from your experience playing Mass Effect or vice verse). My definition is much much less broad than how the RPG genre is currently defined.

And picking what you character says can be more engaging than actual gameplay. Mass Effect's dialog and story choices are more engaging than COD's campaign gameplay. I like to play pen and paper RPGs because I can literally say and do whatever the fuck I want, I still enjoy the combat though but it's not the reason I play. In a game of Mutants and Masterminds, I was on a talk show shooting roman candles into the audience, that kind of freedom just isn't possible in a video game.

 

[ntw3001]

A game's RPG-hood is governed by the same process that governs whether that game is 'art'. If a term has no concrete meaning, it's a waste of time trying to figure out exactly where it is and isn't applicable.

I wish this acronym would die out, but I guess it won't. Not until some series of snappier, more meaningful acronyms take its place. Acronyms that actually describe something about the game! Who's with me?

 

[otakon17]

I think the most defining trait of an RPG is the fact that the choices of the player effect the outcome of the story and even the development of the other characters in the story. Not just in gameplay terms, like beating a certain boss or finding a certain item but in the choices of how they play their character.

Other things that have become synonymous with RPG's are of course stats and leveling, to show the growth of your characters as a hard number. Whereas platformers and adventure games usually show this by the growth of the skill of the player themselves, it's the growth of the characters in RPG's that reflects the progress of the player.

But, that's just the way I see it. On a side note, my favorite RPG's are Bioware made.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Question: Final Fantasy XIII, Disgaea, Persona - these are all JRPG's but earlier you said JRPG's weren't really RPG's. What gives?

I was listing a bunch of games that are considered RPGs by professional gaming sites. I wouldn't consider most of the games I listed to be RPGs like Final Fantasy and Disgaea (which isn't a knock against them). I think Persona might have some role-playing elements, I haven't played them but 1 of my friends does (I know how the game plays to a degree), and I think someone said Persona has some role-playing elements when I made a post awhile back stating that JRPGs aren't RPGs.

 

[Therumancer]

[
An interesting read... thank you for elaborating. While I do not disagree with your standpoint, it does make me wonder one thing. You refer to the past and how RPG games came into being. But don't you think that definition might be outdated with the new(er) generation of games; that maybe we have altered the meaning to a new acceptable standard?

No, because I feel the proper definition of some things cannot change. The arguement that language always evolves based on the way people wind up using a word is nonsense, because while that can happen in rare circumstances over the passage of centuries it would mean it would be impossible to misuse a word and toddlers would have changed the dictionary into nonsense long ago.

That, and the simple fact that we're having this discussion because there is so much disagreement over the term and what it means. It's not like one absolute alternative meaning has slipped into common usage for decades on end or whatever.

In the case of the term RPG a lot of it comes from ignorance, and desired association. Overall not that many people have played PnP RPGs, and were introduced to RPGs through computer games... and what's more many of those things were current generation RPGS aimed at casuals. The definition is being based on what appealed to the person playing the game. The problem is that a lot of producers of games realize that with the current "geek chick" where everyone wants to be seen as a smart science fiction and gaming nerd, while still somehow being normal and socially acceptable, RPGs might not be understood but are associated with smarter nerds, so of course this kind of cred can come from being thought to play RPGs. Thus the stamp is put on a lot of things where it doesn't belong for a sort of consumer self-validation. I'm probably not articulating that well though.

Honestly your typical faux-RPG player will crank up something from before gaming was mainstream and then start complaining about how the game isn't flashy enough, and more importantly that all the numbers make their head hurt (so to speak), because your typical RPG player expects something more similar to an interactive movie and does not get that RPGs existed long before that technology even existed. In many cases the understanding of why RPG playing was associated with intelligence and a degree of social ineptitude (it can take a lot of effort to figure these things out... RPGing becoming a lifestyle or part of one in many cases... hence you know... actual nerds), and of course that causes them to realize they really aren't what they had pretensions of being in terms of intelligence and the abillity to enjoy the abstract. They really don't want what is largely an intellectual exercise, just to think of themselves as enjoying such things and wanting other people to think of them that way. Hence attempts to re-define RPG, while still hopefully retaining the associations the people making the new definition want.

Some people would say an RPG is not a stat building game (which is actually pretty close to what it is, but not an entirely accurate definition, as the idea is statistical simulation rather than improvement, although improvement exists to represent change/learning, etc...), in my case I would counter by saying an RPG is not an audio/visual "My Little Golden Book" with some buttons to mash.

 

[4RM3D]

...Hence attempts to re-define RPG, while still hopefully retaining the associations the people making the new definition...

"redefine"... I love the euphemism you are using there . I have noticed most RPG games have changed over the years, going from number crunching to numberless RPGs (every calculation happens behind the scenes, if anything is happening at all). Some people might even say that the RPG genre have been butchered, dumbed down; making it more main stream. While other people have found a new experience with RPG games that wasn't possible before due to limitations in technology and money.

By your definition RPG games have (nearly) gone extinct. I personally don't know what to think. The old Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale era has passed and I do miss it. Even Final Fantasy changed over the years. Each installment is becoming less "Final Fantasy-ish". But I don't know... I don't know whether RPG games have gotten better or worse or just different. I guess the old school die-hards/elite might say RPG games have lost their essence. Hmmm...

 

[alloneword]

The response to this question can actually be found on this very site:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_283/8400-Introducing-The-Escapists-Genre-Wheel.3