Why do JRPG seem to have such strong western influence in world building?

[Godric]

After having looked at a number of JRPG over the years I have noticed that many of them seem to be based to varying degrees on a quasi medieval Europe. I know that many of the earlier games were influence by Wizardry I think it was? But why does this still persist when we don't see similar trends in the manga/Anime industries. For instance Besides Way of the Samurai or the
Persona Series I have never seen a Japanese rpg based solidly on Japanese culture or life.

Games which seem to show good example of this are Ni no kuni and the Zelda series(particularly the earlier games). White Knight Chronicles is another example.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

 

[shrekfan246]

1) Zelda isn't a JRPG.

2) "Varying degrees on a quasi-medieval Europe" could very easily alternately be called "varying degrees on a quasi-medieval Japan". A lot of them are fantasy games, and a lot of them have sprawling worlds, so a lot of them are at least trying to be culture-neutral. The Tales franchise, for instance, seems much more Japan-esque than Europe-esque. Kingdom Hearts is neither. Resonance of Fate is some weird mixture of cyberpunk and steampunk in a fantasy universe. Final Fantasy is a mishmash of everything. The Xeno games are generally sci-fi/fantasy, and don't seem very "European" to me.

You have a point that there aren't many solidly based in Japanese culture, but then, there aren't many solidly based in any other culture either.

 

[Orange12345]

It might have something to do with D&D and other RP starting out in the west and original RPG's took a lot of inspiration from that (see dragon quest for a good example)

 

[CloudAtlas]

I guess it's also due to the fact that in Japan everything that's from the West is just seen as more cool. Perhaps not as much as it used to be, but still.

 

[RaikuFA]

Final Fantasy? Not so much. In fact, I can't think of a single series whose aesthetic contrasts so strongly with the Dungeons and Dragons archetype of WRPGs.

I think the first FF was based off of a DnD campain the dev team made.

Though there's Crimson Shroud for the 3DS, which is literally a DnD campain, you even roll dice.

 

[Launcelot111]

You have a point that there aren't many solidly based in Japanese culture, but then, there aren't many solidly based in any other culture either.

He never said 'solidly' based. He said 'loosely' based. Two very different things.

Yes, there's no exact replicas of medieval Europe but many Japanese games are heavily influenced by Medieval European settings as opposed to Japanese ones. You can see it in the architecture, clothing, language used, monsters and so on.

No, the OP said solidly based (verbatim in fact).

Not too many games that I can think of are solidly based on anything real world though. Aside from the SMT series and maybe Valkyria Chronicles or Jade Empire, most are in a world that's pretty much their own. JRPGs may borrow dwarves and western castles from time to time, but WRPG borrow katanas and warrior monks too. Enemies are taken from all sorts of folklore, and steampunk and scifi and the like are neither eastern nor western in my book.

And the language seems Western because the games are localized.