Ok I wanted to explore the minds of the western culture and find out exactly why so many of us classify the RPG with the typical "Dungeons & dragons/knights and goblins and elves/Lord of the Rings" style theme.. It seems to me like the majority of western RPGs ae based on this style and as a much greater fan to the japanese style RPG games i'm interested to find out exactly why this is so.. Is it because this theme is what people define the RPG to be? Is it because they lack the creativity to imagine their own fantasy world and so they use the stale, boring setting which seems to have been used so much in the past..? Is it because they actually prefer this theme to any other..? I just don't understand how RPG's from japan can come up with so many strange and unique worlds and stories (even in the same series, a la Final Fantasy) from FF, to pokemon, to Breath of fire and so on and so forth, and yet western developers show very very little variation in style and setting with only a select few deviating from the norm (fallout for example).. Heck even Morrowind (which I much prefer to Bethesda's latest offering btw) started to have its own distinct style and flavour which seemed to have got completely thrown out in favour of the "traditional" look and feel of the sequel.. I wonder how long it will take before western developers start getting bored with the whole knights, Orcs, goblins and dragons themes and actually decide to work there grey matter to prove that they can dream up original worlds, settings and themes as beautiful and as detailed (or even more so) than our eastern cousins.. On a side note: Here's a few other things i'd like to see get ditched from RPGs on the whole..: - The giant "rat" enemy - whats the point of fighting a giant diseased rodent? whats the point of having such an enemy on a game? nobody likes looking at it/fighting it or anything else to do with it for that matter so I hope we never see it again.. - The "spider" enemy - Again just as bad as the rat.. its cliche and boring and should be used in games in other, more interesting ways.. - The "Skeleton" enemy - Just as stupid as the last two.. and as boring.. - The "Health" potion - Can't we see some more original ways to heal a character from a life threatening wound..? - Poision - I swear its on EVERY damn game and every time it does the same thing.. you get it.. you loose health slowly.. until you die or you cure it.. Again a desperate cry for innovation please! And that's about it.. Sorry for the long rant.. Please don't flame me too hard..

I have to disagree with you, I don't find Japanese RPGs that much more inspired than Western RPGS. The only difference I see between the two is that Japanese RPGs focus more on the story, while Western RPGs focus more on the role playing. I find that most Japanese RPGs are really cliched and don't really offer that much in innovation.

Quote:Original post by JohnnyCasil
The only difference I see between the two is that Japanese RPGs focus more on the story, while Western RPGs focus more on the role playing.

how do westren or any games focus on roleplaying, is it role playing just becouse i can choose to be a fighter, mage or some class with the same abilitys but more diffrent looking, or becuse i can choose the order i want to crawl the dugeons in insted of a preset order.
this is where i wish westren games would just stop trying to be dnd, in dnd you have a gamemaster to make a gameworld where you can actually do something original or interact with the world and define your character, this just istn going to happen in computer games any time soon, becouse you limated to what the game desiner and programmer put in the game.

Quote:Original post by Kaze

Quote:Original post by JohnnyCasil
The only difference I see between the two is that Japanese RPGs focus more on the story, while Western RPGs focus more on the role playing.

how do westren or any games focus on roleplaying, is it role playing just becouse i can choose to be a fighter, mage or some class with the same abilitys but more diffrent looking, or becuse i can choose the order i want to crawl the dugeons in insted of a preset order.
this is where i wish westren games would just stop trying to be dnd, in dnd you have a gamemaster to make a gameworld where you can actually do something original or interact with the world and define your character, this just istn going to happen in computer games any time soon, becouse you limated to what the game desiner and programmer put in the game.

Western RPGs generally give you much more control over your characters. Think of all of the D&D franchise games, The Elder Scrolls, and Fable. You focus more on your character and what they can do, then some black clad figure with a big sword. Yes, this isn't the same as table top roleplaying, but comparatively, Western RPGs DO offer more roleplaying, where in Japanese RPGs you aren't playing a role so much as taking part in a story.

My favorite games are the Final Fantasy series. Japanese "RPGs" are not role-playing games at all. I would classify them as an interactive story. On the other hand, I do not feel like I am playing a role in Lineage ][ or Guild Wars either. Both of them have merits and flaws.

There are plenty of western RPGs that are not set in the traditional Tolkein inspired universe. There are some based on other pen-and-paper worlds (such as Fallout and the Vampire series). There are also a few sci-fi based ones (Deus Ex, System Shock). In my view I find the Western-style RPGs to be a lot more innovative in the gameplay area, and comparable in story to the Japanese-style RPG (obliquitory link to The Grand List of Console RPG Cliches).

As for "what is an RPG", my usual answer is "I know it when I see it". The RPG moniker is used on such a wide variety of gameplay types it is hard to classify them closely. I would not classify Diablo in the same group of games as Final Fantasy, but many people classify both as RPGs.

However, since the question is what is an RPG to me, here's my list:

• The player must be able to choose aspects of the personality of the hero to a reasonable degree, i.e. choose their own role which is reflected in the gameplay. Since this has to be limited in computer games, this is usually done by choosing character types or skill choices. Since most Japanese RPGs fail this (the hero is fixed), I would classify them closer to adventure games. The "reasonable degree" of customisability is a fairly arbitrary factor which depends from person to person, but in my view it has to be higher than just choosing your path or weapons through a level, and has to do with how the hero reacts to the story.
  
• The game provides an explicit or implicit plot (or plots) to a greater extent then other genres.

The level of how well a game achieves those two points describes how "RPG" a game is. An interesting thing is that I consider The Sims to be more of an RPG than Final Fantasy [grin].