I agree with Jiro's assessment of the tone and I'm going to stop the condescension and namecalling.
But Wolf, it is outrageous that you accuse me "frothing at the mouth" and ignoring you when you have yet to make a single contribution of substance to this thread and its subject matter. I talked about FFVII to flamebait you, and I've only elaborated because Vivi challenged my position. He's actually partaken in a back and forth about the subject matter and I really owe him an apology (I'm sorry dude), because this originally stemmed from your assertion that:
So, along your line of thinking, no genre can possibly have "unique strengths," because there are no genres with unique mechanics. What's ironic is that I actually haven't ignored you:Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
So I'll ask you one more time, how does cinematic expression existing in other genres stop it from being a strength to JRPGs? How does its existence in other titles stop it from differentiating JRPGs from WRPGs?
But to go on your last post, how could the nonexclusivity of JRPG mechanics affect "what JRPG are at their core that makes them unique," your alleged desire to define the genre? Isn't it a collection of strengths, or something entirely different that defines a genre?
I'm not going to pretend ShinGundam came to my defense, but his latest post illustrates how your line of thinking is untenable:
I'm going to steer this issue into the topic of this thread, in that one difference between WRPGs and JRPGs are their definability.
Vivi pointed this out at the end of his post before his last: the trouble of defining JRPGs. The reason I'd rather talk about what differentiates JRPGs from WRPGs as opposed to defining JRPGs as Wolf urged is because, as the Extra Credits video Vivi posted suggests, the terms "JRPG" and "WRPG" are largely arbitrary. Games that look like JRPGs such as Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood have come out of the West and games that look like WRPGs such as King's Field have come out of Japan.
Despite the lack of substance to their names, one major difference between the two is that we actually can come close to defining the WRPG. One of the few points I made that remained undisputed by Laddy is that WRPGs don't have nearly the level of subgenres as JRPGs have. Demon's Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, and White Knight Chronicles are three recent games that exemplify three very old, but very recognizable pillars of JRPGs. Yet they are absolutely nothing alike. Their combat systems have (almost) nothing in common. Even the way you customize these characters and maintain them is different. The way they present their stories are particularly distinct. Their settings and characterization are also dissimilar.
Two forces are at work in defining JRPGs and also differentiating them from WRPGs. One is an intangible sense of Japanese sensibilities that go into the game design. You can't point to a group of gameplay or story mechanics and say "that's a JRPG," it's one of those things that you know it when you see it. It's why many consider Zelda a JRPG and opponents have struggled to answer why it's not. The other force is the limitations of a console. You're looking at a controller, not a keyboard, and a tv screen, not a monitor. Original WRPGs had no problem shipping their games with manuals that included the commands you needed to type in order to cast spells. Even today, many inventory and menus systems in WRPGs have been described as "clunky," largely because console ports fail to portray how easy it is to breeze through rougher, more complex menus with a mouse and keyboard. As I said in my post, RPGs existed in Japan before Dragon Quest, but that's the title that really invented the JRPG genre. Whether it's action, strategy, or small party turn-based/ATB, actions need to happen relatively immediately. Menus need to be quick to sort and navigate.
That being said, there are two factors that, in tandem, are really the only defining lines of what a JRPG is. One is the use of some kind of a fantasy setting. White Knight Chronicles emulates high fantasy, Valkyria Chronicles portrays an alternate World War II and Demon's Souls delves into the Macabre, but each of these occupy some corner of what we would consider firmly entrenched in fantasy (or its twin genre of science fiction). The second factor answers the Zelda dilemma: JRPGs utilize some degree of randomness applied to their combat and/or loot.
So a Japanese console fantasy game that incorporates random calculations is the closest I think you could come to defining a JRPG. Close, but not perfect. Zelda randomly calculates drops from enemies and the damage in Demon's Souls is not exactly random. So probably the best definition would be a collection of Japanese fantasy games that are impossible to define.
While the lack of coherent labeling is a new difference to this discussion, I think there's some things I should clarify that are not differences between the two. I've mentioned character-as-avator creation before, but I don't think that's something that's exclusive to WRPGs. Demon's Souls lets you create a character in no less a fashion than many WRPGs do. Even the original Final Fantasy let you select a group of classes to begin with. And I also believe that JRPGs do a far better job at letting you customize characters abilities and stats throughout the game than the WRPGs I've played have.
Nor are branching storylines exclusive. Chrono Trigger is a really awesome example of this, but even moral choices have been done in a really powerful way with Tactics Ogre.
So while I think it's easier to define WRPGs as a coherent "genre," I don't think they have as many major characteristics which JRPGs haven't incorporated or also experimented with over the years.
Reply With Quote