Which is just not true. At the top of my head I can only think of three actual JRPGs I played that have an exclusive playable cast of human characters: Earth Bound, Final Fantasy VIII and Ni No Kuni. (Not even sure about those, since I haven't played either of them through.) The arguably biggest contender is of course Pokémon which has aside from the main character no playable humans at all.
PS: Regarding The Legend of Zelda: Hylians are pretty much elves, so ...
@Vallmyr Rune Factory 4 is great, I can very much recommend it. Be warned though, you will need a walkthrough to complete it, since this game gives you zero clues on how to proceed story wise.
@Buttercheese Harvest Moon is indeed a fully fledged RPG franchise. To be more precise it is a farming simulation RPG. And perfectly valid for the point you were trying to make as well. Given the dozen of nonhuman NPCs. Broadly speaking many consider the Zelda franchise in between Action RPG and Adventure Game, especially Zelda 2. Great game at that! :-)
I also reccommend picking up Disgaea PC on steam when you get the chance. Its humour alone makes it worth the purchase.
Anyway, you probably have noticed that I partially agreed with @ShapiroKeatsDarkMage precisely because the majory of RPGs tend to focus solely on humans. This is not wrong either. There are of course exceptions like the titles you have listed. But exceptions like these are seen less in Chinese, Korean or other Asian RPGs. Generally they tend to be more... historical in nature.
I think you got your definition of JRPG wrong ... At no time would I call Harvest Moon a JRPG, it has aside from the visual style none of the defining elements of a JRPG. No deep story, barely and world exploration, no combat, no leveling system, no party, characters with defined personalities, etc. And like I said, in Zelda you play an elf Hylian. And again, it's not even a JRPG, it's an action adventure.
Not really, no. You can readily read it up for yourself if you think I'm wrong on both accounts. Harvest Moon is an RPG franchise just like its spin-off Rune Factory, even with levels I might add (although not combat related). Same with Zelda II. But that's okay. They're after all a different sort of RPG than most.
But that's about it. There are still more human centred Asian RPGs out there than non-human ones.
That's probably true, albeit it would require a lot of squabbling over what constitutes human and human-centred. Maybe.
But even if it is, is that particularly surprising or unusual? We are humans, after all. Most of our stories center on humans, and not all fantasy realms make sense to put elf-equivalents into (that's not even getting into the argument as to whether stock fantasy races like elves or dwarves really quality as "not human").
By the same token, pretty sure you play a human in most or all of the Fallout games too.
Anthros/ Animals: - Kimahri Ronso (Final Fantasy X) Ronso (blue, horned lion-anthro) - Frog (Chrono Trigger) Frog-anthro - Freya (Final Fantasy IX) Burmecian (rat-anthro) - Mog (Final Fantasy VI) What ever moogles are. - Umaro (Final Fantasy VI) Yeti - Red XIII (Final Fantasy IX) Some kind of weird looking lion - Kevin (Seiken Densetu 3) Effectively a werewolf - Micah (Rune Factory 3) Effectively a weresheep - Bow (Breath of Fire 2) Grassrunner (dog-anthro) - Rand (Breath of Fire 2) Shell clan (rhino-pangolin-anthro) - Katt (Breath of Fire 2) Woren (tiger-anthro) - Sten (Breath of Fire 2) Highlander (monkey-anthro) - Jean (Breath of Fire 2) Creeping clan (frog-anthro)
Kemonomimi: - Fran (Final Fantasy XII) Viera (rabbit ears) - Zidane (Final Fantasy IX) Genome (monkey tail) - Amber (Rune Factory 4) Butterfly antenea and sometimes wings - Leon (Rune Factory 4) Fox ears and tail - Dylas (Rune Factory 4) Horse ears and tail - Nina (Breath of Fire 2) Wing clan (bird wings)
Dwarves: - Doug & Bado (Rune Factory 4) Though they really don't look the part ...
Superhumans/ Great old ones: - Terra (Final Fantasy VI) Half-esper - Garnet & Eiko (Final Fantasy IX) Summoners - Yuna (Final Fantasy X) Half-Al Bhed - Rikku (Final Fantasy X) Al Bhed
Other: - Quinna (Final Fantasy IX) Qu. Whatever those are. - Vivi (Final Fantasy IX) Black mage. - Popoi (Secret of Mana) Sprite.
A few more to add that I can think of off the top of my head:
-Tales of Symphonia has Genis and Raine sage, both half-elves. -Tales of Vesperia has Judith, a member of the Kritya, which are basically elves. -Tales of Xillia has Milla, one of two protagonists, who's a mana spirit in human guise. -Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has Sveta, who is a werewolf. -Suikoden III has a HUGE character roster (as all the Suikoden titles do), one of which includes a duck. -Final Fantasy VII has Red XIII (a chimera), Cait Sith (a robotic cat), and Aeris (an Ancient). -Not sure if we're including tactical JRPGs, but Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have the laguz, humanoid beast-people of many different kinds. Additionally, Fire Emblem: Awakening has manaketes and taguels. -Tales of the Abyss actually touches on the science of clones and whether or not they should be considered human. Especially after one of our main characters turns out to BE a clone. -Legend of Dragoon has Kongol, the last of the giant race Giganto, and
Meru, who is a wingly.
Edit: Thanks to the boyfriend, I'm adding more!
-The Persona series! In the third game we have two nonhuman playable characters: a robot named Aigis and a dog named Koromaru. The fourth game has Teddie, who is...weird.
-Tales of Vesperia also has a playable dog character named Repede.
-I wasn't sure whether to put Vincent down for FFVII, as he's a character who used to be human, but was experimented on and became something else. You can debate that all you like.
-The .hack// series is another weird one in that every character is actually a human playing an online game, so characters with beast-like models don't really count. Except for:
I'm the only one who wonders why most JRPGs have a cast of only human characters?
Probably because of different philosophy behind the game design. WRPG school boasts the "be whoever you like, do whatever you like", i.e. making it a game about the character sheet you've generated - something that's what the player is every single bit is not. Whereas Japanese approach is more centered around the player's own experience, dragging them into the story. Which - surprise! - does make WRPG less of an art and more a pure entertainment, in comparison.
Can't make player care about the problems of a drunken dwarf miner as much as about those of an average city denizen protagonist featured in most Japanese titles...
I wouldn't say it makes western RPG less of an art, and I definitely wouldn't establish a dichotomy between how artistic something is vs. how entertaining it is.
I like diablo, but it isn't rpg, it is for the lack of a better name, a h&s game. BG IS the rpg. Even games like Skyrim, with heavy roleplaying elements are not real rpgs, but a h&s rpg hybrid. Again, i like all 3 genres, i just don't like when non-rpgs are called rpg.
This comment is old, but I can't agree more. Genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense and it annoys me to no end when people call a game a certain genre that it's per difinition not.
And I find it strange when people apply overly purist views as to what gets to qualify as which genre. Skyrim is definitely an RPG, despite elitist statements to the contrary.
I tend to play pretty loose with the RPG tag when referring to games as well, I probably won't stop either..But come on it's nothing to get worked up about^^
Genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense and it annoys me to no end when people call a game a certain genre that it's per difinition not.
Umm... I can only hope you wrote that statement with self-deprecating irony.
I didn't, when I am using genre defining terms with the meaning in mind they are supossed to imply. Unlike the vast majority of people on the internet and in the media who wouldn't know correct genre terminology if it hit them in the face with a baseball bat.
Today's genre definitions are arbitrary and have often little to do the actual gameplay. Skyrim isn't an RPG because the focus is on exploration, dungeneering, etc. and not on roleplay. These days the term RPG is completely misused.
Different example: TellTale's The Wlaking Dead. Everyone's calling it a point and click adventure even though it really isn't. The problem is that it developed from point and click adventures but ultimately became it's own genre.
That's the same problem with Skyrim. People are completly blinded by the few things it has in common with RPGs, that they dismiss the major and defining elements of the game which have little to nothing to do with roleplaying. Yes, Elder Scrolls was inspired by D&D. But at some point down the road it devoloped into something different.
Skyrim is at it's core a sandbox game. It has more in common with Minecraft and GTA5 than it does with any of the classic RPGs.
And NO, RPGs are not defined by leveling systems, dungeon crawling and character stats. There are several RPGs that don't don't have any of those (LARPing for example). People forget that D&D is not the be all end all of what defines an RPG. It's just one of many many interpretations. Roleplaying is what defines an RPG. And at the end of the day the roleplay elements in Skyrim are rudimentary at best. It has no more roleplaying than any other game that let's you play as one defined character.
Skyrim is the Pluto of videogaming. Everyone is so bloody fixated on calling it a fully fledged planet even though it doesn't meet the qualifications.
So let me rephrase that: It's not "Genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense." It's "The mainstream genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense."
@Buttercheese , I want to insightful, agree, and like your post. I hate genre definitions. I use to hate JRPGs because of genre definitions. I treated them like role-playing games. Now I realize that they do not focus on role-playing at all but character-driven stories so I actually like them better because I'm not judging them for things they don't facilitate.
@Vallmyr Thank you. The term "JRPG" has to go away as well. It's completely misleading. But I have been angry at that since the dawn of time and I kinda gave up by now
Well, it's established enough that when people say "RPG" they usually really mean rocket propelled grenade "stats, classes and levels", even though it may be not literally accurate...
Well, it's established enough that when people say "RPG" they usually really mean rocket propelled grenade "stats, classes and levels", even though it may be not literally accurate...
Being a sandbox doesn't make a game not an RPG. Neither does exploration. Skyrim has just as many RPG elements as Baldur's Gate, in terms of interacting with NPCs in the world and other elements. In some ways it is better at being an RPG than Baldur's Gate (for example, character customization before and during play). It doesn't have party mechanics, but you don't need a party to be an RPG.
This isn't a case of me being wrong about what qualifies as an RPG. It's a matter of you being too restrictive in your definitions. Genres are also not static things that never change - rather, they grow, evolve, and adapt over time. Games that might not have been viewed as RPGs in the past are certainly viewed as RPGs now and that's not just fine, that's to be expected.
But what do I know? I only used to write RPGs professionally.
There's no place for a purist perspective on game genres when advancing technology means new takes on old ideas. Is it so hard to acknowledge that games like GTA and Saints Row have RPG elements? Is it so hard to acknowledge that there's no solid clearly defined line that marks what qualifies as an RPG and what does not? If you have tsuris over people having different genre definitions than you do, then the problem isn't them. Chill out.
Unlike the vast majority of people on the internet and in the media who wouldn't know correct genre terminology if it hit them in the face with a baseball bat.
There is no such thing as "correct genre terminology", because genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense.
There are exactly two situations where gaming genre definitions have meaning:
1) Common usage, which defines meaning
2) Marketing, for the expectations of a buying audience.
In both of those situations, the games you complain aren't RPGs are, in fact, RPGs. Anything else is your personal genre definition... which is, like all others, dumb and lacking in sense.
"Genre" is not a real thing. It is arbitrary. It is a loose and imperfect sorting of things that are seen to have shared characteristics.
There was never a time when "RPG" was used "properly" the way you want to define it, and there most certainly was not any time when it was used "properly" with regards to computer and console games. Nor has the emphasis EVER been on "roleplay" (whatever that is, it's also completely arbitrary) in the genre on computer or console. Virtually all of the earliest CRPGs were dungeon-crawlers where party members had no or nearly no personality. By those lights, Skyrim and its focus on exploration and dungeoneering is far truer to the roots of the genre than any game focused on "roleplay". But because game genres are dumb and lacking in sense, it shares a genre with many games that are like it in some ways and unlike it in others.
Different example: TellTale's The Wlaking Dead. Everyone's calling it a point and click adventure even though it really isn't. The problem is that it developed from point and click adventures but ultimately became it's own genre.
The Walking Dead, and all TellTale games, are visual novels with quicktime events. However, the Western audience by and large isn't familiar with visual novels, so they are not marketed as such. That genre doesn't exist, to Western mainstream marketing, so it's mashed into the closest thing available. This is because game genres are dumb and lacking in sense.
That's the same problem with Skyrim. People are completly blinded by the few things it has in common with RPGs, that they dismiss the major and defining elements of the game which have little to nothing to do with roleplaying. Yes, Elder Scrolls was inspired by D&D. But at some point down the road it devoloped into something different.
By the by, people can and do do plenty of roleplaying in Skyrim, and even more in Morrowind. Plenty of people do NO roleplaying in Baldur's Gate. "Roleplaying" is, again, just as arbitrary a term as "RPG".
For that matter, plenty of people play D&D and do no roleplaying. I've played with people like that many times.
Skyrim is the Pluto of videogaming. Everyone is so bloody fixated on calling it a fully fledged planet even though it doesn't meet the qualifications.
The definition of "planet" is also completely arbitrary. Pluto didn't change one iota between when it was called a planet and when it wasn't. The difference, of course, is that this arbitrary definition is for scientific classification, as opposed to "RPG", which is an arbitrary definition used for fan discussion and marketing (and in both of those, you are going against majority view).
i just need to correct one small thing. telltale games post walking dead are visual novels. everything prior to that are point and click adventure games.
@BelleSorciere You don't call a sandwich a salad just because you put a lettuce leaf in it, do you? I never denied Skyrim having RPG-elements, but they are hardly the focus. Games should be categorized by what they focus on. In Skyrim's case that is exploration, adventure & sandboxing. The roleplay elements are a sidenote.
@Ayiekie Thanks for that. Though I do believe that genre categories have their uses, if actually thought through. The visual novel thing is a great example, btw.
@megamike15 That's why I mentioned Walking Dead specifically, up till Tales of Monkey Island they actually did make fully fledged point & click adventures. Which makes me sad in a way, because ever since then a lot of people (especially critics) act like Walking Dead and Co. is the best thing that ever happened to the genre of point at click adventures. Even though it's really not part of that genre anymore. That's like when a jazz band suddenly starts playing rock'n'roll and everyone goes "This is the best jazz you ever played!" No mate, it's not jazz, it's rock'n'roll.
In the end it comes down to this argument: How can two vastly different games that only share similarities in settings and very few, very basic gameplay mechanics and appeal to different audiences be part of the same genre?
Calling both BG and Skyrim RPGs renders the term "RPG" meaningless. They are both too different from each other to be part of the same genre.
Why do you think terms like "Diablo Clone" or "Rogue Like" exist? Because both Diablo and Rogue did their own thing and ultimately ended up creating new genres. Elder Scrolls and Co. did the same.
Certainly, one could use "RPG" as an umbrella term, but then what happens to all the games who do focus on roleplaying? What do you call that genre? This is how we got that stupid term "CRPG" "Classic" is just a synonym for "original" and "true" in this case. So every so called RPG that isn't "classic" is therefor not a true RPG. (I am aware that the term CRPG also refers to other elements within the genre, but that makes it an even dumber term.)
And that's why I refuse to call anything an RPG that doesn't have it's main focus on roleplaying.
The thing is, the genre definitions are subjective, that's what makes them murky and a wee bit dumb. It's because there are no firm rules on what can or cannot be (for example) a role-playing game. It was mentioned earlier by Vallmyr that just about everything can be classified as a role-playing game. Call of Duty, for example. There's a question as to what role-playing really means. Is it a game where you put yourself into the game and role-play that character, create a character that you like and role-play as that, or is it any role the player can assume as the protagonist in the game?
Here's my issue with calling everything a role-playing game: if everything is automatically a role-playing game, then there's no point it existing as a definition. It's not a category for a person to look out for in shops, it's a given, it's nothing special, it's something that every game will have so why bother mentioning it?
Current mainstream genre definitions are about as useful as vague age ratings and are slightly less helpful. I've played some games listed as role-playing games and ended up bored with them for lack of any story or character interaction. I've played some shooters and thought they could double as role-playing games.
Genres are a muddle—not the definitions themselves, but how they're used. In many cases, people believe that mechanics such as inventory management, levelling, and points distribution make an RPG... that's really not the case, there are plenty of RPGs out there that have no inventory management and no points distribution.
Let's be honest, there are several games (and franchises) out there, including Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, and Grand Theft Auto; these gross billions and make substantial net profits. Marketing in video game companies will always find that appealing and so the lines are blurred. Companies can suggest that their game has elements in it that are similar to those in other games, people playing those other games might consider buying them where they otherwise might have dismissed it. If you can stretch the definitions in a particular game so that it appeals to an audience that wouldn't consider it, then the already subjective definitions are just about useless. Instead of a genre, each game may as well simply list the elements it has (as per the tags on Steam). That's generally much more helpful when trying to get an at-a-glace representation of what a game will contain.
I don't consider myself a purist on this topic, I'm largely on the fence. I do, however, think better defined, objective, definitions would be vastly more useful rather than definitions that change with the wind. Or a list of game elements as mentioned above and drop the use of single/double-barrel genres.
Comments
Harvest Moon is as much a JRPG as Portal is an FPS.
No idea in what context Zelda would count as a JRPG ...
I never played Disgaea.
No one ever said anything about there being more humans than non humans. It was stated that: Which is just not true.
At the top of my head I can only think of three actual JRPGs I played that have an exclusive playable cast of human characters: Earth Bound, Final Fantasy VIII and Ni No Kuni. (Not even sure about those, since I haven't played either of them through.)
The arguably biggest contender is of course Pokémon which has aside from the main character no playable humans at all.
PS: Regarding The Legend of Zelda: Hylians are pretty much elves, so ...
@Vallmyr
Rune Factory 4 is great, I can very much recommend it. Be warned though, you will need a walkthrough to complete it, since this game gives you zero clues on how to proceed story wise.
Broadly speaking many consider the Zelda franchise in between Action RPG and Adventure Game, especially Zelda 2. Great game at that! :-)
I also reccommend picking up Disgaea PC on steam when you get the chance. Its humour alone makes it worth the purchase.
Anyway, you probably have noticed that I partially agreed with @ShapiroKeatsDarkMage precisely because the majory of RPGs tend to focus solely on humans. This is not wrong either. There are of course exceptions like the titles you have listed. But exceptions like these are seen less in Chinese, Korean or other Asian RPGs. Generally they tend to be more... historical in nature.
At no time would I call Harvest Moon a JRPG, it has aside from the visual style none of the defining elements of a JRPG. No deep story, barely and world exploration, no combat, no leveling system, no party, characters with defined personalities, etc.
And like I said, in Zelda you play an
elfHylian. And again, it's not even a JRPG, it's an action adventure.Answer: Everything.
But even if it is, is that particularly surprising or unusual? We are humans, after all. Most of our stories center on humans, and not all fantasy realms make sense to put elf-equivalents into (that's not even getting into the argument as to whether stock fantasy races like elves or dwarves really quality as "not human").
By the same token, pretty sure you play a human in most or all of the Fallout games too.
-Tales of Symphonia has Genis and Raine sage, both half-elves.
-Tales of Vesperia has Judith, a member of the Kritya, which are basically elves.
-Tales of Xillia has Milla, one of two protagonists, who's a mana spirit in human guise.
-Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has Sveta, who is a werewolf.
-Suikoden III has a HUGE character roster (as all the Suikoden titles do), one of which includes a duck.
-Final Fantasy VII has Red XIII (a chimera), Cait Sith (a robotic cat), and Aeris (an Ancient).
-Not sure if we're including tactical JRPGs, but Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have the laguz, humanoid beast-people of many different kinds. Additionally, Fire Emblem: Awakening has manaketes and taguels.
-Tales of the Abyss actually touches on the science of clones and whether or not they should be considered human. Especially after one of our main characters turns out to BE a clone.
-Legend of Dragoon has Kongol, the last of the giant race Giganto, and
Edit: Thanks to the boyfriend, I'm adding more!
-The Persona series! In the third game we have two nonhuman playable characters: a robot named Aigis and a dog named Koromaru. The fourth game has Teddie, who is...weird.
-Tales of Vesperia also has a playable dog character named Repede.
-I wasn't sure whether to put Vincent down for FFVII, as he's a character who used to be human, but was experimented on and became something else.
-The .hack// series is another weird one in that every character is actually a human playing an online game, so characters with beast-like models don't really count. Except for:
Also: I'm pretty sure a majority of WRPGs also feature predominately human characters.
Which - surprise!
Can't make player care about the problems of a drunken dwarf miner as much as about those of an average city denizen protagonist featured in most Japanese titles...
Genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense and it annoys me to no end when people call a game a certain genre that it's per difinition not.
Unlike the vast majority of people on the internet and in the media who wouldn't know correct genre terminology if it hit them in the face with a baseball bat.
Today's genre definitions are arbitrary and have often little to do the actual gameplay.
Skyrim isn't an RPG because the focus is on exploration, dungeneering, etc. and not on roleplay. These days the term RPG is completely misused.
Different example: TellTale's The Wlaking Dead. Everyone's calling it a point and click adventure even though it really isn't. The problem is that it developed from point and click adventures but ultimately became it's own genre.
That's the same problem with Skyrim. People are completly blinded by the few things it has in common with RPGs, that they dismiss the major and defining elements of the game which have little to nothing to do with roleplaying. Yes, Elder Scrolls was inspired by D&D. But at some point down the road it devoloped into something different.
Skyrim is at it's core a sandbox game. It has more in common with Minecraft and GTA5 than it does with any of the classic RPGs.
And NO, RPGs are not defined by leveling systems, dungeon crawling and character stats.
There are several RPGs that don't don't have any of those (LARPing for example).
People forget that D&D is not the be all end all of what defines an RPG. It's just one of many many interpretations. Roleplaying is what defines an RPG. And at the end of the day the roleplay elements in Skyrim are rudimentary at best. It has no more roleplaying than any other game that let's you play as one defined character.
Skyrim is the Pluto of videogaming.
Everyone is so bloody fixated on calling it a fully fledged planet even though it doesn't meet the qualifications.
So let me rephrase that:
It's not "Genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense."
It's "The mainstream genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense."
We don't need a broken system.
I hate genre definitions. I use to hate JRPGs because of genre definitions. I treated them like role-playing games. Now I realize that they do not focus on role-playing at all but character-driven stories so I actually like them better because I'm not judging them for things they don't facilitate.
The term "JRPG" has to go away as well. It's completely misleading.
But I have been angry at that since the dawn of time and I kinda gave up by now
rocket propelled grenade"stats, classes and levels", even though it may be not literally accurate...Edit: put in spoilers because language.
PS: I wish I was joking/ overstating.
It's the 'go-to' mechanism for progression of characters.
Being a sandbox doesn't make a game not an RPG. Neither does exploration. Skyrim has just as many RPG elements as Baldur's Gate, in terms of interacting with NPCs in the world and other elements. In some ways it is better at being an RPG than Baldur's Gate (for example, character customization before and during play). It doesn't have party mechanics, but you don't need a party to be an RPG.
This isn't a case of me being wrong about what qualifies as an RPG. It's a matter of you being too restrictive in your definitions. Genres are also not static things that never change - rather, they grow, evolve, and adapt over time. Games that might not have been viewed as RPGs in the past are certainly viewed as RPGs now and that's not just fine, that's to be expected.
But what do I know? I only used to write RPGs professionally.
@Buttercheese is right, BTW. You should listen to her. There is no such thing as "correct genre terminology", because genre definitions in gaming are dumb and don't make sense.
There are exactly two situations where gaming genre definitions have meaning:
1) Common usage, which defines meaning
2) Marketing, for the expectations of a buying audience.
In both of those situations, the games you complain aren't RPGs are, in fact, RPGs. Anything else is your personal genre definition... which is, like all others, dumb and lacking in sense.
"Genre" is not a real thing. It is arbitrary. It is a loose and imperfect sorting of things that are seen to have shared characteristics.
There was never a time when "RPG" was used "properly" the way you want to define it, and there most certainly was not any time when it was used "properly" with regards to computer and console games. Nor has the emphasis EVER been on "roleplay" (whatever that is, it's also completely arbitrary) in the genre on computer or console. Virtually all of the earliest CRPGs were dungeon-crawlers where party members had no or nearly no personality. By those lights, Skyrim and its focus on exploration and dungeoneering is far truer to the roots of the genre than any game focused on "roleplay". But because game genres are dumb and lacking in sense, it shares a genre with many games that are like it in some ways and unlike it in others. The Walking Dead, and all TellTale games, are visual novels with quicktime events. However, the Western audience by and large isn't familiar with visual novels, so they are not marketed as such. That genre doesn't exist, to Western mainstream marketing, so it's mashed into the closest thing available. This is because game genres are dumb and lacking in sense. By the by, people can and do do plenty of roleplaying in Skyrim, and even more in Morrowind. Plenty of people do NO roleplaying in Baldur's Gate. "Roleplaying" is, again, just as arbitrary a term as "RPG".
For that matter, plenty of people play D&D and do no roleplaying. I've played with people like that many times. The definition of "planet" is also completely arbitrary. Pluto didn't change one iota between when it was called a planet and when it wasn't. The difference, of course, is that this arbitrary definition is for scientific classification, as opposed to "RPG", which is an arbitrary definition used for fan discussion and marketing (and in both of those, you are going against majority view).
You don't call a sandwich a salad just because you put a lettuce leaf in it, do you?
I never denied Skyrim having RPG-elements, but they are hardly the focus.
Games should be categorized by what they focus on.
In Skyrim's case that is exploration, adventure & sandboxing. The roleplay elements are a sidenote.
@Ayiekie
Thanks for that.
Though I do believe that genre categories have their uses, if actually thought through.
The visual novel thing is a great example, btw.
@megamike15
That's why I mentioned Walking Dead specifically, up till Tales of Monkey Island they actually did make fully fledged point & click adventures. Which makes me sad in a way, because ever since then a lot of people (especially critics) act like Walking Dead and Co. is the best thing that ever happened to the genre of point at click adventures. Even though it's really not part of that genre anymore.
That's like when a jazz band suddenly starts playing rock'n'roll and everyone goes "This is the best jazz you ever played!" No mate, it's not jazz, it's rock'n'roll.
How can two vastly different games that only share similarities in settings and very few, very basic gameplay mechanics and appeal to different audiences be part of the same genre?
Calling both BG and Skyrim RPGs renders the term "RPG" meaningless.
They are both too different from each other to be part of the same genre.
Why do you think terms like "Diablo Clone" or "Rogue Like" exist?
Because both Diablo and Rogue did their own thing and ultimately ended up creating new genres.
Elder Scrolls and Co. did the same.
Certainly, one could use "RPG" as an umbrella term, but then what happens to all the games who do focus on roleplaying? What do you call that genre? This is how we got that stupid term "CRPG"
"Classic" is just a synonym for "original" and "true" in this case. So every so called RPG that isn't "classic" is therefor not a true RPG. (I am aware that the term CRPG also refers to other elements within the genre, but that makes it an even dumber term.)
And that's why I refuse to call anything an RPG that doesn't have it's main focus on roleplaying.
Here's my issue with calling everything a role-playing game: if everything is automatically a role-playing game, then there's no point it existing as a definition. It's not a category for a person to look out for in shops, it's a given, it's nothing special, it's something that every game will have so why bother mentioning it?
Current mainstream genre definitions are about as useful as vague age ratings and are slightly less helpful. I've played some games listed as role-playing games and ended up bored with them for lack of any story or character interaction. I've played some shooters and thought they could double as role-playing games.
Genres are a muddle—not the definitions themselves, but how they're used. In many cases, people believe that mechanics such as inventory management, levelling, and points distribution make an RPG... that's really not the case, there are plenty of RPGs out there that have no inventory management and no points distribution.
Let's be honest, there are several games (and franchises) out there, including Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, and Grand Theft Auto; these gross billions and make substantial net profits. Marketing in video game companies will always find that appealing and so the lines are blurred. Companies can suggest that their game has elements in it that are similar to those in other games, people playing those other games might consider buying them where they otherwise might have dismissed it. If you can stretch the definitions in a particular game so that it appeals to an audience that wouldn't consider it, then the already subjective definitions are just about useless. Instead of a genre, each game may as well simply list the elements it has (as per the tags on Steam). That's generally much more helpful when trying to get an at-a-glace representation of what a game will contain.
I don't consider myself a purist on this topic, I'm largely on the fence. I do, however, think better defined, objective, definitions would be vastly more useful rather than definitions that change with the wind. Or a list of game elements as mentioned above and drop the use of single/double-barrel genres.