While role-playing games from Japan don't seem to have changed very much in the last 20 years, Western developed titles like Oblivion, Fable, Mass Effect and others have introduced new features most Japanese developers wouldn't even consider including in their games. The Japanese turn-based battle systems, character leveling, menu and dialogue navigation seem all too familiar for most gamers these days, and that's one of the reasons that Western development has surged ahead, says BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk.
Speaking to Destructoid, Zeschuk commented, "The fall of the JRPG in large part is due to a lack of evolution, a lack of progression. They kept delivering the same thing over and over. They make the dressing better, they look prettier, but it's still the same experience."
He added, "My favorite thing, it's funny when you still see it, but the joke of some of the dialogue systems where it asks, 'do you wanna do this or this,' and you say no. 'Do you wanna do this or this?' No. 'Do you wanna do this or this?' No. Lemme think -- you want me to say 'yes.' And that, unfortunately, really characterized the JRPG."
And now, as the industry continues to evolve the medium of games, we're seeing more and more titles that offer RPG elements. The definition of what an RPG is can be blurry at times. "We have big debates on whether GTA is an RPG, for example," said Zeschuk. "It's got all the elements, it just doesn't have the numbers. And what gamers here want is that higher depth, that higher integration of features...Mass Effect 2 is in some ways a continuation of that evolution."
1 Comments
December 22, 2009
I love JRPGs, but I acknowledge that they're probably the most static genre on the planet. Despite all of the technical innovations, they typically present very similar sorts of stories in similar sorts of ways that they have for the past 20+ years, with a few exceptions.