Dragon Age Origins

[Brill Weave]

Not to most people.

Are we most people?

[Tits]

I'm sorry, BRP, I need you to clear something up for me.

Did you actually type that KoToR is an RTS?

[BRP]

Yes, as with most WRPGs.

(EDIT: As with most games based on Dungeon and Dragons' combat systems. RTS and TBS.

EDIT: Oh, and to be on topic, likely this game as well! If my details are right.

[Tits]

K, just wanted to make sure it's posted twice for people to laugh at.

[BRP]

It's okay. You don't need to argue. It is much easier to just to think what IGN tells you to.

[Tits]

No need for arguing. Your statement stands on its own.

[Isiolia]

Are we most people?

Yes >_>


BRP, the thing you seem to be missing is that you're arguing over combat systems versus the game as a whole. No combat system alone automatically makes something an RPG, or not.

The actual combat in KoTOR and Mass Effect has a different flow, sure. But, that's ignoring the similarities that nearly every other aspect of the games share. Most of which are the kinds of things that separate Mass Effect from, say, Gears of War. The thrust of Mass Effect is not third person combat, it's playing your version of Shepard through the story.

Fallout 3 differs a lot from straight up FPS games. For one, you don't -have- to play it that way. You can pull up VATS if you like. Or you can mix n' match according to the pros/cons of the systems. Last I checked, Half Life 2 didn't pause to let me select a headshot with a predicted percent of success based on line of sight, distance, my stats, skill in small guns, chosen traits, and condition of my weapon, but perhaps you've played a different version.

The larger point, of course, is that you're playing a character you made, how you want, within the confines of the world provided. Typically, that'll include leveling up, options as to how to approach game goals beyond which weapon to use, equipment to swap/upgrade, and so on. All things that the mentioned titles have.

Granted, you could look at some as action games with RPG-ish elements. In some cases, that may be warranted. For instance, something like No One Lives Forever 2 where you get points to upgrade a few categories, but at best you're adjusting to your style of play within the same linear missions, not really changing the outcome of anything.
Arguably, the same could be said of most JRPGs and similar, but still...

Applying your same logic to JRPGs would, to me, label most of them as turn based strategy or some variant of RTS games as well. If you strip everything away from the battle system, that's what you get.

[Maguspk]

So what makes this game unique, the trailers I've seen don't make it stand out to me. Is it just the fact that BioWare is pushing out an RPG so people are eating it up or is there some gameplay information/video I'm not seeing?

[Kyo]

So what makes this game unique, the trailers I've seen don't make it stand out to me. Is it just the fact that BioWare is pushing out an RPG so people are eating it up or is there some gameplay information/video I'm not seeing?

There are a few good gameplay video's on gamespot's site from E3, one is a 20 or 30 min hand on session and they have some impressions/previews that are a good read. I can see how you wouldnt get it from just watching a few trailers. The developer interviews are good as well.

[BRP]

I can tell you right now there are two issues here, but you can't get one right and the other wrong. You understand what is a genre's purpose is and what a RPG is or you don't understand either. Right now you don't show an understanding of RPGs or genres and it is difficult to fight two fronts at the same time without having to explain a shitload of things. So I'll try to be brief.

Applying your same logic to JRPGs would, to me, label most of them as turn based strategy or some variant of RTS games as well.

This is true. JRPGs are RTS and TBS for the most part(people will call ANYTHING made by SE a JRPG, ie kingdom hearts.) JRPGs are like WRPGs, JRPGs actually came form proto-WRPGs, and they are both not true to their original source: RPGs. They are both not proper genres. They are not RPGs. What we call RPG-elements in other games range from storytelling(the antithesis of role playing) to outright strategy-elements(anything involving a battle system.) Very rarely are they truly RPG-elements.

The reason these games are not RPGs is something you've said: "No combat system alone automatically makes something an RPG, or not." This is true. Neither does exploration or aesthetics.

If you strip everything away from the battle system, that's what you get.

And anything of this argument.

I am not "stripping" away anything. I am only prioritizing things. At some point things stop being essential to genre definition and are simply characteristics of individual games. Such characteristics like character customization, free-roaming, multiplayer(online, MMO, or otherwise), "stat progression," and even something smaller like "survival horror" themes. These characteristics are never dependent on genre and almost ALL of them can be found in almost EVERY genre. You can have free-roaming RTS and "stat progression" FPS. This is why they are not genres. These characteristics are already implied in name of the series and game. These characteristics is what splits Final Fantasy from Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy IX from Final Fantasy X, getting more and more specific.

You must keep these characteristics out of the equation of genre because a game cannot be in more than one genre(hybrid genres are separate genres.) What you have left is the very essence of the game. It shouldn't be a surprise that most games revolve around a battle system. Though "battle" implies combat when combat is itself just an aesthetic theme anyway(which comes in many, many flavors.)

But then there is Wikipedia's fine list of "Oh, if it contains any ONE or more of these ten random as fuck attributes, its a RPG!" Yeah, well they are fucking wrong. So very, very wrong. This proves itself when you have genres in videogames as completely useless as they are today. Judge through difference. (PS: It's Wikipedia, goddamn.)

To get back to the idea that I am stripping down games... for example: If I was reviewing Fallout 3 I would still talk a lot about the exploration within it(the game's highlight.) After that I would mention things like storyline, graphics, mood, themes, etc etc. But before all of the above, I would talk about the very thing the game revolves around: the combat system. If it had good exploration and mediocre combat(which is true) it would be a 3/5 type of game.

Now for some dissection:

The actual combat in KoTOR and Mass Effect has a different flow, sure.

...flow? The only flow in videogames I know of is immersion. Please explain yourself and avoid words like "flow" in sentences where they don't belong. Its prone to be called nonsense.

But, that's ignoring the similarities that nearly every other aspect of the games share.

THEY IN SPACEEEE!

Most of which are the kinds of things that separate Mass Effect from, say, Gears of War.

This stuff is much less "important" than what separates Mass Effect from Knights of the Old Republic. As I explained above.

The thrust of Mass Effect is not third person combat, it's playing your version of Shepard through the story.

How is third person combat(shooting) exclusive to "playing the story." After all, in every non-RPG game you are simply "playing the story." Be is Halo or Space Invaders.

Additionally, "your version of Shepard" is as consequential as "your color of Master Chief's armor." Well maybe a little more... you can't fuck dudes as a dude.


Now is the best time to (poorly) explain what a RPG is and what makes that whole area of probability different than the probability of reflexes and the probability of strategy.

Every videogame has a narrative: a chain of story events with one event following the next. Simple games will have something like "Earth is being invaded(maybe?), kill them, and you win. Other games will try to be like movies or novels. Even fucking Madden has a narrative. In both examples you have a story. One story. Every game is at least 1% RPG because of this simple little thing. Because we are smart folk and we judge through difference we don't count this since it is indistinguishable. Same for every game having some strategy and some reflex requirement. (And mind you it doesn't matter how oscar-winning DEEP you make the story, since we are talking about the game and not the cutscenes.)

So it would simple enough, right, that you'd just make stories split! Here you have the Bioware/Bethseda formula. Jedi or Sith or if you are lucky, a boring middle. But guess what? All you've done is turned one into two and that's still absolutely nothing. Your goal is the huge mind of a human Dungeon Master and you are not going to get there by having a bunch of quests with 2 or 3 endings. And you won't get these with having a quest with a hundred endings(and I will explain why in a second.)

That's assuming your alignment even changes the GAME, not only the ending cutscene(ie Fallout 3.) The ending doesn't occur in the game, this much should be obvious. So it doesn't matter how many endings you have(1, 2, 5, 132, 1,000,000.)

And the same applies to quests which do not change other quests. This is how you judge a RPG's depth of role-playing(how good a DM is): how interconnected everything is. If you do a quest in Fallout 3 with some outcome and it doesn't change the game's main story(or at minimum the region's story) then that quest has failed at being a RPG quest. It is no different than something out of a MMO's "collect for me, adventurerrrr, 5 boar heads" no matter how many cutscenes and dialogue trees you throw into it. At best you'll trick someone into thinking the fictional world is more complicated than it truly is. (Instead of turning 1 into 2, you turn 1 into 2 into 8 into 100 into...)

In Dungeon and Dragons, when the adventuring party decides they want to go East instead of West, they don't only go East on a map... the entire game has changed. When they want to join the bad guys? Take a hostage? These are not only strategic decisions(DnD is 2/5 wargame, 3/5 RPG btw) they are role-playing. This is the (impossible) goal of RPG on computers. I said I would be brief, so despite how long this is already I am skipping over a lot.

Fallout 3 differs a lot from straight up FPS games.

Halo differs a lot from straight up FPS games. FPS game x differs at least some degree with straight up FPS games. We should note this all the time.

You can pull up VATS if you like. Or you can mix n' match according to the pros/cons of the systems.

The VATS system does mix things up(which is why a reviewer would mention it to distinct the game from Half-Life 2), but it is still a FPS. It still plays that way. That is, unless you only use the VATS. If you only use the VATS then you are making up your own rule which is prone to change the game no different than a mod would. At that point... hmmm, I would say it would become a RTS.

Unfortunately, the inclusion of both VATS and shooting only harmed the game... neither is very competent at being interesting. This is what happens when you mix water and earth.

The larger point, of course, is that you're playing a character you made, how you want, within the confines of the world provided. Typically, that'll include leveling up, options as to how to approach game goals beyond which weapon to use, equipment to swap/upgrade, and so on. All things that the mentioned titles have.

To go down the list:
-Making the character doesn't have anything to do with genre. You can make your own character in CoD4, Wrestlemania, and World of Warcraft.
-You always decide how you play a game... even betting on a coin flip.
-Leveling up, which option to use, "and so on" are all strategic elements. Nothing to do with RPGs. (And just in case you are wondering, strategic elements in an action game doesn't change the fact it is an action game.)


lol, brief.

[Qalbert]

Out of curiousity BRP, how do you define Mirror's Edge? Platformer, FPS, or something else?

[BRP]

I haven't played Mirror's Edge. I would probably call it a platformer though.

[Qalbert]

Ok, that was my take on it as well, was just curious and I do know some people who go OMG ITS FIRST PERSON AND HAS GUNS!!1! so yeah.

[Atreides]

Mirror's Edge? I call it overhyped trash!

But seriously I think the whole idea of genres for games is useful but only to a point. The broader terms for genres are generally accepted for online stores (which typically carry too much product to lump together by system alone) to organize their product for sales tracking and to make it easier for customers to find it, but it seems like the truly effective recommendation on amazon come from similar games chosen individually (and not by genre) by other customers and algorithms.

I think the whole concept of game genres made a lot more sense in gaming's earlier years as a matter of expediency, mostly because A) games were a lot simpler than and didn't break as many genre boundaries to qualify them for a "subgenre" (regardless of your feelings on the validity of said subgenre or subgenres in general), and B) because genre classifications provided a more effective way of finding similar games to the ones you like, by virtue of there being less games to begin with and the fact that we didn't have downloadable demos, online spotlights, and streaming trade shows.

Recently I asked for help finding "Metroidvania Games" using a subgenre or a subsubgenre or whatever the fuck simply because I knew that using the term would get me a list of precisely the games I was looking for. And despite a few people suggesting games that were technically not what I was looking for, I found quite a few gems very quickly without having to sift through piles of crap I would never play.

Could I have said "give me games like Symphony of the Night" and gotten the same list? Probably, but I guess it kinda proves my point. I think the debate over what makes a game such and such a genre and what defines a genre is somewhat unnecessary, as to an extent the only purpose using genres really serves is to allow people to communicate their desire to find games similar to other games they enjoy. I think the idea will probably fade with time, as games grow to incorporate elements traditionally associated with other genres and grow large enough that subclassification would require 1 subgenre per game.

So yeah, all this shitting all over this thread (by everyone) is dumb, should just drop it and talk about the game itself. You're all right in a way, but you're all retarded.

[Kyo]

I honestly can give a fuck less what genre an rpg falls in, I just want good games. Thanks Atreides, the shitting up of this thread was starting to get annoying but it does seem to follow certain people.

[BRP]

If what I posted in this thread is "shit," then it is the best shit is this whole damn forum made up of nothing but shit. Off-topic? Maybe a little, but I am talking about games like Dragon Age Origins from developers like Bioware so we can be thankful for that. I can only answer questions in one way and will answer every post pointed at me unless it is something like "I'm right, you are wrong" which I can't reply to. If a mod wanted(and was good) he could always just move the posts into a thread anew. That would be the best solution. (But why bother? when you can just infract people for "semantics lol.")

Knowing genres is more useful than you give credit for. If I were to explain why with Metroidvania's as an example, I would basically be insulting you for putting so much emphasis on the most watery parts of those games. Having such narrow vision is not useful and is easily dropped, ie Cave Story being suggested when it has none of the (mostly horrible) qualities of a Metroidvania. Same could be said for those who ask for JRPGs. I guess the bigger question is why you think you want those qualities? (The grinding and the backtracking and the connected map I guess?) I am not entirely sure. Grinding is understandable, false accomplishment is like a drug. The rest, I am not sure.

I don't map out genres they way I do because I feel they look cooler or neater this way(that is just what happens naturally with good organization.) I do it this way because this is how videogames actually work. Though it is not flawless, shit like RPGs and Fallout 3 are a no-brainer.


To move onto Dragon Age, if the combat system isn't good then it will be a neutered experience. Who knows, maybe it will try to usurp Deus Ex in RPG elements, but I think the best we can hope for is well-written mini-plots and a decent world to explore.

[Tits]

I like how you took 4 paragraphs to say "I am right and you are wrong."

[BRP]

I like how you took 4 paragraphs to say "I am right and you are wrong."

Sure, if you ignore the second paragraph and the fact I've explained most of what is said in this post previously.

EDIT: Actually, I take it back. You are right here. Since every argument's objective is "I am right and you are wrong." The difference is that I've explained why I am right and why you or he is wrong. So I took 4 paragraphs to say that.

[Mayareira]

Oblivion&Fallout are action RPG's, not FPS. Most important aspect of a CRPG is the exploration part and they've both got a good bit of it. Item and Inventory settings, character development, experience points system and bunch of other stuff also help categorizing them as RPG's.

FPS's on the other hand, are...well, shooters. They heavily focus on the action and skill(you get better at a FPS game as you play it) aspects of the gameplay. Exploration is limited and there isn't too much emphasis on character development and variety. Your experience in Oblivion will be totally different depending on what kind of a character you create(archer/ranger type, melee, mage)

Examples of fantasy FPS's are games like Hexen, Heretic and Witchaven, not Oblivion&Morriwind. Lack of deep battle system in Oblivion doesn't make it a "FPS", it just makes it a CRPG with not-so-deep combat elements.

[BRP]

Oh Mayareira, it seems you have no intention of reading my long post where I bury the dead horse. But I can squeeze out two quote replies.

Item and Inventory settings, character development, experience points system and bunch of other stuff also help categorizing them as RPG's.

Except all of those qualities have nothing to do with RPGs and are solely strategic characteristics. Moreover, they are found everywhere.

(you get better at a FPS game as you play it)

This is true for every game, and then some. The only difference between FPS and the games you think are RPGs is that the latter tend to be so boringly easy that you might become a master within two hours of play. (Those two hours might be stretched very thin because you might be too busy "exploring" or worse, watching anime.)