Bioware: “JRPGs are Stagnant”

His point is completely valid. JRPGS give you choices, but in reality, they are just there to make you feel like you are somewhat in charge; but you really are not.

at this point nobody has made a rpg thats successful. nobody has the right to say a word, they all need to shut the f up and go back to their multi-million dollars and keep wasting their money on dumbass developers and waste people's time and money on their dumb ass games, and tragically including me on a few titles here and there.

You mean like in Mass Effect where you're pretty much forced into the major fights? The major plot points?

With Mass Effect though, I felt like I actually had a say in what was going to happen. Plus, in Mass Effect 2 the decisions that you made in the first one with affect what happens in the sequel. JRPGs that are turn-based are lame as hell. Shit's just not fun. It's like how MMOs aren't actually fun for some people, it's just a psychological thing (again, for some).

I beg to differ. I think he has as much right to brag since they just made a really great game called Dragon age origins.

@05:44
Dragon Age was not that much of an innovation in terms of gameplay. Heck, the game plays so much like NWN, that you probably would feel like playing NWN3 if it wasn't for the different combat system (which isn't anything unseen either).

Not that DA is a bad game. This is probably the best title to come out this year.
But there comes a time where the base technology must evolve before derived products can evolve with it.

Yea DA:O is awesome ^^

But hey play DeausEx, you can play the Game without killing ONE person.

And I bet maybe even here:

http://www.lolsauce.com/RandomBS/Deus%20Ex.jpeg [http://www.lolsauce.com/RandomBS/Deus Ex.jpeg]

Valkyria was a great RPG, no innovation my ass... it was a first for its genre...

Japanese have great ideas, but there are too many ideas and not many ears to listen, its absolutely normal to have linear stories. Consider it a speedbump on ideas.

Valkyria was more of a tactical game than a RPG.

I think the biggest thing Dragon Age did was remove all detail from skills and combat. No more combat rolls, no more info on just how hard a spell hits, etc. Ironically a step backward.

I think by your responses none of you know the difference between innovation (which is one element that is dome in a completely new way or a new element all together), and evolution (which is the slow progression of something not a drastic immediate change)

The fact is this. JRPGs are not changing much at all. Some even feel they are moving backwards. For example look how non linear FF12 was and now look at 13.

To get what he was trying to say imagine you took 2 games; The latest JRPG say (Infinite Undescovery, or the recent Star Ocian) and the latest WRPG (say Mass Effect 2) and you somehow remade them in 16 bit graphics (super Nintendo/Sega Genesis) so only the game mechanics them selves would be intact and you went back in time. The 16 bit Mass Effect 2 (remember we only changed the graphics.) would literally be the best game in the world back then as it is a product of the evolution of western RPGs. But the JRPG would play almost exactly like every other JRPG out at that time. Sure there would be a few noticeable differences (mainly the use of cliche's that had not yet been invented) but other then that it probably would only be on par with the best JRPGs back then like Chrono Trigger.

As FF XIII shows (previous article), there are just some things about jrpgs that are better left unchanged.

Artefacts words fall short, Mass effect and Dragonage are totally new derived genres in their own right, RPG's learn from that amazing stuff, and i do partially agree with what they are saying but i will still buy JRPG's for the same reason most of us do, because theres nothing like sitting down on a late night, with a hot drink in the darkness twilight hours of the night fighting your way through an epic story, and whilst linear, still tearfully marvellous at the same time. We all like that cosy feeling.

The upcoming Mass Effect 2 is a perfect example of a character's choices impacting gameplay. Bioware is absolutely right as WRPGs went for a sandbox open gameplay but JRPGs focus on a single solitary story.

Also would like to add that Bioware is the leading RPG developer in the west along with Bethesda and Blizzard. They've literally had hit after hit.

Sometimes you want to do your own thing, and sometimes you want to follow a riveting story the way its intended.

I agree that JRPGs are getting stale, but all the customizing and possibilities in Dragon Age makes my head hurt sometimes. I won't even look at the tactic slots anymore.

Each have their own strengths and faults and I enjoy the variety and choices I have when picking a game.

With that said... Mass Effect 2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Anything else that will come out in 2010, Western or Japanese.

...but I don't want to be in charge! I just want to follow the female characters around doing what they tell me I should do. I just want to travel with pretty girls to pretty places doing mindless repetitive tasks along the way. You know, like real life, but prettier. What would anyone wants to be in charge in a sandbox? Clueless wandering for days on end? Second guessing what you just did? Uncertainty along the way?

You wanna LOT of CHOICES????
PLAY EROGE NOT JRPG

I am proud to share the same name as the poster above me.

Also, I completely agree that JRPGs really haven't been delivering anything new. That being said, they can still be enjoyable. They just can't be called GREAT.

^
^Agreed. ^_^

By the same token, it sounds like JRPGs, ever since the original Dragon Warrior (which gave us the immortal "But thou must!" choice) haven't given much to the gaming world... and that just is not true! Bioware may make some decent games, but they really need to come down off their high horse before they fall down and crack their oversized skulls on the ground.

The customers are a better judge of what games they are likely to enjoy, not some developer parked behind a desk thousands of miles away, with his hands tented like Gendou Ikari.

He was talking about the customers, he was asked to explain why the sales of JRPGs had dropped off sharply in the past decade or so. Also, to compare in-genre why games by companies like Bioware and Bethesda seem to be doing so much better.

Not such a high horse there.

The most telling element I think, is that the original JRPGs were clones/copies of the early Western RPGs, Ultima and Wizardry. Dragon Warrior itself is little more than an overworld system like the early Ultimas crossed with a combat system that's Wizardry dumbed down.

Franchises like Ultima evolved to have greater choice, and move to more anti-cliche territory. Ultima IV was all about becoming a paragon a various virtues, and had less of a focus on combat. Wizardry 7 had NPCs of various factions.. all of which you could have varying reputations with, wandering the world and possibly getting to treasures before you.

Later Dragon Warriors progressed their systems to be even more like the earliest Wizardry/Ultima. Final Fantasy removed more choices in favor of stories that were more on rails.

Compare a game like Star Ocean 2 or Final Fantasy 7 with Star Ocean 4 or Infinite Undiscovery. The progress is almost entirely graphical. In some cases (the 360 version of Star Ocean 4), the progress was actually backwards, as the party (with one possible exception on NG+) was always the same.. where previous iterations gave you options.

Even within the paradigm of "on rails" story, I think the JRPG franchise has been stagnating. It's been said (by the Japanese) that there's an endless appetite for the exact same thing in media (paraphrase there). So, there's the endless litany of animes with super-familiar themes, character archetypes with no variation, and so on. It bleeds into the games which parrot the anime/manga. So many games feel the need to play to these anime cliches, that's it gets extremely old that there ALWAYS has to be a token cute creature, a spunky kid out to prove himself, primarily school-age casts, a tsundere female, a submissive homemaker type, overly effete villains with white/long hair... and so on.

The issue with Greg's statements isn't that he's talking out of turn, it's that these are obvious things that many Japanese developers already note, and have been known for a long time.

Which its true, Bioware needs to realize they do the samething but diffrently then the other Japanese Developers had done before.

It's funny that they should talk about linear storyline progression in JRPGs when "JRPGs" encompasses both of the games I've ever played that gave the option to say "No, fuck you" to the main quest. (Breath of Fire 2 and Devil Survivor, if you're keeping track.) Let's not even *start* on what happens when I add visual novels to the mix.

You've clearly never played the elder scrolls series... I completly ignored the main quest in Oblivion by not going to that one city that starts those damn portals.

Also, the interactivity of most visual novels is far higher than JRPGs...

Some evil army is attacking your or some neighboring village/country/planet and you must stop them.

On the way, you meet many people who think that having you kill rats for them is more important than saving the world. You kill the rats, they give you gold/items which you promptly spend/equip. Repeat few thousand times by replacing the thing you are supposed to kill and the rewards with slightly more powerful alternatives.

In the end, you fight the evil master of the evil army that has been attacking and defeat him. gz, you've saved the world. Oh, and he drops something uber-awsome but you don't get to use it since it's game over.

THE END

@06:17

You're a fucking idiot.

If you even played the game, you'd realize that the empire wasn't even that evil. Your side had villains too.

And the game play was vastly more innovative than anything Square or Bioware have made in a long fucking time.

I like to think of JRPG's as books. Story is not gonna change no matter how many you play/read them, but you can still love it each time you do it again. Obviously as you are going to get a linear story, the story itself is hit or miss. You either like it or you don't. Not everyone is going to love a certain book, but it will get its fans. That pretty much settles the story aspect of JRPG's. Now JRPG game play is not going to be able to have a lot (if any) choices to make BECAUSE of its book like storytelling. So obviously how can you complain about that when that's what it is meant to be. They aren't making a mistake or not being inventive when they restrict choice making. It is just the way it is meant to be played. And foe game battle systems, well the "click and use selected act on targeted foe" of both FF and DA:O are not original. Sure they both make tweaks here and there but neither are great innovations. So in the end, Greg Zeschuk is just talking about a game style he himself may not like, but others may not necessarily think the same way. Pretty much you can completely disregard his statement as nothing more than the opinion of a random person no matter who he is. I don't really think its a lack of innovation that's the problem. He just doesn't care for the style of delivering a story.

Awwwww, damn you, you spoiled it >.< I'm playing FF8 atm T_T

Methinks Sir Fact is a bit biased to the kingdom far East.

BG didn't have a decent plot until BG2 and Throne of Bhaal... The first half of BG1 is mostly grinding quests to level 5 or 6 before you take on the big bads...

Bioware has come a long way in storytelling since Baldur's Gate, just as Squaresoft has come a long way since Final Fantasy on the NES. Knights of the Old Republic has one of the best plots I have experienced in an RPG to date.

try playing through all of Baldur's Gate before you make a judgement, and KOTOR has a crappy plot compared to Baldur's Gate

lol

cuz being made into a movie is supposedly something good?

Final Fantasy da Movie FAILED
Dead or Alive FAILED
Super Mario Bros FAILED
Mortal Kombat SEMI-FAILED
House of the Dead FAILED

dont comment if you know shit little boy.

The Super Mario Bros. movie was AWESOME~ ;P

Dead or Alive was SUPER-FAIL, next to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

yeah you are right regrettably but I expected as much. Risen was more enjoyable than DA:O IMO

Could you make your bias any more transparent? The JRPG fanboy butthurt in this discussion is as palpable as it is amusing.

Greg is absolutely right and all of you know it. JRPGS have done worse than stagnate, they have degenerated. Before you all accuse me of being a "kid" who has never played RPGs before this generation I did start rpging with Final Fantasy VII, and I enjoyed it, but then I was introduced to a little game called Fallout. I discovered the wonders of customizable characters and real choices that have an effect on the outcome of the game. I have been a fan of WRPGs ever since. Everything I found wrong with FFVII has gotten worse since 1997. JRPG stories have gotten more linear, characters have descended further into trite stereotypes, JRPG battle systems staunchly refuse to get with the times, and JRPG art direction now simply rehashes the same tired and silly looking architecture and monster designs.

@06:15
Aren't you the one to call people butthurt?
The guy was saying DA had nothing innovative, not that JRPGs were any better.

p.s.
It's unfair to compare Fallout to JRPGs. Fallout (esp the 2nd) is still way ahead compared to games like DA.

@06:15

While I do agree that JRPGs have stagnated to a degree, your arguments are foolish.

You may not believe it, but many people like linear stories. They can be better fleshed out than those choose your own adventure games. Offering a certain element of choice is always nice, but it isn't necessary.

It's like a book. The story is linear but it can be enthralling, and the gameplay makes it all the way better.

The reason the battle systems refused to change? Because the games are made so that they will always appeal to the audience that enjoyed the series in the first place. They won't turn away fans that have been with the series since ground zero.

WRPGS have stagnated just as badly. The WRPGs that everyone seems to love so much all rip from the formula set out since the Ninties. Other than fallout, they all seem to be the uninspired Baulder's Gate or Diablo style game play with the generic Lord of The Rings inspired lore. Fallout was the only exception, except it made no innovations gameplay wise.

Beg to differ - original NWN sucked in concept and execution of concept so much that I deleted it right after pirating it. So there definitely is difference. Not in the terms of basic gameplay (you click where you want to run, you pause the game to give orders etc.) but it have so different structure and storytelling mechanics that it really pushes the game to whole new level. But you probably cant understand what I am speaking about.

DA:O is not that innovative as many people think, but it surely brought some new game experience. There just wasnt any BG-like fantasy RPG between next-gen games.

i might add, it isn't a bad thing that the kids now are discovering wrpgs. there's a treasure trove of excellent stuff there on par if not better than the best of jrpgs.
but it would be great if these wrpg neophytes would just accept something newly learned and learn about it.
then maybe they'd understand what is and isn't innovative.

instead they feel the need to crow about it, and crow as if they've suddenly become a longtime authority on a sub-genre of rpgs they've actually just discovered.

Name another RPG that your origin story follows with you through out the entire game? Oh yes only Dragon Age. Pretty sure half you fan boys havent even played the game.

@12:07 - Your character's origin story also follows you through *every RPG with a fixed main character, ever, whether J- or W-*. Oh, also Baldur's Gate, and Fallout, and all those other Bioware/Black Isle games that gave you a customisable character with fixed backstory.

TL;DR, learn what the fuck you're talking about before you open your e-mouth.

@12:07 - There's also... let's see... every single RPG to have a fixed main character, and every single RPG to have a fixed background for a created character, whether they be J- or W-.

If you're going to post, at least know what the fuck you're talking about.

You do realize that Black Isle is still around, right? After closing down, they renamed themselves to Obsidian and continued making games. They were responsible for KOTOR2 and Neverwinter Nights 2.

The name is different, but the people inside the development team are all the same.

You do know that Black isle Splitted themeselves BETWEEN Obsidian and Bioware right? and all the people who made baldurs gate went to Bioware thus officialy claiming ownership?

Unfortunately Troika and Obsidian have great concepts (I love these guys in a hetero way)but their games are technically flawed in one way or another...

Troika:
Arcanum - somewhat broken and buggy
ToEE - broken and buggy

Obsidian:
NWN2 - can't comment, never played it
KOTOR2 - somehow forgot to finish the game AND buggy

What I don't like is that Bioware tend to use the same old cliches and stock characters (e.g. the tsundere, the psycho, etc.)...

"What I don't like is that Bioware tend to use the same old cliches and stock characters (e.g. the tsundere, the psycho, etc.)..." - ever played a JRPG?

@Anon from 23:19: YES!!! They use the same character pool as JRPG studios!!! Only new character archetypes they had were minature giant space hamsters (and their pet berserkers) and sociopathic assassin droids...

Bioware concept of RPG is getting old after being used properly for 3-4 times? That would mean FF is already prehistoric because they stick to the same concept for 13 games excluding spinoffs and lookalikie games from other companies.
Also Bioware RPG style is good for telling stories. They dont have to change the core or to be exact, they cant change the core because it wouldnt be RPG anymore. But they change everything else - ME is military sci-fi where all aspects of said gendre can be found, DA:O is dark heroic fantasy, KOTOR is Space opera. It also have interesting plot twists (KOTOR - actually you are the villain, ME - twisted politics do their part...). Also basic gameplay styles also vary to certain degree - ME being more FPS than DA:O which is much better when you commands whole party to get tactical advantages.
On the other hand FF didnt changed its whole approach to gameworld from beginig. I know that its part of the series, and without Potions, Bahamut summons and Demi spells it woudnt be FF, but it means that they have to catch up with other game aspects. And guess what? They dont, they still sell the same thing only with different CG movies. Fucking good CG movies with incredibly boring game.

Hay, at least the first few FF games let you pick your character class... Square actually went backwards...

Oh heaven forbid you need to aim.... Never play a FPS. Btw when you are older and get past bakugan and power rangers you might enjoy the story more.

Oh yes, that's my point: the game is incredibly fun even without the guide. However, if you want an example of the depth of gameplay that's possible from DA, the Strategy Guide's complexity is. . . ummm. . . kind of an indicator.