After seeing a video series continuing this I thought I'd bring it up here.
The RPG genre involves games that create an immersive environment and are driven by a narrative. A game designer can decide to either make said narrative one where there's an emphasis on having your choices matter, or a predefined story is progressively exposed. Flexibility in turn needs to be balanced with things being purpose driven. These elements are important in any game and whether based in manual, cutscenes, or game engine have been a staple of good game design since the 8-bit era.
There's also questions related to how much of a simulation you want to create with your immersive environment, and whether to have direct or indirect control of the character(s). Direct control allows for a more involved feel to combat, and encourages more tactical fighting approached. Examples include the Zelda franchise, System Shock series, FallOut 3, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex:HR.
Indirect control involves giving your characters orders on what to do, and puts an emphasis on strategy. Examples include the Baldur's Gate series, FallOut 1-2, Knights of the Old Republic, and most of the Final Fantasy franchise. This in turn tends to mean that you want to try to enable a variety of strategies and strategic options, and make the interface for issuing commands as unintrusive as possible.
Indirect control schemes benefit greatly from having a mouse, as this allows the player to indicate where characters should go and what they can attack. A keyboard thanks to having over a hundred buttons and hundreds of key combinations also tends to enable a significant number of options that can be called directly, like was used by early Ultima games, Ultima Underworld, or System Shock. Consoles have tended to have to take a different approach due to the limitations of the available hardware. Thus the tendency was towards menus that popped up and gave a cascading set of options.
Japanese console RPG makers have made a point to try to overcome these limitations. Square introduced a system where you had counters instead of fixed rounds rather early. Wolf Team which became tri-Ace is particularly noteworthy for their work along these lines even with the original Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean.
I keep seeing the term “JRPG” used to reference this concept of a game that has fixed turns and a narrative. Often as a setup to deride Square Enix as being backwards, despite them having been using alternatives to basic turn based combat since the 1991 release of Final Fantasy IV, and being the big company behind Deus Ex:HR. Nested in this though seems to be legitimate question related to gaming trends.
Should all RPG be designed to accommodate the limitations of making it convenient to play on a Dual Shock/XBox controller, and should the market abandon indirect control schemes on RPGs? Is the experimentation Square Enix has done with their Final Fantasy series over the years not been worthwhile at looking at different approaches within the rather significant limitations of the control scheme provided? Are they actually stagnant as a company, or are people just ignoring their large and diverse IP catalog?
The RPG genre involves games that create an immersive environment and are driven by a narrative. A game designer can decide to either make said narrative one where there's an emphasis on having your choices matter, or a predefined story is progressively exposed. Flexibility in turn needs to be balanced with things being purpose driven. These elements are important in any game and whether based in manual, cutscenes, or game engine have been a staple of good game design since the 8-bit era.
There's also questions related to how much of a simulation you want to create with your immersive environment, and whether to have direct or indirect control of the character(s). Direct control allows for a more involved feel to combat, and encourages more tactical fighting approached. Examples include the Zelda franchise, System Shock series, FallOut 3, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex:HR.
Indirect control involves giving your characters orders on what to do, and puts an emphasis on strategy. Examples include the Baldur's Gate series, FallOut 1-2, Knights of the Old Republic, and most of the Final Fantasy franchise. This in turn tends to mean that you want to try to enable a variety of strategies and strategic options, and make the interface for issuing commands as unintrusive as possible.
Indirect control schemes benefit greatly from having a mouse, as this allows the player to indicate where characters should go and what they can attack. A keyboard thanks to having over a hundred buttons and hundreds of key combinations also tends to enable a significant number of options that can be called directly, like was used by early Ultima games, Ultima Underworld, or System Shock. Consoles have tended to have to take a different approach due to the limitations of the available hardware. Thus the tendency was towards menus that popped up and gave a cascading set of options.
Japanese console RPG makers have made a point to try to overcome these limitations. Square introduced a system where you had counters instead of fixed rounds rather early. Wolf Team which became tri-Ace is particularly noteworthy for their work along these lines even with the original Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean.
I keep seeing the term “JRPG” used to reference this concept of a game that has fixed turns and a narrative. Often as a setup to deride Square Enix as being backwards, despite them having been using alternatives to basic turn based combat since the 1991 release of Final Fantasy IV, and being the big company behind Deus Ex:HR. Nested in this though seems to be legitimate question related to gaming trends.
Should all RPG be designed to accommodate the limitations of making it convenient to play on a Dual Shock/XBox controller, and should the market abandon indirect control schemes on RPGs? Is the experimentation Square Enix has done with their Final Fantasy series over the years not been worthwhile at looking at different approaches within the rather significant limitations of the control scheme provided? Are they actually stagnant as a company, or are people just ignoring their large and diverse IP catalog?
