Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

There are people so consumed by hatred of JRPGs that they fail to appreciate FF VI

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
"Design ethos"..."game structure". Well, yes, if you ignore the game elements that were cited by me (or by Machocruz earlier) and instead focus solely on plot/quest structure (which seems to be what you mean by "game structure"), then Planescape: Torment appears dissimilar to JRPGs. On the other hand, if you had bothered to ponder the simplification and de-emphasis of combat and exploration --- two of the three main components of the RPG genre --- in Planescape: Torment and the relative importance it places of backstory, dialogue, and characterization, then you might realize that the game has a very different relationship with JRPGs from what you're assuming. To refer back to Machocruz's list, we remember Planescape: Torment for characters, their adventure, plot points, art, color, the music, written descriptions and dialogue, not combat or exploration. Planescape: Torment takes a literary approach to being art rather than the theatrical/operatic approach of FF VI and other JRPGs, but is otherwise quite similar.
By that logic adventure games are also similar to JRPG's because they're both narrative-heavy. You say that its storytelling is what makes Planescape: Torment similar to JRPG's, yet everything about its storytelling is far more similar to cRPG's than it is to JRPG's.

Besides, Planescape: Torment isn't notable for its story, its notable for how it integrates that story into the game. If it had actually taken significant inspiration from Final Fantasy and conveyed its story primarily through non-interactive cutscenes, PS:T would've been lacking most of what made it memorable and interesting. Take for example TNO's immortality. TNO is distinct from other party members because whereas they need to be resurrected when they die, TNO will simply regenerate and respawn. It would've been impossible to convey TNO's immortality in a JRPG because party members in story-driven JRPG's can't die, they simply get knocked out, even if they are at 0 HP, they still participate in story scenes. The fact that TNO gains attribute points on level ups and can change classes at will is a deliberate violation of AD&D's rules, to convey the fact that TNO can recall and quickly relearn abilities his previous incarnations possessed. The use of dialogue as a core mechanic follows naturally from the fact that as an immortal, combat is inherently non-threatening, and because you're in search of your identity, and any conversation could potentially make a memory resurface or trigger a new insight. PS:T also manages to avoid the age-old problem of amnesia feeling like a lazy contrivance: because TNO is the player avatar, the amnesia plot is essentially sidestepped. Unlike other stories, there is never a moment where TNO regains his memory and the main plot kicks into gear. The story in PS:T is always driven by the player's actions and curiosity to uncover the story. And said story is incredibly meta: it's about a man who tried to fix his alignment meter by prolonging his life so he could perform lots of good deeds to balance out his bad ones.

To cut my own ramblings short, it would've been impossible for a JRPG to tell tell Planescape: Torment's story because it's a story built on D&D mechanics and cRPG tropes. That's why your arguments are not just wrong, but completely misguided.


Final Fantasy VI
de-emphasis of combat
:retarded: A game where you can't take five steps without triggering a random encounter de-emphasizes combat?

Look at the summary of Final Fantasy VI in my previous post. The entire game is structured around a very specific combat loop. You reach a town where you can stock up on items and buy equipment, followed by a dungeon that concludes with a boss battle, after which you gain access to a new town where you stock up on items and buy slightly better equipment and enter a new dungeon that also concludes with a boss battle, rince and repeat. Granted, this combat loop is not very engaging or challenging, but it's the focus of the game nonetheless.

art, color, the music
Why are these crossed out?
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
Besides, Planescape: Torment isn't notable for its story, its notable for how it integrates that story into the game. If it had actually taken significant inspiration from Final Fantasy and conveyed its story primarily through non-interactive cutscenes, PS:T would've been lacking most of what made it memorable and interesting. Take for example TNO's immortality. TNO is distinct from other party members because whereas they need to be resurrected when they die, TNO will simply regenerate and respawn. It would've been impossible to convey TNO's immortality in a JRPG because party members in story-driven JRPG's can't die, they simply get knocked out, even if they are at 0 HP, they still participate in story scenes.
To cut my own ramblings short, it would've been impossible for a JRPG to tell tell Planescape: Torment's story because it's a story built on D&D mechanics and cRPG tropes.
That implies that Dragon Age Origins is a jRPG and that Fallout is not an RPG because nobody can be resurrected when they die. PS:T isn't a "standard" wRPG, and nobody ever said that RPGs are distinguished by resurrection mechanics.

That's like saying Galuf or Tellah's or Aeris' death couldn't be conveyed in a wRPG because wRPGs aren't built on the jRPG tropes, so no. We forbid you from having plot deaths, it's not going to be so poignant because people die all the time in wRPGs.
A game where you can't take five steps without triggering a random encounter de-emphasizes combat?
Fallout has plenty of random encounters and combat, yet people say that you can technically go pacifist through the entire game. And, to be fair, you can run away from most combat in any Final Fantasy title.

To me, a game that emphasizes combat would be something like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, wherein battles are essentially missions and not winning a battle through killing the entire opposition basically triggers a fail state, and there's only a few battles you can opt to completely skip (and usually not without huge consequence).

(We just made this thread into a "what is a jRPG" debate, haven't we?)
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
Sounds similar enough to me. I don't see how being influenced by Ultima is really relevant to this situation. It was 1986, there wasn't much else available for them to use as inspiration.
I disagree, in my opinion you can't relate the elegant structure of Ultima 3, Dragon Quest 1&2, early Might&Magic and similar old open-world blobbers, etc... with the ugly thrown-at-your-face quest-based structure of many further WRPGs. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that the structure used by many latter JRPGs is better, I'm just saying I fudamentally dislike both. I think these 2 different derives come from the same exact 2 problems of developpers wanting first to integrate heavy narrative to the equation and secondly to remove any trace of challenge from the exploration part. These are two bad ideas from the start, and these are reasons among others (other aspects are dumbed down too) why the results are generally worse than what we had before. Sure these don't prohibit proper dungeon crawling or character skill-based gameplay or that sort of things and with proper execution games can still be good but I still consider it's awkward.
 
Last edited:

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,315
Location
Hyperborea
Sounds similar enough to me. I don't see how being influenced by Ultima is really relevant to this situation. It was 1986, there wasn't much else available for them to use as inspiration.
I disagree, in my opinion you can't relate the elegant structure of Ultima 3, Dragon Quest 1&2, early Might&Magic and similar old open-world blobbers, etc... with the ugly thrown-at-your-face quest-based structure of many further WRPGs.
I have to agree with this. These games are what I would describe as "archetypal," and things that are archetypal are very powerful as anyone who is a student of mythology or classical literature knows. And the path to the archetypal is relative simplicity (but not simple-mindedness) and clarity, which are both features of elegance.

Now you probably don't want no sidequests, because that's not very interesting. If you're pursuing a goal in real life, there are usually accessory goals, or paths, that go along with that, so it makes sense to have those things in a game. You want just enough quests to not lose site of the overarching journey, otherwise that journey loses potency and urgency. This I think many JRPGs have been very good about*, and of course earlier WRPGs.

Besides that, having 100 sidequests is a video game construct. It has nothing to do with any tabletop RPG that I've played or heard about. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I'm familiar with most if not all of the major tabletop games. And those are your canon so they have some authority in terms of defining what this genre is and how it works. Video game designers can have their own take on it, but it generally doesn't work well because they don't understand the structure of the thing that is already well established and how it fits together, before they add all their own bullshit. Like maybe there's a reason a DnD module doesn't offer 50 sidequests, and it's generally frowned upon by the GM and your group if you go off and collect heads of cabbage for some random NPC. But they haven't asked why, or they don't care because they can announce their game has 200 hours of content. And that's what your supposed to have when you have an open world, right? Lots of stuff to do. Well that's the conventional wisdom these days, and doesn't lead to very interesting open world game structure if you ask me.

*Something like a Golden Saucer or monster arena might be getting into the ridiculous side though and I'm not sure what that has do with the genre either. However these things strike me as more fun and useful than delivering a letter or collecting macrame materials for a spinster.

Note: all the above was typed with the voice of Jordan Peterson in my head.
 

MasPingon

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2007
Messages
1,796
Location
Castle Rock
I recently played Final Fantasy VI for the first time to finally see what all the buzz is about and I'm at a loss on what's supposed to be so mind-blowing about it. It's completely on rails

You're wrong, keep playing

Can you elaborate? I loved Chrono Trigger so I had big expectation while sitting to FF6. I liked it but stopped playing after couple of hours so I can't tell much about this game. Maybe I missed some magic and the game grows as CT.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
6 is overrated. Half the game is a hyper linear slog (you can't even backtrack for a good chunk of that) with little customization (Espers only have one real choice till end-game, when the one speed raising one is unlocked, as AP is unlimited and the HP/MP increases are neglibile: Do you want strength or magic at level up?) and half the characters have abilities that are useless or quickly become useless due to poor scaling.

5 is better.

I'm gunna play 6 again soon, but it definitely didn't grab me like 5 did.

I've now played through 5 three times and thrived on each playthrough. 6 I only played once and found it fairly "meh".

Be interesting to see if time has changed my opinion any when I go back to 6.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,225
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Can you elaborate? I loved Chrono Trigger so I had big expectation while sitting to FF6. I liked it but stopped playing after couple of hours so I can't tell much about this game. Maybe I missed some magic and the game grows as CT.

You know how in the final part of CT, the game sort of opens up and there are various quests around the world (listed by Gaspar) that you can do in whatever order before you take on Lavos? FF6 does exactly the same thing, but er, "bigger" I guess. It's kind of epic when you get to it.

Analogy that I like: Final Fantasy VI is to Chrono Trigger what Baldur's Gate 2 is to Planescape: Torment.
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
I recently played Final Fantasy VI for the first time to finally see what all the buzz is about and I'm at a loss on what's supposed to be so mind-blowing about it. It's completely on rails

You're wrong, keep playing

Can you elaborate? I loved Chrono Trigger so I had big expectation while sitting to FF6. I liked it but stopped playing after couple of hours so I can't tell much about this game. Maybe I missed some magic and the game grows as CT.
Since you stopped playing, don't seem to care much, and the game is almost 25 years old, after what's probably considered one of the most devastating, and iconic RPG events (Hint: You actually lose) your entire party is split up. Instead of starting with Terra, you start with Celes (obvious comparison between the 2) and aim to go reform your party in order to take down the final boss. The characters you're forced to recruit are Setzer, and Edgar. After that, you're free to take down the final level, or spend hours tracking each one down. Depending on your actions, there is also one (particularly powerful) character who may be permanently killed as well.

It was also a bit daring for a JRPG, in that it deals with the reality of death up front, particularly Celes' (optional) attempted suicide, and Cyan coping with his murdered wife and son.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Joined
Mar 27, 2013
Messages
277
Location
Austin, TX
FFVI and Planescape are still classics purely because of their story. Plenty of games have awesome innovative gamplay. We forgot about them, they've been replaced. We remember these games because of their story, whether we realize this or not. Planescape is the Blade Runner of games, and FFVI is Star Wars. FFVII was Fight Club, and we were all Edward Norton when we played it.

FFVI had amazing gameplay for its time. It still has a nice progression as it opens up with the airship. You go from single hero, to partners in crime, to rebel leaders, to epic heroes. Now that it's old, the parts in between are unimpressive and tedious.

And FFVI still has one of the best plots ever. Not the characters, the dialogue, or the writing---but the plot.

There are plenty of people who don't care about plot. These people are useful idiots, and I wish them the best with their meaningless attempt at life and entertainment.

 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,784
I rate your post delusional

also your analogies are shit

That said, your point about plot is not bad, but plot isn't the same as story. FF6 had nice plot pieces (on an individual base stuff like the prologue or the train sequence worked quite well), but sadly an awfully railroaded structure and annoying chars (forcing them down your throat all the fucking time), and the overall story was generic tripe. And the game had no clue what to do after it wiped its own gameworld out. 2nd part was boring as hell, also the plot became much messier at that point
 
Joined
Mar 27, 2013
Messages
277
Location
Austin, TX
Not much to disagree with there. It's the best "typical" story of all games. But that's a huge deal.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom