RPG Progress Report

[Sarge]

If there's anything I've felt about WRPGs vs. JRPGs, it's that the tech really tended to hold back Western developers' vision. JRPGs tended to work a lot better when the tech was underpowered because they were mostly content to be simpler games, whereas WRPGs weren't against throwing the kitchen sink at you.

Put another way, it reminds me a bit of what a major professor told me about design philosophies in the States vs. Japan. It might not always be true, but American design tends to throw as many features out there as possible, and then try to cram it all into the space available, whereas the Japanese tend to start with a simpler core and build out from there to fill the space. It might even be rooted in being an island country vs. a sprawling expanse of countryside. Who knows!

It might also be crap, but it seems at least somewhat plausible. And it's also why the tech increases have benefited WRPGs far more than JRPGs.

[prfsnl_gmr]

How else am I to be a godking of gaming?

Beat all the King's Fields and I'll share the throne with you.

[noiseredux]

Bioware are teasing a Dragon Age tactics game. That would be amazing.

[touchofkiel]

As an RPG fan...there were some WRPGs I got into growing up, but so much of my focus was on JRPGs that I feel like I'm playing catch up with many of the classics. I owe it to myself as a fan of the genre to play through the likes of the Ultima series while continuing to explore what other RPGs are out there that I missed or never beat.

I've had the exact same experience - growing up playing JRPGs, then finally discovering CRPGs... especially the cheap-as-hell (and Mac compatible! Ok yeah I know, shut up... I'm going to buy a PC soon...) games on GoG... which, like you, I've found myself purchasing way too many...

I also had the idea of starting the beginning of Ultima, but... puke. Some things don't age well, specifically for those of without any nostalgia to improve it. But what do you know, I picked up the entire series for something like $20. So maybe I'll start with VII.

I think we started seeing these on consoles more often (and successfully) with the Xbox... Morrowind, KOTOR, etc. But last gen, especially on 360, there were tons of western RPGs release that would have never seen the light of day on consoles before. Now they're even putting out the isometric stuff on PS4 - and it's pretty well optimized, apparently. They just need to get Pillars of Eternity on PS4 and I'd be happy.

I'm hoping to start a new CRPG pretty soon, probably Baldur's Gate. These are big, complex games, and as a lifelong console gamer I'm extra-slow when it comes to kb/m... so they require a good chunk of time and the patience to really get into it.

Meanwhile I can fire up a JRPG, watch a cinematic, and spam-attack my way through half the game's battles.

[MrPopo]

The western RPGs were starting from "let's do D&D in the form of a computer", so the fundamental design goal started from this broad and ambitious thing. Then Japan sees the end results of these like Wizardry and Ultima and decides to make games patterned off of that gameplay without the D&D context to understand that these were a series of compromises against a larger vision. So then they iterated off of the dungeon crawling or limited overhead movement and focused on those elements, while the western RPGs kept striving towards that D&D on the PC goal.

The CRPG Addict's blog is a fantastic resource for seeing how the computer RPG has evolved over time. The beginning is a bit rough as he restricted it to DOS and hadn't yet embraced the historical cataloging that he has in the later years of the blog. But he's gone back and revisited a lot of those early years and the early games that he didn't give a fair shake. It's a really interesting series of reads and you can definitely see how the genre evolves over time; which branches are fruitful and which are diversions that die off.

[Sarge]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I thought about mentioning D&D, and how much it influenced Western RPGs. It really was a lot to try to cram on to very limited platforms, while Dragon Quest really started the idea in Japan to strip the idea down to its essence, and tailor it more for the platform.

It also means that many WRPGs are extremely ambitious, and despite various technical foibles, you'll find folks that recognize the depth there and fall in love with them anyway.

Personally, the first "Western" RPG I ever actually played through was Knights of the Old Republic, which in many ways was more a WRPG/JRPG hybrid, a sort of consolized take on the genre. I'm not even a big Star Wars fan, and I enjoyed it a ton.

[MrPopo]

Dragon Quest is very heavily influenced by the first three Ultima games. You have an overworld, you wander around and kill guys to get special items and then defeat a boss at the end. But Ultima was trying to realize that full roleplaying ideal and you see that get expanded on into Ultima IV with the virtues, while Japan stuck with the framework of "wander around a map, kill dudes, get items" and evolved by giving more and more context to why you're wandering and getting these special items and increasing the complexity of the battle system (think FFIII's job system).

[Xeogred]

Wasn't Wizardry the ultimate blueprint for JRPG's?

I can't see myself getting into old WRPG's much. The "you are the avatar" approach that most of them seem to take doesn't do it for me as much as being directly told a more linear story and direction, even the mute characters in JRPG's seem different because they still clearly feel like they are their own character and not trying to put me in those shoes. I like being on the outside.

Would love to try some out but the motivation doesn't really exist. I couldn't stomach much Baldurs Gate. Planescape lost me real quickly because of the lack of actual gameplay. And while I like the old Fallout's in some ways, the combat is terrible.

[Sarge]

If memory serves, both games were influential.

[BoneSnapDeez]

There's actually a pretty substantial amount of pre-Dragon Quest RPGs developed in Japan (1982-1985).

A large number of these games are heavily influenced by Ultima and Wizardry, while others are completely crazy and experimental. You can also find the birth of the top-down action-RPG genre, as well as early strategy RPGs.

Check out the "Dark Ages of JRPGs" entries on the HG101 blog sometime. Sites like MobyGames also have some great chronological lists. What's depressing is that some of these games appear to be on the verge of being "lost" as their disk images have yet to be dumped.

I began with JRPGs before WRPGs, mainly because my parents were not early adopters of the home computer. When they did get one it was one of those black & white Macs, so I missed out on the DOS/C64/Apple II WRPG craze. Eventually we got a Sony Vaio and I later picked up the Ultima Collection.

But my first real "exposure" to WRPGs was from reading about the console ports in Nintendo Power. I remember being both fascinated and intimidated by these games. I recall thinking that the "Advanced" in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons meant that you had to be, like, really good at video games to handle that shiz. And Wizardry had that "Ages 16+" warning on the back. Hardcore.

I love old WRPGs but have little time to invest in them these days. For me they're "one and done" games (who the hell plays Wizardry IV more than once?!) while I can replay retro JRPGs ad nauseam.