Mr.White555 wrote:MrPopo wrote:Mr.White555 wrote:Especially JRPG's, I NEVER found the need to play as some adolescent kid that looks like a girl trying to save the world from destruction.
Ok, this is a pet peeve of mine, but the whole "effeminant teenager" thing didn't really get started until FFX. All the SNES RPGs had normal characters and were some fantastic pieces of gameplay (in my opinion). And a decent number of PSX and PS2 RPGs also have regular protagonists, like Xenogears and Persona 4. The last couple of high-profile Square (and I specifically call out the Square half) games have had the effeminant protagonist that makes you question is sexuality, and that has been transferred onto all JRPGs. I have no problem if you don't like JRPGs; different strokes for different folks. But the "teenage guy who looks like a girl" thing is NOT a reason to write of the genre.
Well its not so much the guys looking like girls or vise versa. I don't like the whole adolescent saving the world nonsence. I would like to see a battled hardened veteran save the world. O another reason I don't like RPG's is that I do not like the turn based system too much. but the whole character stats and such are cool but my main problem with the genre is its gameplay. They tell great stories, but I think they suffer from gameplay problems for the most part. This might have to do in part that I am a huge shooter/platformer fan... I still think there needs to be a proper fps/rpg game. Stalker had good gameplay but its rpg elements sucked and fallout 3 had sucky gameplay(V.A.T.S still rules though)
See, that's fine, in my book. If you don't like the gameplay then it makes sense that you wouldn't like the genre, as it's all about similar gameplay between titles, with slight quirks to the combat or stats system. I, on the other hand, enjoy that gameplay, as I like figuring out the precise way to mold a party to trounce everything in my path.
As for the adolescents saving the world, Orson Scott Card wrote a very interesting piece about that phenomenom in the preface to Speaker of the Dead. Paraphrasing it, if you look at a lot of fiction in general the heroes tend to be going through an adolescent phase of their life, even if they aren't technically adolescents. When you're an adolescent you've begun to break away from the dependence of your childhood; however, you have not yet accepted the responsibility of adulthood and the need to generate strong roots for stability. And look at the protagonists of fiction. Most of them are free to wander the earth, answerable to no one. The adolescent is also one who is going through a transition, and good fiction is about growth. The protagonists start off naive or as asses and end the story wiser and with resolve. They frequently have found someone to protect, which moves them fully from their childhood dependence and into the role of caregiver.
There are obviously going to be exceptions to this. But take a look through some of your favorite stories sometime. Luke Skywalker is a man without parents who leaves home to join the Rebellion in all his naivetivity, and ends the series as a much older and wiser person who has taken the safety of the galaxy into his own hands. Frodo is a young halfling who has the sudden responsibility of carrying the One Ring thrust upon him. At the beginning he is carefree and doesn't want to deal with it. As he journeys he begins to mature and voluntarily takes up the burden. And by the end he is so weighed down by the weight of his experiences that he's practically an old man.
You see the adolescent protagonist in video games because you see it in fiction. The difference is that in fiction you rarely have your face really rubbed in the fact that your protagonist is a 17 year old kid with a chip on his shoulder. The age can be quickly forgotton as long as it isn't either that of a child or that of a senior. In a video game, though, you have a constant visual reminder that your protagonist is a 17 year old punk with a stupid pair of lederhosen.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
