IGN put their hands on Stalker
- Thread starter Odin
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Role-Player
A Smooth-Skin
The game doesn't even need to look better, which I don't think it particularly does. It just needs to be better than D3, and honestly, I don't think that's particularly hard to do.
Bradylama
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Can't really argue with that, seeing as how the first CRPG I ever played was Ultima VII.
Good article, though.
Good article, but I don't agree with calling a genre bullshit just because its name was coined for marketing reasons and implies certain things.
If by your definition a CRPG is an adventure game with PNP style character development, then why can't an Action RPG be an Action Adventure (you used that term, not me) with PNP style character development (if only in terms of mechanics)?
Just that marketing people like to put the RPG stamp on everything doesn't mean certain genre labels, if applied with logic, would neccessarily be bullshit.
By my previous terminology, an Action RPG is an RPG in the way that it has stats, skills and other RPG mechanics, a CRPG has both that and personality development and an Adventure has only the personality development but no RPG mechanics. Of course in praxis an Adventure is more like a PNP RPG than an Action RPG, but that's because the existence of personality development has a very strong effect on the actual gameplay, more than whether you improve your skills with experience points or power-ups (agreed, it'd look stupid if in an Adventure you'd have power-ups).
Many people copy the marketing people's mistake and have no clear definition of an Action RPG. The result is that every somewhat combat heavy RPG becomes an Action RPG in their eyes: Fallout, NWN, IWD, BG; the label gets applied mostly to games they personally dislike.
I give it to you that you are both a good writer and a smart and educated person, but sometimes your statements, not to offend you, just seem a bit broad and based on personal prejudice rather than long contemplation. Just that I dispute of Hip Hop music doesn't mean its inferior to Classic Rock, just that I don't like FPS games doesn't mean an FPS can't be as good (enjoyable, well-thought, complex, atmospheric, ...) as a CRPG. The lack of good games in a genre doesn't justify labeling the entire genre as crap.
If by your definition a CRPG is an adventure game with PNP style character development, then why can't an Action RPG be an Action Adventure (you used that term, not me) with PNP style character development (if only in terms of mechanics)?
Just that marketing people like to put the RPG stamp on everything doesn't mean certain genre labels, if applied with logic, would neccessarily be bullshit.
By my previous terminology, an Action RPG is an RPG in the way that it has stats, skills and other RPG mechanics, a CRPG has both that and personality development and an Adventure has only the personality development but no RPG mechanics. Of course in praxis an Adventure is more like a PNP RPG than an Action RPG, but that's because the existence of personality development has a very strong effect on the actual gameplay, more than whether you improve your skills with experience points or power-ups (agreed, it'd look stupid if in an Adventure you'd have power-ups).
Many people copy the marketing people's mistake and have no clear definition of an Action RPG. The result is that every somewhat combat heavy RPG becomes an Action RPG in their eyes: Fallout, NWN, IWD, BG; the label gets applied mostly to games they personally dislike.
I give it to you that you are both a good writer and a smart and educated person, but sometimes your statements, not to offend you, just seem a bit broad and based on personal prejudice rather than long contemplation. Just that I dispute of Hip Hop music doesn't mean its inferior to Classic Rock, just that I don't like FPS games doesn't mean an FPS can't be as good (enjoyable, well-thought, complex, atmospheric, ...) as a CRPG. The lack of good games in a genre doesn't justify labeling the entire genre as crap.
I almost agree on that.Ashmo said:
I agree that it is imaginable to create an Action-Adventure with PnP style character development, depth and interactivity, but it has never been done afaik so it's a hypothetical genre, and the actual application of the term to existing games is bullshit.
The important difference is Ashmo's restriction of the term to "only in terms of mechanics" which reduces the meaning of RPG to some elements of game mechanics. But I believe interactivity and depth ought to be the defining part of RPG, not stats.
Personally I wouldn't mind the use of the term in the sense
Ashamo describes it if it weren't for the slippery slope argument. First you accept that Diablo2 is an "Action-RPG" and before you know it people call DeusEx and RPG or make statements such as "In Half-Life, you play the role of Gordon Freeman" - yuck.
It's not that I am offended if someone calls DeusEx an RPG, but it defeats the point of having genres if you mislabel games.
Edit:
On the concept of Action-RPGs. What I think of is a game that brings player skill into play like fighting in DeusEx for example, but instead of focussing on combat it ought to make the player exercise all skills actively, kinda like lockpicking in Splinter Cell.
It'd be kinda like mini-games but it ought to be integrated into the gameplay as seamlessly as possible.
I figure Morrowind's combat system may have been a half-hearted step in that direction. It just wasn't done well, and it wasn't apparent anywhere else in the game.
Of course, maybe noone is properly combining action and rpg elements because it would be too much work making a game both a good action game and a good rpg.
It's nice read Ashmo and Roshambo.
I thought a little about what games were disslabeled and such and found nice comparision.
Just take a look at Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale 2. Both have similar engine, interface etc but while we could say Planescape Torment is CRPG then Icewind Dale miss "that something" that reduce it to Action-RPG/Action with RPG elements ... ( or how else you'd like to call that enere )
I thought a little about what games were disslabeled and such and found nice comparision.
Just take a look at Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale 2. Both have similar engine, interface etc but while we could say Planescape Torment is CRPG then Icewind Dale miss "that something" that reduce it to Action-RPG/Action with RPG elements ... ( or how else you'd like to call that enere )
The thing is that genres are artificial.
Nobody really says "I'm gonna make an Action RPG now". The actual quote would be "I want to make a game which focusses on single characters, with each character having certain stats and skills defining how good or bad it is at doing things and which has only limited amounts of dialog with a very linear story and action loaded gameplay" or something like that. In order to bring sense to the whole mess, people start comparing games and putting them into certain categories.
Evolution alone is a good example. In most cases it is not easy to say at which point one species evolves into another one -- the whole process is fluent and every single creature is unique, so we can only label a certain set of properties characteristic and then apply labels based on that.
"CRPG" is a broad term because it is based on another broad term: "PNP RPG". Many PNP RPGs are combat oriented, yet some people prefer to label CRPGs with a focus on combat "Action RPG" just because of that. On the other hand all games are, in the broadest sense, roleplaying games. In GTA you play the role of a criminal, in WarCraft you play the role of a military leader, in Asteroids you play the role of a pilot controlling a spaceship shooting asteroids, in PacMan you play the role of a round something called PacMan eating pills and moving to electronic music in dark rooms (wait, that sounds like an add-on to The Sims), in Tetris... well, I think we can make an exception for Tetris and Pong, but you see where I am going. That's why by most people's definitions (intentionally or coincidentially) CRPGs are games which let you develop your role's personality and abilities, also they traditionally only focus on one person or a small group of people, they usually have a somewhat open story and allow you to do a lot of things to solve problems; basically they are interactive plays with certain mechanics restricting people in what they can do (the dice and rules being the same restrictions we'd have in the real world due to physics and fate/luck/God's will/Canada/religion/The Reds/Dubya).
So basically they let you play someone else's life.
Now what if someone uses a random numbers generator instead of dice, is it still an RPG? Is it still an RPG if your dialog choices are limited? Is it still an RPG if there oftenly is only one way to solve a problem? Is it still an RPG if your role is predefined beyond a vague class ("the unknown stranger called Herve who likes to kick little puppies and gets off to photos of Martha Stewart" rather than "a wizard", "a ranger", "a soldier", "a firefighter", "a prostitute" or "an Interplay CEO")? Is it still an RPG if it's played in first person perspective? Is it still an RPG if the story is linear and you got no real choice?
It's not defined well enough to say which of these requirements or even how many of these requirements have to be met in order for a game to classify as CRPG, is it?
I didn't think so.
EDIT:
So I've been called Ashamo now as well? If this would be Pokemon, next you'd know, I'd evolve into "Ashambo".
Nobody really says "I'm gonna make an Action RPG now". The actual quote would be "I want to make a game which focusses on single characters, with each character having certain stats and skills defining how good or bad it is at doing things and which has only limited amounts of dialog with a very linear story and action loaded gameplay" or something like that. In order to bring sense to the whole mess, people start comparing games and putting them into certain categories.
Evolution alone is a good example. In most cases it is not easy to say at which point one species evolves into another one -- the whole process is fluent and every single creature is unique, so we can only label a certain set of properties characteristic and then apply labels based on that.
"CRPG" is a broad term because it is based on another broad term: "PNP RPG". Many PNP RPGs are combat oriented, yet some people prefer to label CRPGs with a focus on combat "Action RPG" just because of that. On the other hand all games are, in the broadest sense, roleplaying games. In GTA you play the role of a criminal, in WarCraft you play the role of a military leader, in Asteroids you play the role of a pilot controlling a spaceship shooting asteroids, in PacMan you play the role of a round something called PacMan eating pills and moving to electronic music in dark rooms (wait, that sounds like an add-on to The Sims), in Tetris... well, I think we can make an exception for Tetris and Pong, but you see where I am going. That's why by most people's definitions (intentionally or coincidentially) CRPGs are games which let you develop your role's personality and abilities, also they traditionally only focus on one person or a small group of people, they usually have a somewhat open story and allow you to do a lot of things to solve problems; basically they are interactive plays with certain mechanics restricting people in what they can do (the dice and rules being the same restrictions we'd have in the real world due to physics and fate/luck/God's will/Canada/religion/The Reds/Dubya).
So basically they let you play someone else's life.
Now what if someone uses a random numbers generator instead of dice, is it still an RPG? Is it still an RPG if your dialog choices are limited? Is it still an RPG if there oftenly is only one way to solve a problem? Is it still an RPG if your role is predefined beyond a vague class ("the unknown stranger called Herve who likes to kick little puppies and gets off to photos of Martha Stewart" rather than "a wizard", "a ranger", "a soldier", "a firefighter", "a prostitute" or "an Interplay CEO")? Is it still an RPG if it's played in first person perspective? Is it still an RPG if the story is linear and you got no real choice?
It's not defined well enough to say which of these requirements or even how many of these requirements have to be met in order for a game to classify as CRPG, is it?
I didn't think so.
EDIT:
So I've been called Ashamo now as well? If this would be Pokemon, next you'd know, I'd evolve into "Ashambo".
Ashmo said:
So it can imply those things, but not bother to deliver. I'd call that bullshit.
Probably because in most cases the genre label is applied without[/i] logic. If there's any hint of a skill increase, people will pull out that the game is an RPG because of that, especially the publishers.
I had alread pointed out that RPG implies a lot more than just a stat system. Many RTS games (even not counting those made on the Infinity Engine) have stats have stats already, as do Action games and many others. A game isn't a particular genre because of the stat system - EVERY game has a stat system, UT2004 included, even if you can't see the stats. Ripping a ruleset from an RPG doesn't make whatever it is shoved into an RPG - it all depends in the gameplay. I thought I had covered the distinction in design before.
I think I have already pointed out that I dislike repeating myself.
Not quite true.
CRPG was fairly spot on in how it meant an Adventure game that is like a P&P RPG. Adventure has had stats quite frequently, but tends to be more story-driven than player decision-driven.
Yet some still try to call Legend of Zelda an RPG when it is in fact an Action-Adventure game. You do get power-ups, you do get better swords, and so on. The same with Devil May Cry and other games that use a skill incrementing system, but otherwise has no relation to anything resembling RPG gameplay.
Where Adventure and RPG split is the defining point. Calling IWD, BG, or anything like that an Action RPG is pure bullshit as well. There is a genre for combat heavy RPGs. They are called "dungeon crawlers". There is certainly nothing there that infers there's any action there. Many of which, in fact, are RTS-Adventure games.
As I've said before, the Adventure genre is a scary one for publishers to mention because it points out publisher incompetence. The genre still exists and has existed for more than thirty years. It has most of the traits of a CRPG, except that CRPG was defined by mechanics to be akin to playing an RPG on computer, whereas Adventure has many forms of presentation.
Then, of course, I could point out there's a difference between tabletop strategy games and P&P RPGs. The semantic straw man argument about being able to "role-play" anything is not a good one, and is only the result of the publishers trying to hammer everything into a flavor of RPG. It is one of the slippery slope quantifications I had previously mentioned, and it completely misses the point of why the genre was coined.
As for PS:T and IWD2: PS:T would tend to be an RPG-RTS, RPG first and foremost given the GAMEPLAY, not the stat system. IWD2 would be RTS-Adventure, because while it uses a stat system, it doesn't have much that would make it an RPG and therefore follows IWD and BG into the RTS-Adventure genre, mainly because it is RTS combat first, Adventure second. Well spotted, Frog.
I suppose this is the point at which my ignorance towards PNP games comes back to bite me in the ass.
Could you tell me someplace where I could find definitions of the most common subgenres of RPGs? I'd love to fill that knowledge gap as soon as possible.
Could you tell me someplace where I could find definitions of the most common subgenres of RPGs? I'd love to fill that knowledge gap as soon as possible.
There weren't any real sub-genres of RPGs. Mainly because RPGs are in themselves a sub-genre. 
Hybrids do exist, but they are rare, extremely so because they will tend to only include part of the whole aspect. An RPG without RPG gameplay is just a stat system, which exists in other genres, expecially Strategy.
If today's gaming press was playing PC games instead of buying a Super Nintendo when X-COM came out, X-COM would have undoubtedly been billed as an RPG in part. Then again, they wouldn't have been taught that games such as Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy were RPGs from the start. Wasteland and many others in the 80's (most from Origin) would have clued them in pretty decently.
Hybrids do exist, but they are rare, extremely so because they will tend to only include part of the whole aspect. An RPG without RPG gameplay is just a stat system, which exists in other genres, expecially Strategy.If today's gaming press was playing PC games instead of buying a Super Nintendo when X-COM came out, X-COM would have undoubtedly been billed as an RPG in part. Then again, they wouldn't have been taught that games such as Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy were RPGs from the start. Wasteland and many others in the 80's (most from Origin) would have clued them in pretty decently.