East vs West in video game world

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

No shit sherlock, who else would that be?

Oh, I don't know, the original Mega Man from the original Mega Man series, maybe? The original Mega Man doesn't fight reploids. X does.

[Guernsey]

^ He is right.

[Kyero Fox]

.... I'm not gonna say it twice....

[WanderingKnight]

Don't feed the troll. The guy is a lunatic who always thinks he's right, and gains pleasure from trolling and putting down other people with his idiotic commentary.

He's an egotistical maniac who probably suffers from either psychopathy or a deep superiority complex, a homophobe and a misogynist--but pray tell me, how does that relate to what he wrote? Did you actually read the article or did you just read "Alex Kierkegaard" and stopped there?

I don't think you read it, otherwise you would have used a real argument to back your criticism.

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

but pray tell me, how does that relate to what he wrote?

You must have missed the "idiotic commentary" part of my post. He's known for missing the point, and by linking his article you gave him credit.

[WanderingKnight]

Ok, so what did he get wrong in that article? I'm all ears dawg.

[Arbitres]

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

.... I'm not gonna say it twice....

I'll say it twice then.

Kyero Fox is, for all intents and purposes, a fallout fanboy with a love of radiation and power armor. (If I'm not mistaken.)

What an individual plays it measured by their person, I'm usually indiscriminate to games until they contradict something I hold as an ideal, or are just plain stupid.

I think someone isn't a real video gamer if they haven't even played a Persona or Digital Devil game. Pray tell, does that make me wrong? No.


The industry of east and west games are independent, and should not be chosen simply by genre. In a particular sense both industries continue to struggle against one another as they scrape ideas wherever they can. It isn't that hard all the time, but it's getting there.


I have no idea what this is about anymore, so I'll drop it there with my defense of Kyero and what I think about East vs West... Just a race of ideas, basically.

[Kyero Fox]

I was actually talkin about the Megaman and X thing.

[HayashiTakara]

Just to set it straight... I only said Mega man because I wasn't going to assume others was gonna know who I was talking about when I just said "X".

[Zenemis]

I found the Alex Kierkegaard article to be a good read.

Some of it is no longer accurate, thanks to a few improvements in modern JRPG systems, but I agree with him, in that JRPGs in general contain very little "Role-Playing".

The director is telling you a story, with characters that an enthusiastic player might view as friends, rather than placing themselves in the story as with older, classic Western RPGs.

[roriconfan]

Guys, role play can both mean "play a role I create" as well as "play a role someone else created for me". Unless you are a genius scriptwriter, the average role a player will make for himself is "cool dude with super powers out to save the world". There will be nothing beyond that and the game won't care if exp is gained by killing monsters and not by how well you impersonate your role. So it is actually a challenge if you need to empathize someone else, get in his shoes and feel/act like him.

That is the difference between western and eastern role play games.

[HayashiTakara]

Originally Posted by roriconfan

Guys, role play can both mean "play a role I create" as well as "play a role someone else created for me". Unless you are a genius scriptwriter, the average role a player will make for himself is "cool dude with super powers out to save the world". There will be nothing beyond that and the game won't care if exp is gained by killing monsters and not by how well you impersonate your role. So it is actually a challenge if you need to empathize someone else, get in his shoes and feel/act like him.

That is the difference between western and eastern role play games.

er... no Role Playing means you're playing a role outside of yourself. There's some fun bedroom role-playing games if you're not aware of 'em.

[roriconfan]

Well, that's the thing. You can choose to play the doctor as the stereotypical doctor following a pattern, or as a controversial doctor.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by HayashiTakara

. There's some fun bedroom role-playing games if you're not aware of 'em.

Well, speaking from personal experience, being hell-bent on playing a "cool d00d with cool powers that will save the world and have his own epic" won't get the p&p rper very far. More often than not, the player's own personality, the GM being often a egomaniac dick on a power trip (1) and the many failures of a dice roll turns the expected epic into a comedy that not even Slayers can dream of. And when we end up with epic stories like a LoTR wannabe (D&D), a JoJo-like epic spanning over generations (whatever game), a dark tale of immortals caught in a web of conspiracies (Vampire) or a long journey in the center of the madness (Kult and Call of Cthluh), it's either by accident or because the GM & his players decides to get serious and get their shit together instead of competing against each other.

Otoh, jrpgs won't be dictated by the personality of the player, or the whims of a Gamemaster, or bad luck. You are on a nice paved road. Nice only if the story and the characters are well-written. That's why I enjoyed Xenogears the most in the genre. Other than the blatant "railroading", it's actually what I think to be a lack of variety that makes me rather bitter about jRPGs. The genre have become synonymous with "generic fantasy with slices of sci-fi, and a cast of either generic anime stereotypes or emo teenagers in impossibly cool clothes pretentiously waxing highschool philosophical", with the occaional Persona and the rare Front Mission.

I mean, I would like to see the Japan's answer to System Shock, Fallout or Deus Ex.

(1) D&D4 actually recommending the beginner GM to play with the players and not against them was actually quite of a shock in the community, after 30 years of GMs being used to make players their bitches.

[roriconfan]

I have played DM too and saw the same things. If you let the players do their character too openly, you either get a clone of another character in some book or an excuse of a character all together. Not to mention those darn power players who were using the most weird combos of feats/classes templates just so they can do a devastating attack all the time. Not to mention that when I tried to not just have them meet in a tavern, they would get lost, and if I was telling them to not reveal their backdrop to others, there was no trust amongst them. So I gave up on playing self-made roles and switched to games where you play a prepared role.

In western rpgs, the only interactivity I found was mostly the appearance and stats your character has depending on his actions. That is statistically nice but does not make him more real than a cardboard. Eastern rpgs on the other hand have an unfolding story. You don't get all the picture right away and you see more aspects of a character as the game goes on. At some cases you even choose a path that affects the ending. That sure felt more interesting.

[Arbitres]

I mean, I would like to see the Japan's answer to System Shock, Fallout or Deus Ex.

I would like to see America's answer to persona and Tales of.

[roriconfan]

^ Planescape Torment?

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Ok, so what did he get wrong in that article? I'm all ears dawg.

I think other posters are making a good case of what already.

[Poetic Justice]

Did someone catch that bioware guy saying FFXIII wasn't an "rpg"?

[WanderingKnight]

I think other posters are making a good case of what already.

No, really, I would like to hear your opinion -- put your money where your mouth is. I haven't found any worthwhile criticism of the article, and I don't recall many people claiming it was "idiotic commentary".

Did someone catch that bioware guy saying FFXIII wasn't an "rpg"?

Read the goddamn article. He explains what an RPG is and why the JRPG label is a misnomer.

Jesus christ people. At least STAND up for what your ideas are instead of dismissing criticism altogether. I'm not asking you to like the guy, or think he's the most awesome thing ever (I think he's quite insane to be honest), but damn.