A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger do not belong in the same category. In the first, you have action fights that require quick hand-eye coordination and skilled reflexes. In the 2nd you just choose actions from menus, no hand-eye coordination nor reflexes required.
To me, an RPG, has always meant the latter (choose [attack, magic, item] from a menu). Wizardry, Bard's Tale (Apple II), FF7 are RPGs. A Link to the Past, Link's Adventure, Breath of the Wild, are not.
I know the letters RPG stand for "Role Playing Game" but if we're going to go down that route, Flight Sim is an RPG. You play the role of an airplane pilot. Mario Tennis, would also be an RPG. you play the role of a cartoon tennis players. GTA5 is an RPG. You play the role of a member of a street gang.
Since we know that's not what people mean when they say RPG, we're still left making sure were discussing comparable games. IMO, Zelda games (nearly all action games) are not comparable to Final Fantasy or other J-RPG games (nearly all select from a menu games). Their similarity is at most, they are set in a middle-earth tolken-esk setting where you fight monsters with swords. But that's clearly not a useful distinction as it would leave out Earthbound or any other RPG not set in a wizards & dragons type of setting.
You are not wrong. Legend of Zelda is categorized as an adventure game. Or sometimes, action-adventure to emphasize the sword-swinging aspect.
This is the kind of thing that people will argue about, but to me, a role-playing video game is characterized by a controlling party (usually) of characters with stats that can change based on the player's actions and/or progress, and turn-based combat.
I think everyone will have a different definition. In my opinion the "Role Playing" element is the ability for the game player to make deliberate choices which alter the character progression.
It can seem somewhat arbitrary. But to me a game like Diablo, Cyberpunk or Deus Ex where you are given a choice (to allocate skill points or similar) which changes the performance/abilities of the character makes its "roleplaying".
On the other hand something like Zelda or Metal Gear Solid the game play tended to change more based around obtaining certain items or reaching a certain stage of game rather than any decision based character progression
Something like Bioshock blurs the line as you make choices about which skills to obtain which alters the gameplay.
I think the defining characteristic is that you can play in different roles within the same game world. Flight simulator is not an rpg, you're always a pilot. Likewise, the content react to your character. Diablo 4 doesn't have any dialogue or level related to character choices, it's an action game with a skill tree.
Yeah, there are bound to be a few oddities, albeit in this case I think technical and market challenges are more a factor than design decisions, coupled with a bit of "this game doesn't really fit as anything else"
Anyway when I wrote different roles I didn't necessarily meant "trough multiple characters"
"playing different roles" is kind of nebulous, though - and especially historically, it doesn't really mesh with what has been considered an RPG.
Depending on your strictness of definition, quite a bit more than "a few oddities" among the RPG classics would not fit this definition, on the other end it would encompass a ton of non-linear P&C/VN/Interactive fiction in general.
I know that the moniker has it's issues when taking it literally, but doing so too strictly makes the term almost meaningless when discussing genres. (..."even more meaningless", some may argue. ;) )
I'm sure I'm not the only one that in Morrowind onwards (heck, Starfield too), I always drag various followers along for the ride to avoid playing solo. In Oblivion it was weeks before I even started the main quest because I wanted to keep Sean Bean around.
I agree this isn't a key definitional point in itself, although I think it contributes to immersion and embodiment within an RPG to have relationships with friendly characters. And I think those are two key points to making a successful RPG: immersion means I believe I am in this world, embodiment means I believe I am this character. They're not discrete things, and there are many ways to serve and balance those goals. Some people's threshold (mine, if I'm honest) is quite high for when a game qualifies to become an RPG, but it seems quite subjective and it's definitely a continuum.
As a MUD enthusiast I think there's a pretty big gap between games that use an interesting story and meaningful choices vs. a game that is literally just role-playing. I think the labels "Choices matter" and "Character progression" are good for capturing the newer versions of roleplaying games while leaving the noun roleplaying for actual RP. That said RP can and is done in a variety of multiplayer engines, I've seen it in Warcraft 3, Neverwinter Nights, WoW, Minecraft and a bunch of other games - but in those cases it's essentially just folks ignoring the actual game mechanics to just use it as a roleplaying platform.
I often draw the line between adventure/action-rpg (Zelda, Diablo, etc.) with traditional RPG based on the reliance of in-game character skills vs player skills.
In a traditional RPG, a character with sufficient stats are bound to succeed more often, whereas in an action game it really depends on the skill of the player.
Baldur's Gate(1), as I recall, does have turns, it is just structured by default that there is no pause at the start of each character's turn. I'm fairly sure there was an option to do so because I remember setting it on.
It also had a strict round order, each character only took an action then passed to the next, with no two characters moving at the same time.
BG1 and 2, as well as several other Bioware games such as KotOR, have rounds as you described but all characters in combat take their actions concurrently within the round. It's not like BG3/D:OS etc where only 1 character's actions are taken at a time.
If you go back to the origins, when did Gygax and friends stop playing 'wargames' and start playing 'role playing games'? When they began adding mechanical distinction between their characters. Me and you are both Fighters, but here's the stats that describe how we're different, and we have different species with quantifiable tradeoffs, and different levels and equipment representing our past experiences. The existence of distinct character description and their harmony with mechanics is at the heart of the thing. This happens to have good synergy with a narrative, but its not required.
I think in my own head I categorize both the Zelda games and GTA as "adventure games", while Oblivion and Skyrim fit as "RPG" despite the basic playstyle being similar to the GTA series. I think it's something about the extensive character customization/progression making the division for me.
I've always thought of RPGs as narrative focused games with character progression based on improving stats and equipment. I think both A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger would fit that description. ALttP may not have the same depth of character traits, but there's still a progression unlocking extra health hearts and stronger swords iirc.
For the other games you mentioned, I would say they have RPG elements (ie. increasing player stats in Mario Tennis), but the narrative isn't really the focus of game in the same way as with a traditional RPG.
> To me, an RPG, has always meant the latter (choose [attack, magic, item] from a menu). Wizardry, Bard's Tale (Apple II), FF7 are RPGs. A Link to the Past, Link's Adventure, Breath of the Wild, are not.
You're talking about several categories of CRPGs.
The likes of Bard's Tale, the old D&D RPGs (eg Pool of DArkness) and the Wizardry series are turn-based RPGs.
Zelda BotW and Skyrim OTOH are what I'd call real-time RPGs.
But both are clearly RPGs. The key aspect of the RPG is that you play a character in a virtual world. Other comments tried to claim that Flight Sim is an RPG by some definitions. It isn't. You're flying a plane. An RPG would be you as the pilot or co-pilot where there is gameplay outside of flying.
There are common tropes in RPGs like XP, levels, stats and better items but these aren't necessary. Nor is magic. Even in a fantasy world.
Compare this to, say, a pure fantasy arena game wher eall you do is combat. Even with progression it's not an RPG.
I generally prefer turn-based RPGs and strategy games. I particularly hate RTS games that require hummingbird level APS. I play games to chill out. But Breath of the Wild is an exception to that rule. BotW is truly one of the most amazing games ever made. The feeling you have as you wander Hyrule is so rarely achieved in any game.
It's also worth adding that BotW is what I would call "JRPG lite". It has many JRPG elements but it's more mainstream than that IMHO.
RPGs are just games where you progress your character through levels/experience/stats/equipment. That’s why Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate are both RPGs, even if they are completely different games.
And I’ll add on to that my opinion that genres are not a rule or an all-encompassing description. The common genres we use for games describe parts of the game, but most games fit into multiple genres. A tag system like in Steam is probably more fitting to categorize games.
Eh I think it's important to realize the distinction of JRPGs compared to the "regular" RPG or the Western CRPG like Baldurs Gate.
Going back to the original tabletop RPG, the mechanics that would form the foundation of modern RPGs were just formalized abstractions to capture the fantasy adventure that players were roleplaying. Later on early CRPGs would continue with this due to technical limitations, but as tech improved, these limitations should have gone away. In that sense if you are still looking for the original goal of realizing a fantasy world, BOTW or Bethesda's games would be the "successors". The ImSim is also quite close, albeit they exist in more restricted sense than a fully realized world.
JRPGs took a different direction in largely throwing away the original goals and instead idolizing the abstractions themselves. Turns out there is a big market and appeal for this, as author himself points out. So when it come to newcomers moving in to the RPG genre, there might be alot of confusion because theres different crowds playing for different reasons.
Me and everyone I know who grew up playing Zelda, we were left utterly baffled by turn based RPGs when we played them. I remember one of my friends left final fantasy seven back to the shop. Wondering how on earth it got amazing reviews when it seemed to be a bunch of menus and cut scenes.
They had similar thoughts about knights of the old republic.
I'm not disagreeing with your point btw. I've just never got on with turn based games
I think a lot of this is subjective. The ideal you're trying to serve in an RPG is making the player identify as deeply as possible with their character. For some people, having complete, instant physical control and a sense of place and danger is essential to that identification. For others it's a slower process of envisioning exactly what they want to do in detail in each situation.
My first RPG was the original pokemon red/blue and as a kid I was utterly baffled by the menu based combat. At first I thought the menus were bushes that you were hiding behind to catch the pokemon. The idea that the battle system was an abstraction over what a pokemon battle would actually be like was completely foreign to me. I got over it within the first hour but I remember being disappointed that you weren't actually slinging pokeballs and such.
Now add things like Diablo 2 or Elden Ring to the mix, both of which are officially categorized as action rpgs. But they are a completely different experience and genre.
Some people don't like the term, but at least with JRPGs you know pretty much exactly what they are. Any other RPG term is completely meaningless because it's way too broad.
> Mario Tennis, would also be an RPG. you play the role of a cartoon tennis players
I think Mario Tennis on GBC (as well as Mario Golf) is generally considered to be RPGs. You walk around, talk to people, level up, etc. combat is just replaced with Golf or Tennis.
> A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger do not belong in the same category. In the first, you have action fights that require quick hand-eye coordination and skilled reflexes. In the 2nd you just choose actions from menus, no hand-eye coordination nor reflexes required.
Why is this very specific thing something that should create a distinction between genres? Don't they appeal to the same players and have much the same, well, vibe (which is what genre distinctions ultimately boil down to)?
We do distinguish between e.g. real-time and turn-based strategy games, but we recognise that that's a relatively fine distinction within a broader genre.
> Flight Sim is an RPG. You play the role of an airplane pilot.
No you don't. There is no pilot in the game; you might as well be an autonomous aeroplane. The game is about flying, which is not a role; flying is something that may happen in stories, but stories are not about flying, even novels where the central character is a pilot will be all about stuff that isn't in a flight sim.
> Mario Tennis, would also be an RPG. you play the role of a cartoon tennis players.
But again, that isn't a role; there are no stories about cartoon tennis players, and if there were then they'd be about things that aren't in the game.
> GTA5 is an RPG. You play the role of a member of a street gang.
I haven't played that one yet, but I hear it's getting that way; narrative and character progression are becoming a bigger part of the game than driving cars or whatever the earlier entries in the series were about.
> IMO, Zelda games (nearly all action games) are not comparable to Final Fantasy or other J-RPG games (nearly all select from a menu games).
But why should that matter, and even if it does why would you draw the line there? Zelda etc. hardly demand a high skill level in terms of twitch FPS-like mechanics; whether you will win a given fight is determined far more by your character's progression (both equipment and "stats", even if you only have one stat in Zelda) than by the player's skill level. Nier;Automata's combat is real-time and quite difficult (more so than Zelda I would say), but if you wanted to draw a line between "Zelda-like" and "Final Fantasy-like" it would clearly belong on the "Final Fantasy" side of it. I was trying to think back to whether The Last Remnant is real-time or menu-based battle to use as an example and I honestly can't remember, because it simply doesn't matter for a game like this.
(I can see an argument for splitting off Soulsbourne style games, where there is a much higher skill ceiling and very little in-game narrative, into a separate genre. But Zelda would not go with them)
> Their similarity is at most, they are set in a middle-earth tolken-esk setting where you fight monsters with swords.
It's not just that. They put a relatively high amount of effort (effectively or otherwise) into worldbuilding and character. They have character progression as a central part of the gameplay. They try to let you be a character in a story (those stories are often ten-a-penny Tolkien knockoffs, but not always). That's a coherent shared philosophy of game design, and whether you use real-time or menu-driven combat is just a tiny implementation decision within that.
> But why should that matter, and even if it does why would you draw the line there? Zelda etc. hardly demand a high skill level in terms of twitch FPS-like mechanics; whether you will win a given fight is determined far more by your character's progression (both equipment and "stats", even if you only have one stat in Zelda) than by the player's skill level.
Different Zelda games have different difficulty curves, but the difference is there really is a skill curve to Zelda games. If you mistime your attack, it hits the shield. There isn't a way to make Link stronger, you just have to get the timing right. In an RPG, there is no way to get better at casting Thunder through player skill. You just have to get more levels or a higher magic stat.
These are very different core gameplay experiences and to me it's what separates action games from RPGs. Obviously there are games that do both - Diablo is a classic example of an Action RPG. I'd say the FFVII Remake is mostly an Action game but it has RPG elements due to its origins.
Combat just isn't the core gameplay experience though. When people talk about Zelda they talk about exploring the world, about the plot opening up, about the puzzles they got stuck on. They don't talk much about their favourite boss fights, and when they do it's usually about puzzling-out parts (figuring out what you had to do to defeat x) rather than the real-time part.
I agree that there's some difference, but we wouldn't consider every game with quick-time events to be an action game. Fundamentally it's just a small part of the experience, and not a genre-defining distinction IMO.
If the author is reading this, I highly recommend you look into the history of text adventures and MUDs (multi-user dungeons), as the post completely omits them despite the fact that they are almost literally "RPGs with command-line interfaces". While old-school text adventures remained fairly primitive in the RPG aspect (and new-school text adventures have trended away from the RPG genre and into interactive fiction), MUDs represent the logical conclusion of the thought process here. For reference, check out DiscworldMUD (http://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/), which is still actively developed and can be played in your browser: discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/decafmud/web_client.html
> In retrospect, looking at tabletop RPGs felt backward because, by using the video games I already knew as models instead, I was benefiting from decades of RPG system simplifications—half the job had already been done.
This is quite a narrow view. Computer RPGs have, for the most part, focused on the combat aspect of the game as that is the easiest part to implement on a computer. Table-top RPGs have gone in many other directions. I find games that focus on story telling to be much more interesting than focusing on combat, and there are some interesting game mechanics that have arisen in these systems. One example is https://wildletters.itch.io/move-quietly-and-tend-things
Really liked this post, thanks for sharing all the references. I actually did a similar project recently of playing a lot of classic JRPGs, but my research only culminated in a blogpost (https://snav.substack.com/p/26-analysis-rainbow-silkroad) rather than any sort of actual project -- the filesystem RPG is a very cool idea!! Would be fun to get some autogenerated fs dungeons :)
That's funny, I remember playing a little bit of a Silkroad themed (MMO)RPG as a teenager (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkroad_Online). I wonder if this game inspired it somehow.
Fantastic game. Only thing free my friend and I could play so we'd play nonstop for a summer or two. Learning basic business sense running a shop outside the safe towns was one of those cool things MMOs can really offer. Support harp class was OP as all hell.
> I’ve played JRPGs long enough that I don’t pay much attention to the characters or the plot anymore; I like the pretty pixels, yes, but most importantly I’m drawn to its underlying systems.
Tangent on the Carmack quote - “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not important.”
I never agreed much with it, as the games I got hooked on as a kid I did mostly because of their stories - however, very recently, I started to like games that are almost 100% story and 0% free-form gameplay. Namely, the "choose your own adventure" stories with quick action events, and such. Bear with me :).
Two strong titles from that category (both 11/10, will play again, recommend to everyone remotely in the target audience):
- Star Trek: Resurgence - IMHO the best Trek game in the past 20 years, and the very one you want if you'd like to feel yourself, if for a moment, living and breathing Starfleet life (not just on the top, but also on the lower decks).
- The Invincible - based on Stanisław Lem's 1963 novel of the same title, it's something you want if you're into hard sci-fi, sci-fi meets philosophy, or that sweet atomic era / Soviets-in-space punk.
Why I started to like this genre? Both games above I could describe in one phrase: Mass Effect but without all the running around and other bullshit distractors.
The games are designed to give you choices (usually time-sensitive) that alter events. There is limited freedom of movement, but it's always obvious where you need to go. The fights, if present, are real, but simplified. The quick action sequences and minigames are designed to mimic context-relevant behavior in the simplest possible way (say "press W" to lift a panel, or "press D + LMB" to push the person to the right away from sudden danger while shooting towards it, etc.). This results in a kind of flow - you have pretty much all the meaningful choices and gameplay of a typical CRPG like Mass Effect (or even more), and zero of the frustration of getting lost, tripping off a ledge, or doing any of the many other immersion-breaking things you would encounter in a typical CRPG on a regular basis.
In essence, this is subverting the article's concept: those games are minimum viable story-driven games, distilled and stripped out of all boring gameplay parts :). Or, in Carmack's terms, captivating erotica that lacks explicit depictions, but achieves the same result by being cleverly suggestive at all times.
I agree with both you and Carmack. Building excellent interactivity combined with an excellent story at the same time is mostly a fool's errand. The two concepts are at odds: good interactivity means relinquishing control of the story, and a good story means relinquishing control of the game.
But as you have observed you can still have one or the other. A great game with a decent story, or a great story with a decent game. Choose-your-own adventure interactivity can be fun, sure, but it will never have depth. It's a deliberately shallow approach that makes room for the story to exist.
When the main character of a highly-interactive game goes on fetch quests, grinds levels, and barters with NPCs it's inherently compromising the story. Stories need pacing and direction. Interactivity is the opposite of that.
You'll notice most games with "good stories" have to go through great pains to divorce the story from the game, primarily through the use of cut-scenes. In the moments you're receiving the story you're no longer playing the game. And in the moments you're playing the game you're no longer furthering the story. And that's OK!
Seems like this kind of mentality boils down to "I like the art direction and broad story tropes but not much else".
It always baffles me as a JRPG player that grew up with stuff like Final Fantasy 7, Wild Arms, and Tales of Symphonia how people would play these 40+ hour adventures made up of 10+ hours of cutscenes but also not care about the characters (you know, the ones you take the role of) and the story. Even if we are sticking to the Japanese art style, you have games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta for a "turn your plot brain off" action game, a myriad of fighting games that is 95+% gameplay, and platformers like Mario that has set dressing at best for a plot.
One of the things I liked to do in these old RPGs was find a way to level up to max right from the beginning. Usually it would involve putting a clamp on the controller at a particular point in the game. This worked in Ys and Dragon Slayer and FF6, for example.
In Genso Suikoden, I discovered a way to get so many water seals that I was effectively invulnerable because I'd regenerate 10x my health every round. Unfortunately, there's a vampire boss who's unkillable and is supposed to defeat you as part of the story. So I couldn't progress any further because it was impossible for either of us to kill the other.
Just to comment on the choice to go text instead of graphics.
I actually think it's pretty easy to program a graphic based 2d game. SDL2 is very easy to use and can blit graphics easily. I do agree it increases the complexity though.
Tangent: the novel "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin is a well-written book about a fictional video game studio. I'm not a game designer but it went into a fair amount of detail and seemed pretty authentic. Curious if others here have read it and can comment.
Game developer here. Read Zevin's book. As expected, some parts are spot on, some are wildly off, but within the industry there is also a wide range of experiences.
If you want to learn more about actual game development stories, I recommend Blood, Sweat, and Pixels:
Can someone explain "deconstruction in the literary sense" to me in an ELI5 way, or even "explain like I'm a programmer with no classical literature degree and for whom English is a second language" way? Every time it pops up, I end up re-reading the Wikipedia article on deconstruction, and my eyes end up sliding over words as my mind fails to understand what's being talked about.
Deconstruction would be using tropes of a genre in a way which challenges their usual narrative function. It's related to subversion, but it also has something to say about the genre's implicit themes in general.
Undertale is an RPG where killing every monster you meet for XP is a very bad thing to do in the context of the plot. Perhaps killing everything in your path to succeed is not a good message. That would be a blunt example of how it deconstructs the genre.
NieR contains a medieval fantasy setting, a wilful protagonist, a dark mirror antagonist, "the power of friendship", heroic sacrifices, and secret endings. These are all staples of RPGs, but they're used here in ways which are subtly critical of the rest of the genre.
I don't have a literature degree either, so I don't know whether this is also the strict definition. But this seems to be how it's used in casual online discussions.
> Over in Japan, the Enyx designers combined the dungeon crawling from Wizardry and the over-world exploration of Ultima, adjusting them to the limitations of the Famicom/NES console—and to the tastes of the local public. With a linear story, streamlined systems focused on battles, and a more forgiving difficulty level, Dragon Quest became the blueprint of what would become the Japanese RPG genre.
"Enix", I assume?
Also, while Enix was the publisher behind Dragon Quest (and pretty much made the series the core of the company's identity), the original DQ was actually developed by ChunSoft.
That's not what I remember, Ultima III had crude 3D dungeons similar to Wizardry's dungeons. The maps of the dungeon levels were 2D and tiled. Google image search for "ultima iii dungeon" confirms my memory.
In fact, all of the Ultimas through V had first-person dungeon views.
Wizardry's wireframe dungeon renderer was a bit more advanced, though, in the sense that it supported empty space and disjoint 'islands' in the map, while Ultima I and II could only display corridors.
IIRC that limitation was fixed by III, but it may have been IV. It was definitely fixed by V.
I dunno about Ultima III, but QotA had 'battle screen' sections of dungeon, which basically means a top-down section. I believe the altars are in such sections? I do know there's a three-way split in the Stygian Abyss, because I accidentally went around in a circle last time I played.
QotA is really awesome, I should play it again some time.
It had both top-down 'combat rooms' and a 3D first-person view (as did Ultima III.)
Of course, in Ultima III, you couldn't leave the top-down combat arena until the monsters were dead or you were. That was also fixed in Ultima IV, where you could chicken out at the cost of some Valor.
A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger do not belong in the same category. In the first, you have action fights that require quick hand-eye coordination and skilled reflexes. In the 2nd you just choose actions from menus, no hand-eye coordination nor reflexes required.
To me, an RPG, has always meant the latter (choose [attack, magic, item] from a menu). Wizardry, Bard's Tale (Apple II), FF7 are RPGs. A Link to the Past, Link's Adventure, Breath of the Wild, are not.
I know the letters RPG stand for "Role Playing Game" but if we're going to go down that route, Flight Sim is an RPG. You play the role of an airplane pilot. Mario Tennis, would also be an RPG. you play the role of a cartoon tennis players. GTA5 is an RPG. You play the role of a member of a street gang.
Since we know that's not what people mean when they say RPG, we're still left making sure were discussing comparable games. IMO, Zelda games (nearly all action games) are not comparable to Final Fantasy or other J-RPG games (nearly all select from a menu games). Their similarity is at most, they are set in a middle-earth tolken-esk setting where you fight monsters with swords. But that's clearly not a useful distinction as it would leave out Earthbound or any other RPG not set in a wizards & dragons type of setting.