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BadAstronaut posted:Why is this so often the case? They're not. Western RPGs are just as childish and juvenile as Japanese RPGS. They're just so in a different way and often are presented in such a way that the dialogue sounds more naturalistic which can make it a bit easier to overlook just how goofy the plots are. I mean I love RPGs in general but very very few of them are not remarkably childish. They tackle serious subject matter but they do it with all the grace and subtlety of bad airport fiction. It doesn't matter what country it comes from, the vast bulk of them are mid-tier fantasy novels at best. I can name plenty of RPGs from any culture that deal with serious subject matter. Slavery, racism, rape, murder, dependency on foreign oil, death as an inevitability, homosexuality, ect, ect, ect. The problem is that while they raise interesting points, the solutions are more likely to be "I passed my dialogue check, you're over your trauma" or "with the power of friendship we can do anything" with the occasional mix of "everything is hosed forever, why even try?" cynicism. The thing is just that frankly power fantasy RPGS are not a good place to handle serious subject matter because that's not really something where a single person can viably change things but RPGs are all about that. You either have to go over the top, excessive and juvenile or make a very dark and very cynical game with a lot of potential to be tremendously unsatisfying. Even the best of the best can only go so far with the latter and there's an undeniable market for pure story-driven power fantasy. There's nothing wrong with that and you can get some interesting stories out of it, but it's very rare for them to be actually mature. As far as the Suikoden games go: The cast is a wide variety of ages, but the protagonist is always a teenager and the average cast skews younger than they would in a WRPG. It handles a lot of political themes, complete with backstabbing and treachery, but it's no Game of Thrones or anything like that. It contains its share of miracles and friendship overcoming all odds and when fantasy meets realism, fantasy wins every time. They're certainly better about maturity than, say, Final Fantasy or Tales of (x), but they're not particularly dark or grim. It's worth giving the first a shot and seeing if the tone works for you. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 09:42
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Western RPGs look more "mature," certainly, if by mature you mean gore and tough manly-men, but that's primarily because they're aimed at male teenagers and the kind of adult who grew up reading Sword and Sorcery novels and still thinks they're the height of literature. JRPGs are aimed at a much larger demographic that includes a lot more female gamers and their style reflects that.
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Sep 9, 2013 10:05
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Hmmm, I just sort of mean games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic etc, generally have adults communicating like adults, and games (amazing ones) like Chrono Trigger and Lufia and so on, which I adored, have a very 'childish' interplay between characters a lot of the time, even if the stories are epic and the entire thing is executed brilliantly. I just find it one of the interesting contrasts between the two, and unfortunately for me I suppose, I find it difficult to look past in some games because I can't take these characters seriously and engage as much as I'd like to. I think it might even make suspension of disbelief harder for me at times, and that might be something I dislike about JRPGs. That and an overabundance of random battles 
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Sep 9, 2013 10:25
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BadAstronaut posted:Hmmm, I just sort of mean games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic etc, generally have adults communicating like adults, I'm wondering how far that etc. stretches, because I don't remember anyone in Dragon Age 2 communicating anything like an adult when they could be whiny babies instead. e: Joking aside I get what you mean, but I think your examples run into the issue of available space and framing. Having long and believable conversations is much easier when you have the space for more than a few words at a time in your textbox. Compare the average amount of dialogue on-screen at a time between Lufia and, say... FF12. Stelas fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 10:34
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JRPGs have childish dialogue because in 99% of them, all the characters are literal children. If you think Western-style "Forsooth! Thou needs the magickal sword Byteminearse to defeateth the evil overlord...eth" is a lot more mature than that you really need to read more real books, though.Stelas posted:e: Joking aside I get what you mean, but I think your examples run into the issue of available space and framing. Having long and believable conversations is much easier when you have the space for more than a few words at a time in your textbox.
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Sep 9, 2013 10:37
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Cardiovorax posted:If you think Western-style "Forsooth! Thou needs the magickal sword Byteminearse to defeateth the evil overlord...eth" is a lot more mature than that you really need to read more real books, though. I don't, and I didn't come close to suggesting that, and you sound like a loving wanker.
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Sep 9, 2013 12:12
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BadAstronaut posted:Hmmm, I just sort of mean games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic etc, generally have adults communicating like adults Did you see any of the romance scenes?
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Sep 9, 2013 12:16
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BadAstronaut posted:I don't, and I didn't come close to suggesting that, and you sound like a loving wanker.
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Sep 9, 2013 12:41
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Cardiovorax posted:That hasn't really been a limitation since the 90s, though. True, but his examples were SNES games and he was asking about a mostly PSX-based series, so I kind of went from there.
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Sep 9, 2013 12:54
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Cardiovorax posted:JRPGs are aimed at a much larger demographic that includes a lot more female gamers and their style reflects that. You're crazy. Considering JRPG sales outside of Japan and the plots and dialogue they embrace I think their target demographic is pretty much "people who like anime" . Also, what is with your western rpg example dialogue. Is this 1992 and you are trying to troll Lord British or something?
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Sep 9, 2013 13:17
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The White Dragon posted:I find that Suikoden 1 and 2 are best about this, and their localizations are pretty colloquial so they get their crass characters across well and their more--for lack of a better word--anime characters aren't fully able to get their annoying traits across. 3 has a certain amount of maturity to it as well but that game is just bad and the pacing is so horrible that it's very hard to get into. 4's localization is bland, but it would've taken itself pretty seriously if its English script wasn't about as interesting as watching grass grow without time lapse photography. I'm not convinced you've actually played Suikoden 1 any time in the past ten years. A character saying, "Where's my food." no matter what events are going on in the story isn't exactly colloquial, it's poo poo. Suikoden 1 had a very poor localization, entirely lacking in personality or nuance.
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Sep 9, 2013 14:26
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BadAstronaut posted:Hmmm, I just sort of mean games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic etc, generally have adults communicating like adults, and games (amazing ones) like Chrono Trigger and Lufia and so on, which I adored, have a very 'childish' interplay between characters a lot of the time, even if the stories are epic and the entire thing is executed brilliantly. I just find it one of the interesting contrasts between the two, and unfortunately for me I suppose, I find it difficult to look past in some games because I can't take these characters seriously and engage as much as I'd like to. I think it might even make suspension of disbelief harder for me at times, and that might be something I dislike about JRPGs. That and an overabundance of random battles
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Sep 9, 2013 14:27
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BadAstronaut posted:Hmmm, I just sort of mean games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic etc, generally have adults communicating like adults, and games (amazing ones) like Chrono Trigger and Lufia and so on, which I adored, have a very 'childish' interplay between characters a lot of the time, even if the stories are epic and the entire thing is executed brilliantly. I guess my main stumbling block in this discussion is interpreting "adults communicating like adults." I mean, what does that really even mean in this context? I'm getting especially hung up on the Chrono Trigger mention since the game, for all the Woolsey-ism it has, doesn't really scream child or adult interaction, but just normal interaction. When noting "adults communicating like adults," are we talking cuss-words, references to death, or something else entirely?
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Sep 9, 2013 14:33
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Cardiovorax posted:Well I was making fun of the genre, not you, but I guess you've just changed my mind on that. Welp, sorry. From where I was sitting it seemed you had for no reason decided to straw man and then insult me. Apologies, sir. Nate RFB posted:I don't know how to phrase this without sounding like an rear end, but it sounds like you care too much. Are you suggesting that something Chrono Trigger would be better if it featured an all-adult cast? Do we need a darker and edgier Dragon Quest? Trying to morph JRPGs into Kotor just seems silly; they're apples and oranges. Like, I get what you're saying but seriously who cares? JRPGs taking themselves ~seriously~ in the same vein as WRPGs would make them an unimaginable chore. They're different beasts, sure, and I just have a preference for the western stuff given that I end up caring more about the characters and being more interested in the worlds. I don't deny that Chrono Trigger has its dark and sombre moments, but its very light and cheerful for the most part. MechaX posted:I guess my main stumbling block in this discussion is interpreting "adults communicating like adults." I mean, what does that really even mean in this context? I'm getting especially hung up on the Chrono Trigger mention since the game, for all the Woolsey-ism it has, doesn't really scream child or adult interaction, but just normal interaction. When noting "adults communicating like adults," are we talking cuss-words, references to death, or something else entirely? And here is Planescape Torment put together as a book: http://www.wischik.com/lu/senses/pst-book.html Just skim through some of the dialogue and what characters are saying... to me Chrono Trigger is definitely a little more on the child-like side of things. I know these are apples and oranges, and Chrono Trigger is far from an extreme example of the kind of thing that 'gets' me. Just sayin'. BadAstronaut fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 15:07
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There are several JRPGS that have adult protagonists (or protagonists that become adults over the course of the story). Strange Journey, Radiant Historia, Infinite Space, and the second part of Persona 2, for examples. I can't really say that I remember how mature or immature the dialog was and they all have to deal with being localized rather than natively written like WRPGS but they would probably be the best point of comparison.
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Sep 9, 2013 15:56
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Suikoden 2 is pretty low on friendship and believing in yourself saving the day stuff, though being a PSX RPG it does have it's moments. Some of the chracters are sort of 'wacky' but not even close to offensive. It's part of the reason I love it. The plot is surprisingly mature and people behave sensibly for the most part. There's a war going on, it's some serious poo poo, and some scenes will definitely make you feel that way. Suiko 1 is pretty... rough let's say. The script isn't bad but it sure is boring and dry.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:01
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Personally, I think the kind of video game writing that tends to stick with people isn't so much defined by genre as by method of production. RPGs these days are produced by committee, and it shows. There's no personal touch. Planescape isn't memorable because it's a western RPG, it's memorable because one guy was free to write down his vision and individually relate to every character. That matters more than what it's actually about.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:02
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Every JRPG lately seems to have the same template, and WRPGs aren't really much better. At least the older ones have some personality, and this isn't nostalgia talking because I didn't play lots of the 16/32 bit junk until more recently. Hell, compare any SNES Final Fantasy to 13, the difference is night and day. Unpopular opinion, I know  .
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Sep 9, 2013 16:07
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Saga Frontier 2, Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden 2 are legitimately well written JRPGs. The only serious problem with them is that they are in translation, and translations rarely match the charm and tone of the original text. Personally, I can't stand the writing in WRPGs. The stories are just as childish as JRPGs, though they have a veneer of maturity that most JRPGs don't.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:09
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BadAstronaut posted:Phantasy Star 4: End of the Millennium being as 'juvenile' as a bunch of other JRPGs I played. Maybe I'm remembering wrong because this was almost 15 years ago, but it seemed at least a little more... uh... serious in terms of dialogue and character interactions. Having also recently played both Planescape and the first two Fallouts a few years prior to that, I guess my take would be that they do a very good job of realizing their settings and worlds (something you seem to prefer) but do so at the expense of having little to no characterization. I've basically forgotten any and all characters from those games already besides I guess the skull guy in Planescape (even then, I don't remember his name). I'll give you Mass Effect I suppose...outside of the awful romance scenes. But at the same time, perhaps we should step back and ask ourselves whether it's a little silly to expect a 1995 SNES game to have the same scope and money poured into it as a 2007-2012 PC game.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:13
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Lost Odyssey has older characters too, and the dialogue is pretty good when the two kids aren't involved. But I mean, wRPGs have the juvenile problem as well. In almost all of them, romance is treated like a game, every issue is black and white morality, and quests have about as much depth as the rewards they return. There are exceptions in both genres, of course, but the problem here isn't the genre - it's just that most video game writing is awful.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:14
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Morpheus posted:Lost Odyssey has older characters too, and the dialogue is pretty good when the two kids aren't involved. The problem with Lost Odyseey is that the 1000 Years of Dreams are more coherent and interesting than anything displayed in the game. That and the highpoint of the game's setting/world building is the end of Disc 1's burial sequence which while great and wonderful novel use of the immortality angle couldn't bail out the rest of the game.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:27
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Nate RFB posted:Having also recently played both Planescape and the first two Fallouts a few years prior to that, I guess my take would be that they do a very good job of realizing their settings and worlds (something you seem to prefer) but do so at the expense of having little to no characterization. My metric is sort of: WRPGs tend to have a non-linear structure or at least some choice given to you in how you go about your goals and characterization, but in return your character kind of exists in a vacuum. Whatever you choose, nothing in the world really responds to your choice of characterization or even your actions outside of a loyalty bar sliding up or down and the immediate response to your latest witty rejoinder. (It's always a witty rejoinder, thanks Bioware.) JRPGs tend to have a completely linear structure and fixed characterization, but in return the world and party respond to your character more fully. (Tales skits, NPCs getting new lines each boss, cutscenes et al.) I tend to find you get more focus on a character's thoughts in JRPGs, too, whether it's introspective main characters or party member backstories... but I can understand people not liking them because sometimes they feel like busywork with a crap book attached. Somewhere in the middle lies Alpha Protocol in all its janky well-meant glory.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:37
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Nate RFB posted:I can comment on this at least, as I played PSIV for the first time ever a little over a year ago on the Wii's VC. Sorry to say, it is as JRPG as a JRPG would JRPG. Cool game though! Yeah, as much as I love PSIV, it's not really any more or less "mature" overall than the SNES Final Fantasies -- I guess you could say the translation quality is better than FF4 and the script takes itself more seriously than FF6 (on account of not being written by Woolsey), but in terms of actual content they're all about on par with each other. What it does have that FF4 and FF6 don't (and that it shares with most WRPGs) is a more understated sense of aesthetics: fewer bright colours, character sprites that are less iconic and more lifelike. I don't know if that aesthetic necessarily extends to the game's writing and plot, but it can certainly bleed over into the way people perceive those things. On that basis, I'd feel pretty confident recommending Radiant Historia to BadAstronaut as a game with similar aesthetics and a generally down-to-earth tone, if he's still on the lookout for JRPGs he can get into. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 16:47
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Barudak posted:The problem with Lost Odyseey is that the 1000 Years of Dreams are more coherent and interesting than anything displayed in the game. People say that a lot, but the dreams bored the hell out of me. I'm not the kind of person who gets angry when they need to read text in video games, but showing just pages of text in a video game is like having half of a movie taken up by a character describing what's going on off-screen. It defeats the purpose of the medium, and grinds any and all pacing the game has to a stop as pages of text scroll by. I skipped a number of them just because I didn't want to take a few minutes to read something when I could be going around playing a game.
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Sep 9, 2013 18:55
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Morpheus posted:People say that a lot, but the dreams bored the hell out of me. I'm not the kind of person who gets angry when they need to read text in video games, but showing just pages of text in a video game is like having half of a movie taken up by a character describing what's going on off-screen. It defeats the purpose of the medium, and grinds any and all pacing the game has to a stop as pages of text scroll by. I skipped a number of them just because I didn't want to take a few minutes to read something when I could be going around playing a game. Within the context of Lost Odyseey which is a game already rife with things that take away your control for long, long periods of time so characters can talk about nothing the dreams were fairly concise and could be skipped through and re-read at leisure. Additionally the writing the showed was not only from a mechanical point of view better but the vision and exploration of the topic at hand was better than all the rest of the gameplay. Basically, if the person who wrote the Thousand Years of Dreams had been the lead story-designer for the game it'd probably have been a hell of a lot better and not needed the Thousand Years of Dreams slideshows at all.
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Sep 9, 2013 19:02
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I think a lot of it honestly comes down to the quality of translation of the dialogue more than anything else. Mass Effect or whatever has the benefit of being written by English-speakers for an English-speaking audience. The end result is a game that, even if it's basically budget Star Trek with Budget Whedon stapled on, at least reads well. This is enough to make people overlook a lot of stupidity unless it gets really really glaring. JRPGs are in (and probably will forever be) in a place where a good translation quite literally makes all the difference. The JRPGs that people really like these days tend to be the ones where a really good translation team got hold of the game and translated the gently caress out of it. If a game has naturalistic dialogue then people are a lot willing to give it a by on its other mistakes. The older JRPGs skated by with poo poo translations because there was nothing else being offered, but these days it is basically "translated big or go home."
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Sep 9, 2013 19:20
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I really enjoyed the Thousand Years of Dreams but why were they written in present tense? Is that just a Japanese prose thing?
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Sep 9, 2013 19:39
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Does anyone know if we'll be able to carry our saves over to Trails in the Sky SC if we finished the first one?
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Sep 9, 2013 19:52
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-Troika- posted:Does anyone know if we'll be able to carry our saves over to Trails in the Sky SC if we finished the first one? They've said that same platform saves will carry over. No psp saves on Steam, though.
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Sep 9, 2013 19:59
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Since I just finished Suikoden V, I'm already on the prowl for another RPG that I missed. How long would a completionist playthrough of Trails in the Sky be?
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Sep 9, 2013 20:41
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CVagts posted:Since I just finished Suikoden V, I'm already on the prowl for another RPG that I missed. How long would a completionist playthrough of Trails in the Sky be? I just finished the game in japanese, earning all possible bracer points in ~80 hours. I'm not that fast when reading japanese , so maybe around 50-60 hours for the english version?
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Sep 9, 2013 20:53
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I've done it in 40 hours, but that was on my second playthrough so I was already familiar with the game. So maybe 60 for a first time, max BP playthrough?
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Sep 9, 2013 20:54
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Sorry if its been covered before on one of the 206 pages but I'm looking to give Gothic 3 another go and I remember that it was awful out of the box and needed a bunch of mods to be properly enjoyable. Does anybody remember what mods those are?
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Sep 9, 2013 21:43
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What I am always craving are modern day rpg, those are rare and far between. That's probably a huge factor on why I like the smt serie so much. Game in this serie also then to have a pretty good translation and are mostly tolerable even if you don't like anime.
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Sep 9, 2013 22:11
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az posted:Sorry if its been covered before on one of the 206 pages but I'm looking to give Gothic 3 another go and I remember that it was awful out of the box and needed a bunch of mods to be properly enjoyable. Does anybody remember what mods those are? http://www.madvulture.de/wp/archives/440 Still pretty bad.
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Sep 9, 2013 22:34
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Bleusilences posted:What I am always craving are modern day rpg, those are rare and far between. That's probably a huge factor on why I like the smt serie so much. Game in this serie also then to have a pretty good translation and are mostly tolerable even if you don't like anime. To be honest I feel the same way. I don't care of it is Earthbound, Parasite Eve or Alpha Protocol, I enjoy the modern-day focused stuff a lot. I'm burned out on Not Tolkien Really and Not Star Trek/Wars/B5 Really. I'd love more modern RPGs.
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Sep 9, 2013 22:48
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I'd love more RPGs that were more setting creative in general. Resonance of Fate had that down, too bad about the rest of it. Final Fantasy sorta tries but it's bogged down by needing to have FF stuff in it. Seems like most things follow the kind of medieval with some technology, slap magic in there but call it something else route. Or the future but everyone uses swords still and there's magic too direction. Something straight up modern day without spells and mystic forces would be a nice change.
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Sep 9, 2013 23:06
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ImpAtom posted:To be honest I feel the same way. I don't care of it is Earthbound, Parasite Eve or Alpha Protocol, I enjoy the modern-day focused stuff a lot. I'm burned out on Not Tolkien Really and Not Star Trek/Wars/B5 Really. I'd love more modern RPGs.
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Sep 9, 2013 23:32
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I attack with my +3
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