As a huge RPG fan for 30 years - my rant about RPG's being called Action-RPG's!

[spcd]

Well, what is a role playing game?

It's not just a game were you play a role. Else Call of Duty would also be a RPG (you play the role of a soldier).

So what is it then? Is it something like stat- and skillpoints? It it about creating 'builds'? Well, you can have 'builds' in all sorts of games. Even in RTS, shooters and even in some tower defense games. Sometimes it's called perks. But I don't think just having stats and skills makes a game a RPG.

To me a RPG is all about the story and how you have effect on that story. A real RPG should contain choices. So can you can 'develop' a story around your character. Do I join the bad guys or the good guys? Your playthrough should be different than the playthrough someone else does. You should get enough choices so you can play through your own story.

If we go back to Call of duty, according to my rule of RPG, call of duty is not a RPG. Because you can't make any choices that affect the story. Everything is linear and you can't change a thing.

If you take The Witcher as an example, this game is a RPG because you get some choices in the game that have consequences.

Skyrim wants to be a RPG, but it has no really important choices. Everyone is experiencing the same gameplay. You are a mage/fighter/thief/murderer at the same time. (With this I mean you can join almost ALL the guilds and clubs, even if they have conflicting values) Skyrim does have choices, but none of them are very important, so they don't change the story around your character. It's just an open world action game with fantasy stuff in it.

[Grizzly]

Today we have games that call themselves Action-RPG's when they have no character skills or attribute trees. Where attack and Defence is decided by the gun you have and the armour your wearing. These types of games should be in the Action-Adventure category.. Games like Mass Effect, STALKER, Bioshock, Rage, Bioshock 2, etc.

Mass Effect actually has character skills and attribute trees (although the second installment has them a bit less, but this was corrected in the third game) which did influence your attack and defence beyond your gun and armour.

I've never heard "Stalker" being referred to as an RPG. As it isn't.

Can't speak for Rage and Bioshock as I haven't played those - Although I have not heard of either being referred to as an "action RPG". The only game I've heard being defined by that is Mass Effect, which has quite a bit of RPG in it.

[uk_john]

The reason it's important is that it was only when the Action-Adventure arrived and diluted the Adventure genre, with publishers saying "it's still an adventure" despite their game have jumping gaps and climbing requirements,etc that the Adventure genre started its quick decline.

I see the same with this "every RPG is an Action-RPG", it just means we will get more "Action-RPG's" with less or practically no RPG elements because they can still be called Action-RPG's. Like RPG's that are just like 90's RPG's that should be just called RPG's to differentiate being called Action-RPGs too, helping to disguise that Action-RPG has has almost no RPG element in comparison.

We do see fewer and fewer real RPG's, and games that had RPG elements like Mass Effect have ever less with each new title in the trilogy, while still calling their game an Action-RPG.

[Grizzly]

games that had RPG elements like Mass Effect have ever less with each new title in the trilogy

This is unfortunately a false statement. Mass Effect 3 has more RPG elements then it's predecessor - And if you haven't played the third game yet, I'd say that just having two games of the trilogy is not sufficient evidence to make such a claim. You need more then two anacdotes before you can spot a trend.

[uk_john]

This is unfortunately a false statement. Mass Effect 3 has more RPG elements then it's predecessor - And if you haven't played the third game yet, I'd say that just having two games of the trilogy is not sufficient evidence to make such a claim. You need more then two anacdotes before you can spot a trend.

Well go on You Tube and see Mass Effect 3 demo video playthrough's. There you will see, as I saw, 3 gaming options on a menu. One Action, Two RPG, three Story,and you highlight each one, an explanation of what each one offers. Under RPG it has just the character creation and the dialogue options!

[Kadayi]

Try playing Jade Empire or Mass Effect without applying a single skill point or character stat. It becomes pretty challenging, if not impossible as you progress if you have the game difficulty at normal or higher.

DSX If that's in response to what I said, I'm not saying that you remove stats (or skills) completely, but more that there's the opportunity within a virtual world both in terms of the appearance of objects/people as well as a games culture and logic to convey distinction without recourse to abstract statistics that are remote from the game space. For instance a complex lock and looks distinct from a simple one. Higher quality equipment will look better than lower quality equipment. Also there are a whole host of conventions we naturally buy into with respect to ideas of higher quality, especially when it comes to the use of numbers. A Phase-master 5000 sound like a step up from a Phase-master 4500, and you don't necessarily even need to know what it does. However all of that you can bake into the game in form of manuals, brochures or even sales pitches.

Naturally you can't do it with everything, but the more you can contextualize everything and keep the player in the game space and less in the interface the better, in my view at least.

[Grizzly]

Well go on You Tube and see Mass Effect 3 demo video playthrough's. There you will see, as I saw, 3 gaming options on a menu. One Action, Two RPG, three Story,and you highlight each one, an explanation of what each one offers. Under RPG it has just the character creation and the dialogue options!

I have played the demo. It definitely has more attribute paths then ME2 has.

[archonsod]

The reason it's important is that it was only when the Action-Adventure arrived and diluted the Adventure genre

That would have been Dizzy. In 1986. Long before Ms Croft.

[NathanH]

It's to be expected that the label "RPG" is going to change in use (or be abused, depending on your point of view) a lot compared with other genres because it's a much more vague label than, say, an FPS. Most video game terms tell us about the way you interact with the game: in an FPS the perspective is first person and you will be shooting things. In an RTS the game with be in real-time and you will be organizing some large system. In a point-and-click game you will point and you will click. About all we can get from RPG is that you'll be controlling a single character or a small number of characters. That doesn't really say a lot.

We can go back ten years or so and look at a bunch of games that came out within a few years of each other. Let's consider Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Morrowind, Might and Magic VIII, Temple of Elemental Evil. I think we're looking at 1998-2003 here. We're probably early enough here (I personally can't go much earlier because I didn't play cRPGs much before this), and I'd say that most people will agree that most or all of the items on the list are RPGs (I wanted to include Diablo 2 here because it helps the example; add it if you consider it an RPG). It's very clear from this list that the way you interact with these games is very different. I claim that there are very few major genres of video game that have such a wide variety as we see from these examples.

Once you have such a variety, it's hard to say what is or is not an RPG, and easy to say "these are the things that are necessary for an RPG" and come up with a completely different list from everyone else. You couldn't possibly have these sorts of argument for many video game genres.

Also add to that the fact that, whatever your list of "things that make something an RPG" it will be relatively easy to come up with a game that satisfies all your requirements but also falls smoothly into the definition of another, more tightly defined, video game genre. Hence the "...with RPG elements" that we see a lot. It's not surprising and there's not much to do about it. The only things we can do is not try to push our personal rigid definitions too strongly and be respectful of the existence of other rigid definitions.

[deano2099]

Has gaming got so dumb across the board that just because an RPG has combat it is called an Action-RPG however little or how many RPG elements it has in the game!?

Why does it matter? Simple fact is that game genre names are utterly silly, and are because of the desire to fit every new game into a taxonomy that was invented before 3D graphics even existed.

'Adventure' is far too general a term to mean anything. So is 'RPG'. Nearly every game with a plot, by literal definition, is both an Adventure and an RPG.

Then there are other genre names, like FPS and RTS that are so bloody specific as to be exclusive. "First-person shooter". So one can't argue that Gears of War or Space Marine is an FPS as they're not in the first person. But they're clearly very closely related. If the term that had caught on instead of FPS was plain old 'shooter' then frankly we'd have a very different lot of genre classification going on. Uncharted would be a 'shooter'. Mass Effect might be a 'shooter' too, or at least a shooter-RPG hybrid.

The current terminology is rubbish, basically. But even back in the 90s there were tons of 'strategy-RPGs' available so it's not as if marrying the term with another genre is anything new.

The funny thing is, I reckon Bioware would make a crapload more money if they positioned Mass Effect as a shooter against Call of Duty and Gears of War. Because those games sell a hell of a lot more than even Bioware's huge RPG hits. They're on another level. If they really felt their games fit that mould, it would be seriously beneficial to sell them that way. That they don't speaks volumes.

[Kadayi]

The thing about this 'No true RPG' line of thinking is that the whole cRPG scene was derived from P&P RPGs in the first place and that for a long time they were it was little more than rudimentary reflection of how those games work, and purely on a mechanistic level rather than in the arena of storytelling.

[Nalano]

Bioware says on-screen under RPG that this option is RPG style because it offers character face creation and the ability to choose dialogue options - neither of which are RPG elements at all; like skill and attribute trees or sneaking or crafting, etc.

Well go on You Tube and see Mass Effect 3 demo video playthrough's. There you will see, as I saw, 3 gaming options on a menu. One Action, Two RPG, three Story,and you highlight each one, an explanation of what each one offers. Under RPG it has just the character creation and the dialogue options!

Speaking as somebody who actually played the demo of ME3 and did several full playthroughs of ME1 and 2, I can tell you that the ME series, including ME3, have extended skill trees.

In fact, here are some freakin' screenshots I found by Googling "mass effect 3 skill tree," and here's a link that actually explains what Bioware means when it gives three choices for new games.* We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts.

*tldr: Action mode has regular combat and skills but automatic dialogue choices, Story mode has regular dialogue choices but simplified combat and skills, RPG mode has regular combat, regular skills and regular dialogue.

[c-Row]

I wonder... do other genres ever stir up such a huge number of threads with people argueing over what qualifies as an RPG or what doesn't?

[Grizzly]

I wonder... do other genres ever stir up such a huge number of threads with people argueing over what qualifies as an RPG or what doesn't?

No.

I don't see the point of the discussion (or the freaking 10 char limit). It's like trying to discuss race.

[deano2099]

I wonder... do other genres ever stir up such a huge number of threads with people argueing over what qualifies as an RPG or what doesn't?

As the OP hinted at, there was a similar sort of thing when games like Tomb Raider turned up and were called 'adventures', in terms of push-back from the point-and-click adventure community. Like I said, they're just far too general terms to mean anything in and of themselves. So the only meaning that can be attributed to them is in terms of how people use them.

Whereas FPS defines exactly what a game has to be to be an FPS, RPG is instead defined by the games that people refer to as RPGs.

[DaftPunk]

I don't know why is everyone against op,he is actually right.

[Grizzly]

I don't know why is everyone against op,he is actually right.

Explain.

/10char

[Malawi Frontier Guard]

I know the OP is writing his posts under the influence, but maybe someone stumbling over this thread and wondering about the term action-RPG would be interested in this article: http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_rpg_conundrum/

It's cool, you should check it out.

[Kadayi]

Explain.

/10char

Seconded. Given everyone's already ripped the OPs opinions apart I'm failing to see how 'he is right' without any additional perspective.

[Wizardry]

Why does this thread exist? I've already given a definition of an RPG that no one here has managed to find exceptions to over a 30 page thread. Let's leave it at that, shall we?