Is it an adventure game or an RPG?
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
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Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Is it an adventure game or an RPG?
Is it an adventure game or an RPG?
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
|
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Every game is a role playing game.
And in this one, you go on an adventure.
Adventure action game.
>EvErY gAmE iS a RoLePlAyInG gAmE
BULL FRICKING SHIT
In Pong, you play the role of a paddle, trying to stop your enemy from scoring on you.
its not a paddle. its a low res deutschman trying to keep the proceeds of his efforts (the "ball") from falling into the hands of an international banker lurking just offscreen
okay
so what role am i playing in tetris?
the well? the individual block that is being dropped until a new one enters the well?
>the individual block that is being dropped until a new one enters the well?
Yeah, the whole team. You've got a bunch of team members with different roles and you make them work together.
You play as Gorbachev
Block dropping man
>every game is an action game because you perform some sort of action including solitaire
>every game is a strategy game because you have to think about how best to play it
>Every game is a role playing game.
No, role playing games are a specific subset of games in which you inhabit an entity (out of a bunch) handicapped in some areas so that you can can cooperate with others, handicapped in other areas, to reach a common goal.
For example, Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch are RPGs, but Wolfesntein or Quake aren't.
Zelda is not a role playing game either.
It's almost like.... a blend of both. Woah
An RPG is a tactical wargame where you play as a unit on the field and go on PvE adventures in a simulated world instead of PvP vs rival troop commanders.
LoZ fails at having any traits of a tactical wargame and fails at having a simulated world (it's just a videogame theme park). LoZ isn't an RPG in any of the ways that matter.
AoL has more of a simulated world. Its progression mechanics and stats also borrow a little more from RPGs. AoL is (weakly) considered an ARPG (which is already a bastard half-breed RPG).
ALTTP goes back to having a pure theme park instead of a simulated world and mechanics are almost entirely action-oriented with almost no traits that could be considered to come from tactical wargames.
>It's almost like.... a blend of both. Woah
No, not really. Actual ARPGs are a blend of action games and RPGs. Legend of Zelda is more like an action game blended (very slightly) with an adventure game.
Bait, but essentially correct.
>making all [Ultima] work in realtime.
Yeah and in the process of converting to realtime, every distinguishing RPG element is removed. It's possible to have realtime RPGs, but they don't look anything like Zelda. They look like Baldur's Gate or Everquest. Tab-target MMOs are heavily oriented around tactical decision-making and resource management (HP, Mana, etc). While you have realtime requirements to coordinate and sometimes respond quickly to events, the gameplay is not based on physical challenges.
For an example, Hearts in Zelda don't function quite like HP in an RPG. Hearts in Zelda are (almost) exclusively a mistake buffer. If you frick up the action gameplay, you get punished. In an RPG, HP is a resource you wager in combat. Often damage can't be avoided, the gameplay is about making sure that damage hits the sturdiest tanks not the most vulnerable casters. Wargame tactical dynamics, not action gameplay.
>Legend of Zelda is more like an action game blended very slightly with an adventure game
I'm talking exclusively about AoL, which is basically an ARPG/platformer hybrid. You level up and have stats that you choose to upgrade and stuff. Very basic shit but it was an attempt at integrating Dragon Quest elements. Plus the overworld and whatnot.
kys aspergers
No, I have merely thought about this issue long enough to understand it. But have fun arguing about half-assed moronic opinions and industry gossip.
2 is shit and you gays aren't gonna trick me into thinking otherwise.
play Panoply of Catalia, it's Zelda 1 and 2 but as a new game.
play Zelda 2 Redux, it's the same game ported to GM8.1 with a second quest and additional scenario.
Great post
Would you say it becomes more of a simulated world after the third game? Not joking. OOT speaks for itself. The GBC games also get planting, or at least minigames+trading sequences.
>Would you say it becomes more of a simulated world after the third game
Only relative to previous entries. Relative to RPGs of similar size and scope, OoT still comes across like very much a fairy tale sort of world. Another indicator is to consider the inventory, and how many items are some kind of puzzle piece or quest item, vs how many items are just shit that you find in the world derived from its mathematical model (eg a Long Sword +1).
Also, bear in mind that the "simulated world" is a somewhat secondary classifier. A simulation without the tactical gameplay model is not an RPG, it's just a simulation. An RPG is a combination of a few elements.
RPG is in this really weird place for videogames because the original term originated from tabletop settings where advanced simulations weren't feasible and where most games were just abstract, usually PvP games like Poker or Chess. On tabletop, RPGs are the genre where people developed models to simulate worlds and where players assumed the role of a character in the game world. If you want to play a survival simulation you might make it an RPG. Meanwhile, videogames quickly became all about assuming the role of a character (eg Pac-Man) in an well-defined game world with its own rules and physics and so on. But, devs started making videogames inspired from tabletop RPGs, and those games clearly form a genre distinct from games like Pac-Man and Super Mario Brothers. And so that's why RPGs are associated primarily with stats and turn-based combat.
checks out. Those games have a main questline+a few (or 100) of simulation bonuses that stand out. It's possible they stand out because most of the game is a quest? Or is it that there are 100 of them? Whatever.
I'm not an ootgay but there's that fricking bridge. In a certain sense, it's a simulation (of this specific fantasy world's...bridge). That's actually something you might see in ultima.
(In gbc specifically you have optional secrets to get a LV3 sword. You don't need a LV3 sword.)
They're Hydelikes, except for 2, which is a hack and slash scotformer.
>Hydlike
I actually kinda like that term
Not going to work austa
I don't think Zelda 1 is an RPG at all. It's closer to Metroid than dragon quest. Tend to feel the same about alttp
Zelda II is the only one that can legitimately be argued to be an RPG. It's also the worst one. This is not a coincidence.
RRPG (realtime roleplaying game)
I used to be a staunch "it's not a role playing game" guy because it doesn't have the numbers, then I watched that interview with Miyamoto for a Wind Waker promotional DVD where he says the premise for the game was literally taking Ultima and making all of it work in realtime.
>taking Ultima and making all of it work in realtime.
Zelda should have been a first-person TES or Ultima Underworld game.
OoT almost was.
In every way that matters, it's an RPG.
By common definition it's the classic example of an Action-Adventure game. It takes Adventure gameplay and ads action to it. There are some earlier proto examples but Zelda really spearheaded the genre. It takes the adventure game framework of exploration, storytelling and puzzle solving plus arcade style action.
RPGs are similar in some ways but spinning off of tabletop role playing games are based around gaining levels and building stats and skills.
No 4 dudes in a line, no rpg
Not an RPG
Obviously five counts. As long as it's a minimum of four and as long as they are in a line.
Chrono Trigger bros...
I don't make the rules, I only enforce them.
Within five dudes standing in a line there are four dudes standing in a line. You utter fricking moron. You should be embarrassed.
>4 only
>"so no 5 then?"
>oh frick well see 4=5...
>5=4+1
5 is 4 with one surplus.
q.e.d. gay
who won this fight?
clearly the Imps
Dragon Quest 1 isn't an RPG?
NO 4 DUDES IN A LINE, NO RPG
Not an rpg. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
It's pretty cool that they turned Dragon Quest 5 into an rpg when they remade it
LOZ - Open World Action-Adventure
Zelda II - Action RPG Platformer
ALTTP - Action-Adventure
RPGs are adventure games. "Adventure" is a broad category
Not in the context of video games. It's a genre designation not merely an adjective.
Adventure is a noun. In "adventure game" it is a noun adjunct. But you are still correct.
Genre designations are categories; Adventure games are a broad genre with numerous subgenres, RPGs being one of them.
This is not true. They are separate genres.
The computer adventure game genre was established without cardinal elements found in the tabletop RPGs inspiring them such as a stat building and point economies. Computer RPGs which better recreated the experience of playing tabletop RPGs came later and are a subgenre of the computer adventure game genre as a result of this issue of occurrence.
Here's why this is confusing you:
The early versions of DnD also referred to themselves as a "Fantasy Adventure Game" - that inspired early computer "Adventure Games" which established the genre for computers in the mid '70s - those computer adventure games alongside the original tabletop RPGs inspired computer RPGs, which isn't confusing considering their modules are still referred to as "Adventures". This entire RPG/Adventure mixup was entirely due to a naming shuffle during the development of DnD alongside the establishment of the computer adventure game genre
Action Exploration, but Zelda 2 is an exploration platformer.
This is, unironically, why you're a virgin. It's why people won't touch you and you have no friends. I'm serious, I'm not trying to be mean to you, I'm just explaining it as it is. It's because of this.
Yes, words have definitions. This is the dumbest most Tumblr/reddit thing I've seen posted on /vr/. The term RPG in videogames has had a definition before you were born. Weve changed the definitions of words because of idiocy for long enough. Just learn the proper definitions of things instead of ignorantly jumping on the bandwagon of dumbasses.
Zelda doesn't fit the major things that define a game as an RPG. You might as well make the same chart with "Zelda is a beat-em-up" it's about as close to one of those as an actual RPG.
The thing that baffles me about this being brought up over and over is why Zelda fans are insecure about it being an Action-Adventure game which it so obviously is by every definition. I genuinely don't understand why they want it lumped into a different genre.
I think it's weirder that nobody ever argues this when someone calls another game an RPG. It's only Zelda that triggers people.
What are other non-RPGs that get frequently referred to as RPGs though? I can't think of another example where it's as much of a thong as Zelda but maybe I'm forgetting something?
Not that anon but I rarely ever see other games miscatagorized as an RPG beyond Zelda. Its hands down the most miscatagorized in that regard.
Its not nearly as bad as the million roguelite games calling themselves roguelikes. That got so bad that now if you want a game that actually plays like Rogue, you have to search for the tag "Traditional Roguelike"
It happens all the time it's just that most of the other examples aren't retro games (eg Dark Souls). Genres have converged somewhat over time as games began including more simulation and progression elements, muddying the waters more than they were in the 90s.
And most of the retro games that do look like Zelda and are called ARPGs, differ from Zelda specifically in ways that make them more RPG-like (more stats, more "realistic" game world with towns and npcs and such). Also, nobody usually gets "triggered" if Zelda is specifically brought up in discussions about top-down ARPGs from the 80s and 90s. So long as you don't incorrectly try to apply transitive logic and claim that because this is tolerated Zelda MUST be considered an RPG, nobody cares.
Superficially looking like an ARPG at a glance is different from it being an ARPG.
>Superficially looking like an ARPG at a glance is different from it being an ARPG.
It's not just superficial, though. The catch is that the mechanics linking together all those games are not RPG elements. Maybe you're comparing boss designs from ALTTP and Illusion of Gaia, probably a fine comparison.
No, it's mostly superficial. They are different genres ar heart and there is no good reason not to refer to them as their proper genres.
>no good reason not to refer to them as their proper genres.
No, it really doesn't matter that much. The important part is to understand the context of the discussion. In most cases the actual term doesn't even come up at all.
It matters because it adds useless confusion.
It's not confusing to me. They are different genres. It's very simple in fact.
Just like Metal and Rock music.
>he didn't get it
Go figure. Rock and Metal are distinct genres and yet one influenced the creation of the other making the new creation a subgenre to the original. Shame you needed that explained, you must not be very cultured.
The analogy is not the same. I'm sorry this all seems confusing to you.
>denial as counter argument
Tacit concession accepted
Because that never happens. If Ocarina of Time is an RPG, so is Silent Hill, Metal Gear, Resident Evil and a whole shit ton of games that no one else ever mislabels. It's only Zelda, always Zelda. Year after year no matter how many times this is explained.
Ocarina of Time is nothing like those games.
Gameplay wise it's a hell of a lot more like them than Final Fantasy VII, SaGa Frontier or Legend of Mana. RPG doesn't mean fantasy setting, genres are defined by gameplay.
Zelda plays much more like Illusion of Gaia and Secret of Mana (undisputedly RPGs) than MGS or RE.
Sure, but the other guy was treating towns that feel like real places like a quintessential feature of an RPG.
moronic analogy
Ocarina of Time plays a lot more like Resident Evil than it does Final Fantasy and we both know it. LTTP is superficially similar to Sieken Densetsu but they are distinctly different in their core mechanics. You know this as it has been explained ad nauseam.
Again, if you are going to keep this going at least explain why it is so important to you that it's considered an action rpg not an action adventure. No one else does this with any other game series. Why are you so insecure about an action adventure? I am dead fricking serious.
FF isn't the only kind of RPG. OOT is more like Threads of Fate (or again, Illusion of Gaia) than RE. Why are RPG fans in such denial about Zelda being an RPG?
They're not. You'll see RPG sites list Zelda all the time. Zelda's always been considered an RPG.
lol then why are people on this board so upset about it?
I'm not upset that it gets carelessly included in lists. I'm not really upset at all but I can get frustrated when morons who don't understand the relevant concepts try to argue as if they do.
Go look at some of RPGamer's actual reviews of Ocarina. You will find it gets a pretty lukewarm reception because reviewers are so oriented toward actual JRPGs.
Well OoT is a pretty lukewarm game. It ain't no LttP or LA after all.
>lukewarm
>revisionism
Here's the snapshot from 1998.
Also bear in mind that RPG Gamer at that point basically a bunch of kids in their first attempt at videogame journalism. Read the reviews. There's really not a lot of deep understanding there.
The site began life as the "Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage" which was just a random webpage run by a couple of college kids that managed to nab the squaresoft.net domain name.
That's also very positive reception, especially if it's coming from a bunch of Square fans.
>That's also very positive reception
A review of 8.5 would cause most ocarina fanboys to lose their minds and the most common rating is a 7/10. The original "Staff Review" even straight-up says the game is supposed to be an "action/adventure game" and makes Plot his first topic of discussion. (JRPG fans, especially at the time, wrongly associate storytelling as a primary RPG trait)
>fanboys
No shit. Fanboys are moronic and want the thing they like viewed as perfect. That's why their fanboys.
I did. Most of the reviews criticize it for being easy, another "Ganon wants the triforce plot", and Navi being annoying. Not that it "wasn't" an RPG.
Back then "RPG" was a catch-all for anything that wasn't a shooter or a text adventure game. 'Action adventure' as a named genre didn't exist until maybe sixth gen, and is retroactively applied to games thag 40 years ago were called RPGs simply because no other term existed to describe them, because they descend from text-based RPGs like clicker adventure games did. When Zelda decided to adopt realtime combat and forego stat growth, they left the RPG genre behind. Zelda basically created the action-adventure genre. Story-driven video games as a whole all descend from attempts to translate D&D (and other tabletop RPGs) into digital space, which means they all lugged around the cultural baggage of their fantasy RPG origins for years after they had moved beyond just being computer DMs for a D&D campaign.
>Why are RPG fans in such denial about Zelda being an RPG?
Because as has been explained so many times it does not have the core gameplay of an RPG. Now tell me what's wrong with the Action Adventure genre.
Nothing, but Zelda is an RPG, as has been explain several times.
Except it hasn't, ever. But at least the trolling is admitted at this point. You're being disingenuous on purpose.
>as has been explain several times.
No, there has been no serious attempt to do so, only very lazy assertions and, half-assed implied ones.
It doesn't have the core gameplay of an Adventure game. But you know what does? Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc. Maybe you should argue that those games are Action-Adventure.
You're full on moronic. This board is not full of ignorant children who don't understand basic logic. Fricking zoomee troony world nightmare.
nta
>It doesn't have the core gameplay of an Adventure game.
It has the core gameplay of an Action-Adventure game
Action RPG.
You can't explain the difference. You don't know the difference.
Adventure games have you grabbing at every sparkling object and suspicious thing to solve obtuse puzzles that make you question what the game maker was doing. That's Resident Evil and Silent Hill to the letter.
So, it's not action rpg.
Correct, Resident Evil is an Action-Adventure. Zelda is an RPG.
Zelda is not an action-adventure game because you don't interact with the environment to solve puzzles, is that your final answer
A game with stats, exploration, weapon upgrades and other proxy level ups is surely an RPG. Hang on, what's that on the bottom of the box?
I remember the time you had to use the dirty diaper on the ceiling fan then combine the pulp with bubblegum soda to make a drink to drink that lets you win the spitting contest with Wesker too!
I couldn't care less about this non-debate but...
Perhaps read up on prototype theory and representativeness heuristics (and pitfalls using heuristics in general). It will answer why that method is not logically sound, which most ppl instinctively recognise anyhow and I refuse to waste time spoonfeeding every anon here on the implications of the above with regard to cumulative error. Figure it out yourselves
Anyone that cared could trace the evolution from tabletop rpgs, text and crpgs on, including why tsr coined expressions like 'adventure game' and would have the minerals for an articulate thesis on why or not X game is an RPG (not hard, right?), but that's not their interest and aside from putting forward your pov you're wasting your time.
Also prototype and heuristics theory for you until you accept the constructs of genre are pretty flimsy, even if most Zelda games do widely miss the mark of a trad rpg.
>Anyone that cared could trace the evolution from tabletop rpgs, text and crpgs on, including why tsr coined expressions like 'adventure game' and would have the minerals for an articulate thesis on why or not X game is an RPG (not hard, right?)
Yeah but it wouldn't necessarily be a good argument and we might be able to learn something from a productive counter-argument.
>that's not their interest and aside from putting forward your pov you're wasting your time.
I wouldn't know until I tried.
I make various arguments from first principle about what an RPG is and why Zelda doesn't qualify. Opponents had some idea in their head about what an RPG is, but refuse to explain it and instead force me to try and reverse-engineer their definition from scattershot attacks on misunderstood or out-of-context comments. This is obnoxious and quickly gets frustrating and tedious, so that's why I reframed the debate, putting the ball in their court to actually serve up something substantial.
>A game with stats, exploration, weapon upgrades and other proxy level ups is surely an RPG
This is incorrect, because the important part about an RPG is the stats themselves, it's how the game actually plays with those stats. Every action game has stats and power-ups. Mega Man has hitpoints and so do all the enemies he shoots. Mario has one or two hitpoints depending on whether he's gotten a mushroom.
To distinguish an RPG you need to look at the nature of those stats and how they define the game world and fit into the gameplay mechanics. In short: wargame-like mechanics. You need an abstract simulation model with an element of chance. The player is expected to reason about and make decisions and take risks for the characters based on stats, resources and probabilities inherent to that model. The gameplay should be oriented around this, NOT on physical challenges of manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.
Sounds less like an RPG and more like a dice rolling game. You should go with DRG instead of RPG.
Is this the shitposting homosexual back again?
Wargame-like simulation model doesn't mean just random dice rolls everywhere.
Sure bro, you enjoy your DRGs while I enjoy my RPGs, like Zelda.
Weak trolling at this point. You basically admit you know you are wrong but simply don't care because your troony precious feelings matter more than objective reality.
It isn't arbitrary. You want it to be arbitrary because you can't accept simple facts. You even describe the core differences right there but dismiss them because you don't understand how they change fundamental game design and you don't want to learn.
Winners don't do DRGs
>why it is so important to you that
dude, frick off. It's a discussion. Trying to prove the other side cares more is pure adhom and going full moron. I could ask the same and go "are YOU insecure about it being action-adventure? why do you insist on it hah gotchalolol" You fricking ruined the discussion with projection for no reason.
So you're just arguing to argue. At least you admit you're trolling but I actually care about truth. I guess that's sadly rare in this world where people can decide they're whatever gender they are they can also decide a game is whate3 genre they want it to be instead of what it actually is. Fricking clown world, you "people" are pathetic.
>quintessential
No, try reading the whole thread. I posted my definition way up at the start:
The simulated world is to be understood in that context.
ARPGs are not real RPGs, they are a spinoff hybrid genre and all this fussing over the nuance of what it means to be a simulated world is missing the point.
The realism of the world as implemented using the RPG simulation mechanics is a CLUE to the "RPG-ness" of an ARPG, a generally reliable litmus test to apply if you care about distinguishing a given game from others of seemingly similar design.
>Japan, the country that invented and populized (sic) the console RPG doesn't know what an RPG is
Japan unironically doesn't know what an RPG is. They completely butchered the concept.
>RPG fans just want Zelda's clout
Speak for yourself, as an RPG fan I don't want Zelda dilluting my favorite genre's already often nebolous definition
it's a puzzle game with extra steps
>extra steps
god i wish i could play a zelda game without all the annoying combat somebody rom hack it plz
Personally I want a Zelda game that's just a linear chain of rooms each one with a harder enemy than the last.
Just play soulcalibur 2 on gc. It has a story mode that fits your description
I hate the aesthetic so I barely played it, but that was the precise design goal of Binding of Isaac.
Monster Hunter
The Oracle games were originally supposed to lean into these specific qualities of Zelda games with 3 games instead of 2, each game representing a part of the Triforce. The game representing the Triforce of Wisdom would have focused more on difficult puzzles in dungeons. Power would have focused more on combat, probably having harder enemies and bosses, and probably items/abilities that were more suited for combat. And Courage was supposed to focus more on exploration, probably having more secrets and stuff hidden around that you could discover.
Anon, they just figured that if they sold you the exact same game 3 times there would be some angry customers.
For one, nobody would have been angry at having 3 different Zelda worlds with focus on different features. Two, they changed it to two ONLY because Capcom couldn't figure out a password system that could use 3 games to give you a secret final episode, but they could figure it out with 2, so that's why they changed it.
stop watching youtube morons and regurgitating what they tell you
Anon, you must be double digit IQ if you believed that.
Zelda 1 & 3: action/adventure
Zelda 2: action RPG
adventure. i never heard anyone call these games rpgs until the internet
ARPG
Action Adventure, not Action RPG
Play secret of mana if want to see one
Of course they're RPGs. How is that even an argument?
Because they don't fit most of the qualities that define a game as being in the RPG genre. It's an Adventure game with action.
>Because they don't fit most of the qualities that define a game as being in the RPG genre
lol
Maybe by your extremely narrow contrarian definition.
I'm sorry you don't understand what the genre RPG refers to, but your ignorance doesn't change reality.
Why does it trigger and upset you that its an Action Adventure game? That's what's weird, it's a genre with many fantastic games. It really does feel like insecurity that you need to shoehorn it into a genre that it doesn't fit.
Action RPG.
Action Adventure, not Action RPG. They are different.
i roleplay as a twink elf each time i play the games. i am a roleplayer gamer.
Only Zelda 2 could be considered an rpg.
Zoomers on /vr/ would flip if they saw everyone calling Megaman Legends an RPG like we did in the 90s.
Yeah because fans of a side-scrolling action platforming series who have never played an RPG in their life can't be mistaken.
Who's talking about them?
The only reason it being an RPG is even a discussion is the top down view and Japanese aesthetics. Maybe having dungeons too, but the dungeons are elaborate puzzles more than anything
I think it's that there are people who want to categorize any game with characters, story and dialogue as an RPG regardless of how nonsensical that is. But it's why one of the first things that always gets brought up is this
itt every game besides tetris is an rpg
Tetris is an rpg because each block has a role to play in clearing the lines, there are classes of blocks, and your stats go up the more experience you gain for every line cleared.
Zelda II is an ARPG.
Zelda 1 is an action-adventure game that was inspired by Ultima and Wizardry.
Zelda doesn't play anything like an Adventure game.
Good thing I wrote action-adventure, then
You go on a story based adventure, talk to people and collect items that help you solve puzzles to progress. Add some action combat to that and you have Zelda.
Good god I hate you pedantic mustards who go on about point 'n clicks being the real adventure game genre because of historical bullshit. Just call them P'nC games, because action/adventure is just splitting hairs and pretty much everyone means game where you control a character directly and move around the world when they say 'adventure game'. There isn't even anything Pn'C games do that can't be done in other adventure games, you're free to implement using items on whatever in any given real time game.
I've renounced team Hyde-em-Lide-em. It's a Courageous Perseus-em-up. Even Hydlide dev laments releasing after the Courageous Perseus-em-up's genre defining game, Courageous Perseus.
By today's standards we wouldn't consider these games to be RPGs because they, for the most part, lack stat-based progression, which is what is generally implied by the term "RPG" these days.
However, the Zelda games share several features with stuff like Ultima or tabletop DnD, like the medieval Europe-inspired fantasy setting, the attempt to create a living, breathing, "open" world in the game, and the collection of different items. So if you were living in an earlier, less autistic time, it wouldn't be a stretch to call these games RPGs. They are definitely RPG-adjacent. It's just that our definition of "RPG" has narrowed to where it mainly focuses on stat-based progression.
By the 80's standards it was the same reaction. It's so clearly an Adventure game with arcade action style combat.
>It's just that our definition of "RPG" has narrowed to where it mainly focuses on stat-based progression.
My definition hasn't. There are plenty of RPGs that don't have (or don't focus) on stats.
Take the GBC Pokemon Trading Card Games as examples. Your character never levels up and has no stats. Yet, the gameplay loop is exploring a world and defeating enemies to become stronger. The character advancement comes in the form of new options (cards) rather that improving statistics.
One might perhaps say "They're card games, not RPGs", but they have vastly more in common with Dragon Quest than FreeCell.
To me, any game where success is based not only on your skill, but also on the quantity of enemies your character has defeated is an RPG.
This is true of Zelda. Each boss you beat increases your max health. I can game over in an area, explore a different area, come back, do the same thing that made me lose the first time, and win because my character is stronger.
How is that not an RPG? Because it's a little picture of a heart instead of a number?
I'm glad to not be the only one who noticed the glaring similarity between RPGs and Dark Duelist Souls.
>Because it's a little picture of a heart instead of a number?
There's also the action. But then only Western games can be ARPGs by some reason. don't really get how that works.
Secret of Mana is an action RPG. There are a lot of Japanese Action RPGs. Zelda just doesn't happen to be one.
As explained earlier, it's because hearts in Zelda function as a mistake buffer, not a resource to deploy in tactical combat. That's the difference.
literal mental gymnastics
No. If you can't tell the difference it means you aren't smart enough to discuss genre semantics and shouldn't try.
>there is no team, and there are no roles, or jobs, or specialities, to divide among several characters. At BEST you could argue that Zelda games borrow elements from true RPGs, but no, Zelda itself is not an RPG.
That's the dumbest shit I've ever read. By that logic RTS games are RPGs as all the different units have different roles.
You're being pedantic. You know what you're saying is a stretch. Sorry, you're butthurt about your favorite game not being an RPG.
Pretty interesting argument, actually, but Dragon Quest is way, way closer to being an RPG than Zelda will ever be, so thanks for agreeing with me.
So the elder scrolls games are not RPGs? You're not part of a team
Originally, that's what paper and pencil RPGs meant, going back to Dungeons and Dragons. You would play with your friends and all make different characters, each character having a different role in your party. Could you play D&D with just a Dungeon Master and one other player? Sure. Is it still an RPG? Of course. Is that kinda gay? Absolutely. Does that somehow magically make Zelda an RPG? No.
iirc, DQ1 has no team. It's just 1 player with a DM homosexualness. Isn't that no different than Zelda?
DQ is an RPG that is directly inspired by D&D. It's the equivalent of running a D&D campaign with a DM and one other player. Would they have implemented a party-system if they could? Maybe. They certainly did for all the DQ sequels. DQ1 was the very first installment of the game.
You're getting real hung up about "role" meaning you have to be part of a team, when in fact "role" DOES mean that you play the role of who/whatever and that YOU the player has agency and are controlling the character.
>in fact "role" DOES mean that you play the role of who/whatever and that YOU the player has agency and are controlling the character.
That's not my argument. Role-Playing Games, as we know them, didn't exist before D&D. Everything else is a derivative of D&D. Its definition sets the standard.
>Role-Playing Games, as we know them, didn't exist before D&D
Who the frick cares?
>Its definition sets the standard.
Since fricking when is a makebelieve fantasy game an authority on anything?
>DQ is an RPG that is directly inspired by D&D. It's the equivalent of running a D&D campaign with a DM and one other player
It's the -same- for Zelda. It has the generic-est fantasy setting possible, you wield a sword, you go into dungeons, defeat wizard Aganhim then a demon. I would be surprised if it wasn't D&D-adjacent. That's what I'm trying to say. It has the same setting that DQ has lol.
>It's the -same- for Zelda. It has the generic-est fantasy setting possible, you wield a sword, you go into dungeons, defeat wizard Aganhim then a demon. I would be surprised if it wasn't D&D-adjacent. That's what I'm trying to say. It has the same setting that DQ has lol.
Ok, I agree. It is RPG adjacent, but DQ is firmly closer to being an RPG than Zelda, I think. Also, RPGs, true RPGs, don't require a fantasy seting, like Earthbound, or Cyberpunk.
>Originally, that's what paper and pencil RPGs meant, going back to Dungeons and Dragons.
No, it's really not.
The simple fact is that when they started calling D&D etc "Role-playing games," they did not carefully choose the terms in a manner to ensure absolute congruity between the adjective and the genre classification. They assumed a bunch of context that modern definition autists have neglected to consider.
Yes, but your analysis is wrong. It's a mistake to attempt to find the perfect definition of "Role" so that "role-playing game" means "game where you play a role" and also matches the genre classification. They simply do not match. It was a mistake and will always be a mistake and there's no fixing it now.
>Since fricking when is a makebelieve fantasy game an authority on anything?
It's not an authority, but it's the origin. The genre evolved on its own, but understanding the origin of D&D is perhaps the best way to understand what an RPG actually is.
D&D evolved from tactical wargames. Granted, many people took tabletop RPGs far afield from wargame roots, but in videogames when you do that, you usually jsut wind up with completely different genres (life sims, survival horror, visual novels, etc)
>life sims
Ah, a true roleplaying game.
>The simple fact is that when they started calling D&D etc "Role-playing games," they did not carefully choose the terms in a manner to ensure absolute congruity between the adjective and the genre classification. They assumed a bunch of context that modern definition autists have neglected to consider.
>Yes, but your analysis is wrong. It's a mistake to attempt to find the perfect definition of "Role" so that "role-playing game" means "game where you play a role" and also matches the genre classification. They simply do not match. It was a mistake and will always be a mistake and there's no fixing it now.
Interesting.
But "modern" colloquialisms count for something, don't they? Where should the line be drawn? Should all RPG-style games should be based on D&D or and older definition of "role" or further yet should it be broadened to mean anything with a fantasy setting?
Fantasy setting has nothing to do with it.
>But "modern" colloquialisms count for something, don't they? Where should the line be drawn?
The problem is when people begin applying the term so loosely that it becomes nearly useless as a game classifier. "Anything with story and stats" doesn't really tend to filter much when you think about it. Any action game can have a story and even elaborate cutscenes. Action games all have some kind of stats and hitpoints under the hood. It's how the gameplay actually uses those stats that matters and that's harder to articulate. And then you get to the question of whether a tiny handful of legit RPG elements is even enough to really consider the game as a whole an RPG.
If you designed game to be essentially a choose-your-own-adventure novel, except with dice roll stat checks that affected the branching storylines, most modern people who don't think carefully would call this an "RPG," even though it's really just a CYOA with stat checks. Stat checks in branching dialog are among the most clumsy and poorly-adapted-to-videogames RPG mechanics in the first place.
The same thing happened to roguelikes as a genre. The idea of them got popular, but most people don't actually like traditional roguelike design and don't understand that all the compo of it are important. So permadeath usually gets tossed out right away which shifts things and then they'll remove complex item interactions and turn based gameplay.
They know the game they are making is now almost nothing at all similar to a roguelike, but the term has value to it so they market it like that. Now a handful of years later the general video gaming audience thinks the term "roguelike" means any game with some nominal random elements or procedurally generated areas.
It's the same situation with the "Zelda is an RPG" debates. To anyone familiar with retro genres it very obviously isn't, but the term RPG is far more popular these days than Adventure game or Action Adventure and there is a desire to have the game be referred to as something more popular.
Even though there's nothing wrong with making a game inspired by Rogue but with action combat, no permadeath and limited items, labeling it as a roguelike is an effort to degrade and alter the meaning of the term so they can gain the perceived value of it being called that. Zelda is the same situation. There's nothing bad about Zelda at all, but insisting that it should be an RPG not because it fits in that genre but because it's a more popular term than Action-Adventure only degrades the meanings of both terms.
People were calling it an RPG when those genres weren't retro.
I know. Doesn't make it any less wrong.
Also this.
The whole "is Zelda an RPG?" thing hits on something significant. And that's that, with regard to videogames, action/RPGs specifically, Zelda basically does everything the genre does better than it does, but also lacks the 'bad features' (like level grinding, save for AoL) that also define it. So calling Zelda an RPG really means something, it's not really a 'mistake', except if you admit that action/RPG shouldn't be a genre classification in the first place (which is a completely fair opinion).
Zelda doesn't have tacticsl combat and doesn't make any serious attempt to simulate an alernate reality. Hyrule and everything about it is designed around the gameplay there's no attempt to make it seem like a real place people might live. Why do old men hang out in dungeons dispensing hints? It's an action game not an RPG. These genres are distict.
>doesn't make any serious attempt to simulate an alernate reality
That's only the case for the first game. By the time it gets to the N64 games it does a far better job of simulating an alternate reality than the vast majority of RPGs.
>Zelda doesn't have tacticsl combat
Most RPGs don't have "tactics combat". They in practice either focus on optimizing your stats/abilities enough to beat things with brute force, or on pre-buffing yourself enough to survive. Unless you just mean it doesn't count due to being an action game, in which case no games with action gameplay should count as RPGs.
> it does a far better job of simulating an alternate reality than the vast majority of RPGs.
No, not really. Hyrule in OoT is still a fairy tale land. Having environmental puzzles isn't the same as depicting a "realistic" world. Final Fantasy VII has like a dozen towns and hundreds of NPCs.
>Most RPGs don't have "tactics combat"
First, at best you can say this about Wizardry-style combat or ARPGs in which case this has already been covered. It's very common to have real tactical combat in a 2D or 3D space in RPGs.
As for Wizardrylikes, you fricking pedantic homosexual, by "tactical combat" I actually mean "decision-oriented combat focused on risk and resource management" and if you replace "tactical combat" with that cumbersome mouthful my point remains exactly the same and Zelda still does not qualify.
>They in practice either focus on optimizing your stats/abilities enough to beat things with brute force
No, this is incorrect. Maybe in your case all you ever do is grind overwhelming resources and brute force your way through everything but that's not how RPGs are fundamentally designed to be played. There is a strategic element to RPGs but the gameplay still boils down to the combat decisions.
>Unless you just mean it doesn't count due to being an action game, in which case no games with action gameplay should count as RPGs.
No action games are true RPGs. They are half-breed RPGs. Or maybe "pseudo-RPGs." Essentially, an ARPG is when you do everything else (inventory, NPCs, how you explore the world, etc) in a way that seems almost exactly like an RPG, but you swap out the combat with action.
>Final Fantasy VII has like a dozen towns and hundreds of NPCs.
N64 Zelda NPCs allow for far more open ended interaction compared to FFVII NPCs, where you have far more means of freely interacting with them. When you have daily cycles+time travel+mask/equipment wearing+music+freely chose item trading etc. there is far more actual simulation of living individuals who can be doing things at different times or depending on what occurred in their recent past in real time, which is a huge contrast with old FF style NPCs which just stand around and only change in response to you making direct progress and can only be promoted to talk by pressing [ACTION] on them if you're not already in a cutscene.
If you can't see how a character like Anju is that much more alive than anyone outside your party in a typical RPG, I don't know what to say besides I'd love to hear an actual counter example.
That's perfectly true of LttP, which has the most 'toybox-like' world in the series that's actually opposed to be a kingdom.
>Hyrule and everything about it is designed around the gameplay there's no attempt to make it seem like a real place people might live.
This is true of many JRPGs.
Not to the same extent in most cases. JRPGs usually have real towns and world maps and such in an effort to depict a world where people actually live.
And even when they don't, they have blatantly RPG-style turn-based combat.
>JRPGs usually have real towns and world maps
Zelda 3 has all of that. 1 doesn't, but, I'm no lore expert, it's an early game, and probably meant to be a wasteland. It has all the invading monsters (moblins) that JRPGs have. It has a world just one overrun by monsters, and you still didn't explain why you ignore zelda 3 and 64...
>Zelda 3 has all of that.
No it doesn't. It has only one town, a castle and a few random houses here and there. It's a fairy tale. Hyrule is a bounded theme park and there's no sense whatsoever that anything coherent exists outside of it.
>It has only one town
You just suddenly, out of nowhere, made up a new arbitrary metric of "world size" to RPGs where it arbitrarily doesn't count when it's 1-2 towns and only when it's "world map". And sure, a few RPGs cover a world map. Like FF1. I still wouldn't be sure every rpg does.
I still wouldn't be sure every rpg does it. I might easily find a rpg that isn't 2big either. This is completely made up fake news. My memory isn't even that well on 3 but zelda 64 has more than one town. Goron village, Zora village...
>It's a fairy tale
>Hyrule is a bounded theme park and there's no sense whatsoever that anything coherent exists outside of it.
Fake news. Zelda chose to focus on a single land, Hyrule, but that has nothing to do with what a fairy tale, rpg or theme park is. It tries to do a good job on this single land.
In DQ2/FFI, they do cover the entire world map, a single city like Cornelia has almost no town/NPC interaction. It has way less than Hyrule in a Zelda (3 is mid but 64 and others definitely improve on that). The castle of Hyrule is also got more stuff than Cornelia's castle. This metric "a RPG must cover the world map" is fake news.
First of all, you're getting way too fricking lost on this nitpick. The game world and setting is only one part of an RPG and is always best understood in the context of the core gameplay and mechanics. So while you still don't understand the point, try not to forget that even accounting for your failure to understand settings and game worlds, it is not the only factor to consider when classifying a game as an RPG or not.
>The castle of Hyrule is also got more stuff than Cornelia's castle.
You should try compare games of similar era and scope, or at least accommodate technical evolution. The reason for this is that a game is classified based on the sum total of the experience it delivers. So when you have a bigger, more advanced game, it may have more detail than an older, more crude game but the sum total doesn't yield the same thing because there are also other bigger and more important features counter-acting them.
Cornelia castle is there to represent a place in a realistic world. There's a town and a castle and some very simple characters and relationships. It's abstract, but it's an abstraction of a realistic world and the player's interaction is consistent with this level of abstraction. (Traveling the overworld and encountering random monsters in forests, but not having to ever actually navigate game trails and underbrush and so on)
Ocarina is more a advanced and detailed depiction of a videogame theme park world complete with full 3D walking simulation, park employees playing the role of key NPCs. It's not impossible to have an RPG in a theme park world, but in that case you'd need core RPG mechanics present (eg turn-based combat) to classify it that way.
>JRPGs usually have real towns and world maps and such in an effort to depict a world where people actually live.
So do Zelda games.
No.
>You just suddenly, out of nowhere
Stop being moronic. I am making short posts on a humble message board attempting to convey ideas on a complex topic as succinctly as possible. So I use terms like "Theme park world" and "RPG-like world" and hope people get what I mean. You fail get it on the first try but don't realize you haven't understood me properly. Then when I elaborate, it feels like I'm making stuff up, when really you were just never following along properly in the first place. It's not like I haven't fricking played Ocarina and don't realize it has interactivity.
FF7 defines a complete world, an entire planet with continents and oceans and cities and towns and politics and wars and so on. It's a world that could exist without the game and the story being told (even if it was technically invented for the story). It's somewhat abstract, it's not like EVERY house and person is depicted or implement, even most of Midgar is left out. But you can easily extrapolate and fill in the blanks. Hyrule is always a kingdom where the entire world outside its boundaries is left completely blank.
Classic WRPGs usually depict only a very small fraction of a world, but the world is still implied to exist. The Sword Coast is a place on the Faerun continent of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. There are hundreds of little details reinforcing this.
In short, you seem unable to tell the difference. You pretend like there is no difference because you aren't smart enough to notice the difference. Leaving me to try and spoonfeed from the very basic principles of what constitutes a setting and
>Zelda chose to focus on a single land, Hyrule, but that has nothing to do with what a fairy tale, rpg or theme park is. It tries to do a good job on this single land.
game world.
Yes it does. And this has nothing to do with good or bad. God I fricking hate when binary-brains derail classification into good vs bad.
No. I simply categorically disagree, and object with what you're saying.
>there's no attempt to make it seem like a real place people might live. [Hyrule]
>No it doesn't. [have real towns and world maps]
Whether or not it's an RPG or not, and other factors, I'll not contend that. but the above is not correct.
>when really you were just never following along properly in the first place
And for that matter, I can not follow the arguments that you have not made or said anywhere, only those that you made.
When you play, even 3, you walk into a village. It's just like being stopped at Cornelia, etc. Just like Cornelia has shops, you find a village, there's shops in subsequent games.
There's no way it's not an attempt to make Hyrule seem like a habitable world. It's not true either that there's no town or map...objectively speaking, you get a map. If it was not attempting anything, such as [to make it seem like a real place people might live], and it was pure gameplay, you would not be stopped by a village. There would not be houses, or a shop.
It is not like the fraction of the world it depicts has no characterization either, or exists in a vacuum. This town exists. You soon learn a desert village also exists, and this desert has a connection with the town, etc. So, for example,
>It's a world that could exist without the game and the story being told (even if it was technically invented for the story).
This completely applies to the world of Hyrule too. It is not a theme park, in a similar fashion.
Which is why, when you mention that the world is isolationist, it kinda falls flat. It does feel you nitpicked on something unimportant that may be true by chance. 1) It's a feudal place. Who knows if the average feudal villager knows what's going on in another continent? 2) There are 6-7 villages that have connections to the main "Hyrule" town, and when they do, it does get brought up, tautologically if it was brought up it'd become part of Hyrule.
You still aren't getting the point. You aren't disagreeing, you are ignoring differences I point out. You are ignoring the role of proportionality and context. You're just repeating the insufficient ideas with no improvement.
Yes, Ocarina has a more "RPG-like" world than alttp or z1. But it doesn't come close to the worlds in actual RPGs from the same period (Baldur's Gate, Everquest, Might and Magic 7, most PSX JRPGs, and so on).
As has already been covered, applying transitive logic to ARPGs is foolish because ARPGs are not pure RPGs. An ARPG is what you get when you do an overwhelming amount of incidental detail in a very RPG-inspired manner, such that the game looks feels and plays like an RPG in every way except the combat.
A simulated world is only one of those details and definitely not sufficient. A fully simulated world alone is NOT even an RPG, it's just a simulation. A survival game with a realistic world sim is not an RPG.
I'm not disagreeing, exactly, just pointing out there are many things in this definition and logic that seem off. 1) You're taking the chronology of a game into a definition. That's pretty odd in itself. suddenly whether it fits the criteria now depends on the time I released it. If it's the right year, it's one, if you released it too late it's not(wut). only same gen comparison's allowed, not previous gen. 2) And also the opinion that the setting of Hyrule is/isn't close to the other game is extremely biased and subjective. 3) that this gray area, (transitive logic arguments?) even exist, and...
If I had to pinpoint, the odd thing is you have a term called Action-RPG in the first place but this game can't be that.
>Make a comprehensive argument from scratch, for why Ocarina of Time should be considered an RPG.
What it boils down to is, maybe i'm just rambling but...Zelda is basically DQ if it had gone in a different direction. And those descend from the first rpgs like Ultima and finally tabletops like DnD., is it not essential to rpg as you mention RPGs that they come from Ultima/tabletops?
> Miyamoto: Yeah. Even Dragon Quest, which is said to be carrying on the torch of the "traditional" or standard RPG, has a rather large amount of puzzle solving elements to it. ... The big difference, though, is that up to now, what would be conveyed by dialogue in a game like Dragon Quest, is done by player actions in Zelda. ...
What this boils down to is, Zelda literally is DQ if it went in a different direction. I think everyone's aware to an extent that's the pro- argument; it's a rpg with the action. You know the con- argument, no stats.
It's more weird (to me) that I have never seen the term Adventure used in conversation, it sounds like a filler catchall term. See GTA, as soon as possible they coined "open world", NO one calls it adventure (maybe action) or question "is GTA adventure or open-world?"
nta
>zelda is like DQ but different
That's why they're categorically separated
>GTA
C'mon now
>1) You're taking the chronology of a game into a definition.
No, I am not. That was advice on comparing individual games. The part actually taken into account is The Complete Game. The sum total of every mechanic and element is what yields the game for the purposes of genre classification. Extracting a single area of a 32MB N64 game from 1998 (Hyrule Castle in Ocarina of Time) and comparing it to a single area of an 8-bit, 256k NES game, is a flawed technique when the context and role of each area in each game is so dramatically different.
> That's pretty odd in itself. suddenly whether it fits the criteria now depends on the time I released it. If it's the right year, it's one, if you released it too late it's not(wut). only same gen comparison's allowed, not previous gen.
No, that's not it at all. Ocarina wouldn't have been an RPG back in 1987 either. "Try and compare games from a similar era" is just a far easier rule of thumb to help avoiding that kind of mistake than "try and compare games of roughly similar size and scope."
>Zelda is basically DQ if it had gone in a different direction.
Yeah, a direction that is not an RPG. Sorry, but I reject appeals to random developer comments on the topic. That's not an argument from first principles.
>I think everyone's aware to an extent that's the pro- argument; it's a rpg with the action.
The problem is that you seem to have a mistaken impression of what an RPG is.
>You know the con- argument, no stats.
Yes, though one of my main reasons for discussing the topic in this thread is to dig down into what that rather lazy careless definition of RPG actually means.
I'm aware the developer's name is there, but that's not the main point. I'm talking about the argument put forth by this developer.
It's an argument from ancestry. Ultima/Wizardry are early RPGs and DQ is considered a RPG because it descends from those. And those in turn come from tabletops which gives name to the genre. There ought to be a strong weight to having similarity, as far as possibly coming from Ultima/tabletops.
>a direction that is not an RPG
That's circular argument. "It is not RPG because it's not RPG."
>That's not an argument from first principles.
>what an RPG is
You seem to think there's metaphysical objectivity to the notion of "RPG".
That's bold, because...look at Theseus' Ship. The greatest philosophers of the time were not able to settle on Theseus' Ship, so how are we to think we hold the answer to Zelda's RPG-ness?
Furthermore, I can't therefore make an argument from first principles. It's a trick question because no matter what definition or principles I used, it's already decided, by circular reasoning, that it's not THE objective one. So why ask?
>You seem to think there's metaphysical objectivity to the notion of "RPG".
He is saying that because it's true. "RPG" is the term used for video games that follow in the tradition of the combat mechanics of tabletop games. "Adventure" is the term used for games that follow the tradition of storytelling, character interactions and using items found through the game to solve puzzles and advance the story. That is objectively what the the meaning of those terms in relation to video game genres.
They both come from the same roots, but approach the simulation of tabletop games in fundamentally different ways. Also as has been noted, which genre ended up with which name is arbitrary, just like "Fighting Game" and "Beat em Up" could have been swapped and would make as much sense. What doesn't matter is the actual name of the genre, what matters is understanding that Fighting Games and Beat em Ups while similar and related are distinctly different and to call Street Fighter a Beat em Up would be both wrong and add useless confusion. Exactly the same with Zelda. Mechanically and gameplay wise it's not an RPG, so calling it one is both wrong and adds useless confusion.
>adds useless confusion.
I'm the guy you're defending, and I agree with everything except again that this is somewhat foolish idealism. There are almost always going to be careless, lazy uses of terms that winds up being more inclusive-- especially for a classifier as messy as RPG. A game journalist wants to pad his JRPG listicle, an RPG forum wants to err on the side of permissiveness to foster greater variety of discussion, and so on. Language can accommodate some of this flexibility, however "confusing" it might be it doesn't change the core meaning of the term.
The key word there is "useless" it's not that it's super confusing, really none of this should be confusing to anyone who understands the formations of the genre. But muddying the waters by lumping Zelda in with RPGs is simply useless on all levels.
>All I'm asking for is YOUR definition. In order to state "Zelda is an RPG" you need to have
You keep acting like this is a debate and we're posting our "opinions" on what the term RPG means in relation to video games. Understand this isn't about opinions, the genres exist and Zelda does not fit into the genre of RPGs. That's nlt an opinion thing. Like it's not my opinion that Street Fighter is a Fighting Game while Streets of Rage is a Beat em Up. That's not something that's up for debate and opinions of what "Fighting Game" means. If you call Streets of Rage a Fighting Game you are simply objectively wrong. By exactly the same measure, if you call Zelda an RPG you are simply objectively wrong.
This isn't a debate, it never was. If you don't understand why Zelda is an Action Adventure series as opposed to an RPG series that's your problem and your willful ignorance.
It's not useless. The term is used carelessly sometimes because it's more useful than not.
It is useless to add confusion to the term, that's the point. There is zero reason to refer to Zelda as an RPG as it only leads to shit shows like this where people don't understand what the term means and want to re-define it for their own purposes. And no, it is not a debate. It never has been, that is the exact issue.
This and this
It really is just morons who think they know the definition of a word, only to have a mangled idea of what the words definition is. This leads to their egos becoming bruised because they have issues or whatever, then they stubbornly attempt to deface the words actual definition to try and save fave in defense of their tiny bruised egos. The kicker is, you get a bunch of bandwagoners who also had half assed ideas of said words definition, who make up a large portion of the squeaky wheel, like they are fighting for the underdog or some crazy mob mentality hijinks that creates clusterfricks of shit like this thread. It all makes sense when you add to this equation the amount of people with median I.Q.s... tiresome it is.
No. You are attempting to mangle the definition on purpose. That's why you are doing this and continue to. You are purposefully trying to make what isn't confusing, confusing so you can shift definitions away from objective reality so they fit your precious feelings.
This is not a debate. If you think Zelda is an RPG you are wrong.
I'm agreeing with you, frick face. Holy shit
That guy is just going aggro on any reply
Granted, I got a bit spicy. But I am a relatively old man and this new world of subjective truth where people define reality with feeling like "I know I have a wiener and balls, but I feel like I'm a woman so I am. Not that I would actually know what being a woman feels like, but I decide that I know what being a woman is like because I now am one" goes hand in hand to me with "I know video game genres are defined by gameplay, but I like the term RPG and I like Zelda so I want it to be an RPG because that feels better to me."
It's not on the same level, but it's all part of the same slippery slope to me. The term roguelike has already been so misappropriated that finding games which fit the definition of the genre and not some card based action platformer with nominal random level design gets harder by the day, so people trying to shift meanings does have genuine effects. Hence the salt, also this is only ever Zelda that it happens with. Silent Hill is every bit as close to an RPG gameplay wise than OoT but no one in their right mind would call it an RPG.
This. Zelda 2 has experience points where you gain better stats in various categories by killing enemies to level up. So it is an Action RPG as opposed to an Action Adventure game. It's one of the key things that denotes that the series in general follows Adventure Game format, because there was only one time they deviated and it made for a very contentious game and they never returned to the format since.
>But-
You're randomly taking out your personal issues with lgbt people, roguelikes and who knows what else on a topic that has nothing to do with it (and to cover up your own ignorance) and expecting people to be sympathetic? It's shameful.
Zelda and RPGs precede roguelite by a decade. It's completely irrelevant whatever issues you have with those people.
It's fricking childish. I lost any sympathy I could have had because I know you're the kind of gay who'll get mad if they don't get the last word on an argument and start bringing up your life story or trannies or some shit. kys
When the argument was a disingenuous attempt to change objective reality yeah I take it seriously. I don't give any fricks if you have sympathy, this is fundamentally no different from the trannies saying them feeling like a woman makes them one. You represent everything wrong with society and I'm far more inclined to murder your ilk than kill myself so you don't have to hear how pathetic you are. I was raised in an era when we stood up for what is right.
The era when Zelda was called an RPG, like it should be.
There was a time when some people mistakenly referred to it as an RPG and you know this you word mangling scumbag. Words and their meaning matter troony. You and your clownworld logic should be thrown in a fricking oven. This used to be one of the few decent boads here but now your fith has infected here as well.
>Zelda no longer is an RPG now I DEMAND you refer to it by its pronouns Action/Adventure
Not falling for your tricks, troony.
I'm not talking about subjective truth I'm talking about how language actually fricking works which you don't understand, even though I'm on the same side of this particular debate than you.
As for being old-- videogame RPGs did not even exist when I was born. There literally was no videogame genre called RPGs, and D&D itself had only been out for a couple of years. Reality changed and language evolved. The term emerged because it was useful, its meaning solidifies over time the more people use in a mutually agreed-upon way. What begins as jargon gradually spreads to mainstream.
For terms that have existed for hundreds of years, there's been plenty of time for experts to vet and refine the language. For terms that emerged 50 years ago to describe the intersection of two brand-new and rapidly evolving phenomena, semantics cannot be so easily fixed.
And yes I know I made grammarr mistakes in previous post I'm phone posting
Roguelike is a different situation because there's one video game with a very specific set of traits that people associate with the subgenre. RPG is much more complicated and people who fixate on one simple thing (eg xp and level-ups, character creation, or branching storylines) inevitably get it really wrong. If you added level-ups to mario (there are already points) but nothing about the game changes, it would still play the same way so it would still be classified in the same genre.
>Roguelike is a different situation because there's one video game with a very specific set of traits that people associate with the subgenre.
It was one game that spawned a series of very similar games following it's set of design elements that all work together to create the genre.
Yeah exactly, which is very different from RPGs which started off being partially adapted from tabletop games.
>If you added level-ups to mario (there are already points) but nothing about the game changes, it would still play the same way so it would still be classified in the same genre.
This is what I've been arguing the whole time, but the RPGgays here seem to disagree for reasons I can't fathom. Defining RPG as "simulation (wargame) adjacent" games that abstract from specifics of whats happening to allow for higher level planning and decision making, as certain people here seem to be doing, is something I *agree* with and feel is a general good way of getting at what an RPG meaningfully is.
However, *because of this*, given we agree that this is what matters, surely you can see that EXP based level-ups are basically tangential to the genre, and can be included or taken away from games regardless of how they specifically play, even if RPGs by convention happen to almost always utilize this as a convention. In fact, I'd actively claim that RPGs, as a style of gameplay, being so unnecessarily tied to EXP, and being so unwilling to explore alternate methods of progression, is a huge thing that is overlooked and is holding them back from their potential.
So I don't get why people who do care about RPGs and how they are defined, are so adamant that EXP/leveling is such a fundamental, as opposed to orthogonal, aspect of the genre. If the typical Zelda game HAD EXP instead of heart pieces and upgrades, there's no doubt it would be seen as an RPG, and that's what's so stupid about all this.
You're mistaking one-off posts by random anons in a Zelda thread as people who care.
Here's your secret favourite action adventure bros
>EXP based level-ups are basically tangential to the genre, and can be included or taken away from games regardless of how they specifically play, even if RPGs by convention happen to almost always utilize this as a convention
Wait, what's a conventional feature of a genre again?
>Wait, what's a conventional feature of a genre again?
I assume he means something useful and practical but non-essential for classification. Most platformer games have level checkpoints but having checkpoints isn't a primary, genre-defining gameplay mechanic.
>surely you can see that EXP based level-ups are basically tangential to the genre, and can be included or taken away from games regardless of how they specifically play,
No, you don't seem to grasp how profound adding XP and leveling to a game is. Thats the main issue. If you change Mario so jumping on every goomba makes him more powerful/faster/better than if he avoids them then it profoundly changes the game. Like it or not "RPG" is the moniker that gets attached to games with that aspect.
>If you change Mario so jumping on every goomba makes him more powerful/faster/better than if he avoids them then it profoundly changes the game.
No, it doesn't.
Let's say mario's level affects hitpoints only (big vs small is disconnected from hits, only affects brick-smashing and access to fire flower) and you lose 50% of your accumulated xp when you die. You could make it fairly easy to reach 2 hits, really hard to reach 3 hits, and possible to reach 4 hits only by stomping every single enemy in the game and never dying. (Maybe farming lakitu if he or spinies granted xp, but that's an easily throttled exploit).
The game barely changes at all. Every challenge still has to be overcome in the same way. Using warp zones will put you at the end with 1-hit or 2-hits max, exactly like the original. Falling into a pit is still instant death so one mistake and you're back to 1 hp. The only difference is that if you play very well through to the end to attain 4hp Mario, you'll be able to breeze past some of the most troublesome spots (eg the hammer bros in 8-3). Unless you frick up anyway and get bumped back to 2hp Mario because you died.
That would not be an RPG, even with xp and levels. Being an RPG is about a whole lot more than just that.
>No, it doesn't
Yes it does. You're laying out how you could do it and make it hardly matter, that's not the point. If you have a Mario who after jumping on every Goomba in a level is notably more powerful in whatever way to a Mario who just ran past every Goomba he didn't have to jump on then that changes the game very, very profoundly. Just look at any classic Castlevania game compared to SotN and the games that came out after. Adding XP leveling and grinding completely changes the series and how people play it.
And yes there are other aspects to RPGs but that is one of the core ones. It's also the one major aspect that doesn't overlap with Adventure Games which is why it's so central to the question of which category Zelda fits.
>Zelda 2 fits it, and so do many others where Link learns new techniques and abilities that go beyond new items.
It's different because the things Link collects that give him new abilities and items to solve puzzles are found through finding and collecting them in the world as happens in Adventure Games. Link can't get the Master Sword or the ability to throw objects further, light torches, fly or whatever by grinding XP on enemies. He can kill bokoblins for weeks on end, but that's not what gets him stronger or to have more life, he has to find better weapons and heart containers.
>Link can't get the Master Sword or the ability to throw objects further, light torches, fly or whatever by grinding XP on enemies
Yeah, and that's what makes Zelda interesting in ways most RPGs aren't.
>If you have a Mario who after jumping on every Goomba in a level is notably more powerful in whatever way to a Mario who just ran past every Goomba he didn't have to jump on then that changes the game very, very profoundly
Of course, and I'd argue the original Mario games didn't rewards you enough for defeating enemies as the scoring system wasn't good enough, so this would be a positive change so long as you couldn't repeatedly respawn things to power up indefinitely (which is a huge flaw in tons of RPGs).
The point though, is that ARPGs in particular could ditch unbound EXP drops in favor of set/limited powerups and barely change except to soft cap power increases and reduce incentives to repeat things, and likewise doing this for RPGs could easily be accommodated in ways that enhanced the games while retaining the core gameplay.
This thing though, I've realized, is that RPG fanatics are basically addicted to being intravenously fed power increasing good boy points and couldn't stand to give that up in favor of something better designed, and so they'll act like decision making is the major draw for them, until you get them to admit how essential "numbers go up" is to them.
>I don't like core elements of the genre so I'm going to expect everyone else to go along with my redefinition, please give me this insignificant fragment of cultural influence for no reason other than because I think it would be nice
The decision making determines how effectively the numbers go up, if you knew anything about the genre at all you would know that much. Your argumentation clearly indicates a preference for action game mechanics, an error so fundamental that you cannot reconcile why the unwashed masses of RPG nerds aren't hailing the sheer brilliance of your ill-conceived conceited bullshit.
>You're laying out how you could do it and make it hardly matter, that's not the point.
That IS the point. That's the most important point. Levels and xp by themselves are not profound. You are wrong to say they are and my demonstration proves this beyond all doubt. YOU are the one embedding unspoken assumptions into your argument.
>Levels and XP change the game "very, very profoundly"
>[proves claim wrong]
>oh well actually by making lots of other changes to totally re-oriented the game around XP and leveling, that means it's a profound change
No, dipshit, it was all the other supporting changes that add up to making the difference seem profound. And that distinction matters a lot.
Wargames had (and still have) XP and Leveling. RPGs changed the scope. Instead of just having dozens of troops with veteran units and rookie units, you follow a single character through the course of all their adventuring days and entire life. XP and Leveling is a way to model that growth. But you could still design an RPG that felt like an RPG even without XP and levels, so long as you kept all the tactical combat and dungeon adventuring features in place. Meanwhile as my Mario example proves, XP and levels alone can't make a game feel like an RPG.
So, in conclusion, they are a secondary trait. It's not deep and profound, it's just one of many ways to model unit growth and progression.
>Adding XP leveling and grinding completely changes the series and how people play it.
A lot more than just XP and leveling changed, though. Hell, even grinding itself is something other than "XP and leveling." You can grind rupees in Zelda and you can play tabletop RPGs where XP is awarded only on full completion of a dungeon or adventure with no incremental xp rewards at all.
>Levels and xp by themselves are not profound
NTA and yes your banal strawman did show that xp, as a metaphor for improving, must connect to progress in a way that matters for it to actually represent improvement. In that sense RPGs could use another metaphor that we would understand as functionally the same. Also this is why Zelda 2 is a watershed for some as a minimalist implementation.
> Proves claim wrong. Dipshit
No need to get so shirty anon.
RPGs can follow multiple characters though. And your Mario example mistakes xp as purely a kind of mistake buffer, which makes it a less-than-weak example. May as well be another way of collecting a mushroom ie. doesn't change the genre in a real sense.
>grinding itself is something other than "XP and leveling."
The nuance of grinding to improve really flew by you there. If you grind for coin that's not inherently improving the character. You can grind for points to similar effect getting extra lives too. Grinding for stat improvement directly does bring improvement.
>XP and leveling
>no not that XP and leveling
Exactly. You don't know what you are talking about. You are saying XP and leveling but really mean something else.
And yes this matters because there are action games designed like action games that people mis-classify because they have xp and levels for progression.
Karma in ShadowRun (snes) is a growth mechanic that isn't xp and follows rpg convention.
>Levels and xp by themselves are not profound.
How they change gameplay is. You know it an I know it. That's why your example tried to minimize it as much as possible. Yeah you can grind for more rupees in Zelda, but they barely do anything. If there's a Zelda game where killing enemies makes him directly more powerful in terms of stats like attack power, defense, hitpoints etc to where leveling up by fighting repeating enemies makes the game easier that is an entirely different scenario and changes the game very fundamentally.
The point is both that that would just be entirely bad, and also that the core gameplay mechanics wouldn't change, only their balance.
EXP allows players to bypass weakness and bad decision making via grinding, and I'll flat out say that this is just bad game design that shouldn't be happening in any game that's good and has integrity.
RPGs often 'need' grinding as a possibility because they allow you to frick up your party so badly that that maybe certain things aren't possible, but this can be addressed by:
a) Allowing either limited upgrades that you can use to boost your weakness up to a point, but not to where you can just gain more and more power.
b) Allow possible re-specs, maybe over time
c) Let players fail. Maybe you can't defeat some boss, and have to accept some worse outcome, ultimately letting you finish the games somehow, but through some alternate route and getting some worse ending
So, to be clear, structurally, EXP can have a significant impact on the game, but it isn't necessary for any given core style of gameplay, except to let players have an 'out' via overcoming things with brute time spent. Action games and RPGs can both have or not have EXP, but it's the latter who constantly rely on this lazy design convention.
>through some alternate route and getting some worse ending
No one wants to waste dozens of hours for that.
No, level progression is more than just a crutch. This is bad analysis. It enables gradual mechanic introduction, delayed build commitments, and soft relief on backtracking pressure.
Xp isn't required to have an RPG, but pretending like it's always bad design because some lite RPGs let you grind to ease difficulty is definitely midwit logic.
>but pretending like it's always bad design because some lite RPGs let you grind to ease difficulty
Yes, that's exactly the bad aspect I'm against. I never opposed ability progression or the ability to make build choices throughout a game, if you get points or whatever from quests/pickups and can gain abilities and limited power increases, then cool, I have no beef with that.
Yeah you are fixated on it yet failed to consider all possibilities before deciding on binary-brain good/bad reduction.
>you can grind for more rupees in Zelda, but they barely do anything
These are not a development mechanism per se. A core feature of true rpgs is the ability to create a specialised character, not always from a blank class. Rupees, absolutely do not achieve this and AoL barely falls over this line with its development system.
>structurally, EXP can have a significant impact on the game, but it isn't necessary for any given core style of gameplay, except to let players have an 'out' via overcoming things with brute time spent
Mostly I'd agree apart from this. XP 'should' allow fundamentally different play styles but this is one qualitative measure of the game design itself. Plenty of examples do not do this well enough but no, it won't make or break rpg'ness on its own if that's what you meant.
Yeah forgot he invented them and is the god of all, definitely not motivated by income.
AoL barely. Not played Skyrim but earlier ES I played definitely.
Should clarify specialised player and/or team
No. Being able to grow a character in an RPG is downstream of its actual core features which is roleplaying a single charge (or small party) through adventures governed by wargame mechanics. And wargame mechanics means having an abstract world simulation presented to the player in a manner that can be reasoned about tactically and strategically. Crpgaddict has it wrong. Developing a character is not the core of an RPG even though it's really close.
RPGs aren't wargames, no matter how much you want them to be the same thing. XP and growth was a part of RPGs before going digital.
You're still wrong. It really should be fricking obvious if you actually thought about it for more than two seconds. Character growth happens as a consequence of gameplay. It is not the gameplay itself. Games are classified into genres based primarily on their gameplay.
RPG gameplay involves the player making decisions on behalf of the character in a manner consistent with that character's in-world traits, as defined in the abstract simulation model (aka "the ruleset"). That's what occupies the overwhelming majority of a player's time and focus. Experience, money, levels, equipment-- those are just rewards. They usually add a strategic layer to the game-- some more than others, but very few RPGs actually make character development the primary gameplay. (the only example I can think of is non-retro).
>RPGs aren't wargames
No, but they use the same mechanics.
>XP and growth was a part of RPGs before going digital.
XP and growth were part of wargames, too. Being a part of RPGs before going digital is not relevant. It has always been a secondary feature of the genre.
>XP and growth were part of wargames, too.
Nah. DND did it first.
>he invented them and is the god of all, definitely not motivated by income.
Are you questioning the god of hype and casual goodness?
Don't make me call you a smelly pedo.
You are an idiot. Right about Zelda but you do not understand language or communication even a little.
I'm not the one arguing zelda is an rpg.
Also you are very confused about opinions, linguistics and semantics. There is not an absolute definition for RPG. It is a natural(and very recent) term that is evolving over time. People have different understandings of the term and some are more accurate than others. Because even though the term and genre classifier evolves, semantics solidify over time.
So yes it is a fricking debate. Even if the other side is wrong you have to start from where the misunderstanding comes from (the flawed perception of the term and genre)
>It's an argument from ancestry.
You have to be able to demonstrate the ancestry with observable traits in the descendant game.
>Ultima/Wizardry are early RPGs and DQ is considered a RPG because it descends from those.
Yes, but with those games one can cite obvious and specific mechanical gameplay influences, unpolluted by confounding mechanics. Wizardry uses a turn-based combat system lifted directly from tabletop systems. Its heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling means that by modern classification it's most accurately part of the dungeon crawler or DRPG subgenre.
>You seem to think there's metaphysical objectivity to the notion of "RPG".
All I'm asking for is YOUR definition. In order to state "Zelda is an RPG" you need to have functional semantics for the term "RPG" in that context. That's all I'm asking. I can articulate mine. If you can't articulate yours, maybe you aren't really ready to debate the topic intelligently.
>The greatest philosophers of the time were not able to settle on Theseus' Ship, so how are we to think we hold the answer to Zelda's RPG-ness?
Because we're not interested in absolute philosophical rigor that's fricking why, moron.
Language evolves over time but that doesn't mean any word means anything anyone wants it to mean. Words do have meanings even if lazy and careless application of these words are accommodated sometimes by non-autistic people communicating reasonably. Theseus' ship doesn't even apply in this situation, because that was a question about a single conceptual object. We're talking about classification of objects based on a definition over time. We aren't talking about the ship itself, we're talking about the CLASS of ship.
>All I'm asking for is YOUR definition.
Oh, I was actually quite sold by anon's above split, not to mention the wargame one is quite rigorous. Aren't those enough? -But- you insist so nicely that I provide one of mine? I have to oblige.
Clearly, through proximity (mechanical, but to an extent setting-wise) to archetypal/ideal RPGs such as Wizardry/Ultima and somewhat DQ. It might be akin to defining "fighting game" by proximity to Street Fighter, as it is tedious to do a definition by enumeration listing all fighting games.
What proximity is there? Obviously, it's not too close to Wizardry. Etrian Odyssey is a game that's rpg due to closeness to Wizardry but not Ultima. Zelda then is close to Ultima but not Wizardry.
>obvious and specific mechanical gameplay influences
1. A navigateable top-down world with towns/maps.
2. a consistent "setting" to that world
3. The "dungeoning", a common RPG staple (dungeon->get item->fight boss)
4. sim mechanics to world (got added over time)
A D&D beat 'em up like Golden Axe or arcade/platformer is already far from that. There's no dungeoning, the world is not navigateable since you don't backtrack a to previous level which makes the world inconsistent, it's not top-down, etc. And how can you forget dungeoning? That's practically what a RPG is about! All it lacks is 5. better tacticalness, but they all can't BE the ideal archetype of a RPG just as a table can't be Plato's ideal "form" of a table.
Those things aren't really distinctive to RPGs, except maybe setting and as mentioned Zelda had a very videogamey setting.
How so? They're all what Ultima brought to the rpg table and then DQ expanded on (by making dungeoning into a RPG feature). If you ask for gameplay influences from Ultima, it would be something like the above?
Which shows us that Zelda has 95% of the features from the archetypal RPG. 'course, merely being top-down wouldn't do it, but it's top-down with map and dungeoning etc.
>and then DQ expanded on (by making dungeoning into a RPG feature)
wat
Just bumping in to clarify that top-down "dungeoning" is not something Dragon Quest introduced to RPGs, even in Japan, but don't let me keep you from your argument.
>How so?
Sorry for previous brevity, thread was precariously perched near page 10.
The tactical combat is the only element that is specific to only RPGs and Tactical Wargames. Virtually everything else about an RPG is a more generic feature and you only get "RPGness" out of them when you combine these generic traits in a particular way.
>top-down world
Top-down is one of the two main options for simple 2D perspectives. You have a top view or side view. Games will overwhelmingly pick one or the other.
>navigateable
A feature common to action games by the 90s. You couldn't replay levels in SMB3 but there was a navigable world map. By SMW, levels were meant to be replayed to find hidden exits.
>with towns
Which Zelda 1 does not have and ALTTP barely has.
>a consistent "setting" to that world
Almost all videogames had settings once tech advanced enough to depict them. Mushroom kingdom, for example. These settings often lack verisimilitude, but then so does Zelda's.
>dungeoning
Reasonable to suggest, the problem is that videogame concepts of "levels" are basically almost the same as a "dungeon." Videogames started off with "stages" and "boards" which pretty quickly evolved into "levels," as technology made it more feasible to implement coherent and discrete chunks of gameplay in areas larger than a single screen.
However, Wargames do NOT have dungeoning (as an essential). The presence of dungeoning is a key distinguishing feature between an RPG and a Wargame, but not between RPG and other genres.
> sim mechanics to world
Tricky because it's really a somewhat specific kind of simulation that makes for an RPG. A hypothetical fully realistic simulation videogame is not necessarily an RPG.
>(got added over time)
As most of these features did, to non-RPG genres. The only thing that wasn't widely adopted was the wargame-style combat model and its associated stat system.
If you go by the metric "what do Ultima/Wizardry have in common?" surely it has to be tactics, which is why I opt to look at the the metric to "proximity to Ultima or Wizardry" instead. (It's a random metric, but then many do call odd games rpg, and perhaps this has to do with it.)
In any case, there's a sort of sheer closeness between RPGs like Ultima and Zelda, and top-down might be one small part of it. If you look at Zelda 2, many perceive it as having deviated from the formula, leading to some controversy, and all it did was go sideways.
The one edge case counter-example that comes to mind is smw. No one would ever think of it as a rpg. I'd never have thought of it, but a map is kind of a rpg feature.
In SMB1 and even one or other hydlyde you move from level to level, in Zelda 1 you have a more of a continuity since there is a world map with locations (dungeons).
even Z2 does a better job in conveying a journey through a continuous albeit sideways world. SMW/3 ignores the consistency criteria. A level could be random boogie-jumps. It IS random boogie-jumping. Any level could be a dungeon, which is far from the archetypal dungeoning Zelda has. The setting criteria suffers too since plumbers are not a fantasy race.etc.
I think there's still too much focus on early games, when it had not even settled on a formula, compared to the rpgness of 3+ onwards.
>I opt to look at the the metric to "proximity to Ultima or Wizardry" instead
Well, you're also combining this with an ancestry argument, which is necessary because "proximity to Ultima and Wizardry" mostly decreases over time. It's also a mistake because even though those games were the genesis of videogame RPGs, they were crude, early attempts to adapt tabletop roleplaying to computer. They are important but not the be-all, end-all of what it means to be a videogame RPG.
>all [Z2] did was go sideways.
No not really. Zelda 2 also introduced a much different (and much more Ultima-like) overworld map with a real attempt to depict scale and different towns in the world.
>I think there's still too much focus on early games, when it had not even settled on a formula, compared to the rpgness of 3+ onwards.
1. That's the topic of the thread
2. The early games are the only games even reasonably close to Ultima and Wizardry. Over time, Zelda diverged from RPGs more than it converged toward them. The incidental additions of more realistic towns and interactive environments were coupled with other, more divergent elements (at a time when peer games actually being labeled RPGs were increasingly emphasizing and elaborating on the RPG-like traits).
Consider ALTTP and Illusion of Gaia with your "proximity" logic in mind, but releasing it from the constraint of comparing to ONLY Ultima and Wizardry. Neither SNES game really feels much like an RPG to play due to the emphasis on action. ALTTP is more open-world and Gaia's "stats" are very limited and the combat is very action-oriented (I'd say a little more stat-conscious than alttp but we'll call it equal for the sake of argument). However, Gaia's setting depicting a complete world with an overworld map, a linear and epic story told with sprite actors through multiple towns and dungeons, is much closer to what more traditional turn-based JRPGs on the SNES were doing at the time than ALTTP.
I skimmed some of this gen but remember FFV and Terranigma, at least.
I suppose from an angle, alttp is a "branch" that's a "bit behind", (there's a meme that Hyrule is a small part of Z1 map) in that maybe you already have more members/plot/overworld in FFV. And no-plot rpgs were a NES thing. In FFI, its prequel, there's a vague plot too.
But in alttp you still have all this dramatic talk with Aganhim which introduces you to the Dark World anyway.
Anyhow, this means going through Terranigma or Zelda can feel like there are similar rpg-lite things going on due to all these beats of going to shrines, and whatnot, just like FFI/V, but that depends on expectations really.
>And no-plot rpgs were a NES thing.
Yeah, to be clear, plot is not really a defining feature of an RPG.
All I'm saying is that if you're trying to figure out why SNES-era ARPGs get classified as such in situations that ALTTP does not, it's because the ARPGs tend to have much more in common with the "traditional JRPG" peers. Even if those traits aren't really defining RPG traits.
But again, that goes back to ARPGs not being real RPGs to begin with. An ARPG is what you get when you rip out the core of the RPG and replace it with an action game, but leave everything else looking so much like an RPG that it still "feels" like one. I know that feels very subjective and messy but that's what happens when you have cross genres.
And that's another point, really. Zelda games do not feel like crossbreed games. They usually feel pure and orthogonal, even elegant. With typical ARPGs you often notice awkward balance between RPG elements and action elements.
Zelda towns feel more lived in than many JRPG towns. There are a lot of characters who exist only to add flavor.
Yeah, because it's an Adventure game, that's what the genre is all about. Many RPGs like Wizardry have quite limited story and outside characters.
Cinderella's house feels lived in, too. You're not getting the point.
In you list several (flimsy) reasons you (wrongly) think Zelda isn't an RPG. Among these is that "Hyrule and everything about it is designed around the gameplay there's no attempt to make it seem like a real place people might live."
Meant for
You're disingenuously cherry-picking my words while ignoring everything else that might clarify. Let's try this a different way, since you're getting a lot of mileage out of finding the dumbest possible way to interpret things that I write.
Make a comprehensive argument from scratch, for why Ocarina of Time should be considered an RPG. The only rule is that you may not use transitive logic with other ARPGs. That is "Zelda is like <ARPG> therefore Zelda is an RPG" is not a valid argument. Whether you believe that dumb shit on your own time is your own business but as far as this discussion goes, it's invalid logic. If you can't make a case for Ocarina without referencing other games that aren't real RPGs in the first place, you don't have a case.
>The only rule is that you may not use transitive logic with other ARPGs. That is "Zelda is like <ARPG> therefore Zelda is an RPG" is not a valid argument.
But it is a valid argument. Not playing this stupid game.
No it's absolutely not a valid argument. I've explained why in laborious detail and if you still don't understand it means you're stupid.
ARPGs are barely RPGs in the first place and Zelda is most like other ARPGs in ways that ARPGs are not like RPGs. This invalidates the transitive logic.
>ARPGs are barely RPGs in the first place
Not so.
You are wrong.
RPGs are based on tabletop tactical combat models extended to cover more than combat. You take on the role of a character and make decisions for that character in the world. The gameplay is oriented around that decision-making and the underlying models. When you rip out the decision-oriented gameplay you remove the core, most important aspect of what it means to be an RPG. There's a lot of secondary detail to what makes an RPG in the end, and if you leave a lot of that secondary detail in a way that looks a hell of a lot like a real RPG, but swap out the actual tactical combat for videogame action, you get an ARPG.
Meanwhile, if you build a 3D, puzzle-oriented game with action combat from scratch, setting the game in a fantasy world with castles and elf villages doesn't make it an RPG.
ARPGs have real-time decision making. Instead of picking out attack or guard from a menu you just attack or guard.
>ARPGs have real-time decision making.
If you can't tell the difference between real-time decision-making and action gameplay, don't reply to me again.
Everquest has real-time decision-making.
Ocarina of Time has action combat.
There is no difference. Action gameplay involves real-time decision making.
RPGs aren't defined solely by combat decision making
It's the most important thing, though. Multiple choice dialog is not an RPG-defining mechanic. Videogame RPGs (over)use it (usually very poorly) to achieve a crude amount of world interactivity, that's it.
That wasn't about dialog trees, it was about having a choice at all. If your RPG disallows bad decisions then all meaning behind your choices evaporate.
Many RPGs have no meaningful decisions that affect the story outside of battle.
That's reductive and you're an idiot, needing me to spoonfeed you the difference between a system designed around challenges of physical dexterity, reflexes, and hand-eye coordination which includes decision-making as an implicit requirement, and a system designed first and foremost about making decisions about where to stand which enemy to target, which ability to use and when to use it, undet real-time pressure.
You are fricking stupid if you can't tell the difference even after having it spelled out for you.
That is in no way a valid argument. All it does is highlight you don't understand what an Adventure Game or an RPG actually is and you refuse to learn because you grew up in a post-truth world where objective fact doesn't matter and your being ignorant to facts doesn't matter because facts don't matter. All that matters in your precious feelings and you feel you want Zelda to be an RPG sp thatis what you will insist forever bdc you're s spoiled narcissistic child. Society is doomed, you people are mentally ill troony morons. Go put on panties and tell yourself Ocarina of Time is an RPG because it makes you tingle.
Calm down, proofread, get a physical keyboard
I'm not proofreading when replying to moronic troony children. You and your dipshit ignorant opinions aren't worth it.
Untwist your nips moron, you're blind firing. Unflattering.
Cry me a river. Zelda is not an RPG by any sensical definition, you and your moron zoomer brain that refuses to learn will never change that. At this point you are a non-entity to me. Clearly too stupid to understand reason and too narcissistic to care.
zelda = rpg
Trolling that guy isn't funny and just makes you look stupid. This isn't Ganker.
I think it is and that's what matters.
Keep it to yourself then.
no
Enjoy being correctly labelee an idiot for having no arguments and stubbornly asserting yourself anyway for no good reason other than you can't seem to help it.
It doesn't matter. This is an anonymous board with no user IDs. I'll show up in the next thread just as smug and condescending as ever.
Why?
to piss people off. and there's nothing you can do about it
Yeah exactly what I thought (and said so earlier). Trolling. You lost the argument and instead of moving on or god forbid growing a little, you are now going to throw a childish tantrum about it, maybe holding the grudge for weeks, with the lame excuse that Ganker is all about inane banter (never mind you haven't shown the slightest hint of wit or humor). Literal 2nd grade behavior.
Zelda games aren't RPGs besides Zelda 2, but it was fun watching you write a whole essay for every faulty argument I made the other way.
>I was pretending to be moronic
Sure, glad you had fun.
Likewise 🙂
>Zelda 2
How the frick is Zelda 2 a RPG?
You collect exp and level up in it.
People who say Zelda is an RPG don't understand what RPGs actually are. That's part of what makes this whole thing surreal. It really cements that Zelda fans seem almost totally unaware of games and genres that are not Zelda. The truly confusing thing is why they are so obsessed with it being labeled as a genre it clearly isn't.
>They in practice either focus on optimizing your stats/abilities enough to beat things with brute force, or on pre-buffing yourself enough to survive.
Yes they do. You can not like it, that is the heart of RPGs. Zelda is an Action Adventure game by every definition and that's awesome because Action Adventure is a great genre. So why bend over backwards desperately trying to say it's an RPG when the term simply doesn't fit.
At least if you're going to keep this trolling going explain why. Why is it important to you that Zelda be referred to as an RPG rather than what fits it's gameplay and design perfectly which is Action Adventure. Why does that genre offend you so much?
You're deliberately omitting and ignoring the key points where I explain my reasoning. Don't think Zelda should count as an RPG? Fine, then nothing with action gameplay should count either, and 'action/RPGs' should be a meaningless category. That's a perfectly consistent view to hold, if you do hold that.
But as soon as you argue that some action game should count as an RPG because it has stats/town NPC interaction, then clearly it makes sense to acknowledge that Zelda has far less shallow reasons to be included. It makes barely shit all sense to include action/adventures in the RPG category because of level ups, but then ignore that Zelda does pretty much every substantial 'RPG-like' thing save for EXP points.
>Zelda does pretty much every substantial 'RPG-like' thing save for EXP points.
No, it doesn't.
Because none of your points are actually valid. You're still failing to grasp the actual difference between adventure games where you go on a story, talk to people and collect various tools and items that let you solve puzzles and RPGs which are made to simulate the combat aspects of tabletop role-playing games. They both come out of tabletop games, but do it in distinctly different ways. You can add action to either genre and Zelda is very obviously an adventure game framework with arcade style combat.
Why are you still refusing to say why it is so important to you that Zelda is not considered an Action Adventure? What is wrong with it's obviously more correct category? That's a serious question. Why do you push this so hard?
You're acting like a moron and still refusing to actually read and understand what I'm saying. It's *isn't* important to me that you consider Zelda an RPG or not-an-RPG. It doesn't matter to me whether or not you classifying it as an action/adventure.
What I'm getting at is simply that there is no solid reasoning, that isn't just shallow and arbitrary, as to why game series like Kingdom Hearts, The Witcher, Nier, Dark Souls etc. are considered, based on their actual game play and structure, to be 'action-RPGs', while Zelda isn't. The thing these games have in common is largely that that have EXP/level driven stat and ability systems, while Zelda involves "finding things in the world" for this. I'm just saying that this is a shallow reason for a genre distinction when these games (including Zelda) are otherwise closer to each other in most other ways.
If you were to just consider all of these games action, that would be perfectly fine, and I've taken pains to make that clear to you
Dark Souls shouldn't be considered an ARPG. That one is a mistake. People see the stats and levels and stop thinking.
>shallow and arbitrary
It's fuzzy and indistinct more than shallow and arbitrary. Like, when does a dry steppe become desert exactly? There's often not a clean obvious line you can cross, one gradually blends into the other. That doesn't mean there is no line or that mistaken classifications cannot exist.
And then there's subtle and deep traits that may be hard to explain to someone not willing to pay attention. How do you know dolphins aren't fish?
Incidentally, Lordran is a perfect example of a "theme park world" that isn't RPG-like at all. Everything about the world was built around the action gameplay. Lordran is like some kind of cursed Olympus set apart from an actual world you never get to see. There are no towns, no villages, no normal people, no regular lands, nothing like that. Only action levels. There are references to a world outside of Lordran, but it's all very vague and the relationship between Lordran and the "real" world is ill-defined. Other "NPCs" you encounter like Solaire and Siegmeyer are basically playing the same game you are. Characters like Domnhall of Zena just show up at arbitrary locations for no reason, just like the random old men in the original Legend of Zelda.
The main reason you don't see anyone arguing about Dark Souls being an RPG on /vr/ is that it's not a retro game by the arbitrary rules of this board. Kingdom Hearts I can't speak to because I've never played it and don't plan to.
>Since Zelda is a one-player game, there is no team
Is Diablo an RPG? It can be soloed, yes?
What role do you play if you solo the game, since you are not on a team? Hero?
Read:
Pictured: not an RPG because you only have one playable character
You're being deliberately obtuse. The term 'RPG' has an origin. I explained that origin. The fact that there are single-player RPGs doesn't change Zelda being an Action Adventure game.
Zelda 2 is 100% an rpg though.
stats? check
leveling and experience? check
exploration, interaction, quests, skills, etc? check
the only difference betwenn z2 and dq1 (aside from zelda being a far better game) is that the combat isnt menu based except when selecting your spells
Zelda 2 is an arpg, a bastard half-breed not-really-rpg that shares a number of key traits.
parasite eve is such a dope game. I love it so much bro
>Since Zelda is a one-player game, there is no-ACK!
>but they don't have classes so it doesn't count as a role!
Heh.
They're Warriors, like the ones in FFI, duh.
>'Role' doesn't me the role of your character, like how an actor plays a role, it refers to the 'role' of your character's specialty in a team, I.E. healer, tank, glass-cannon, etc.
No. This is not true. Role means taking on the role of the character. It's just not the end of the definition. RPG doesn't mean any game where you play a role.
Yes that guy is very confused. However, RTS are very close to RPGs because RTS are wargames with tactical combat. It's a good exercise to think about what it would take to turn an RTS into an RPG, bearing in mind the succinct definition of an RPG stated in the first sentence here:
Now let's make 3 simple tweaks to a Warcraft RTS.
1. Instead of being an invisible troop commander set apart from the game, you take on the role of a single character on the field (or maybe a small group of them).
2. Enemy behavior is governed on a unit to unit basis by a hand-crafted logic, with no default to simulating a rival 'troop commander.'
3. Instead of building forts to fight armies on battlefield maps, you take your units adventuring in hazardous labyrinths and monster lairs.
And that's it. You have a real-time RPG. In fact, as I recall, there there were a handful of dungeon-like scenarios you could play in the original Warcraft that were essentially little mini-RPGs within the greater RTS. By Warcraft 3, increased emphasis on Hero Units like Thrall and Arthas led to criticisms that the series was becoming too much like an RPG.
Now take it a step further
4. Consolidate all unit abilities into a few classes, giving units many more combat choices
5. Add an auto-pause feature to give the player plenty of time to ensure units are making the right choices (remember, you're pretending as if they are deciding for themselves, you're not a field marshal issuing orders from on high).
At that point you've basically got RTwP like the Infinity Engine RPGs.
>You have a real-time RPG
RPGs can't be real time because I said so, checkmate.
Smart patricians understand the difference between real-time tactical combat and action-oriented gameplay.
>No. This is not true.
>Yes that guy is very confused.
Frick off. It very much is true gay.
In the course of my career as a vidcon specialist (my own coinage, spend it wisely), I have never seen such blatant and frankly sickening ignorance as that exhibited by the "people" (if, in fact, they are homosexual sapiens at all, as their intelligence implies elsewise) that claim that Zelda is not an RPG. There is nothing that Shigeru "Shiggy" Miyamoto could possibly do to make the vidcon any more of an RPG as it meets every single criterion for being one, particularly that it takes place in an imaginary realm with a fantastical beastiary, the damsel villain ratio is at or above standards, and that the core emphasis of the gameplay is on bedazzling all foes with impeccable swords and sorcery. Furthermore, this line of thought can be extended to all vidcons in which the player controls a character (hence, roleplaying), though I cringe slightly at the thought of such mundane vidcons as Madden being RPGs, as they do not even include exotic weaponry such as the tonfa.
kek is this the new pasta?
Newfqg
RPGs have stat growth mechanics. No stat growth = not an RPG. Zelda is an action-adventure game, having weaved the cloth that later games like Assassins Creed and GTA would be cut from.
Western RPGs are RPGs where the in-game computer is the DM, whereas JRPGs are RPGs where the player is the DM.
>I'd rather buy Super Monaco GP for $49 than Ninja Garden 2 for $44
>some please recommend
He may not have a clue
he has good taste
at that time it was all about the graphics. we know better than him only in hindsight
Nope, going with what we've decided what RPG meant in video game lingo a really long time ago.
He's wrong on the details but correct on the point. RPG refers to games that follow the combat mechanics of stats, experience to gain levels and skills that are used to overcome increasingly challenging enemies. That's the core of what the genre descriop RPG refers to. Zelda is not an RPG in any meaning way. It's an Adventure game which is in a related genre, but those two genres are very distinct and have very diff core gameplay.
Is FFX an Adventure game? It feels a Sierra point-and-click where I click to proceed to the next scene. It sure can't be an RPG, can it? Even RPG-Adventure might be going too far.
I prefer 'click em up'
I think these first three titles can certainly be seen as RPGs, especially by their more exploration oriented gameplay, use of levels (either leveled items or real levels), emphasis on dungeon crawling with few story ties, and levels-like hp progress in a way that matters.
Later games are much less RPG like, your progress is less important, much less item progression not tied to story, story driven etc.
Both
Zelda II is the king of RPGs. Deal with it.
That's what I meant to say. It's a huge mandela effect for me that it's even on Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is not a real person. I NEVER, for example, saw someone casually call GTA an adventurer in a Ganker thread before today. It's always in some tagging system nobody looks, but outside of tagging a normal person would call it "that open-world game".
>That's why they're categorically separated
Yes, but why is Zelda the one that isn't a RPG? We could have instead said that "DQ is not a RPG"? hmm. The truth is out there...
Your faulty memory doesn't refute written consensus.
>call GTA an adventurer
Action-Adventure, not just Adventure. You realise the terms aren't interchangeable, right? You realise Action-Adventure games can be open world, right?
The reason Zelda isn't considered an RPG is because of an emphasis on action-oriented gameplay over stat management and attribute strategies, but you already knew that.
>Zelda literally is DQ if it went in a different direction. I think everyone's aware to an extent that's the pro- argument; it's a rpg with the action. You know the con- argument, no stats.
Make the effort to recall your own stance
it lacks the ingredients to make it an rpg. you need experience points, levels, progression. castlevania symphony of the night is an rpg. deus ex is. zelda ain’t
Y'all didn't like the four dudes in a line argument, so I will revise it to an indeterminate number of dudes in a line definition. There. Now no Zelda game is an rpg, and every real rpg counts. I fixed the dilemma for you.
>4 swords
Theyre not in a line though
So Breath of Fire 4 isn't an RPG, got it.
Wait frick I replied to the wrong post. Your definition still excludes games like Shadowrun though.
Neither is Wizardry or Dragon Quest since you can't see your dudes. They could be standing anywhere.
Incorrect. The boxes are in a line.
I dont know what that is.
>im really just trolling u guise
No, you're just an idiot
the difference is the guys in that comic didn't get mad and rant about fake news and the post truth era
>You should have just flamed me and called me moronic
i mean, yeah, that'd be less entertaining
>I t-troll for fun I swear
Calling people moron would indicate anger, odd you didn't notice that detail
You don't say moron casually?
You say frick off to greet people?
Hostility isn't the same thing as being mad.
Simmer down.
Based. People who dont understand this are moronic. I post aggressively because that's just how people talk on this board. In real life I'm just chilling with my hand down my pants and laughing at youtube videos. I can also go from "frick off and die moronic Black person" to completely charitable argumentation in a split second.
mad
No, just fricking bored at this point. The conversation was somewhat interesting until you decided to get pissy and trolling (you're probably not even the same guy, just a masochistic homosexual here for punishment)
me too. i kind of laid it on too thick with the zelda = rpg comment tbh, but it doesn't matter since there are no consequences on this site
>it doesn't matter since there are no consequences on this site
That's where you're mistaken. You're the one who chose to invest your time posting in this thread and whatever you get out of doing that are the consequences.
meh got nothing better to do
>meh I can't do better
Bright future ahead
If I don't have one, I'll take out my frustration on /vr/.
>I refuse to do better and actively infect the board with pissant whining
Thread hidden
mad
Feel better soon
Thanks. It's been a rough year, but shitting up this site genuinely makes me feel a lot better.
I believe you
You should, I mean it.
That's nice.
So how are you?
Doing well, thanks.
Better than someone that replies to themselves for companionship.
Well it has been a rough year.
Don't worry. Things will get better.
You know, right after they stop being terrible due to your impulsive self-sabotage. Should be any day now.
I sure hope so. Things were looking up for the last couple of years, but unfortunately I experienced a major setback, and now old habits I thought I had kicked are coming back.
A good first step would be to just close your browser right now (all tabs) and go to bed while the jannies clean up the mess you've made here.
I can't sleep.
yeah because you are addicted to internet dopamine hits.
Lie flat on your back on the floor for 30-45 minutes minutes and observe your breathing, clearing your mind until nothing intrudes. Then go crawl into bed.
That won't work. It's only 8:20 where I am.
In fact, do yourself a favour and cancel your internet outright. You know you don't have the discipline to improve when you shitpost to hide from your responsibilities
I don't pay for utilities, and mobile data would still be available to me.
>Lacking the motivation for self discipline
>Phoneposter
Kek
It's /vr/'s problem as much as mine. I'll make sure of that.
>only motivated by rage
Inevitable rope statistic
That remains to be seen. I have external obligations for the foreseeable future though.
Any responses to you from here are made out of pity, which I'm sure is the point
Subgenres do indeed exist and often depart from the source material enough to require a separate genre tag
Thanks for the response. I appreciate it.
As you can see, I have this thread on auto refresh. I really need the replies.
If it's action based it certainly isn't a RPG.
Arpgs exist.
And they aren't RPGs.
Half of this thread is just two morons forcing us to read their back and forth. This should be banned. Stop bumping threads to the front page that we all can see just to have a private conversation.
Hide threads you don't like.
But I do like the thread. I just don't like the past 100 replies up to that post.
You counted them? The discussion must have been quite remarkable for you to care about it that much. You know, since you're definitely a bystander.
No, I didn't count them. I just guessed a random number.
RNG? RPG.
Not an RPG, it's Action-Adventure.
How do I get there?
From the inside. You come out there if you frick up the Ganon fight and fall into the pit.
oh frick thx
Eggerland has taught me how to differentiate between an adventure game and not an adventure game. It comes down to 2 things.
Does it have a constant time limit and does it not give you passwords at any point? If your game does not fulfill these 2 conditions, they can not be adventure games.
No need to thank me.
There are exactly zero RPG elements in those games.
>There are exactly zero RPG elements in those games.
Zelda II has experience points and stat growth.
When I play Zelda I roleplay as Link so I am roleplaying the game.
When I play Pong I roleplay as the paddle so Pong is an RPG.
No, it would be a RPtG like I said. Are you stupid or something?
it trash
You got greedy
Zelda didn't become a roll playing game until ocarina of time
It's the true definition of a native isekai (except for Majora's Mask and maybe Link's Awakening)
fun fact: no one ever called zelda an "action rpg" before j-rpgs became a thing. game mags usually used "action adventure" to refer to this genre.
What a stupid example. Stop skirting the argument in a meaninglessness way. No RPG works like that. Having access to super mario etc forms after gaining levels, on the other hand, gets pretty close, wouldn't you say. But what else would get it over the line? Specialisation? Dungeons with Loot? Village people? A 4 man squad? Not being a platformer?
>No RPG works like that.
No shit, moron. Because being an RPG is about more than having XP an levels. XP and levels is a litmus test that works most of the time but it's not the definition of an RPG.
>But what else would get it over the line?
We've covered this. An RPG is an adventure game with combat (and adjacent systems) inspired from turn-based wargames.
You would have to make so many changes to Super Mario Brothers that the resulting game would be unrecognizable. I don't have time now but maybe later if I have time we could do it as a thought exercise.
Also, remember an ARPG is not a true RPG, so there's no stark line.
As best I can tell, every other major game that is commonly considered an RPG fits the criteria in picrel, and no Zelda game that I'm aware of fits any of them. So it's safe to say that Zelda is not an RPG. Like I said way earlier in the thread, it's RPG-adjacent.
His older one was better.
Character development is a dumb "driving mechanic of gameplay." I guarantee it's not even true of the overwhelming majority of shit that guy has reviewed. For games like the Gold Box D&D, tactical combat is the driving mechanic of gameplay. It's a common part of what makes an RPG but it's not the most important thing.
I respect his autistic ability to apply his formula to a gorillion million shitty ancient RPGs and his writing on the subject can be interesting. But his attempts to get intellectual usually fall well short of impressive. Almost disappointing to be honest, given his vast experience playing RPGs. (Although perhaps this is the problem, his viewpoint has become so RPG-oriented he has lost sight of what other genres are all about)
Incidentally, his review of Zelda is half-terrible and half-good for exactly this reason. The good part is that some of the negative scores are fair applications of his RPG-evaluation rubric, in which Zelda scores poorly (because it's not an RPG). The bad part is that he loses his fricking mind over the game and spends half the article ranting about nonsense and makes himself look like a fool in the process. He understands that the game isn't an RPG, but doesn't remotely understand what the game is actually supposed to be.
>no Zelda game that I'm aware of fits any of them
Zelda 2 fits it, and so do many others where Link learns new techniques and abilities that go beyond new items. However, I think that definition of RPG is too broad.
nta First edition D&D has character progression directly tied to experience points. The best way to get experience points was through the acquisition of precious metals and gemstones as combat gave comparatively less experience points, making combat optional. Not the case for Zelda
The entire point of RPGs like D&D is player freedom. You are playing a role, granted, but that role is yours to play however you want. If Zelda were an RPG, you would be allowed to make bad choices at crucial plot points
Branching plot points isn't meaningful freedom in the sense of an RPG. There's a genre of game for that it's called Choose You Own Adventure.
Kek, it's called non linear story/gameplay, shit for brains and it's not technically a genre in itself but moreso an additive that helps define them.
CYOA is a brand of books, not a genre of video games or even the name of a genre itself, and the CYOA series books still have room for character progression.
"Gamebooks" which is what the paperback genre is actually called, has plenty of room for branching stories and rather chunky character progression mechanics. Fighting Fantasy is one of the biggest ones and does the opposite with largely avoiding branching plot points, so there's no real divide in how it's meant to be as you imply
It's a genre. Yes, the brand became synonymous with the genre. They aren't RPGs. Any game can have a story and branching is a trivial element.
Your opinion is worth as much as your knowledge which apparently begins and ends at a well advertised series made for children. Anyone knowledgable knows that not all tabletop RPGs are D&D, the same reasoning applies to CYOA and gamebooks.
I argue gamebooks are a sort of ergodic literature subgenre. You know, the nonlinear writing style.
He's talking about a subgenre dummy. Cyoa is simply a branching plot and that brand doesn't do game books like Lone Wolf etc which tack on tactical battle as best a book can.
>You don't know what you are talking about.
Lel, can't tell if you are just trolling ironically at this point with your farcical circular argument style. It takes more than a theft to make a heist movie too. Come up with a serious argument before we suffocate with laughter.
>Free choice isn't meaningful freedom when role playing because I feel like it
Good going proving his point
> No leveling whatsoever
Action, ez
OP is a gay
how do you go from that to the joker getting pregnant and having a baby
It was the next day actually
I don't think "adventure" as a genre descriptor has any sort of consistency outside of lucasarts style games and don't understand why it's applied to this genre outside.
Zelda are action games that feature puzzles, nonlinearity, and storytelling. An action game can have puzzles without it becoming an adventure game, I think. Like, devil may cry has puzzles.
Adventure is an RPG specific term in this context in some cases, and in others it is appropriated or used in its regular sense eg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(role-playing_games)
Correct, the term Adventure was first used in Tabletop RPG modules which simulated tactical combat and stat progression using diagrams, charts, and math. Computer Adventure games were made which were less about combat and more story focused while still expecting you to draw a map and take notes. Computer RPGs added turn based combat functionality similar to Tabletop RPGs, then Action-Adventure games further simplified combat to discrete button inputs allowing for greater focus on the action and adventure and less on the menus and grinding found in earlier genres.
Ok so far. Where does AoL and Skyrim go then?
>AoL
Action-Adventure
>Skyrim
Not retro. You tell me where The Tower of Druaga goes instead, show what you know.
Sakurai said it's ARPG
Remember: Sakurai can say no wrong.
Nintendo plops all Zelda games under "RPG" on their e-shops.
not much of a legend if everyone forgets everything about the last time this shit happened every single game
It had a hand in defining both genres. It has elements of both.
Why doesn't Link just eat Ganon and take the triforce?
It's an RPG, like Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid. Picrel is the context.
Japanese OoT box says "3D Action RPG"