The Oblivion of Western RPGs

1up has a piece looking at how Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion may just be what the western RPG genre needs to spring back from the brink of nonexistence. From the article: "Western RPGs focus on the characters, and the world around them is a tool to let the player-as-character do and see more. Eastern RPGs focus on the events unfolding around the characters, and how the characters affect the world around them. Western RPGs are based on the experience of tabletop role-playing games, limited only by the imaginations of the players and the game master, where Eastern RPGs are more re-creations of traditional storytelling. Oblivion has taken huge strides toward meeting fans of MMOs halfway by building A.I. that really lives alongside the player and ensuring that the actual missions are easily pursued."

Comments

Eastern RPGs = Teh Suck

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I think I agree. I'd say Final Fantasy was one of the earlier "Eastern RPG" titles to make it big in the U.S., and that "game" just continued to suck more ass as it got older.

Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?"

[AuMatar]

Because I enjoy playing many eastern RPGs. I don't enjoy the western style whatsoever. I find the elder scrolls games to be particularly bad, I'd put them in the worst 50 games I've ever played (Daggerfall gets a particularly bad rating in the bottom 10, due to the pure bugginess of it).

I play RPGs for the story. Western sandboxes (I refuse to call these roleplaying as well, as you need to have interactions between people, not bad bot scripts with no creativity, to be roleplaying. If you want roleplaying in a video game, its called an IRC chat room and a dice bot. Dice bot optional.) have either no story or a very poor story. TES is a great example for that- what the hell is the story in Daggerfall? Or Morrowind? I couldn't find one.

Have eastern RPGs fallen into a bit of a rut? Yes. Although that doesn't mean there are no gems- I'm truely enjoying Dragon Quest 8, I'm having far more fun playing it than I ever did with NWN (horrible game that was barely saved to mediocre with multiplayer), Baldur's Gate (horrible series), or TES. But even the shittiest of the eastern rpgs is better than the western style ones.

Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?"

[AuMatar]

The only real RPGs are played with friends and dice (dice optional). Western RPGs aren't real RPGs either. IMO they're worse because they try to be one and fail so miserably.