The JRPG and You

The following editorial was originally posted on QJ.net on the 29th of Decmember of 2011 and can be viewed here. The beginning was an original opening I was toying with and eventually cut due to it's overwritten nature, I've left it in because this is a blog and I needed something to entice a reader into possibly reading more...other than just the READ MORE button. In the article, I draw a comparison between the stories, histories and the genre of gaming, that are Western Shooters and Japanese Role Playing Games. Each a reflection on the cultural history on each country (American and Japan, respectively) and also a form of genre which has grown stale and how other countries/genre's have rectified it so.

It was written some time after I'd spent some time playing the 2009 game, Demon's Souls. The game was incredibly difficult and got me thinking about one of my least favourite genre's: JRPG's. Whilst I grew up playing Pokémon and one of my favourite games from a few years ago was The World Ends with You, I had felt that people had looked down on those who had not been playing Final Fantasy every year of their life, should not be playing JRPG's and considering I am quite time constrained, the whole genre kind of fell by the wayside in my catalogue of games. Like it's more social cousin, the MMORPG,  the time heavy and plot driven ideology, which JRPG's push often give off an air of the Greek epic such as those by Homer or the unconquerable Ulysses by Joyce. However, my adolescent experience, playing games such as Final Fantasy X, had left me cold and grinded down to a point where I'd never really want to play the games again. But Demon's Souls was a JRPG...why did I feel different playing this.


Let's explore shall we...

I recently started playing the From Software game Demon's Souls and I know I'm incredibly far behind but I'd heard so much about the series and the amount of praise it's sequel got this year I thought I'd try it out. The game is not as hard as people make it out to be and that's not any critique on my skills as a gamer.  It's just that the game offers up a lot of interesting ways to play that may not be common to those who play traditional RPG's or action games.

I think the only comparison I can make off the top of my head is Minecraft as both games give you the game mechanics and then you have to feel your way in the dark for what you have to do. Both games have developers and fans who tell other gamers that they will need everything at their disposal to "defeat" the game or even just play it efficiently. These games I tend to avoid unless the pay off is worth it. The first experience I had with these type of games is the endless hype around Dwarf Fortress that came from these guys I hung out with in my first year of University.

They're like ants...but I control them!

I enjoyed my time in Demon's Souls and noticed that it's Japanese developers had a few JRPG elements but they were not the core part of the gameplay. The core part was not too dissimilar to the recent rogue-like game Dungeons of Dredmore. The game constantly just made you try and try again and the entitlement and success came from not power-ups or next levels as most JRPG's do, but by just getting to the next area.

Dredmore has a bit more of a funnier and kinder approach while in Demon's Souls you have to keep track of yourself. You may open a gate or find a special item or kill a dragon and then you'll be on your way to the next area.  But before that are literally hours of...what I wouldn't necessarily call grinding, but progression. I guess, in most cases, yes you could call it grinding, but I've never enjoyed games that do that.  

Grinding always seems like an error in terms of gaming progression. More often than not there is a learning curve in games, but modern JRPG's seem to drop the ball and let the kids roam free in traffic, especially Demon's Souls. However, Demon's Souls seems to be more upfront about it than traditional JRPG's.

I'll get to you another day, Ryu, but I do acknowledge your contribution.

  
Now, I feel like I've used that term two times now and it needs explaining. In terms of JRPG's I more often than not mean turn-based or level-based games in which your progression is determined not by your level, but the progression of the story. While Demon's Souls does have a levelling system, via the souls count, it never strays from your progression as a player over story elements. 

The JRPG may be one of the oldest form of gaming that has scarcely changed in the latest generations.  Games such as Final Fantasy 12 and Lost Odyssey seem to follow similar story-based formulas which while they usually never get in the way of you levelling up, they often require grinding to make sure you are strong enough for the next battle. They are representative of the strong and worthwhile struggle of those who live and work in the Japanese society. A tradition of stories based around both good and evil and the hard work it takes to overcome those odds.

With this tradition, I do declare that JRPG's are to the Japanese market as shooters are to Western gamers. They had their time in the sun in the 90's and have slowly turned into money-makers by name only. The gaming world seems to find a glut of them that rise, fall and burn every year and more often than not it's the one's who stray from the formula who come out on top. Western Shooters take pride and slightly over-masculine style, in which those who win wars write history and those histories are then re-written into a slightly skewed player experience, where the only people who bother to figure out the consequences are writers who think too much about video games...oh and objective historians.

Coming up this week on the History Channel: A Tribute to Moustaches.

They also have a large focus on graphics and laxed storytelling. As we've seen over the past few years the biggest advancement has been visually while story's tend to stay the same...or rather the advancements of story seem to follow tropic "Save the Princess, Save the World," or make sure you "Kill the bad guy" and everything will be okay.

These games could explore greater things than just game mechanics based around who has the bigger or stronger sword. What does it mean when you want to play a thief? Who are your allies in a world that is built around war and chaos? What are the true repercussions of your actions?  

I only understood recently why I enjoyed WRPG's so much as they blend the story of classic American or European folklore with the first person perspective and immersion of creating a character. If the Japanese market wishes to contend with RPG's in the US, I think they need to look at their games more thematically and player-driven than just storytelling. A change in perspective, both mentally and also technically. I've yet to really see a first person game break the mould in the Japanese market.

New Vegas and Skyrim both proved that you can tell a compelling story and create a character of your own at the same time. While Skyrim did have more story constraints it was so expansive and immersive that the only thing that ever really took you out of the experience was a backwards dragon or two. 

While JRPG's do focus on good versus evil the world isn't exactly like that.  But this is more of a cultural heritage. The American literature landscape is more often than not a grey area with heroes and anti-heroes turning themselves into one and the same. This is reflected in Rockstar Games Red Dead Redemption and of course, the GTA series.

Hot damn! Storyline!

Obviously, due to a difference in gameplay and genre, this is very different from WRPG story telling where you have a larger morality system in games such as the original Fallout, which focused heavily on character interactions. However, Rockstar's Games also suffer from the fatal flaw of freedom vs. storytelling which I often believe cramps it's style.  Excluding the Ballad of Gay Tony storyline which finally got it right. I would also like to mention Saints Row the Third here but that's for another time. 



Traditional JRPG's on the other hand seem to be very story-orientated and while you never really do anything evil, the weight of your actions are only based on if you do them or not, rather than a striving for a morally ambiguous goal. I personally would have loved to have seen a Final Fantasy on the bad guys side of things or even one where you actually get to place the evil creatures on the map for a hero to fight through not dissimilar to the Holy Badman series.

If you have a PSP, buy and download and play this game!

Also the humourous Breath of Death VII and Cthulu Saves the World from Zeboyd Games took the traditional 16-bit style of JRPG's and blended it with a tongue-in-cheek look into what traditional RPG tropes there were. Zeboyd Games shone through with making sure they were praising but also lamp-shading the fact that RPG's are a bit dated and samey when you boil it down.

Of course, like I mentioned before, this was not always the case. The JRPG is far from shallow.  It just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Players want more from their gaming experience than just a linear story now-a-days. And if you're a fan of Final Fantasy or any JRPG and they do explore one or many of these themes, do tell me where to shove it and provide examples.


I have only played a few and realise I am talking about a genre I am not entirely well versed in, but felt I needed to make a modern point about it and how video games needn't really be used for linear story telling, like it has in the past. The main reason stories seemed to play out like slightly crappy looking cinema experiences, was a limitation in hardware and software (possibly imagination) but along the line, someone looked too closely into making everything linear and was eventually stuck there.

Often me vs. JRPG.

Final Fantasy 7 is a great example for classic linear JRPG story-telling but also it gives an interesting point with raising the question of death and what that means in the FF universe. After six games of just being able to use Phoenix Down's willy-nilly you are given a character right off the bat who you learn bits and pieces about before finally, spoiler, she dies and you are given a second act turning point in which your goals now seem greater than ever before.

While I never really play Final Fantasy games and enjoy them I still find them a relic to the testament of formulaic gaming but only by name. As opposed to Westernized sequels where the number is either a year or a new iteration, Square Enix intentionally makes a canon-less effort (excluding X-2, XIII-2, etc.) to create games with new storylines.  But why not create a new game?

It all comes down to branding. The gamer mind will be drawn more to something they've enjoyed before or a license they enjoy watching/listening to because it's a sense of comfort. It lulls the average consumer to build a name and recall characters. It's quite similar to how the word Mario to millions of people worldwide is synonymous with gaming. 

So while creating new properties and titles could be an interesting step forward we may only see that in the light of independent games such as Minecraft, Sequence, Dungeons of Dredmore or Binding of Isaac. The gaming world will be fraught with gaming genre mashups that reflect either gamers needs or developers intentions and while both can work well simultaneously, JRPG's need to get their act together if they want to thrive in the global scheme of things.