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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9845882" data-attributes="member: 18">The extreme forms are, but there's huge overlap in the increasingly large middle. "RPG" in a videogame sense is quite a complex packet of traits. Like, mechanically, FFXII (the one where you can basically "program" the characters) has the potential to appeal to exactly the same sort of person who enjoyed DA:O and DA2 (which featured similar systems - though FFXII's is actually more in-depth and tactically important) or even Pillars 1/2 (which also did), because all of them are these mechanically complex, very heavily-class-based, very tactical, real-time-with-pause, lengthy games with winding, lore-heavy stories and so on. The only big difference is that FFXII doesn't really have much in the way of story choices, and that you have character creation for the main character in those other games (there are other smaller differences, like the FFXII does a better job with most of the companions than those other games). Honestly though if FFXII had Basch as the lead (which is how the design started out), or Balthier (who is the de facto lead in practical terms, but the game doesn't quite present him as such), instead of Vaan (who feels kind of glued on and doesn't really fit imho, just someone decided they needed a typical anime teenage boy lead instead of a grown-up) I think it would have been a major crossover title, especially if they'd released on PC earlier. And that's a game from, like Indeed. That's why we've spent the last 35-odd years discussing it. I think the most unhelpful approach is to aggressively gatekeep what is an RPG. That's increasingly uncommon though, and the main people who do it seem to be people who are still mad that RPGs kept changing after BG1.On of the most fascinating developments for me over those last 35-odd years has been watching "RPG elements" infiltrate perhaps the majority (or at least a very large minority) of games on the market, particularly around stats, equipment and progression.I do appreciate this as a trip down memory lane lol. There was a lot of that general sort of thing, like, 15-25 years ago. My favourite remains when someone (clearly 20+ years younger than me) tried to condescendingly explain that "CRPG" didn't stand for "Computer RPG", it stood for "Classic RPG", and always had done. He got big mad when I pointed out that wouldn't even have made sense when BG1 came out lol. Not as mad as the guy on Reddit who boldly claimed GTA 3 was "definitely the first 3D open-world game", and when me and three other people pointed out there'd been 3D open-world games since at least the 1980s (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_(video_game)" target="_blank">Mercenary</a> etc.) he claimed we'd just "hacked" (his term) the Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world" target="_blank">article</a> on open world games and that they weren't really 3D open-world. I guess it was impressive he kept responding, and even though this was long pre-AI, went as far as to claim playthrough video of a couple of these games was "faked" (again his term). Ahhhh the internet!</blockquote>

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