How to Fix the JRPG
Nayan Ramachandran complains in "Waypoints and Questlogs - Moving the JRPG Forward" that - for all its improved beauty and innovations on combat systems - the Japanese RPG has remained stale on too many fronts, and makes some suggestions on how these games ought to evolve. Including (I say with some sense of fan-victory) adopting some of the conventions that have long been embraced by Western RPGs.

His suggestions include making more meaningful encounters (instead of the usual array of random "trash" monsters), better quest logs, the use of waypoints on maps for quests (within moderation - he acknowledges there are times they are inappropriate), giving characters more life, going beyond cutscenes for character interaction, and going outside the bounds of traditional fantasy settings.

The cut-scene suggestion struck home for me in particular, as two nights ago I found myself ... uh... watching... a LOOOOONG cut-scene in Persona 4 with very limited (and ultimately meaningless) player interaction. We're talking more than a half an hour of just pressing the 'X' button. If you've played the game, you probably know the one I'm talking about (although I fear there may be more long ones in store as I close in on the end-game) --- it's the one that ends with the party standing before the Pearly Gates. While the end result was completely expected - they'd telegraphed what would happen for months of game-time - it was still compelling to see how it played out, with all the drama of characters I've come to care about hitting a crucial point in the story.

I hate to add the "for a game" disclaimer, but... for a game... it was pretty good storytelling. Which is what jRPGs are known for. Except... it wasn't really a game for those thirty to fourty minutes. It was a show on my TV where I got to pick some inconsequential responses in dialog and press the X button to move things along. I guess I could have hit the X button faster to skip the talky parts, but I really was interested in seeing what was going on. I was invested.

It was representative of a lot of what is both the good and bad in jRPGs. On the one hand, you have compelling, angsty, melodramatic storytelling in spades. You have interesting (if too often cliché) characters. But on the other hand, you also get extremely linear gameplay, limited interactivity outside of combat, and Really Freaking Long Cut-Scenes. Choices are limited for no good reason other than the necessity to preserve the linear story or gameplay progression.

As a fan of both styles of RPGs, I'd like to see more done to obtain the best of both worlds. Western RPGs have traditionally been more rooted in the pen-and-paper RPG experience, and typically emphasize open-ended exploration, simulation, interactivity, and player choice - often to the detriment of storytelling (because, you know, the two goals do not get along very well).

But as Ramachandran states, nobody is asking for a revolution here. Just some incremental improvements. I'm pretty much in favor of all of his suggestions (with some reservations for things like quest waypoints that could trivialize exploration if applied universally). But I'd like to add a few minor suggestions of my own to add to the list.

Now, speaking as an indie, I understand that one of the problems we face is that the "jRPG style" games are often constructed using the RPGMaker engine, and that comes saddled with its own limitations. But as Amaranth games demonstrated with Aveyond 2, even such crucial limitations such as the lack of mouse support can often be surmounted.

#1 - Let Grown-ups Be Player Characters, Too!
Why is it that anybody over the age of 21 is "over the hill" in jRPGs? Granted, characters on the cusp of adulthood are definitely in an interesting stage of life no matter the age of the player, and in the past this was closer to the target age of the target audience of these games. But seriously - we could use more grown-ups in grown-up situations.

#2 - More Meaningful Conversation Options
Even modern JRPG dialog with NPCs seems to be stuck in the Ultima III world, with NPCs standing around incapable of saying more than one or two canned responses to player interaction - unless you go to a rigidly scripted cut-scene style dialog sequence which generally features very limited player choice. On the plus side, you can get better dialog from a writer if they don't have to deal with weirdly branching dialog trees that circle back in on themselves. It's plain ol' linear storytelling. But all it is doing is taking the player for a ride. I'd like to see more meaningful choice and consequences. Meaningful meaning it changes the game in possibly subtle but long-term effects, but not clearly favorable versus unfavorable results.

I know, I'm always harping on RPG conversations and dialog. What can I say? It's a neglected aspect of games.

#3 - Better Reminders
Games (both Western and Japanese) are getting better at this, but its still a problem. It's one thing to be told during a dramatic cut-scene that you must seek out Doctor Foozcousin in North Geograville. And it's awfully helpful to be reminded by NPCs later that you really ought to seek out Doctor Foozcousin. But when you haven't been able to play in a week, the whole part about how you might find him in his studio apartment behind Al's Garage in North Geograville gets forgotten. And while perfect strangers in the jRPG mysteriously know that you need to seek out the good Doctor on your quest that they know nothing about, nobody sees fit to inform you of where the doctor can be found.

So you end up hunting all over the world for the doctor, twice. It's only on your second time in North Geograville that you spot the studio apartment behind Al's Garage and think, "Oh, wait, didn't the NPC in that cutscene two weeks ago mention a garage?"

Granted, this could also be resolved by having waypoints relating to your quest on the ol' map, or better quest journal entries. Or the ability to review cutscenes.

#4 - Change It Up
If the player is going to be revisiting old locations, change things up a bit between visits. This doesn't have to be anything radical like leveling or invading the city (though that's cool sometimes, too). But just things to illustrate the passing of time and events. Move the NPCs around, give them something else to say... whatever it takes.

#5 - Character Progression Choices
Give the player some choices when leveling up or otherwise improving their character. Admittedly, many modern high-end jRPGs have gotten better at that (to the somewhat baffling extremes of the last couple of Final Fantasy games). But the old-school tradition is for the progression to occur automatically with little or no player choice. One possibility explored in some games (especially Western RPGs) in the last decade is to allow the player to toggle "auto-leveling" if they really don't want to mess with the details.

#6 - Right-Sized Environments
Yes, I have to fight this problem myself. Sometimes environments get too big with too little to do but walk from point A to point B and deal with random encounters. Break things up. Vary the geography. Add interactive objects or hidden goodies. Or just shrink the environment.

#7 - Save (Almost) Anywhere
The limited save points are an artifact of the cartridge era, where a single kilobyte of persistent memory was a Big Deal. Somehow that got converted from a technical limitation to a game design feature. There are points - like in the middle of a cut-scene, or action sequence, or even combat - where I can understand turning off the ability to save the game for game design reasons. And to make it less of a pain in the butt for programmers to handle state preservation in the middle of a fight or whatnot. But when you are just bopping around the world? Puh-leeze!!!! Have mercy on those of us who can only play in 15-minute increments!

I should note that while Persona 4 still has those accursed save points, they at least made them far more plentiful than in the last game, and allow easy access back to the highest / lowest dungeon level you last visited. Now why certain indie RPGs persist in making you have to hunt around for some place to save your game is completely beyond me...

Finally, while indie RPGs rarely have the problem with overlong cut-scenes, I'd like to see that be a problem indie games continue to avoid.

(Update: I can't believe I forgot #7.)

Labels: design, Roleplaying Games

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