>WRPG: story is sacrificed for the bloated gameplay >JRPG:

Mass Effect

A SaGa game with good story? If there is any

Shin Megami Tensei

>>3748907
OK, good answer. Been looking into playing these for a while.

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>story cucks

>>3748948

One of the many things that ruined his career.

>>3748963
He's literally so rich he just goes around messing around with new tech as he pleasures, i'm not sure what you're on about.

>>3748948
>>3748985
Carmack hasn't been relevant since Quake. He's the Bill Gates of FPS.

>>3749009
that's waaayyyy too much credit

>>3748948
Sounds like an excuse for someone who can't write a story for a game.

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>>3749009
Outside of that one quote of him, he's never been a relevant game designer.

He's the man you need when you want a new cool engine to make your game in but we all know it's not him who designed Doom nor Quake.

>>3748948

Half Life is better than Doom

prove me wrong

If /vr/ infested with story-cucks too? the main appeal of retro gaming is a greater appeal to gameplay over plot

>>3749032
And this is how my thread about RPG slowly turned into a thread about Doom and Carmack

>>3749050
>RPG
>Role Playing Game
>No roles
>No plot too
Thanks but no

>>3749051

i just pointed out a game that is famous for his good gameplay AND having a story made it flawless.
Also i think WRPG are superior because the story is still solid and the gameplay is fun and addictive. But i cant deny i have wasted months playing JRPG.

>>3749057
>Also i think WRPG are superior because the story is still solid and the gameplay is fun and addictive. But i cant deny i have wasted months playing JRPG.
Recently I had a weird realization: I've barely seen WRPG with any relationships between characters. At least there is never a feeling of drama between them. I've played Might & Magic 7 and 8 recently. Loved them both, but I felt my party was just a spectator in a story and the lore. And of course, characters are all silent dolls.

But JRPG? They are on the other side of the spectrum. You are just a marionette at the hands of plot. Characters die because plot. Boss fights are ridiculous because plot. Battle systems are shallow and imba as fuck because all effort went to plot.

>>3749032

I still play Doom.

vagrant story

vagrant gameplay, too

>>3749056
haha

>>3749136
True, but I'm out of luck… I play JRPGS once in a blue moon, and yet I've already played Vandal Hearts, by pure chance. Liked it, great game IMO.

Funny how it often triggers some anons over here

>>3748847
Uncharted Waters

>>3748948
Literally who?

>>3749196
Does it have any character relations though?

>>3749175
obscure joke? i haven't played vh. if you are counting srpgs, though, then there are probably tons more that'd meet your criteria.

valkyrie profile is another jrpg that isn't just a menu-battler.

>>3749032
Doom is still played by lots of people today.
You play HL once and that's it.

Oh and modding community still active everyday.

Besides, you don't see a HL general, do you?

>>3749230
Sorry, I mixed up Vagrant Story with VH. My bad

>>3749032

Half-Life is a watered down Doom with pseudo cutscenes and less compelling gameplay.

>>3749249
>Doom is still played by lots of people today.
>You play HL once and that's it.

If it wasn't for Source, a lot of people would probably still be playing HL today too.

>>3749050

The 90's is home to some of the most story heavy W and J rpgs. /vr/ is an expansive enough discussion era to include not only the 2D arcadeophiles but the rpg nerds as well. Also, there's Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time and etc.

>>3749029
he was only a director for one game, quake 3. And he is right about story in games. It's pretty garbage. OP is also a faggot.

>>3749404
>I've played all games so I know all the stories and I can guarantee they're all garbage
Sounds plausible. You know what, graphics is also not necessary, as is sound. Atari 2600 was the peak of gaming, NES was a mistake

>>3749091
WRPGs, at least traditional ones, don't have characters.

They follow the "you are the character" idea.

>>3749438
There are parties though.

This does make sense since in role-playing games YOU play a certain role—as a character.

>>3748847
You don't know what you're talking about, stop using words you do not understand.

Give an example of what you consider good story and another one for good gameplay and maybe I can suggest you something.

>>3748948
isn't this literally the kind of statement that causes popular culture to label all gamers as autistic masutrbators

>>3748948
Carmack is right.
>all the triggered JRPGfags mad at this post

>>3749392
Any RPG nerd with good taste would take Dungeon Master or Wizardry over storyfag shit any day of the week.

>>3750016
This desu

>>3748847
>WRPG: story is sacrificed for the bloated gameplay
The only good way to be quite honest.

Death to storyfaggotry.

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>>3748847
>VNs for redditors
>engaging gameplay

>>3749384
>watered down Doom
>has jumping, crouching, alternate fire, and advanced movement mechanics like bunny hopping and airstrafing
fires the neurons

>>3748879
Ahahahaha. The story and setting is totally ripped-off and the gameplay, as far as I have been able to determine after 8 hours, is simply absent. That's for the first game, anyway. As if you'd go near the others after that. The franchise is for kindergarten kids, surely?

>>3749050
But I play retro games over modern games for their plots

>>3750349

try reading a book

>>3750351
>all film is bad
See what I did there?

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>>3749198

>>3750323

More control options and simplified combat. You could apply that argument to nearly every shooter released after Doom and it would still stand that Doom has more undiluted and challenging fps gameplay. Doom is superior in every area that is relevant.

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>Be OP
>Ask a question about RPG
>"storyfags invaded /vr/"
>Suddenly it's Half-Life vs Doom

>>3749738
I hope so, if gaming becomes socially aberrant again then the suits and investors (and their normie herds) will seek out greener pastures and the quality that existed from between 2600 to Xbox will return once more.

>>3750681
>undiluted
So it's a simpler game? Doom is great especially with map packs like Scythe but you niggers are delusional.

>>3750772
Don't be naive. Graphics is what drives up the development costs and makes the game industry increasingly corporate. Every gen increased a price of making one game 3–5 times—that's solely because of the graphics. 6th gen was simply the moment when shit had hit the fan, and smaller studios couldn't support themselves anymore.

The industry has pushed gaming into the mainstream, because it wasn't profitable anymore to make games for a bunch of dedicated nerds. It didn't "get" mainstream suddenly, it was the result of the wide shift in vidya towards spending half the budget on marketing.

>>3748904
Oh, idk. Not technically /vr/ material, but Romancing Saga and Unlimited Saga character narratives where pretty well written.
I've played more of Unlimited Saga. The scenarios were compelling, I wanted to know what was going on. The only think that ruined it was the damn slot machine I couldn't get the hang of.

>>3750862
>Romancing Saga
Wait, the SNES games? They are /vr/

>>3750872
nvm. I had only played the opening scenarios in the ps2 remake. I had the impression it was going somewhere and would have a lot of character development, but the reviews say otherwise.

>>3750785

That's not what diluted means.

>>3749091

Yeah pretty much. WRPGs try to simulate open worlds, which as yet precludes complex human stories, and fighting against that turns you into Chris Crawford and sends you down a rabbit hole from which you may never emerge, chasing a miracle that may or may not even be possible.

In principle, at least, there's no reason why a railroading JRPG-type story-heavy game couldn't at least have really excellent strategic challenge, though... that, at least, is very much possible with today's hardware and today's design techniques.

>>3749409

There's a fundamental reason why story is less important in games than graphics or sound: Graphics and sound support interactivity, which is essential to gaming, whereas stories do not (thus far anyway). If we had, say, a true AI, then somebody could slap it into a game (supposing it was willing to participate in this) and have it work as the Dungeon Master for the player, using its human-level imagination to invent new stories on the fly. That would be AMAZING. And it would allow for a 100% interactive game with an arbitrarily deep story in which the player played an arbitrarily deep role, assuming the AI could be smart enough for that.

Maybe a true AI would be needed to produce something approaching what I just described, and maybe not. Probably not. But whatever is needed, we don't have it. So stories in games that exist today are only weakly interactive and have big clumsy pre-fabricated chunks that you can't alter even though it might be natural for your character to do so.

Running-around-and-shooting simulators, meanwhile, are highly functional today, and highly interactive. So they work well as games. And they need (of course) graphics and/or sound.

This is why people say story isn't needed in games. It's not so much that it really isn't needed as that when we try to put it in, it reduces the "gameness" of the games, because of how much we suck at putting it in (so far).

>>3750174

This is why I play roguelikes. I just can't stand WAITING for games anymore. I want to do things, not wait.

>>3750975
It's a shame because I know a lot of JRPGs with actually interesting mechanics. And yet when I try to get deeper in them I feel that plot constantly puts sticks in my wheels.

>>3748847

The best way I know of to find this is to be a kid with a kid's low standards, and then just play whichever type of RPG fits you best, and love it. Worked for me.

I don't know of any good answer to your question. :(

The only JRPG-style game I've played recently that I can tolerate anymore is, oddly enough, The Desolate Room which is a PC RPG (very likely not "retro") by Scott Cawthon, who later blundered into great fame as the Five Nights at Freddy's guy. It isn't exactly what you're asking for though. But it's a good game and you should play it. (Note that it starts with an awkward fetch quest that feels a bit tedious but is fairly short; fortunately this is never repeated.)

>>3750982
>why story is less important in games
First, this thread is about RPGs and RPGs alone. I don't care about story in action games. But I do want it in RPGs.

> Graphics and sound support interactivity
I was talking about music and artistic detail. They serve no real interactive purpose. But then, why almost no one makes "green square vs blue square"-style games anymore?

Story is not required per se. But it can add to the experience. And when story and gameplay combine in a good way (see MGS for exmple), the resulting experience becomes more than a sum of its separate parts.

>>3748847
>WRPG
>"engaging gameplay"

I laugh

>>3750982
>it reduces the "gameness" of the games
well put. but it isn't interactivity that's at the core of games: it's agency.

video is essential to video games, but that's simply by definition. it's the primary content-delivery mechanism. it enables "gameness"; it doesn't contribute to it (the game design/mechanics make the game). anything beyond what's required to deliver the game is polish (of which immersiveness is a part), and typically this is extremely minimal. the same applies to audio (although audio is almost always optional). better sound and graphics make games better, but they can't make a game more a game.

story, however, can actually affect agency. as you elaborated, storytelling in video games usually only allows for minimal interaction when compared to probably all other types of gameplay. but that assumes that the action stops. if told concurrently with existing gameplay (with audio as the delivery mechanism), a good story doesn't take anything away from the game. in fact, if impactful choices are added, the story makes the game more gamey.

the problem, of course, is that text or cutscenes are more appropriate methods for converying stories in certain types of games (and possibly for conveying certain types of stories in any game). telling a substantial story in a crpg or jrpg without any pauses in exploration/battling might be possible, but it would become something different (closer to a hack-n-slash, an rts, or a... menu-battler) and wouldn't supplant traditional crpgs/jrpgs. having that advanced ai would go an incredibly long way, but rpgs would still need a good portion of downtime.

>>3751209 (cont.)
so the pertinent question is: how gamey should a game be? i contend that it depends on what the game is trying to accomplish. putting nonstop dialogue in a shmup worsens the game, but so would an rpg be worsened by adding a required, shoehorned platforming section. yet worsening the shmup doesn't make it any less of a game, and worsening the jrpg actually makes it more of a game.

so story isn't less important than polished graphics or sound; it's simply a case of doing what's appropriate for the given game. if that were to happen, then folks could play whatever sorts of games they liked and they'd never have a problem with stories (or lack thereof).

except when people bitch about genres they dislike. so probably little would change here.

>>3750772
>to Xbox

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>>3750862
SaGa in general has good narrative for a game because it's minimalistic and goes straight to the core of the matter without melodrama, Romancing SaGa 2, the Frontier games and Unlimited all have great narrative and characters but you must like that kind of games that only tells you the bare minimum and lets you put the plot and lore together by yourself.
You mentioned Unlimited, there's a lot of good examples from that, you don't know who Iskandar is unless you play through Ruby's quest, if you play as Mythe you do meet him but you can't play as him and have him hang around, same with the Gauntlet, the Seven Wonders and pretty much everything else.
>>3751212
> putting nonstop dialogue in a shmup worsens the game
Not retro but Soldner X-2 did have quite a lot of dialogue and it wasn't bad, mostly because it was voiced dialogue that happens while you are playing the game.
>but so would an rpg be worsened by adding a required, shoehorned platforming section.
Hmmm...

>>3751212
With computer RPGs that have a lot of dialogue options, I think that's a form of discovery. If the player wanted to, they could go through the paragraphs of text options 1-5 for and get a history lesson for immersion's sake.
Sometimes these options influence the character's alignment or compatibility with other party members who might abandon you at some point because how the player responded.

>>3748847
games don't need sound either. are you some kind of austistic baby that's entertained by noises?!!!

>>3751406
yeah, the dialogue in soldner-x 2 is fine, but there really isn't that much of it. and it isn't really story, either. it's more along the lines of donpachi: telling you there's a multi-assault tank as it's arriving, not detailing the personal conflicts of its crew or the politics surrounding the battle in which you're engaging for the entire stage.

and the donpachi announcer was a hell of a lot cooler.

>>3751431
totally with you. gameness isn't binary: it's a continuous spectrum. the metric is degree of agency over time, where time in this case is how long it takes to get to the choice in the rpg.

the ability to read optional text is similar to the ability to wander about a game world just to explore. it's freedom, so it's agency. alignment/compatability/plot-affecting choices are obviously more impactful than the choice to read optional text, but these still take a while to get to, at least with a good, nuanced story. so while it's certainly gameplay, it still isn't as gamey as, say, real-time gameplay where you're constantly on the razor's edge of dying. it might, however, be as gamey as possible for a given game while still meshing with the other aspects of the game, and in that case it's perfect.

>>3748847
Woof

>>3748847
Torment? It was influenced by some JRPG's.

>>3753297
Hm. I think it might be close. I must say the idea of playing as a zombie sounds a bit like '90s yuck to me though

>>3753928
You don't play as a zombie, just as a guy who looks like a zombie.

>>3753928
>Hm. I think it might be close. I must say the idea of playing as a zombie sounds a bit like '90s yuck to me though
That's basically all the game is, just pages and pages of gross-out purple prose. When you actually get down to it and take out all the gross fluff and the lore ripped straight from the campaign books, you have a pretty weak and forced story without all that many twists and turns or anything.

>>3748847
>JRPG
>story

It's always the same global calamity bullshit.

>>3754010
It's really not.

>>3748847
Not retro, but honestly Dwarf Fortress adventure mode is probably the closest thing to what you're asking for.

>>3748904
This
>>3750862
The slot machine thing is meant to be more like a d20, you really dont need to time it to get a good result as much as it seems like it.

>>3750882
The opening segments serve more to introduce you to the character's personal quest. After you are past that, the story is barebones. Its no surprise that reviewers who are used to jrpgs with long and heavy would be put off by that. Its a huge shame.

>>3754010
Ok, here's the thing that people don't get.
Rpg's are all about character progression -- the game mechanic, you know, stats. Not to be confused with character development, which is a story device. -- This goes back to tabletop games, that's just how they're invented. If characters don't have stats and attributes that determining outcomes then it's not an rpg, plain and simple. That's the game.

Now, rpg's don't need a narrative. But when they do, what's more satisfying than starting out as a weak Lv1 and winning the game when you kill a God? And yeah, character development alongside character progression is nice too. Hooray, my character is a werewolf now. Aww, he killed his family. So tragic.

>>3750203
whoa I never saw that side of the doctor before, is there some quest or dialogue that gets him hostile?

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>>3750351
>>3750509

>>3754639
Have you ever read the "hack 'n' slash" article? That's not the logical end of RPG. Maybe DnD is indeed all about progression, but the genre allows for much more than a wargame with leveling.

Story and character progression can go together really well and enhance each other. Instead of empty abstract dungeons after dungeons, you could actually have some story that connects it, explains it and makes it more intuitive.

>But when they do, what's more satisfying than starting out as a weak Lv1 and winning the game when you kill a God?
>Hooray, my character is a werewolf now. Aww, he killed his family. So tragic.
I see your idea of game plot has been formed by earliest and shittiest examples. In 1992, Dragon Quest V saw your hero from his birth, to his father dying to protect him, to getting caught in slavery, to marriage, to having children. I haven't seen much like it in WRPG.

>>3748879
First post worst post.

>>3748847
Dark souls

>>3754993
You meant Demon's Souls right?

You didn't mean to tell everyone you're a pleb by accident right?

>>3755010
Demon's is more pleb.

>grass to heal instead of limited Sunny D
>easier bosses and level design in general
>magic is more abusable due to having mana
>fall damage is practically non-existent

Honestly DeS and BB are the plebbest in the series, you can instantly spot a Sony fanboy if he claims those two are better than any Dark Souls game.

>>3749404
>he was only a director for one game, quake 3
To be fair, that one game is among the best ever.

>>3755023
>this guy actually ran out of estus
>thinks auto-tracking is acceptable
>what is level design
>defending vancian magic in a game where more than half the spells are different tiers and flavors of attack magic

I can tell you played the games as RPGs rather than action games. Dark Souls is some art major game design shit compared to DeS. Every single game is more rushed and janky as the series gained popularity, grasping at straws to the point that you spend 5 minutes chopping at a dragon's ankles to kill it, dancing around these loose as fuck hitboxes lazily pasted over each set of canned animations.

You won't see a single fucking enemy with actual legs spin around like they're on sideways rollerskates in Demon's Souls.

>>3754943
>Doesn't know the difference between Adventure and Role-Playing games.