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[eliasfrost]

Now I haven't played Undertale but I have had limited experience with Earthbound. I never got into Earthbound an awful lot mostly because it seemed to me like they took someones stream of conciousness and made a game out of it which I felt was a bit disconnecting with just random scenes and ideas stapled together. I do like the over-arching concept and I like listening and reading about the game because it interests me but I don't really like playing it. Is Undertale similar to that because I heard the game is heavily influenced by Earthbound, is it all just random humour or is there some sort of context to it that doesn't make it all feel kinda esoteric and hard to grasp?

I did like Lisa though, I felt that game did a better job of contextualizing the weird stuff that happens, it made the stranger encounter easier to swallow for me.

[oahda]

Story-wise it's quite linear and nothing odd. It's just that a lot of attempts at humour is thrown in a lot along the way, and a lot of it in the main story that you can't just avoid if you want to.

[Pfotegeist]

*pops out of a hole*

an unopen box metaphor. Just wait, and eventually someone will open it, stop explaining why the box needs to be opened please. just saying there's a box is good enough. thanks. bye.

*ducks back in*

[gimymblert]

@Princessa
It's deep once you get that's about the guilt children feel when parent divorced, which make it tumblrish and kind of justify it too if you understand tumblr's culture.

[Pockets]

Now I haven't played Undertale but I have had limited experience with Earthbound. I never got into Earthbound an awful lot mostly because it seemed to me like they took someones stream of conciousness and made a game out of it which I felt was a bit disconnecting with just random scenes and ideas stapled together. I do like the over-arching concept and I like listening and reading about the game because it interests me but I don't really like playing it. Is Undertale similar to that because I heard the game is heavily influenced by Earthbound, is it all just random humour or is there some sort of context to it that doesn't make it all feel kinda esoteric and hard to grasp?

I did like Lisa though, I felt that game did a better job of contextualizing the weird stuff that happens, it made the stranger encounter easier to swallow for me.

I've never played Earthbound or Lisa. I generally despise JRPGs, but I played through Undertale at the start of the week and absolutely adored it.
 
Personally, I'd say there's not much humour that's totally random, just a few of the random encounter monsters - all the rest is pretty well tied together in context but has a lot of the deliberately 'quirky' & 'zany' stuff, too much for some peoples' tastes. Generally speaking it hangs together. None of the humour is hard to grasp.

I wouldn't say it's quite a "stream of conciousness" thing but the way it's set up with the history being presented as a legend (albeit one that's filled in over the course of the game), with the world outside of the underground being very thinly sketched, along with the level design that's not fussed about realism gives it a kind of almost dreamlike feel in some places. I'm usually someone who is bothered by internal consistency of environments, but here it just doesn't matter where they've got the construction materials from or whatever, the whole thing just breezes over it.

Plot-wise: It's relatively linear, pretty tightly focused.  It's more about how events change based on how you've behaved than branching directions. There's quite a few things you can do that are effectively side-quests in some of the locations and you're pretty much free to do most of them whenever, and there's a little backtracking to previous locations in order to catch up with the NPCs, if you aren't playing as a psycho. The plot unfolds in a very reactive way (and remembers some of this between play-throughs), and if you miss certain things (eg. by killing certain characters rather than becoming friends with them, or by not asking certain side characters some questions that fill in the gaps in the story) some of the later reveals might not have the same emotional impact.
It does have a little bit in the way of meta stuff near the end, but that's all tied into the plot quite well.

If what you're looking for is wonderful characters and a balance between a mostly breezy atmosphere in an inventive world and a well-developed plot which mixes tragedy and hope-for-the-future, the use of heavy themes that it really commits to and mechanics that don't fight against the story but are tied right into it, then it's fantastic.

It's definitely best going in blind, but there's one suggestion that really makes the game - be nice & friendly, don't be a killer.

[s0]

@Princessa
It's deep once you get that's about the guilt children feel when parent divorced, which make it tumblrish and kind of justify it too if you understand tumblr's culture.

my parents divorced when i was 4 and i have no idea what you are talking about lol

[gimymblert]

play earthbound

[s0]

so is this parents divorce thing in earthbound or undertale? idgi

also i didnt feel guilty when my parents divorced at all. i didn't want them to get back together either. things were actually slightly more chill after the divorce from what i remember. the 2 common tropes about divorce don't apply to me.  

[gimymblert]

My parent separated too (never married) and I'm on the same ballpark as you but the story is really about flowey/asriel/chara/frisk perspective, I assume they are the same character or that at least the death of chara spring the whole "perspective", flowey is basically anger and frustration, asriel the former self, and frisk the consciousness that deal with the thoughts and impulse that traverse it, hence why flowey is beyond time. When you restart after the genocide run (I believe) the soulless flowey do feel guilt and hint the pacific run, in some replay the game is cal floweytale and your name is flowey. The only other character with determination is Asriel. The whole game is about loss, the goto "deep" theme, it's very like majora's mask (and chrono trigger) in its treatment for me, repeated play to get all the story from many perspective, maybe the best (stealth) time travel game out there. Oh well it's less about divorce and more loss (chara). It make more sense as to way Asriel return and use the souls of everybody to break the barrier even though that seems to contradict the supposed lore, he then says he do not want to return as a souless flower, ie the mental state he tries from breaking of (the perspective of the stories, it's allegorical.

Edit: (the divorce stuff I thought when Toriel stay mad against asgore (don't want to be call dreemur) thus implying their relation is not repaired).

About earthbound
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/mother-3-faces-some-significant-hurdles-to-be-localized-for-wii-us-vc-or-any-other-nintendo-console.454360372/

edit
Another way to see it is that undertale is the successful localisation of mother 3 into the west without the problem associated with it (read the first spoiler of that link, you will see the common motif like sunflower field, etc ...)

[JWK5]

Not to derail whatever the topic has gravitated towards currently, but for myself what makes or breaks a JRPG for me is pacing.

The classic JRPGs (early Final Fantasy games, Suikoden, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Lufia, Breath of Fire, etc.) all had pretty great pacing as far as I am concerned. They threw chunks of story at you and then they cut you loose and sent you on your way. Between one story point and another the better JRPGs of the time sprinkled the gameplay with a lot of optional exploration and discovery but mostly kept you on track.

Even when the gameplay breaks down to a fairly basic level, if the story is entertaining and the game is paced well I am hooked (which is why I am a big fan of the Dragon Quest games). The Souls games do this perfectly as well, you are mostly on track but after the game throws you some bread crumbs they leave you the fuck alone and let you figure it out (though they back great pacing with intense gameplay).

Actually, even looking at a lot of the early NES and SNES action games compared to those of today that is really what stands out to me. The classic Castlevania games (for example) give you chunks of gameplay to learn much akin to going bonfire to bonfire on Dark Souls, it is segmented just right so that you can practice and memorize it and repeated deaths are more a part of the learning process than a sign of failure.

As JRPGs moved into the PS1 era they started getting long-winded but towards they end of the PS2 era their pacing really started to become disjointed (very noticeable in the Xenosaga games), favoring excessive exposition and unnecessary detailing over true exploration. By the time the PS3 was mid-swing I just could not enjoy JRPs very well. Eternal Sonata and a few others were great, but most of them were just visual novels minus the conveniences of that genre (and thus lacking the pacing).

It is not a problem with just JRPGs, though, WRPGs have similar pacing issues. Dragon Age: Inquisition is fun as long as you stay on course, but as you deviate the game just dumps more and more banal bullshit on you. Rather than rewarding you with a few nice trinkets a a slice of side story for veering off the trail a bit like classic JRPGs do they just send you on a garbage-collecting spree. 75% of all the content you encounter in Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls (Morrowind to Skyrim), etc. is just banal or immediately or retroactively made obsolete.



tl;dr: As far as I am concerned, pacing makes or breaks an RPG (and just about any other game). It doesn't matter if we are talking JRPG, WRPG, PnP RPG, etc. I think that is why the Dragon Quest series still has such a rabid following even today, it maintains that great pacing of the classic JRPGs.

[gimymblert]

At least skyrim has the bug and weird system to complement and make you have an unexpected laugh or situation to conquer.

[JWK5]

At least skyrim has the bug and weird system to complement and make you have an unexpected laugh or situation to conquer.

Honestly, Skyrim and most of the WRPGs and JRPGs are fun to an extent, which is what makes them especially frustrating. A lot of the time you want to enjoy the game more than its pacing will actually let you. JRPGs try to cram in too much melodrama, WRPGs want to cram in to much unnecessary information.



On another note, I've noticed the key difference between the two is that JRPGs filter reality through fantasy, WRPGs filter fantasy through reality.

What I mean is that with a JRPG they are giving you all these emotional interactions between characters, often touching upon modern life nuances and subtle relationship quirks, etc. (much like anime) but it is all delivered through the exaggerated nature of its fantasy (which is why JRPGs can get away with weird monsters that seem out of place yet somehow fit in just fine). The drawback is that it is very easy to and often happens that the fantasy becomes so overbearing that the subtle reality it is creating a framework for gets buried in it.

With WRPG they are building these fantasy worlds, monsters, magical societies, etc. but it is being grounded in a lifelike logic and reason. There is great attention to detail (especially where background world information is concerned) and where JRPGs tend to mirror anime WRPGs tend to mirror Hollywood (of course both JRPGs and WRPGs still mirror PnP RPGs to a degree). The drawback with WRPGs is that there is so much focus on details and information that often everything gets "padded". Tons of items you don't need, tons of NPCs not really contributing anything, tons of quests not really going anywhere, tons of characters underdeveloped or locked in trope and stereotype, etc.

I think a good fusion of JRPG and WRPG would be to take reality and filter it through fantasy and then filter it back through reality again. The relationship and humanity nuances of JRPG pushed into its exaggerated fantasy but then taken and grounded in logical and reasonable way. Although, it seems more and more the two are coming together (you see a lot of ideas found in WRPGs making their way to JRPGs and vice versa).

Radiata Stories comes to mind as a good fusion of sorts, it was pretty much JRPG to its core but then they went and created this living (albeit small by today's standards) world where everyone lived somewhere specifically, had a day/night cycle of activity that included their job, relax time, etc. and a lot of the creatures fit their environments and even had a functioning role in it. The world was believable, the characters were lovable, and the whole package was cohesive and great to explore, if for nothing else than to see where everyone went and what they did with their time and how it all was connected.

[gimymblert]

Nice way to put it we had similar observation in the xenoblade thread.

We are so close to the perfect jwrpg or maybe it's a wjrpg? just before the ultimate lifeform, the csjwrpg it will be actually about ethics in game dialog

Just reading you and looking at some video,, the main difference between j and w rpg is not just anime/realism, but wrpg try to fake "cohesion" and "coherence" as much as possible, possibly "pushing" things a bit further for fun at best, jrpg don't give a flying fuck, it's mix match hodgepodge patchwork up to 9000, if it's cool it's in.

This game is literally mass effect x skyrim. Side by side it's evident the total difference in paradigm.

By fake I mean they go extra length to make gameplay mix with the pretend world, not that it's not cohesive. It's fake in the sense it's made up. Jrpg are always thematic, but it's often "dress up" rather "explain". You can fight a sentient house as a base enemy, that's thematic in the spooky region but it's hardly "coherent" in term of "consistent world". House enemy and numerous alike are literally inexistant in Wrpg, which are more plausible "naturalistic" monster maybe with the "poetic edge" when they took inspiration from japan, japan don't need to explain how magic and element work to justify their fire/ice monster hybrid, they just "there".

I was wondering because I have interest in trying to see what a mix of the two could be, and that's one place where it doesn't mix at all.

souls series maybe? its not really cohesive but constantly hints at greater cohesion.

[s0]

tbh the lack of "groundedness" in jrpgs is one of my biggest personal issues with them. it often feels like theyre just arbitrarily playing around with symbols without really going into the meaning of them at all. like you said, a lot of stuff (like monsters, magic, buildings etc) is "just there" because the developers thought it was cool.

grounding to me doesn't mean having a super nerdy detailed explanation for everything btw, but at the very least putting a modicum of thought into why things are the way they are, what they represent and how they could fit together. for instance, the original star wars trilogy explains fuck all about anything but still feels grounded. maybe zelda falls into this category as well (and the already discussed souls games)?

[JWK5]

it often feels like theyre just arbitrarily playing around with symbols without really going into the meaning of them at all.

I think that was what I liked about them, though there were these monster-symbols all over the place with no given meaning, especially as a kid, it caused me to imagine my own. In the original Final Fantasy (NES) and in Dragon Warrior/Quest certain "themes" of monsters hung out in certain environments. Wolves, imps, and ogres wandering the forests and the spiders and slimes and skeletons wandering the caves. There wasn't a whole lot of rhyme or reason but they still added to the sense of place.

With the modern JRPGs it does seem like at times they just went "Let's just shove these cool monsters wherever, because why the fuck not!" The monsters don't really help describe the environments so much as they just happen to be there so you have something to fight.

WRPGs tend to go the other extreme, you end up fighting the same damn enemies everywhere. For all the space in Skyrim there really isn't a whole lot of enemy variety (just the same enemies with varying gear), same with Dragon Age Inquisition. By the first two hours you've basically encountered 95% of everything you'll encounter for the next hundred hours.

[eliasfrost]

At least skyrim has the bug and weird system to complement and make you have an unexpected laugh or situation to conquer.

Honestly, Skyrim and most of the WRPGs and JRPGs are fun to an extent, which is what makes them especially frustrating. A lot of the time you want to enjoy the game more than its pacing will actually let you. JRPGs try to cram in too much melodrama, WRPGs want to cram in to much unnecessary information.



On another note, I've noticed the key difference between the two is that JRPGs filter reality through fantasy, WRPGs filter fantasy through reality.

<snippet>

That's an interesting observation. In some areas fantasy is a way to explore culture as well, for example the Fable series is steeped in British humour and quirks, it's thoroughly a british game though it's set in a different world. The Witcher is almost a downright deconstruction of Polish culture viewed through a fantasy world (not talking with any kind of authority but it's the general feeling from people I've read and listened to). The same with the Gothic series.  I guess European fantasy and RPGs are a way to explore culture rather than singular ideas and concepts.

Recently I've become a little bit more interested in genre and formula fiction and how they are used to process contemporary real-world culture, it's fun to think about. Like how Post-apocalyptia can be viewed as an offshoot of western fiction and how

and they all develop and evolve based on societal tensions of the time.. Cool stuff.

[DragonDePlatino]

The meat and potatoes of any RPG is the battle system, so I think it's important to make it as engaging as possible. When you are playing the game, what are you doing? Are you just picking options from menus? Or are there action commands? Timed presses? Do you dynamically move around a field? Is there a sense of urgency to what you're doing?

Menu-based combat usually feels like a chore unless you have incredible amounts of content or polish (e.g. Pokemon). Therefore, having an interesting gimmick can compensate for a lack of resources. Personally, I think the bare minimum for a good battle system is something like MOTHER 3. Like Earthbound, there is a rolling-HP system where you can save someone that took critical damage. There is also a timed-hit mechanic where you attack to the beat of the music. Both of these mechanics made the game less generic and kept battles from turning into a chore.

So if you're still working on the idea for your RPG, focus on having a battle system more interesting than "pick option from menu, watch action".

[TonyManfredonia]

There's so many aspects that make a great RPG great, but I want to touch on just a couple! 

The battle system, for example.  Many people have commented on it, and I couldn't agree more with the majority of their comments!  Make sure it's engaging, but don't try and go overboard with insane innovation.  I think there's a fine line between innovation and "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Take note of how each well-known RPG has core elements to their battle system: For FF12 it was the "Gambit" idea.  For Paper Mario it's very much about real-time reaction sequences.  It's better to stick with one core 'interactive' idea with the combat than to go overboard with too much to think about for the player.  That might be fun for some, but to grab a wide audience you want to appeal to the masses (without suffering your own creative quality).

My favorite RPGs - Final Fantasy 9, for example - all have really great NPCs.  That's not to say there isn't the occasional "Woof" from the random dog in a city, but for the most part all of the NPCs have some type of charisma.

Engaging battle system (but not a sensory overload) and high-quality NPCs/characters can go a long way 

[s0]

btw gimmy, it's funny that it was mystic quest that got you into rpgs. that game was designed by square as an "entry level" game for the european and american markets. it's even called "final fantasy US" in japan. looks like it worked haha.

it was my first rpg too btw.

[battlerager]

That game was weird as shit