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[antoniodamala]

Ugh, lines. JRPGs today have too many lines of dialogue. Maybe even games like Dragon Age. But I don't actually want to read/listen to all that. Sometimes there's a good game underneath all that, but you have to smash the any key to grind through all the dialogue and get to the gameplay.

Sorry, but I would argue that the main purpose of RPGs (especially jRPGs) is the story, rather than the gameplay. It often tends to stay the same over large numbers of RPGs because it's not the real focus, no one buys RPGs for the innovative gameplay (though there are often some good incremental improvements). jRPGs did stem from visual novels, after all.

Basically, if you want gameplay to take a front seat, that's the domain of action games.

This is a damn awful excuse to not advance in the gameplay. Sorry, but if the focus is on the story to the point the gameplay doesn't matter, then it should be a book. Games are about gameplay, and if you wanna tell a story well, it's through it's gameplay. Also I've played lots of RPGs when younger, and the only stories i keep remembering are from Earthbound and Planescape: Torment. Both of them were f**** by the restrictions of RPGs, it's time to stop repeating these dumb conventios already.

And mostly, the best stories i have played didn't came from RPGs (or at least RPGs with proper stories).

if you think that then i would wager you haven't played any of the newer ones, but i guess it is easier to make an emoticon than to discuss things!

The last one i've played from them was the remake of Escape From The Pit, and it had terribly unbalanced combat. Is there any game better? If there is i'm willing to check out.

[gimymblert]

To chime in a bit with a new perspective, it's like saying a movie that isn't from hollywood format should be a book because movie are meant for action movie... Heck "participatory storytelling" does evoke different emotion than books and movie, even on rails with gimmicky interaction (heavy rain). And whatever the medium as long the piece is good.

[antoniodamala]

Besides that discussion, i started playing Desperados the other day and jeeeez what awful voice acting. And so far it doesn't feel half as interesting as Commandos, it doesn't have the feel of danger whatsoever. Should i stick with it a little longer or just toss it?

[SirNiko]

Dialogue in an RPG by linecount is a depressing thought. The recently released "Macguffin's Curse" boasted unique lines for every decorative object in every location, which in practice just meant jokes that rapidly wore thin and distraction from the game because stopping to read every sign is time consuming.

When you're just bouncing around an area talking to everyone and getting dull bits of stuff like "Hooray it's a festival!" and "springtime is my favorite season" the player isn't learning anything. It's the video game equivalent of small talk, which is meaningless when it's not done with another human being.

One of my least favorite JRPGs is Final Fantasy 8, but I really liked how it used dialogue as a reward for a lot of quests. One quest in particular is triggered by talking to a lonely fisherman on a dock until he asks you to return later. When you do, he takes you to the hotel and gives you a little hologram device that reveals the origin of the town is tied to another town elsewhere in the game. Final Fantasy 6 did a similar thing, where talking to NPCs in the village of wizards at the right time would reveal some tidbits about Strago and Relm, hinting at Relm's father's identity. The line count for both these things were relatively low, but they're concise, meaningful, and entertaining.

The key should be to put the dialogue and the mechanics of the game together. When I keep stopping to read several paragraphs I feel like I'm just jumping between a book and a game instead of a game with a deep story. Story can be conveyed in other ways, such as the way NPCs or creatures behave (eg, instead of talking about how a character is a coward, demonstrate it by having them hide during battle, like Pokey does in the first part of Earthbound) or by the setting (eg. instead of telling the player how the castle was destroyed in ages past by a giant golem and it sank into the desert, let the player find the castle in the desert with the remains of the golem inside).

[Shine Klevit]

One of my least favorite JRPGs is Final Fantasy 8, but I really liked how it used dialogue as a reward for a lot of quests. One quest in particular is triggered by talking to a lonely fisherman on a dock until he asks you to return later. When you do, he takes you to the hotel and gives you a little hologram device that reveals the origin of the town is tied to another town elsewhere in the game. Final Fantasy 6 did a similar thing, where talking to NPCs in the village of wizards at the right time would reveal some tidbits about Strago and Relm, hinting at Relm's father's identity. The line count for both these things were relatively low, but they're concise, meaningful, and entertaining.

This is something that really grinds my gears with both American, and Japanese RPGs. I shouldn't get lost when trying to find my way around a town that has no enemies, but do continually in most newer RPGs. A key example is that damn annoying ship in Fallout 3. 15 stories tall, and everyone had 18 daily patterns.