Extra Punctuation: Role-Playing Games

Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame has begun a new “Extra Punctuation” editorial series on The Escapist, with one of his first entries covering the vast differences that exist between video games that fall under the “role-playing game” classification.

But the worst of these is “role-playing game,” and the fact that its definition has never been particularly clear doesn’t help. Again, surely every game has you playing a role to a certain extent, but presumably it’s intended to harken back to the old pen-and-paper role-playing games you used to play with your little friends around the kitchen table in your pathetic, idle youth (or pathetic, idle current existence). But those games were about literally taking on a role; by this token the only true video RPGs are ones like Mass Effect or Vampire: Bloodlines that let you make dialogue and action choices that define the nature of your character’s personality, and there are plenty of RPGs that don’t do that.

Okay then, so I guess an RPG is a game where you select from a list of characters at the start, or guide your character down a certain development path, creating individually skilled protagonists who all approach problems with different solutions depending on their specialties. But this could apply equally to both Torchlight and Oblivion, which are still extremely different games. At a pinch, it could also apply to Team Fortress 2. Besides, where exactly does the JRPG fit into all this? The protagonist is always the same (usually an angsty androgynous douchebag) and the story is fixed. Many of them don’t let you pick your own stat bonuses when you level up. They might as well just make the games entirely cutscenes, that’s clearly the direction Final Fantasy wants to go in.

This is certainly a subject that needs to be debated, but I don’t think Yahtzee’s the man with the answers – even if “Games Where You Click On Things A Lot” is a category we desperately need.