Keep in mind that I have been saying that there are exceptions, and that it's all a matter of degree; I'm just discussing how I find the typical Western RPG to be. In my (albeit limited) experience, the game does its level best to progress you through the game at an average difficulty level, no matter what choices you make. I found this to be true in Fallout 3, and the Mass Effect games, to name two easy examples. When I play, I tend to make one playthrough doing everything "right," and then go back the next time and try to do the complete opposite of what I did before, in order to see the most new content. This often leads to my second playthroughs incorporating some of the worst possible skills, weapons, party members, etc, just because I want to see how they work. I also tend to make my second playthrough be on the hardest difficulty. Using this approach, I got through the Mass Effect games, and Fallout 3, with no trouble at all (and I'm hardly some leet gamer).

As far as the KOTOR example, I played that game with the same strategy, and with the same result. However, I can't swear that my choices the second time were the worst possible by any means. I'm willing to concede that there are combinations that result in winless finales. However, I believe those to be the exception, and to be an error on the company's part. KOTOR is more complex in its options and combinations than the Mass Effect games, and I think it likely that they simply weren't able to balance it perfectly. *shrugs* Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Western RPG designer's goal is to get the player through the game at an even, average difficulty, no matter what he does. This doesn't sound like such a bad goal, but, at least for me, it always comes across as stifling (...stiffling? ).



See, I just haven't seen that to be the case. In my experience, the overbearing "LEVELS ARE GOD" system isn't replaced with a more fine-grained, horizontal sort of progress. No, the majority of a character's improvement is simply funneled over to the game's design. The options are there to make the player feel good (to provide the illusion of choice, as I said before) but, for the most part, the game takes care of the important parts. How many times in a Western RPG have you "leveled up" (or the equivalent) right at the end of a major plot sequence? Constantly. How often do you gain more than one level per zone? Rarely. Or maybe the game's a little more subtle than that. Maybe the game gives you a superpowerful weapon right before a difficult part (Mass Effect 2 anyone?). You can have zero points in the skill associated with either of the two weapons you're allowed to choose there, and they're still far and away your best option to continue on with. Heck, let's talk points in general while we're at it. I guarantee you I could beat either of the Mass Effect games on the hardest difficulty without ever assigning a skill point, and without the game being much harder at all. I could do that in the majority of Western RPGs I can think of, actually, with varying degrees of trouble.

It's a joke, is what it is. In a rare nod to the world of politics (blah, politics), I'm going to go ahead and call it lipstick on a pig. Choice in Western games exists to convince the player that their input is important, while the game runs its nice, carefully choreographed simulation.



Only if there's the same ability span. In a JRPG, you often start out doing single digit damage, and, by the end (even in a "regular" game) you're hitting for FIVE digits. If you take that same ratio and pack it into ten levels (as opposed to 99), then sure, each level is more meaningful. In a Western RPG though, it's common to see no more than a doubling, or perhaps tripling, of ability from beginning to end. Heck I don't know the numbers, but I do know that the spread is usually much, much smaller.

Of course, there are some exceptions. And in games where leveling up does hold significant meaning, well. . .you can bet you're only going to level up when the game wants you to, and not a minute before.



I didn't really mean to focus on the difficulty thing, I was just using it as an objective metric to show that the state of the game world changes very little no matter what "choices" you've made. You might have radically different skills (which affect the action gameplay), but very rarely will they matter. Backstab, spell, sword n' board assault, whatever; you fight the same boss, for roughly the same amount of time, and with roughly the same amount of effort expended. The buttons you push to bring the boss down differ (again, this is the action side of the gameplay), but your experience was the same.



Argh, I really can't get this right. I've tried "character progression," "roleplaying," and a few other words too, but I can't effectively communicate my thought process here. I know it's not roleplaying exactly, but. . .well, it's something. You say that the sole advantage of a JRPG is the ability to play David or Goliath, but it's more than that (those were just the only reasonable examples I came up with before). You often have fewer total options in a JRPG, but they tend to be more meaningful. You're free to make your own mistakes. You're free to do unusual things, even meta-gaming things if you want. For kicks, you should go to gamefaqs, and look at the difference between the FFX section, and the Mass Effect 2 section. FFX is packed with crazy challenges that people have come up with, guides to max this or min that, and just a whole bunch of strange, cool things that have nothing to do with the main game. Mass Effect 2 has. . .a shop list, and a money finding guide. That's more or less the extent. This isn't because Mass Effect 2 was far less popular, or that it hasn't been out long enough for guides to be written, it's just because the game controls EVERY little detail in ME2. You can never get off those tracks, those rails. There's a bunch of stuff you can customize, but it's meaningless in the end. The game plays itself.



Theoretically, I agree with you. Given infinite technology, the "perfect game" would be, more or less, virtual reality in an amazing world. Go anywhere, do anything, experience what you cannot in real life. Total control, total choice. However, we are many decades, if not centuries away from such technology. When we want to make a game with "choice" these days, we hire more content producers. We write twice the dialog to let you choose between good and evil paths (even though most of the events are the same). We animate a few different ending movies, so that you have a satisfying conclusion. All that such things tend to do, however, is emphasize the problem areas.

The current strategy of emulating a dynamic game from completely static content does NOT work (or at least, it doesn't work for me). You can't make me believe I'm in a living, breathing world, where I'm free to make of myself what I will. We don't have the tech. I know to talk to citizens until they repeat themselves. I know to search for the sidequest branch points. I can tell when I'm about to walk into a carefully scripted cinematic. It just doesn't work! And game designers try so hard to create these illusions that they neglect others parts of the game, to its severe detriment.



Well, I don't know that I'm exactly the most focused lens out there, but I'm happy to explain my crazy viewpoints if you want to hear 'em.