Amir0x said:
Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard - the three B's. But also companies like CD Projekt, Obsidian and Runic games have found varying levels of success in the genre. It's quite expanding, whereas with jRPGs the big developers sales-wise remain SquareEnix with their Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts.
Atlus carved out a niche for itself, but it is still very much a 'niche.'
Blizzard hasn't released an RPG since 2000 (MMO's are their own thing) so they can't be attributed to any recent rise in WRPG popularity, which didn't start till they moved over to consoles (KOTOR and Fable to a degree but mostly Oblivion). As much as I like Obsidian, the success of their games is due in large part to name recognition of the series in which they are creating a sequel for (primarily Bioware and Bethesda games btw) and even that couldn't help DSIII. Their first foray into creating their own game/IP from scratch (Alpha Protocol) bombed hard. Runic has thus far only made one game and though it has sold 1M copies, it took a 1.5 years and at a price of $20 or less. Lastly, CDProjekt have done relatively well for themselves but they are more on the level of the White Knight Chronicles or Tales of... games sales wise, which are seen as mid-tier games.
Categorically untrue. Western RPGs are unique in terms of how much effort the developers go into world building. We're talking sometimes libraries within the game filled with multiple page reports detailing past wars, political strife, factions, city histories. We're not talking like the typical jRPG open a book and you get one sentence about something; we're talking a very real drive to make a world feel like it has existed before you and will exist after you.
I feel that (some) JRPGs do have all that information available, it's simply not always placed into a codex menu. The lore is something generally pieced together over the course of the game through dialog, cutscenes, items, ect. Wikis/Fansites will generally consolidate some of this information though the Japanese ones are far more in-depth. Point is, I think there is a comparable amount of lore in the Star Ocean Universe as there is in the Mass Effect Universe. The Elder Scrolls Universe is the only one I feel that stands far and away above the others in terms of depth (for better or for worse). Older CRPGs like Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights worked off of pre-established lore.
Not only that, because Western RPGs thrive on dialogue trees and choices - a blessed advantage over jRPGs - there is a constant re-feeding of world information, whereas if you talk to someone in a jRPG you're lucky to get one line of dialogue about how you're welcome in the town or some shit.
If a dialogue tree is only there for me to ask/answer questions, then I don't feel it is serving its purpose. I would much rather walk up to someone and hit the talk button once and go into a cutscene where they tell me everything I need to know in a smooth transition rather than having to choose each individual subject every few lines (same result with more steps). Choices are only good when there is a purpose or consequence to them. Not many WRPGs do this well (but otherwise, yes, it is a good system when done right).
I don't know how anyone could argue against this point, for whatever else one may feel about jRPGs. Western RPGs develop their lore like it is going out of style, whereas jRPGs are much more concerned about the 'here' and 'now', which is to say if it's not somehow directly connected to the events of the main story likely they're not going to bother developing it up. That's quite unlike most WRPGs.
The "here and now" as you put it is all that matters, to be frank. Telling me about some random battle that happened some random number of years ago and a random place between random people, all completely unrelated to anything I'm doing or will do in the game world is irrelevant. It's not like I can fact check that information or make use of it in any meaningful way. Having a ton of history just for the sake of having it isn't exactly something to be proud of. Even in literature, you're only given the information that is necessary to understand peoples motivations, the worlds politics, how the worlds science works, why there is a conflict, ect. and maybe some tidbits of information that may be useful in the future. The only lore I need (which simply applies to my knowledge of the world, not just its history) is that which helps me to understand the aforementioned points.
So in terms of sheer volume of lore, yes, some WRPGs go above and beyond the call of duty to provide the player with more information about their world than they will ever need to know (and I'm sure all 2% of the players that actually read that stuff appreciate it) but most, like JRPGs, tell you just what you need to know to have an understanding and connection to the world. As long as you know what you need to know to move throughout their game world without gaping holes in logic, the developers have done their job in world building.
It's a fun game to be sure, but compared to the previous entries (which I do agree deserve pretty much all the praise they get), MGS4 has a serious identity crisis.
