RPGs are not just games where you equip items and use magic.

Why call it an RPG when it is not?

What does it mean to "role-play"?

"You walk out of the building and are standing on the busied street of [insert town name]. The citizens of [insert town name] move at a chaotic pace, bumping into each other with no apology, though it seems the way of things because no one is getting angry. Buildings line the north and south of the street with buyers, sellers, and various shops. To your west there is a hurt boy laying on the ground nearly trampled by the stampede of people. To your east there is a cathedral though it is blocked off by an invisible wall that eliminates this direction as an option for you even though the description of the scene suggests that people are traveling to and from this direction."

Suppose you want to travel east regardless of the situation.

"Despite the narrative you choose to walk east. You walk aimlessly towards the cathedral with no success. After time spent running towards the cathedral, [insert your character's name] is taken over by a foreign though, 'I should see if that boy is alright.'"

Okay, that may seem like a waste of words to some of you, but let me explain. You would never come across a scene like this in a true RPG, because your options would never be so severely limited.

I have been watching this "next generation" of "RPGs" and have been drawn to near hopelessness for the genre. These are not Role Playing Games. They are more like games where you equip items to an already developed character to accomplish a task that you really have no control of. The player is merely the cursor of an interactive movie.

When a publisher gets it mostly right, as with the Forgotten Realms games, Morrowind/Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins, or the Mass Effect franchise the story's beginning often suffers from the need to build a back story that the player did not invent. The beginnings of these games are stacked with dialog's that ask questions that sum up to "Is my character nice or mean?" and more times than not, you either have amnesia (The Witcher) or you are in jail (Many other popular RPG titles). Successful RPG titles have shown us the difficulty of creating an RPG that is both believable and holds to the "I control this character" aspect of role play.

Any games I reference are not because I think they are terrible games, but because their definition as RPG should most likely be revisited as something else. If you are merely moving a pre-developed character towards check points that build a plot into a well built story, you are not playing an RPG, you are watching an interactive story or playing and adventure game. To say these games are RPGs is very similar to saying that reading a book is like actually becoming the protagonist in the story. You are not actually the protagonist, you just have a good understanding of who he is and what he wants out of life.

With these non-RPGs, it is true, many of them have great stories, some of them are more overrated than others, but none of them achieve RPG in the literal sense of role play. Though you do travel the world and explore, the characters are not really your own. They are characters that you get to follow along with on their predefined path towards a goal that you will have no decisions to truly alter. The illusion of control implemented by dialog options gives the player a sense of real character development, but a second run through the game will reveal the truth; no matter what you choose the outcomes will remain the same.
My favorite example of illusory control is Final Fantasy VII so I am going to use it as my prime example throughout this post. when you meet Yufi in Final Fantasy VII, the illusion is that you get to make a choice to get her on your team or not, the game pretends your dialog choices mean something when you come across her, and she steals all your materia. But it doesn't matter, its scripted, and you can't kill her or capture her. She inevitably becomes an ally, which means that you are never given the choice to not forgive her, which means you really aren't role playing but observing a story that unfolds exactly the same for everyone who plays it. There are many situations similar to this throughout the entire Final Fantasy franchise, making them, not an RPGs, but adventure games with RPG elements.

I would like to point out some fallacies that I believe people have bought into concerning what an RPG is.

1
Statement: I get experience points, its an RPG!

Response: You get EXP for accomplishing things, Modern Warfare 2's multi-player option had EXP that leveled you up and you could buy features that would customize your person... It was not an RPG.

2
Statement: But there is such a large cache of items to find and equip.

Response: Just because I change my armor and weapon does not mean that it is an RPG. For Example, in Counter-strike, you choose your items every time a round starts.... It is not an RPG.

3

Statement: I do quests, and the story is so big.

Response: Doing quests is no different than fulfilling objectives in any game. "do this then do that then do that." When you finish it there is some sort of reward EXP, items, maybe a cut scene... None of this make a game an RPG.

4
Statement: But there is an Active Time Battle System or Turn Based Battle System.

Response: The only bearing that an RPG should have within combat is that the player gets to make choices, and that the environment at least feels interactive (i.e. Mass Effect). The combat should not eliminate the idea that the environment is persistent. If it does it makes combat feel like a mini-game, and eliminates your character persistence in that world, which makes it very difficult to role-play a person who stands and waits his turn instead of relentlessly assaulting his foe. There is a way to show a persistent environment that does not involve random battles and time gauge bars, its called real-time combat, and it works much better with immersing a player into an RPG.

5
Statement: But there is magic; it must be an RPG.
Response: Just because you are in a fantasy world where magic is used doesn't mean that it is an RPG. I feel like the modern gamer would look at the LOTR movies and get some weird impression that they are RPG-movies, just because there is both magic and adventure in it. Magic does not = RPG, and Fantasy does not = RPG.

Most importantly I think I should tell you how to know you are playing an RPG.

1

How to know:The game starts with character creation of at least one person that includes name, class, and race (Race if there are multiple races in the word. if it is that kind of game). Also, there should be a player's manual that comes with the game that aptly defines all races and classes so that the player knows how the world will interact with their character.
Reason: If you do not get to choose these things, then chances are that the game requires you to be "so-and-so, son of so-and-so." or the story needs you to be an elf archer, because it is going to play into the key plot. These sorts of decisions should not be pre-decided, you should discover the plot without following a linear path, all points should converge naturally at a climatic time which points the direction that you are lead to go, though not required to go.

2
How to know: You wondered how your friend got his awesome item. He told you he killed [person]. you respond "Oh, I saved them and they joined my party." and you both look at each other wondering if one choice was better than the other.
Reason: It is very important in role playing, as I have said many times, to put choice in the players hands, and to actually have those choices effect the progression of the game. Otherwise, there is no reason at all for spending time carefully choosing dialog options if the person will always join your party. Imagine Final Fantasy VII where you get to choose not to help Aeris get away from the Turks. Think about what kind of game you would be left with... I imagine Cloud would have spent a lot more time in the Sector 5 slums in that game.



3
How to know: Your character has a reputation based on the decisions you have made, and some people like/dislike you because of it.
Reason: You can't really role-play if you don't have realistic NPCs to role-play with. So, NPCs need to get mad at you, they need to be able to learn to like, and even love you. If they can't then your character looks very out of place in his world.

4
How to know: Before you start doing what you do in the game, you know just about every important part of your character, after all, he is you.
Reason: Who goes into a fight not knowing why they are swinging? Another reason why Final Fantasy VII is not an RPG, what if I didn't want to bomb the reactor... why cant I just live in Midgar, and try to deal with my weird clone-memories, make friends, and be a mercenary? Oh yeah, because it's not an RPG, and I don't get to choose.

Nick Drake is doing what he does, and you assist him... This is no way to start an RPG. You really have no clue whats going on at this point, you're just trying to live.

5
How to know: When you talk to your fellow-gamer friends, you refer to your character in the first person: "I was in the temple of the deep, searching for the lost sword of Bukaka when Isben, the dragon of wealth and flame attacked me."
Reason: YOU ARE THE CHARACTER! the feeling of absolute control should whelm the player as they play. You should be able to second guess your choices, and want to try it the other way immediately after making a choice.

Don't get me wrong, I love Warcraft III, Final Fantasy is a great franchise, and I think that Super Mario Brothers 3 is the best of all the Mario games, but to call these games RPGs because I have a character that levels up, I go on a grand adventure, and I collect items that assist me in conquering enemies just doesn't make sense.


Z. W. Van Kleeck

Another interesting article on this topic: Why is everything trying to be an RPG?