Computron2000 wrote...
Ok so you're saying your first statement is subjective and thus not true in many other cases.
Er... no. My first statment says that there's more to the definition of a genre than its name. I suppose you
could argue this, but I don't think anyone seriously thinks that any game with a gun is a shooter, or any game which incorporates roles is a RPG, or any game in which you're not free-floating in the void is a platformer.
The subjectiveness comes into play when determining exactly
what qualities are essential for an RPG. Since the genre emerged not out of some textbook definition but rather through three decades (four, if you want to throw pen and paper into the mix) of trial-and-error, real-world experience, then there's obviously a lot of different opinions. There are plenty of old school DnD players who will argue that
no computer game can be legitimately labeled an RPG, plenty of western cRPGers who say the same thing about JRPGs, and so on. And, since it's all subjective, there's only degrees of "rightness" that can be invoked. I think we can safely assume that, say,
Pac-Man isn't an RPG, since practically no one would seriously argue that case.
But when you're dealing with a game like
Mass Effect, which is explicitly marketed as a hybrid RPG/shooter, then it gets a lot messier. To some people, there's still enough essential "RPGness" there to call it an RPG. To others, there isn't. It's entirely personal. The point is simply that when you push the boundaries, you're bound to wind up with a sizable percentage of folks who feel that you've pushed it over the edge of what they consider an RPG. It's not a question of who's "right" or "wrong."
Also, question. Can it be a shooter AND a RPG? No? Why not?
No. And yes.
Ideally, genres are perfectly discrete: a shooter is not an RPG is not an adventure game is not a puzzle game is not a grand strategy game. In practice, that's obviously ridiculous: there's nothing gained from arbitrarily limiting the potential of games just so you can fit everything into neat little packages. Hybrid genres (action RPGs, strategy RPGs, puzzle platformers, etc.) have been around for decades. You typically sacrifice certain aspects of one genre to accomodate aspects of another genre.
Both
Mass Effect games are shooter/RPG hybrids. They combine certain aspects of both genres, and ignore certain aspects of both. I don't think that many people dispute this. The question is, where is the balance of the two? Certain elements are mutually exclusive: you can have combat effectiveness determined by a character's statistics/abilities if you're determining it by player speed, accuracy, and reaction time. So there's a balance to be struck, and, to some people,
Mass Effect 2 tips that balance too far towards the shooter side of the scale when compared to either a) the original
Mass Effect,
the sort of game they expect from a primary RPG studio like BioWare, or c) the sort of game they actually enjoy playing.
I'm very much in the latter category: I despise the shooter genre, and enjoyed the first
Mass Effect in spite of its shooter elements. There was enough RPG "meat" on its bones to satisfy me, and I loved, as always, BioWare's skill at crafting an enjoyable story and setting. The increased focus of shooter mechanics in
Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, turned me right off, and I didn't like the game at all. I don't for a minute claim that my evaluation of the game is the only correct one, and I don't even really argue with people who feel that the game is still a solid RPG.
But just because genre definitions are fluid doesn't mean that those definitions don't exist. I think the best way to look at it is as as checklist: no one RPG is so "pure" as to fill out the entire list, but most everyone would agree that you need at least a couple of them filled in. How many, and which ones, are very much open for debate, and my answer to that question would be different from yours and anyone else's.
Retour en haut
