Topic: The Future of RPGs on Nintendo Consoles

[Mop it up]

The top selling RPG for the WII is Paper Mario @ 3 million copies.  The next was MH3 which hit 1 million in Japan but fell well short of the PSP sales.

Do you mean Super Paper Mario? I don't know if that's accurate or not. VGChartz lists it at just under that, though Wikipedia has it as 2.28 million and cites a Nintendo financial report as a reference, though it's a older one. Regardless, I wouldn't consider Super Paper Mario an RPG, as it's most definitely a platformer above anything else.

I also don't think I'd consider Monster Hunter to be an RPG; at least, it isn't a traditional one, like Final Fantasy.

[Peachylala]

I would consider Super Paper Mario to be a Platformer sprinkled with RPG elements ala Metroidvania.

I also don't think I'd consider Monster Hunter to be an RPG; at least,   it isn't a traditional one, like Final Fantasy.

Mostly Zelda adventuring with a sprinkling of RPG defense stats.

[Kytim89]

As strange as this might sound, I would like to see a western RPG like Bioware to develop a major JRPG like Final Fantasy, but SE probably does not like the fact that Bioware is encroaching into their territory. When Bioware developed Sonic Chronicles they made it like JRPG with some western features. This hybrid of a game was okay, but it gave some sense that a western company could make a JRPG work in some sense.

That would be strange indeed considering the smug (overly-so in my opinion.  They come off as rather arrogant) sabre-rattling that Bioware's been doing ever since Final Fantasy XIII launched, heavily criticizing Japanese RPG developers for a lack of creativity and evolution of design.  After all that, I don't see Bioware stepping in and making an RPG that would appeal to the Japanese RPG market, and I see even less the Japanese accepting it.

What I was talking about was some company like Bioware or Obsidian could make an RPG of their own in the form of an JRPG and sell it to appeal to western gamers and at the same time flip such companies like Sqaure the bird. In fact, Obsidian expressed interest in remaking/sequeling Chrono Trigger if SE was interested in letting them do it.
 
I truelly like, nay, love Bioware's development style. This is one reason why I bought Sonic Chronicles because they developed the game in their own studio. But I have to be honest, they would have alot more credibility in criticizing Sqaure-Enix's games if they were still an independant comapny. They were mainly bought out by EA for financial reasons. Now, take Square for example, they brought themselves back from the brink of bankrupcy with the success of one franchise, the very one that Bioware is condeming.

[Kytim89]

Square-Enix could do a lot more for the wii. For example, they could releases a sequel to Treasure of Rudras made for the wii.

[Dirk Temporo]

Well really I'm just wondering when people are going to realize that the currently accepted conventions for "RPGs" only exist because the hardware and software back in the day wasn't advanced enough to handle the true ruleset for say, Dungeons and Dragons, from which all video RPGs have stemmed. The games weren't able to be in-depth enough to encompass all of what a pen and paper RPG was able to offer, so they did their best to emulate the experience, by severely limiting it out of necessity.

It blows my mind that Deus Ex came out ten years ago, and games are JUST NOW starting to catch up to what was laid forth in that game.

[ymeegod]

Sad, everyone gives credit to Deus Ex but skip over System Shock series :0. 

One week away from Arc of Fantasia .

[Kytim89]

It seems as though travelling a world map like older RPGs is fading, am I right?

[broodwars]

It seems as though travelling a world map like older RPGs is fading, am I right?

Good riddance, IMO. The only reason developers ever used that convention is because their platforms weren't powerful enough to render an entire game world, so they used the shortcut of having the player avatar running over an overworld.  Menu-driven "overworlds" let you get where you want to go right when you need to be there, and 3D overworlds are so much more immersive and can be better scripted and directed for more compelling events.  Sadly, our platforms still aren't powerful enough to render detailed 3D worlds all at once, so using them for something like airship exploration is out of the question (which is just about the only scenario I still consider appropriate to use "world map"-style overworlds).

[Kytim89]

I was thinking of something like the older RPG over world movements married to something like the free roaming world of Monster Hunter 3.

[Kytim89]

So I guess Xenoblade will play a lot like Final Fantasy 12? I really liked Final Fantasy 12, but I did not care for the battle all that much. I prefer for an RPG to have a random battle system that starts when you touch an enemy on the field and the sequence starts right away. I also like controlling all of my characters on the battle screen. I actually heared that Final Fantasy 13 only allows you to control one party member, right?

[Stratos]

How can you have a random battle system if fights start when you touch the enemies? Doesn't the fact you can see the enemies coming remove the randomness?