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Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

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Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#71

Post by JohnBooty »

jstarfish wrote: post #38
spinningD20 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not explicitly stating that it is rape by any means, and I don't interpret it that way. It seemed to me that Maria and Setzer had a history already and he was stealing her away from her opera life, which she may or may not have wanted, we are not told whether or not she even wanted to work at the opera house, or what those conditions were. Casting characters in these negative lights without explicit proof is…

> Especially after you get the backstory on Setzer and his love interest - nothing else in the game paints him as character that would do something awful like that. Did we play the same game? However you define "rape," Setzer was an amoral gambler and rogue whose idea of romance was kidnapping and forced marriage. His relationship with Darril was mostly one of sport. He planned to kidnap the opera singer, was duped i…

I don't think it's silly of you to bring this up. In fact I think it's crucial to reexamine nonconsensual stuff in fiction, even kids' fiction. But I don't think I agree with your conclusion here.

It's true: in the real world a forced marriage is more or less explicitly rapey.

But at some point we as a society decided that in light works of fantasy we don't need to really need to follow every single thing to its logical real-world conclusion.

I mean, was there rape in Super Mario Brothers? The antagonist is quite the princess-kidnapper.

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#72

Post by djur »

knodi123 wrote: post #52
kmeisthax wrote: post #43

>To be sure, there were Americans who found all of the barriers to entry into these deeply foreign worlds to be more bracing than intimidating, who took on the challenge of meeting the games on their own terms, often emerging with a lifelong passion for all things Japanese. At this stage, though, they were the distinct minority. In Japan and the United States alike, the conventional wisdom through the mid-1990s was t…

A decade before Pokemon existed, I went to see the movie The Wizard, a Fred Savage vehicle that was basically a 2 hour Nintendo commercial. And in the lobby of the theater as I was leaving, there was a booth selling subscriptions for the brand-new Nintendo Power magazine. The first issue came with a free copy of Dragon Warrior for the NES. So Nintendo was willing to bet big on JRPGs long before Pokemon came out.

Nintendo also dedicated an issue of Nintendo Power to a full strategy guide for Final Fantasy, including a surprising amount of new (heavily Westernized) art depicting various scenes in the game. I read that issue front to back many times before I ever had a chance to play the actual game. (In retrospect it gave some bad advice, because the authors were unaware that the game had numerous bugs that made equipment and spells work differently than intended. But the maps were very) useful!

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#73

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

cubefox wrote: post #66
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #65

> Before that scene in Final Fantasy VII, Hironobu Sakaguchi served up a shocker of equal magnitude in Final Fantasy VI. Halfway through the game, the bad guys win despite your best efforts and the world effectively ends, leaving your party wandering through a post-apocalyptic World of Ruin like the characters in a Harlan Ellison story. The effect this had on some players’ emotions could verge on traumatizing — heady…

I thought it was commonly accepted that Chrono Trigger (another SNES JRPG) was better than FF6.

I guess it turns out I'm a rebel then.

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#74

Post by default-kramer »

Of course I enjoy leveling up and choosing skills and exploring dungeons, but plenty of games implement those same mechanics at least as well as DQ. For me, the distinguishing feature of the Dragon Quest franchise (today*) is its charm: The charismatic cast of endearing enemies. The regional accents of the NPCs. The wordplay, the art, the music. Even the venerable hanging leather sack is enough to make me smile.

*I say "today" because earlier translations were not very good, as the article mentions. As I recall, even DQ7 on PS1 was pretty rough. But the English localization of DQ8 in 2005 was a masterpiece, and I think this is the one that set the bar for the future of the franchise (including remakes of earlier entries).

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#76

Post by djur »

default-kramer wrote: post #74

Of course I enjoy leveling up and choosing skills and exploring dungeons, but plenty of games implement those same mechanics at least as well as DQ. For me, the distinguishing feature of the Dragon Quest franchise (today*) is its charm: The charismatic cast of endearing enemies. The regional accents of the NPCs. The wordplay, the art, the music. Even the venerable hanging leather sack is enough to make me smile. *I s…

I thought the NES translations were fine. They were a little more formal than the tone of more recent translations, but they felt very friendly and literate compared to the terse messages you got from the contemporary Final Fantasy games.

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#78

Post by anthk »

astrange wrote: post #62
mjr00 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there's still so much more... tactics rpgs like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, dungeon rpgs like Etrian Odyssey or Labyrinth of Touhou, or action rpgs like Seiken Densetsu 3 or Nier Automata. Always debatable where "JRPG" ends and some other genre begins, of course, but the great part of the genre is how widely varied things can be.

The games of course don't call themselves JRPGs; game series in Japan tend to make up their own genre names, and each individual Tales Of game actually claims to be a different one they invented for it. Some of the developers are very sensitive about this term. Recently for FFXVI the director went on a press tour talking about he made it Western by making the dev team watch Game of Thrones and in one interview essent…

Slur? I doubt it. Series like the Shin Megami Tensei ones were pretty different to AD&D based Western RPG's. And Chrono Trigger it's a mix between Toriyama artwork with Square's design.

It's like Poker and 'Mus'. Both are card games, but the mechanics are pretty different.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus_(card_game)

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#79

Post by jstarfish »

JohnBooty wrote: post #71
jstarfish wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially after you get the backstory on Setzer and his love interest - nothing else in the game paints him as character that would do something awful like that. Did we play the same game? However you define "rape," Setzer was an amoral gambler and rogue whose idea of romance was kidnapping and forced marriage. His relationship with Darril was mostly one of sport. He planned to kidnap the opera singer, was duped i…

I don't think it's silly of you to bring this up. In fact I think it's crucial to reexamine nonconsensual stuff in fiction, even kids' fiction. But I don't think I agree with your conclusion here. It's true: in the real world a forced marriage is more or less explicitly rapey. But at some point we as a society decided that in light works of fantasy we don't need to really need to follow every single thing to its logi…

> I mean, was there rape in Super Mario Brothers? The antagonist is quite the princess-kidnapper.

I was surprised to see they only now re-released Super Mario RPG. There's a forced-marriage story arc in that one too, and Mario Odyssey also had an abort-the-wedding mission.

I'm in a weird position where you don't agree with me, but I actually agree with you. Yeah, wedding implies an unwanted consummation, but there's already kidnapping and unwanted bondage (marriage), which are themselves serious crimes and boundary violations. What may or may not happen next isn't really the point since we're already in not-ok territory.

I don't have a dog in this fight, I was mainly arguing against the Setzer-wouldn't-do-that line of thought. He's a wildcard who lives for himself, not a saint. Celes leveraged his own ego against him to challenge him to a game-- and cheat at it to guarantee her success. She didn't need no man to save her. Even then she ended up having to babysit him later.

Re: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue

#80

Post by bigstrat2003 »

krapp wrote: post #45
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I have always used it to simply refer to the different style of RPG which developed in Japan. It's not a discriminatory term (at least, not in the pejorative sense) at all IMO. In fact, I prefer JRPGs.

It isn't really a style specific to Japan though, which is the point. Undertale is aesthetically more of a JRPG than Dark Souls. We should just be calling RPGs made in Japan "RPGs."

The style originated in (or was at least popularized by) Japan. That's why it's called JRPG. To address your examples: Undertale is a JRPG, Dark Souls is not (it's a WRPG). It's a genre, not a country of origin stamp.
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