... Dark souls review?

DkS is 100% RPG, you roleplay as an undead who goes on to become the chosen undead who kills gwyn.. seriously what about that isn't "roleplay"

but then again... you role play in every game.. I agree using it as a definition for a genre isn't very apt. It seems to be used as an umbrella term for fantasy and I can see why they do it, it is a name or title without an attached stigma that other parts of the fantasy genre entail.

Reaperfan wrote:wall of text

Are there - have there ever been - any pure RPGs? It seems like RPG is just one tiny descriptor of a game that has a litany of other aspects to it. In that vein, one could argue that something like Skyrim is about as close a thing as we have to a pure RPG. Combat isn't so much emphasized as is the leveling of your character (as the world around your character remains stagnant) and where you choose to take your character.

The defining attribute of an RPG as I see it, is a focus on storytelling above all else. DKS isn't about storytelling, so I can't call it an RPG. elements are there, but I can't say its an RPG. There's not enough emphasis on the story. There is a story to the world, but if it were an RPG it would drive you to them, not necessarily force it, but quite intentional lead you to discover the history and status of the world. It doesn't, like the dungeon crawl it is, it doesn't much care. The only goal you're given until the lordvessel is advance.

Forum Pirate wrote:The defining attribute of an RPG as I see it, is a focus on storytelling above all else. DKS isn't about storytelling, so I can't call it an RPG. elements are there, but I can't say its an RPG. There's not enough emphasis on the story. There is a story to the world, but if it were an RPG it would drive you to them, not necessarily force it, but quite intentional lead you to discover the history and status of the world. It doesn't, like the dungeon crawl it is, it doesn't much care. The only goal you're given until the lordvessel is advance.

But what of all the item descriptions and NPC dialogues? There is story all around you always you just have to notice it.

Oscar tells you of a prophecy at the start. Every useful NPC that you will need to speak with to gain spells and gear gives you a bit more of the history. Every item you pick up teaches you about the world. The narration explains the setting at the very beginning. Every character has some sort of view of the world that can lead you in different directions. The architectures and areas tell you about the world and the people found within it. The creatures explain what has become of the humans and others who once lived. The bosses help in telling your story, the Chosen Undead's, as well as leading further in. If that isn't story telling, then I have no clue what you mean by the term Forum.

However forum, even without a great emphasis on story, it's still an RPG due to the other elements in the game.

It's kinda like claiming that diabetic chocolate isn't actually chocolate because it has no sugar in it..

Tolvo wrote:Oscar tells you of a prophecy at the start. Every useful NPC that you will need to speak with to gain spells and gear gives you a bit more of the history. Every item you pick up teaches you about the world. The narration explains the setting at the very beginning. Every character has some sort of view of the world that can lead you in different directions. The architectures and areas tell you about the world and the people found within it. The creatures explain what has become of the humans and others who once lived. The bosses help in telling your story, the Chosen Undead's, as well as leading further in. If that isn't story telling, then I have no clue what you mean by the term Forum.

Never been a fan of being bottom paged haha.

Oh. So Forum's argument is that a story is required for an RPG to be an RPG?

A role playing game is where you play it to take a role to go through the game like Reaper said. It's to play as this character. And you don't need a story to do so. You do not need a story to be immersed in the character you play, nor the world you are in. You don't need to have the story in order to feel like you're playing the role of your character.

And thus, you don't need a story for the RPG to be an RPG. Plus, Dark Souls has a story... It's just one you have to look at, not one that's there no matter what you do as you play the game.

It's not Story Playing Game. It's Role Playing Game. How you got them mixed up, I'll never know.

Maybe you should try define a bit of difference between the storytelling of a game, and a games lore.

The items descriptions for example are generally not storytelling as much as they are just lore about the world around you and how it came to be. All RPG's have this, generally in the form of a journal or codex that is updated when locations or items etc are discovered, and most have a lot more than DKS.

A game can have great lore whilst still lacking it's storytelling ability.

Tolvo wrote:

Tolvo wrote:Oscar tells you of a prophecy at the start. Every useful NPC that you will need to speak with to gain spells and gear gives you a bit more of the history. Every item you pick up teaches you about the world. The narration explains the setting at the very beginning. Every character has some sort of view of the world that can lead you in different directions. The architectures and areas tell you about the world and the people found within it. The creatures explain what has become of the humans and others who once lived. The bosses help in telling your story, the Chosen Undead's, as well as leading further in. If that isn't story telling, then I have no clue what you mean by the term Forum.

Never been a fan of being bottom paged haha.

I think he's just too used to sitting through hours of cutscenes and dialogue on other games.

To put in another analogy, saying a game without a certain degree of story telling isn't an RPG is like saying a Robin Reliant isn't really a car because it only has 3 wheels. For those of you who don't know the awesomeness, here's a piccy:

I lvoed MGS4.

Again, you're not driven towards it. I never said a story wasn't there, but its not told, its searched out. Thats the difference. If I played COD and had no idea what the story was, it wouldn't impede my progress, same with DKS. If I played Skyrim without knowing at least part of the numerous stories it has, I'd simply be wandering around trying not to die and wouldn't really accomplish much untill I learned the story.

Have I made the distinction clear yet? You all seem to be having trouble grasping my argument.


Joe gets it, though he seems to disagree. I'm defining RPG as a genre joe, by your definition nearly every game is an RPG, I'm attempting to segregate the genre and the concept.

Tolvo wrote:I loved MGS4.

Fix'd.

And yet despite it's huge amount of storytelling, not many people would classify it as an RPG, would they?

LordRevan wrote:Maybe you should try define a bit of difference between the storytelling of a game, and a games lore.

The items descriptions for example are generally not storytelling as much as they are just lore about the world around you and how it came to be. All RPG's have this, generally in the form of a journal or codex that is updated when locations or items etc are discovered, and most have a lot more than DKS.

A game can have great lore whilst still lacking it's storytelling ability.

There are times when the item descriptions are both. If you read the item description of the Covenant of Artorias ring it tells you that if you wear this ring you'll be able to go into the Abyss just like Artorias once did. So it gives you the lore, it tells of an ancient knight who traversed the Abyss with this sacred ring, but it's also telling you how to progress in the story. That ring might as well be DkS giving you an objective to complete like most traditional RPGs do.

I understand what you are trying to argue Forum, but I just don't see the logic. The story is told to you in a wide variety of ways. And in Skyrim you can easily play the whole game without paying attention to the story. Now, Deus Ex is more so a game where you have to pay attention to the story to progress in certain ways. Skyrim? Point me in a direction, tell me what to kill. Very few games actually require you to know the story to play them.

WhatDoesThePendantDo? wrote:

LordRevan wrote:Maybe you should try define a bit of difference between the storytelling of a game, and a games lore.

The items descriptions for example are generally not storytelling as much as they are just lore about the world around you and how it came to be. All RPG's have this, generally in the form of a journal or codex that is updated when locations or items etc are discovered, and most have a lot more than DKS.

A game can have great lore whilst still lacking it's storytelling ability.

There are times when the item descriptions are both. If you read the item description of the Covenant of Artorias ring it tells you that if you wear this ring you'll be able to go into the Abyss just like Artorias once did. So it gives you the lore, it tells of an ancient knight who traversed the Abyss with this sacred ring, but it's also telling you how to progress in the story. That ring might as well be DkS giving you an objective to complete like most traditional RPGs do.

Yeah I realised that in DKS there are a couple of items that the description is part of the story. Hence the items descriptions for example are generally not storytelling. But the majority of course are not.

Forum Pirate wrote:Again, you're not driven towards it. I never said a story wasn't there, but its not told, its searched out. Thats the difference. If I played COD and had no idea what the story was, it wouldn't impede my progress, same with DKS. If I played Skyrim without knowing at least part of the numerous stories it has, I'd simply be wandering around trying not to die and wouldn't really accomplish much untill I learned the story.

Have I made the distinction clear yet? You all seem to be having trouble grasping my argument.


Joe gets it, though he seems to disagree. I'm defining RPG as a genre joe, by your definition nearly every game is an RPG, I'm attempting to segregate the genre and the concept.

You're probably right in that we just don't understand your side. Then again, we seem to have different basic definitions of what RPG is, and as long as we believe it to be two different things then no amount of arguing the point is really going to matter because it won't be about the issue, it will be about definitions of terms. No matter how much you say it is or say why, at my core I don't believe RPG to, in and of itself, be a genre. It's not that I don't believe in games that are designed for their narrative experience, but I don't believe that that narrative experience is a defining point behind what makes something an RPG.

Long story short, maybe we should just respect each others' opinions and agree to disagree?

I guess I described my "definition" wrong. I tried to use Reaper's, kinda. It's a game where, at it's core, it's a person playing another person, and, as you play, you "are" that person. As I played Luigi's mansion, I felt scared extremely because I was in Luigi's place. Same with Amnesia, though I barely played that game because I am extremely sensitive to that kind of stuff. Don't even get me started on a freaking real demon in my room after watching Paranormal Activity...

Anyway, a Role Playing Game, to me, is a game where you play it to play your character. A CoD game doesn't do that. You don't play that game in order to play your character. You have 5 classes to play depending on the map, you play that game to be better than others, to feel better about yourself, yada yada yada.

By this definition, when people play Dark Souls for just the PvP, you aren't using the game as it was originally intended, which is correct with Dark Souls. This game was ORIGINALLY made to be an RPG.

Did I explain it right?

To me, Forum, the way you're explaining why an RPG needs to have a story, is like saying an RPG has to be like LA Noire, or Heavy Rain, where the story was the main aspect of the game. Where you played it in order to know the story. But RPG's are a game where you play in order to play your character. You can want to play an RPG just to get your stats up to be better, without any want for the story at all. this is why I disliked Skyrim. Because the story was kinda shoved in your face as if it was like LA Noire or Heavy Rain, but then it suddenly ended, and it wasn't even good, and you were left with "what now? I didn't even care in the first place.." I played that game in order to read journals in caves after that haha! The aspect to make your player better was just cut off so fast, because I didn't need to.

And that's another reason why I loved Kingdom Hearts. By stopping at every mob, you made your character better. By playing the game, and not skipping enemies, you worked at making Sora better, and playing this character. Though, I'd say Kingdom Hearts is half a Story Playing Game than an RPG. And yes, I kinda just made up Story Playing Game in order to define an RPG. And Skyrim was kinda trying to be a Story Playing Game, but failed at it, unlike Kindgom Hearts, which has an extremely amazing, heart jerking story.

Reaperfan wrote:Long story short, maybe we should just respect each others' opinions and agree to disagree?

This is always the best, and wisest course of action.

It doesn't tell a story though, it leaves scraps of diary pages all over the place. Skyrim may have been a bad example but I stand by my point.

How about heavy rain. Thats my definition of rpg. Its almost sole focus is the story. Now must a game exclude nearly every other potential aspect to be an RPG? Of course not, but if the story isn't the driving force its not an RPG. Its a shooter or a dungeon crawl or puzzle game, with RPG elements, instead of an RPG with shooter elements.

Make sense now? Thats how I classify games.

WhatDoesThePendantDo? wrote:

Reaperfan wrote:Long story short, maybe we should just respect each others' opinions and agree to disagree?

This is always the best, and wisest course of action.

Not always. I want to keep going because there's no reason to stop. Really, I like debating, and I have zero emotion in on this. Why would we need stop because we respect each others' opinion? We already do. We did before we even started.

JoeBroski09 wrote:Anyway, a Role Playing Game, to me, is a game where you play it to play your character. A CoD game doesn't do that. You don't play that game in order to play your character. You have 5 classes to play depending on the map, you play that game to be better than others, to feel better about yourself, yada yada yada.

I know it's unheard of. But COD has a story mode too you know? It's not just multiplayer lol

WhatDoesThePendantDo? wrote:

Reaperfan wrote:Long story short, maybe we should just respect each others' opinions and agree to disagree?

This is always the best, and wisest course of action.

Oh and this is probably best ^^

Forum Pirate wrote:It doesn't tell a story though, it leaves scraps of diary pages all over the place. Skyrim may have been a bad example but I stand by my point.

How about heavy rain. Thats my definition of rpg. Its almost sole focus is the story. Now must a game exclude nearly every other potential aspect to be an RPG? Of course not, but if the story isn't the driving force its not an RPG. Its a shooter or a dungeon crawl or puzzle game, with RPG elements, instead of an RPG with shooter elements.

Make sense now? Thats how I classify games.

Damnit bottom post

Heavy Rain, isn't an RPG, it's interactive drama.

To me, the way to simply solve it is just admit that the term "RPG" is used for "Fantasy". For some reason they have just been called RPG instead of fantasy games, probably because then it would alienate the general population from the genre and be stigmatised.

It also kinda proves my point that if you search on wikipedia "Fantasy games", the article that comes up is RPG, just saiyan, try it yourself.