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"We want Call of Duty's audience"
Why. Why would you try to reach for a FPS' audience when you're making a roleplaying game. Why would anyone who's interested in what's pretty much an online sport be interested in a game where you kill dragons.
Even if they came right out and said, "We just want to make as much money as possible, and Call of Duty has the biggest audience out there, so we're trying to make this game appeal to them" then I'd respect these developers just a little bit more than if they tried to justify it by claiming that Call of Duty is actually an RPG.
And before you say "FLANDERIZED QUOTE sarcastic comment," BioWare actually said this, and Todd Howard almost said it in the same words.
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This is why we need to bust up the video game medium. Roleplaying games should not be trying to compete with virtual sports. Third-person shooters should not be trying to compete with Angry Birds.
Trying to have two entirely different types of experience compete with one another is like Paramount saying, "Yeah, 'A Song of Ice and Fire' is selling, and we want their audience, so we're replacing 50% of our movies with text, so we can appeal to that audience."
Say the average COD player buys an RPG and likes it because it appeals to his tastes or whatever. He asks to himself "are there more games like this?" so he branches out and starts playing more RPGs. Suddenly the company that made the first game has another loyal customer and the guy in question now enjoys a genre of games that he was missing out on.
This was, allegedly, the thing Nintendo was trying to do with the Wii. Using casual games to reel in non-gamers and slowly introduce them to more and more hardcore games. In the long run bolstering the overall gamer population.
That would be true, if every goddamn RPG wasn't trying to get COD's audience.
The only game out there that seems to be actually trying to deepen its RPG experience is Mass Effect 3, and it wasn't an RPG to begin with.
Or the fact that a genre that evolved from tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons might not appeal to the people who pushed tabletop gamers into lockers in high school.
^ He's talking about WRPGs. No, JRPGs are going in the opposite direction.
"This was, allegedly, the thing Nintendo was trying to do with the Wii. Using casual games to reel in non-gamers and slowly introduce them to more and more hardcore games. In the long run bolstering the overall gamer population."
Didn't work on the Wii, either. The only 3rd party games that sold were Ubisoft's casual games and titles based on already famous franchises.
I don't play JRPGs, for obvious reasons.
Also, they've got that hack Nomura and his disciples working on character design, but that's a whole other story.
I'd rather play an RPG that's pandering to COD players than a modern JRPG.
^JRPGs aren't just Square Enix you know.
And it's not just RPGs. It seems like the creators of every famous stealth game have simultaniously decided that stealth games are obselete and that gamers only want action.
Maybe. But the pizza cutter sword thing sort of blots out everything else.
COD and TF2 do have RPG elements. Which I hate. But they can do whatever they like within their own FPS genre. What I don't want is my pet genre to be diluted in a vain attempt to gain the audience of an entirely different kind of game.
I'm not saying that RPGs are inherently better vide-
Okay, well I am saying that, but here's the reason: Video games are an inherently interactive medium. Choices and the ability to change the story take advantage of the medium in order to tell a better, more immersive story. Any game that doesn't offer those sorts of options is only partially making use of the interactive medium.
RPGs do it more often. If there was an FPS that allowed you to change your story, make deep and lasting decisions, I'd play the fuck out of it. But as it is, most FPSs are really just electronic sports. They're fun, but I don't feel like they make the best use of the medium.
^^ Presumably it's a 2D game.
RPGs don't make for better or more immersive stories. A lot of them are straight-up generic and stuff like Oblivion is so illusion-breaking I couldn't bear it.
Quite honestly, I think WRPGs limit themselves with the boxes they've trapped themselves in. (not that other genres don't) and they're dying out not because people are stupid, but because most of them are boring and so are their stories.
The idea that more choices and options makes for a better story is a woefully dumb one as well.
Deus Ex was an Action RPG, like Morrowind. The only thing it has in common with modern FPSs is its first person perspective. Oh, and guns.
^ I never played Silent Hill because I don't have a PS3, although I've heard good things about it.
Also, Oblivion isn't the perfect example of a WRPG. That award goes to games like Baldur's Gate, Ultima and Deus Ex.