The modern video game RPG has been around for nearly two decades now, reaching their current level of popularity in no small part thanks to modern marketing techniques and the outreach of flagship games such as Baldur's Gate II and Final Fantasy VII. Over the past decade, consumers, designers and self-important windbags strove to classify different “styles” of the video game RPG and create from the broader market a kind of RPG taxonomy. Generally, this has been successful-- no-one will dispute that Fire Emblem is a strategy RPG, or that Shining Tears is an action RPG-- except for games and series such as Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls and Neverwinter Nights (“traditional” RPGs, for lack of a better term). The only clear and generally agreed upon classification within this group is the difference between “JRPGs” (Japanese RPGs) and “sandbox RPGs” (“Non-linear” or “Western” RPGs). This taxonomy fails, however, because it is deceptive, overly broad, and at best hides the true nature of the game in question.

Yet, there are people who swear by one “group” and despise the other, sometimes leading to faux-crusades as gamers line up on opposite sides and attempt to not-so-calmly explain why those who prefer the other “style” of traditional RPG are both stupid and wrong. Leaving aside the ridiculous notion that one type of game is somehow intrinsically “correct,” there is an important question at play in this market: are the consumers (gamers) specialized for one type of traditional RPG, or generalized enough so that there may exist a traditional RPG that would appeal to the entire market. This may appear to be idle speculation, but the video game RPG market is worth millions of dollars, and the expansion of any developer's install base would almost certainly lead to higher profit.

From a consumer's standpoint, however, it is interesting to clearly highlight what we look for and what we like. In this and future articles, I will be taking a reductivist and critical look at popular traditional RPGs in an effort to discern what separates them from their brethren. To do so, we are going to need to define some terms and develop a sound methodology. This bit is a kind of boring and long, but important. You don't absolutely need to read it if you want to skip to the meat, but you probably should anyway.