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Editorials and Features

How a JRPG Fanatic Put 128 Hours into Oblivion & Loved It   Article by: SophinaK

Editorial: How a JRPG Fanatic Put 128 Hours into Oblivion & Loved It [Written 2008-07-21]

Oblivion. I bought it. I let it sit on the shelf and stared at it for a while. It's hard to let go of prejudices, even in something as silly as game genres. But eventually, finally, I played it. And it was good. I have always been a fan of role-playing games, even before I really knew what they were. As a fourth-grader, I tried very hard to make Oregon Trail into a RPG, agonizing for ages over the choice of name and profession and every supply I put into my cart. My parents were of the generation who heard as youngsters about the evils of Dungeons & Dragons, and so real RPGs were hard to come by in our household. No Final Fantasy, and not even any Zelda until I was old enough to start making my own purchase decisions. When that finally happened I was in college, during the post-Final Fantasy VII heyday of the JRPG, and I snapped it up and loved it threadbare like a favorite teddy bear. I went back and played through the cIassic SNES RPGs like Chrono Trigger and EarthBound. I savored Final Fantasy IX and X. I bought Disgaea and Dark Cloud and anything else I could get my greedy hands on. While I had loved Super Mario World and the other platformers and puzzle games I'd played as a child, they didn't have the emphasis on story and character that I was finding in my precious beloved JRPGs. And then there came a game called Morrowind. I grew very excited reading the case: hours upon hours of sidequests, open roaming around the world, and a character I could design. I snatched it up -- even though I didn't own an Xbox -- and carted it straight away to a friend's house where I planned to spend blissful hours recreating myself as a fictional denizen of a fully realized world. I hated it. The game was so dark, I couldn't see anything. The first person controls made me dizzy and nauseous. I kept getting lost. I couldn't figure out what on earth I was supposed to be doing. My character had no personality, and was there even a story here? I sure couldn't find it. This was not an RPG as I knew it; this was some kind of weird hybrid that felt far more like those befuddling action games than the bright-colored, melodramatic, turn-based bliss I'd expected. From that day on I became a purist. I didn't love RPGs. I loved Japanese RPGs. Anything else was an insult to my clearly superior good taste, and maybe even my intelligence. Bethesda was a dirty word. I eschewed anything that boasted open-ended gameplay or real time combat. I avoided MMOs like they carried the plague. It was the peak of the PlayStation2's reign. There were plenty of JRPGs pure enough for the purest purist; I didn't have any reason to look elsewhere. Then, slowly, things began to change. The first thing I discovered was Kingdom Hearts. This was exactly the kind of game I'd been trying to avoid, it merged my favorite genre (and, gasp, my favorite developer as well!) with some kind of mongrel combat system that involved swinging an actual sword instead of choosing from a menu. Sometimes I even had to control the camera myself, rather than the game finding the most appropriate angle for me. Blasphemy! But in the end, the irresistible lure of SquareEnix won out. I played the game. It was different, but I liked it. The next discovery came as I found people to play tabletop RPGs with. This was something I'd never had before. I came from the very conservative sort of family that looked on all that as some sort of voodoo or paganism, and I went to a college that was very constrictive culturally and reflected a similar viewpoint. So I was already a college graduate when I discovered the pencil and paper RPG. It was a miraculous discovery. I started with a game called Conspiracy X, a conspiracy-theory/supernatural/aliens themed game with a similar feel to the X-files, but without David Duchovny. When our GM moved to China, I fell in with a group of friends playing D&D. The details of character creation and inventory, and the structure of the quests, and the meticulousness of the storytelling hit me like a ton of bricks... I was in love. Again. It was like a video game that didn't require quick reflexes, and I was in charge. Bliss. It was this new familiarity with D&D that paved the way for me to love Knights of the Old Republic. I looked it over. I saw videos. I didn't like the idea of the interface; I didn't think it'd have enough strategy. I never would have tried it if my friends hadn't cajoled me into it with the promise that the character creation was "just like D&D". It turns out it wasn't exactly like it, but close enough that I felt an immediate familiarity and ease in the system. I didn't get to finish KOTOR then; I had just enough time to get a taste. And that was good enough. KOTOR made me reconsider Final Fantasy XII, another game I'd been disproportionately disappointed in as I heard more and more about it. I didn't want a Final Fantasy title with (as I mentally termed it) "hands-free" party members. I didn't want to give up random encounters and the semblance of turn-based combat I'd been clinging to even with KOTOR. But it had a wait mode and beautiful, easy to see, bright landscapes, with none of the samey dark caverns and corridors that I associated with "open world" games. And again, I was wrong. FFXII was awesome. I had good control of all my party members. It was just as strategic as its predecessors, and I really enjoyed it. That left only one thing left I wouldn't touch. The game I'd been quite vocal in denouncing based on the shortcomings of its forebears: Oblivion. I bought it. I let it sit on the shelf and stared at it for a while. It's hard to let go of prejudices, even in something as silly as game genres. But eventually, finally, I played it. And it was good. The storyline didn't make me want to cry at any point, in fact, I was kind of bored with the story at times, but I never got bored with the gameplay. I loved the music, I loved the visuals, I loved the Thieves Guild quests. I bought some of the additional quests from the Marketplace. I put in 128 hours and I'm not done yet. And now I find I can't go back. At least, not all the way back. When I played Eternal Sonata, the lack of camera control irked me so badly I wanted to throw the whole disc out the window. When I was playing Shadow Hearts: Covenant some of the linearity really got on my nerves. I think the "Western" vs. "Japanese" RPG sub-genres are starting to come together more and more. Games like FFXII that take something from each camp are going to enrich the genre as a whole. The RPG niche market needs the change, for better or for worse. And for my part, I say better.

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