LogFAQs > #979944638

So what I was talking about was back in the 90's, when somebody told you the game was an RPG, you had a number of checkboxes that it was probably gonna hit most of. Story-focused. Party-based. Turn-based. Town/dungeon structure. Swords and magic. Etc. None of those things, of course, were strict requirements. The genre as a whole got its identity from its tabletop ancestry. And that much remains true today. So it's not like anything has changed in that regard.

But what HAS changed is the scope of that tabletop influence. The last RACER I played had experience and skill trees. I've played scifi shooters *coughMassEffectcough* that for some reason people refuse to let me call shooters simply because you can talk to people and level up. Shredder's Revenge? Experience, leveling--RPG. Arkham City? Experience, skill trees.

Most people wouldn't really argue that my two examples from the other topic, Resident Evil 4 Remake and some Sonic game, would count as RPGs even if they do have some of the mechanics (or most of the examples in the previous paragraph for that matter), because ultimately the determination of genre is at more of a aesthetic level than a mechanic level. That's using the game design definition of the term "aesthetic" that summarizes the overall feel and appeal rather than just how it looks. For example, you do level up in Shredder's Revenge, but that alone doesn't make it an RPG, because at an aesthetic level, it's still a game where you beat up hordes of enemies just because they're in the way and not so much about... uh...

What are RPGs about again? Oh, that's right, this is one genre that's determined by its influences instead of its aesthetic. Which is probably why it's gotten so out of hand in terms of scope.

All I know is, when Final Fantasy 4 and Mass Effect 2 are the same genre according to pretty much everyone, well, what isn't?