After making the MJ post I realised I had used up basically the only thing that's been pissing me off lately, so I've come back yet again to video games. This time I'm going to explore a genre that I play probably more that anything (with racing games a very close 2nd) RPG's (role playing games).
-Cliche character types: This is something that's been happening since probably the late 90's and Final Fantasy is the biggest culprit I can think of. Thinking of the post-1998 FF's that I've played [7,8,10(aka X)and 12(aka XII)] all have basically the same types of main characters. The rebellious but slightly stupid lead (Cloud in 7, Squall in 8, Tidus in 10 (X), and Vaan in 12). The battle hardened stoic (Barret in 7, Auron in 10). The quiet shy girl, the main guys love interest (Aries (technically Tifa too, but she's a little to outgoing) in 7, Rinoa in 8, Yuna in 10, Ashe in 12). The "spunky" loli type girl (Yuffie in 7, Selphie in 8, Rikku in 10, Penelo in 12). Look, I like fapping to Aries-Tifa-Yuna "rule 34" pics as much as the next nerd, but damn does it always have to be the same character set for every fucking game. I mean why not just call it Final Fantasy: Generic Hero Story (with fetish female charater types)...maybe it's too big for the cover. I mean, it doesn't really matter to me, the main appeal of RPG's is basically spending 50 hours "leveling up" your party so you can kick ass on the final boss, then another 30-40 hours leveling up more to beat all the insanely super hard "secret" bosses (think Ruby or Emerald weapon from FF 7, or Catastrophe from 10) the designers put in to rob us nerds of any shred of a social life we may have had. It's just sad to think that with all the awesome graphics and battle systems and unique monsters, the main characters of the game all fit nicely in maybe 8 different groups. Also, what's the deal with all the "girly-guy" leads of basically every Final Fantasy after 7, Squall, Tidus, seriously! These guys don't look like heroes they look like metrosexuals on a journey to buy some D&G sunglasses.
-Don't treat me like I'm retarded: I've been playing a game called Enchanted Arms for the Xbox 360 for the last week or so, and overall it's decent, but one glaring flaw is, it treats you like your fucking 5. Not that 5 year olds don't play RPG's (I know I sure did), but there's no god damn reason that I need a 2 minute long conversation about how to swim, or some other basic task, when I've been playing for 10 hours already. I have the fucking instructions (not that I needed to read them) and in there it says "A button = Action", that's all I fucking need, besides the fact that when I walk next to the shore a little subtitle shows up that says "A:swim", so why do I need the fucking dialogue. Yet the game insists on telling you (in a somewhat condescending way) that you need to hit the "A" button to do *whatever* when you come to a situation you haven't been in yet. The icing on the cake being that you get the options of "I understand" or "could you tell me again", I think that if someone picks option 2 the game should stop and the 360 should format it's hard drive, then display a message of "your obviously a complete fucking retard, kill yourself and do us all a favor.", then burst into flames (really it's just 1 step up from the "red ring of death" anyway). Just because you designed the main character to be an "idiot who just happens to be good at fighting", you don't have to design the dialogue so it look like I'M the idiot, fuck you.
Things I like about RPG's:
For something a little different I'll put up some things I like about RPG's that deserve a mention.
-"open world": This is fucking excellent, the first game that comes to mind is Elders Scrolls 3: Morrowind for Xbox/PC (also ES4: Oblivion for 360/PS3/PC). Since it was one of (if not the first) RPG I played that used this type of gameplay format. You basically get dropped in the world and what you do is up to you, wanna be a Knight, join a guild, wanna be a murderer, kill off a whole town of people and steal all their shit, go for it. There are main quests and side quests, but you can do them, or not, it's up to you, it breaks away from the "Go to Pecker Mountain and get the Sword of Giant Testicles, then head to the Hall of Assholes and defeat Lord Dipshitium" format of most RPG's.
-Middle English Dialogue: This is mostly just for nostalgia sake, but I love RPG's that use middle English, like Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) for NES. I never get enough "thou", "hast", "shall", etc. It just adds that correct amount of fantasy feeling to RPG's that makes them that extra bit nerdy, and it's delicious. Not many games still have that, and it's kinda sad. Since, to me, there are few things better than getting wiped out by a really bad assed boss and getting the status message of "thy party hast been defeated".
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