Diablo vs. Arcanum

I would rather say that without constant interaction with the world, and it reacting to your actions, it is not an role playing game but an action game.

Saying that you are playing a RPG just because you are imagining your self into the character, is about as much RPG as reading a good book (yes I imagine my self in the book if it can pul me in, like a good book should). I seriously dissagre with that.

 

I agree with J_K that the basic definition of an RPG, is that you act out a role in a set environment. Therefor you might call a FPS a RPG. But I however think that a game has to have some character evolving, and player controllable storyline in order to be a RPG. Another reason to border the RPG definition is that you need some form of classification in todays exploding gamesmarket. You might say that all RTS,strategy and management essentially are chess spinnoffs, but then the gameclassificationnavigation(fancy word?) would get seriously screwed up. In order to describe a game you need some more or less defined boundries to place the game within.

on the Diablo/Arcanum: I hugely agree with Silverforce!!

- Zen

 

Yeah you REALLY have to have clear cut lines for the differences between rpg's and fps's and such. Personally I draw the line at what is the majority of the game spent at? FPS's are shoot em up games, so even if it has fancy xp and all that crap but you spend ALL your time shooting up crap, its still an fps