Japanese role-playing games don’t command the respect that they once had. But, why is that? BioWare, a leader in Western RPG development, believes that Japanese role-playing games don’t innovate, meaning that “lack of evolution” is the reason for the JRPG decline, in both sales and quality.
“The fall of the JRPG in large part is due to a lack of evolution, a lack of progression,” BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk told Destructoid last week. “They kept delivering the same thing over and over. They make the dressing better, they look prettier, but it’s still the same experience”.
“My favorite thing, it’s funny when you still see it, but the joke of some of the dialogue systems where it asks, ‘do you wanna do this or this,’ and you say no. ‘Do you wanna do this or this?’ No. ‘Do you wanna do this or this?’ No. Lemme think — you want me to say ‘yes.’ And that, unfortunately, really characterized the JRPG.”
“We have big debates on whether GTA is an RPG, for example”, he adds. “It’s got all the elements, it just doesn’t have the numbers. And what gamers here want is that higher depth, that higher integration of features…Mass Effect 2 is in some ways a continuation of that evolution.”