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The next sentence of this editorial will likely make
you draw back in
revulsion.
"What about a console RPG, with all that overworld
travel, and epic stories,
and items and stuff but with a fighting game for
the battle system!"
I can almost see the look of horror on your face.
Will this editorial give
this most dangerous and immature fantasy, that of
mixing the pure line of RPGs
with some other genre, the light of day?
I won't mince words: when I hear the above
sentence, I imagine some young
whippersnapper who's just come off of playing his
first RPG (probably a Final
Fantasy) and thinks he knows the ins-and-outs of the
genre. Even though he hasn'
t paid his dues to the RPG genre, he'll think he
has the right to dream up
some abhorrent combination between an RPG and some
other genre. He'll evidently
be ignorant of the great RPGs of yore, all of which
did perfectly fine without
a Street Fighter battle system, thank you!
An RPG with a battle engine that's basically
Tekken? Sacrilege! Heretic! Burn
them at the stake! Might as well combine an RPG
with, well, flight
simulators! Or perhaps the sports genre can do more
to corrupt the sacred RPG
experience! Or those silly war boardgames, those
strategy titles!
What? There already are Strategy RPGs? Do you
mean to say that Tactics Ogre
and Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem have
betrayed us to other genres?
That must be a one-time thing yes, surely an
anomaly to the natural order that
only came about because strategy games are easy to
turn into RPGs.
But Natsume! That infuriating company with it's
domestic agenda has gone and
given us an RPG centered around fishing called
Legend Of The River King! And
they've given us a farm-simulation RPG, Harvest
Moon! Surely enough, many of
you have committed RPGamer adultery with that
(undeservingly) popular game
series for hours on end What next? A game
combining RPGs with Final Fight? A
bastardized hybrid like American Technos' River
City Ransom for the NES?
To think that such sinful and rebellious half-bloods
exist! And as if their
mere preesence weren't bad enough these games have
stolen recognition meant for
pure-blooded RPGs. Animal Crossing, a
"communication" game, as Nintendo puts
it, stole, I repeat, STOLE, the 2002 Academy for
Interactive Arts and
Sciences awards for Best RPG of 2002. This crime
occurred when Animal Crossing was
competing against the popular and stalwartly
conventional FFX! That award was FFX
's manifest destiny, by nature and by birth!
Then, to add insult to injury, there are those
who'd say that these
mixed-blood games have done some amount of good for
RPGs. Ha! Such people will think
that RPGs benefit by being combined with other
genres! They'll delude themselves
into thinking that half-blooded games will be better
than any pure-blooded
game solely by the false virtues of
"innovation." They probably believe that
RPGs can "evolve" and "change" into
something beyond than a perfectly
blue-blooded condition.
They might say that Harvest Moon taught us that RPGs
don't have to be about
saving the world, or even fighting monsters. RPGs
could instead revolve around
pulling out vegetables from the ground and an
ultimate quest for wife, child,
and that killer pad of your dreams. They'll
suggest that RPGs can be grounded
in domestic pursuits and small neighborhoods instead
of always being about
saving the world, or physical conflict. And then
they'll claim that Strategy
games benefit us by giving us the added headache of
worrying about our character's
relative positions whereas before we had the simpler
rank and file 18th
century battle lines. And even Natsume's
illegitimate sports-RPG sacrilege Legend
of The River King will be used to suggest that the
mixing of the genres is
tolerable! In this game our income had a logical and
settled source: catching and
selling fish. Gone are the days of freely
slaughtering dozens upon dozens of
woodland creatures simply to buy a new pair of
boots: the non-believers have
won a victory by cross-breeding RPGs with the most
pedantic and somnambulistic
of endeavors: fishing.
These unbelievers will always have their fun by
imagining RPGs mixed up with
racing games or card games (good lord card game
RPGs ) or whatever else
happens to be the flavor of the day. They will
always delude themselves into
thinking that RPGs can be wed with other genres, and
that the bastard offspring of
such a heresy will be an improvement on
pure-blooded, conventional RPGs. Such
groundless fantasies will, surely, end up harmless
like so many Tobal or Mortal
Kombat: Mythologies games.
But to suggest a typical console RPG, but using a
Tekken-style fighting
system instead of any traditional turn-based system!
Perhaps in that sacrilege, the
young, disrespectful youth of the RPG community see
a way to dispense with
the plodding feeling of traditional RPG battle
systems. Perhaps they are
grasping for a way to make RPG battles visceral,
lightning-paced, highly personal,
and increasingly tied to a player's hand-eye
coordination.
But to think that such a game could exist is not
only heretical and immature,
it's just ridiculous. RPG-simulations have been
made, RPG-strategies have
been done, RPG-sports have been attempted, RPG
cardgames have been touched on.
But an RPG-Fighting game will NEVER see the light of
day. Even if one believed
that mixing genres wouldn't be the worst sin to
commit against the RPG genre
it should be clear to anyone by now that such a
thing has no precedent.
Anyone who thinks otherwise probably trusts in
similar heresies such as the
world being round, and probably rejects the fact
that the Earth is the center
of the Universe.
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