Justin: Hello, and welcome to our second edition of the RPGamer news roundtable. We have a slightly different panel than we did last time, and I'd like to give everyone an opportunity to introduce themselves.

Andrew: I'm Andrew Long, head of news, and I'm back by default!

Googleshng: I'm Googleshng, back by a scheduling fluke.

Justin: I'm Justin Weiss, news roundtable director, and also back by default

Matt: I'm Matt Stuckwisch, resident mediaite, back for another round of thought provoking analysis

Michael: I'm Michael Bischoff, another mediaite, here for my first go at the Roundtable.

Seán: I'm Seán Michael Peters, and I run the editorials section and the message forums.

Justin: All right. Now, a quick look at our upcoming list will reveal that there are quite a few RPGs coming out for the next-generation consoles. With enhanced graphical capabilities, more powerful sound engines, and mass storage devices, these consoles give RPG designers a chance to create completely immersive worlds. However, most next-gen RPGs seem to be little more than graphical upgrades of last generation's gameplay styles. How well do you think RPGs have made this transition between generations and do you see any RPGs pushing the envelope in the near future, using the next gen consoles to their full potential?

Googleshng: I think that technical muscle is, and always has been, pretty irrelevant to RPGs honestly. The best received RPGs are those that either offer up innovative, challenging gameplay, or a very engrossing story. Neither of those need graphics or sound at all when you get right down to it, and if you look back, you'll notice the truly great RPGs hold up just fine with prettier stuff coming out.

Seán: I feel that RPGs have pretty much squandered the freedom they've been given, choosing to utilize the larger storage capacity and power of the current systems to focus on aesthetic issues rather than add depth to the game world. I'm all for pretty graphics, but they hardly add to my immersion if the world's detail is still mired in the cartridge era. That said, Project Ego for the Xbox seems to be taking some large steps forward in using the hard drive to store a comparatively immense amount of variables, letting your decisions, actions, and their consequences actually shape the world and your character.

Matt: Even if we were to look at the graphics, I don't think "using the consoles to their fullest" is a well though out way of thinking of it all. To paraphrase an artist I know of, Cédric Trojani, you may have the best paintbrush, but I guarantee you that a master artist can do better than you using a cheap paintbrush. Hence I still believe that some of the graphics presented on the Super Nintendo are better than even PS2/GC/XBox graphics because they can fit the situations at hand better. Just because you can do complicated things doesn't mean you should. Less can be better.

Michael: There are definitely developers out there who will surely take advantage of the power of next-gen consoles. Graphical and audio enhancements are always a given as they naturally evolve with the hardware. RPGamers aren't usually known to demand the prettiest eye candy in the first place, so I believe what the community wants are new gameplay innovations.

Michael: With the introduction of hard drives in consoles, online play, as well as the Nintendo GameCube-Game Boy Advance linkup we could be looking at such innovations coming to fruition in the near future. It will surely be interesting to see what Nintendo does with the new Legend of Zelda game for GameCube, and what part the Game Boy Advance linkup will take part in it.

Andrew: I'm not too sure that things will be changing too drastically anytime soon, though. People are used to the conventions of RPGs that exist now, and until someone manages to work gameplay changes in effectively, there probably won't be much of an effort to innovate. I think in the end that money is going to speak- it's easier, and probably cheaper, to continue pumping out games with prettier graphics and little substance than to actually put some work into making them more fun to play. That said, the next-gen games I have played thus far have been reasonably good, so I'm not saying things are going into the crapper, by any means.

Googleshng: That's a good point. RPGs have changed less than any other genre in the history of gaming. I mean, aside from the odd one-shot gameplay innovation here and there, there's nothing in the RPGs of today that wasn't in the 8-bit ones. Heck, we've LOST some elements in fact.

Justin: That's true. RPGs are one of the few genres that regularly receive remakes/re-releases, since it is guaranteed to earn money.

Googleshng: Plus the gameplay has been essentially the same forever.

Seán: Provided, of course, that you ignore the so-called Action RPG.

Michael: I think RPGamers are still waiting for their own Super Mario 64 so to say: A game which radically redefines the genre overnight.

Matt: I think this "redefining the genre" was most recently tried with MMORPGs. However, the mistake with these was that the real RPG elements that were kept were the action elements, which can change greatly between games, while leaving out the story elements, which is really what first defined RPGs. Hence, I believe Googleshng is very correct in saying that RPGs have lost some elements.