Baldur’s Gate is very much indirectly controlled
What makes an RPG?
- Thread starter Bowsette Plus-Ultra
- Start date
It... absolutely is not. You give specific commands to all your party members, including which actions they take, words they speak, and which spells they cast.
in the context of Smash, don't you yourself call Sora an RPG rep? b/c Kingdom Hearts itself is an action RPG
the implementation of stats is something to consider too, stats may not make an RPG but they do all have stats
Right. You have to give your party members commands, as opposed to directly controlling them.
I think you're confusing gameplay perspective with gameplay. You very much directly control the actions of your party members.
Doesn’t KH also require you to indirectly control Donald and Goofy as well as use menus for spells? I guess it’s kinda in a grey area but there’s definitely some indirect control in there.
No I could definitely bring up a few games without stats, at least in the sense that you’re talking about, that I’d definitely consider RPG’s. Sid Meiers Pirates is a go to.
No I’m not. If you have to tell a party member what to do instead of actually taking control of them yourself then it’s indirect. Clicking a spot in the level and then watching your character walk there is pretty definitively indirect control.
Well, you do control them directly whenever you plug in a controller or just hold the mouse button down. Additionally, whichever one you control is treated as the main character in dialogue, gameplay, and cutscenes. I'd call that pretty direct control.
no, Donald and Goofy are AI controlled (hence all the memes of them screwing you over), and the spell selection happens in real time, you're in full control of Sora and wacking things around
yeah I really can't speak for Hideo Kojima's Tom Clancy's Tyler Perry's John Carpenter's Sam Raimi's Sid Meier's Pirates, but looking it up I'm seeing stuff like strategy and action adventure, sometimes RPG
Hmm. Maybe you do have a point here. I guess I haven’t seen enough of it to really know.
Why would one specific character being in a cutscene or dialogue have anything to do with whether a game is directly or indirectly controlled?
Maybe I’m just not too familiar with the series, I don’t remember any of that from what I’ve played.
Well you’re pretty clearly roleplaying as a pirate, your actions as a pirate actively have an effect on the world, and every aspect beyond the occasional ship battle is indirectly controlled. I feel like it checks off every mark that the three of us have proposed to be a requirement minus the stat system.
All party members appear in cutscenes, but whichever one was being directly controlled at the time is treated as the one dictating the conversation in the cutscenes. You still select all the responses, but the speaker can be different. So, direct control over the character and stuff.
Once again, I wouldn’t call that direct control. Lets say that the same thing happened in, say, Fire Emblem. Whichever unit you just moved on the grid into another one now initiates a conversation instead of a battle. That unit is still a part of the conversation and you now have the dialogue options as if they’re the ones talking. Fire Emblem is about as indirectly controlled as it gets, is it now all of a sudden directly controlled as soon as that unit appears in dialogue?
It's directly controlled at all points. You're always directly controlling at least one character, except during combat where you directly control all of them (or during forced turn-based mode where you also directly control everyone).
I'd have to say the lack of a stat system is what's keeping from being fully acknowledged as an RPG then
IGN
Wikipedia
Steam
Wikipedia
Steam
That’s not directly controlling it at any point whatsoever. You commanded it to move to a location, and then it moved. You didn’t make it walk there yourself.