If there is one outcome, remove the guise of control. Have my character speak for me. I don’t fucking care. I’d rather feel like my character is doing or saying something I wouldn’t personally do than for me to be given a fucking pop-up that means nothing and is just there to reinforce a self-insert facade. At least make a bit out of it if you’re gonna do it. It’s genuinely one of the worst pieces of game design outside of legitimately predatory behavior.
That’s just kinda how it is in a lot of RPGs these days. So many games are labeled as role-playing games when they’re actually an action game where you get to pick your abilities. Like there’s no role-playing element to Borderlands or Vermintide, other than the role you play in the party (i.e. tank/sniper/dps). You don’t have to think like your character and what choices you’re allowed to make rarely matter in the long run.
I mean, idk, as a JRPG fan the whole “True RPG” discourse annoys the hell out of me. Yeah sure JRPGs are linear narratives usually but it still has its historical origins routed in the first RPGs the genre just developed differently because of Japanese culture.
Tho idk this is a particular bugaboo of mine because of a close friend of mine who Ive argued with about this subject a lot. She has what to me is an incredibly narrow view of what an “RPG” is.
I guess I should have specified the branch of the RPG genre. As much as I rag on western RPGs for the lack of choices, I’m still a huge sucker for Dragon Quest and early Final Fantasy.
