Board 8 > Is Dark Souls an rpg?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think yes, but interested what others think

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Assuming you're not distinguishing between action RPGs, strategy RPGs, etc.
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Yeah, I'd say so.

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Assuming you're not distinguishing between action RPGs, strategy RPGs, etc.

putting them in a pot and calling it rpg soup

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Yes

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Obviously yes

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Every game is an rpg
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No. It's an action game with some rpg mechanics. It doesn't have the narrative to really make it an RPG. And before you go like "oh but the narrative is in like the environment and atmosphere" give me a break. Dark Souls has a lot of lore packed into the game but its actual story telling is a piece of garbage.

Skyrim, while not having the same depth of combat that an action game like Dark Souls has, manages to pack the atmosphere, lore, narrative, and presents it in a form that is pretty unmistakable for an rpg.

A game like Zelda 2 (one that dark souls is commonly compared to), leans more to the rpg spectrum because the narrative is a bit better (although maybe not strong enough to call it like an rpg. If zelda 2 had Zelda 3 and onwards story it would fall more firmly into that camp).

Yes, it is an action RPG; its primary mechanics trace their lineage back to pen-and-paper RPGs (though far removed) and it would not confuse the average person to refer to it as an action RPG, therefore it is appropriate to describe it as one.

KokoroAkechi posted...

No. It's an action game with some rpg mechanics. It doesn't have the narrative to really make it an RPG. And before you go like "oh but the narrative is in like the environment and atmosphere" give me a break. Dark Souls has a lot of lore packed into the game but its actual story telling is a piece of garbage.

Skyrim, while not having the same depth of combat that an action game like Dark Souls has, manages to pack the atmosphere, lore, narrative, and presents it in a form that is pretty unmistakable for an rpg.

A game like Zelda 2 (one that dark souls is commonly compared to), leans more to the rpg spectrum because the narrative is a bit better (although maybe not strong enough to call it like an rpg. If zelda 2 had Zelda 3 and onwards story it would fall more firmly into that camp).

Ah, I see you haven't played Zelda 2

what little story there is in souls is a billion times more interesting than all the blandness in skyrim could ever hope to be.

Since when are RPGs story games? Plenty are really focused on gameplay.

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paperwarior posted...

Since when are RPGs story games? Plenty are really focused on gameplay.

They might focus on gameplay but that doesnt mean they are devoid of story or storytelling.

KokoroAkechi posted...

No. It's an action game with some rpg mechanics. It doesn't have the narrative to really make it an RPG. And before you go like "oh but the narrative is in like the environment and atmosphere" give me a break. Dark Souls has a lot of lore packed into the game but its actual story telling is a piece of garbage.

Skyrim, while not having the same depth of combat that an action game like Dark Souls has, manages to pack the atmosphere, lore, narrative, and presents it in a form that is pretty unmistakable for an rpg.

A game like Zelda 2 (one that dark souls is commonly compared to), leans more to the rpg spectrum because the narrative is a bit better (although maybe not strong enough to call it like an rpg. If zelda 2 had Zelda 3 and onwards story it would fall more firmly into that camp).

define rpg

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You have stats and you level up, so it's an RPG.

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NBA 2K has a career mode where you take control of a new player. You play games to raise stats like shooting, passing, etc and raise your overall rating. It has a sort of built in story where you rise from scrub to super star. No one calls NBA2K an rpg (I say everyone as like almost all people being that I'm sure someone has at one point). Despite it technically meeting some mechanical requirements.

Some racing games have you race (fight) to gain more prize money (exp) to get better stat upgrades (better parts) or gear (better cars). And sometimes has a story mode (although not always). No one calls these rpgs.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

define rpg

Without so many words

A game where a player takes control of an avatar meant to represent a character(s) in the game that provides a sufficient level of story telling which is presented in some sort of narrative (usually a mix of cutscenes, a DM talking, etc and dialogue with npcs but that can differ).

What is actually a sufficient level will vary, but Dark Souls has like nearly none. The only thing that makes Dark Souls anything like an rpg is that it has stats and xp. Like lets say on a scale of 1 to 100 on how rpg is a game with 1 being the least Dark Souls would be like a 20 and 3D zelda games would probably be closer to 40 imo since it fulfills the narrative and storytelling and has more interactions with the world and characters etc.

The term RPG for games is very similar to Slice of Life in anime. Technically the tag can be used for nearly every single work with a individual in it in some form. But it's not because we often have more fitting and specific genres to put things into. (And yes I have talked to people who think things like Cowboy Bebop are slice of life).

So in general I ask this question. If someone just asks me "Do you have an rpg you'd suggest" and if I would not suggest said game it's already in a bad spot for being called an rpg. Even if they said action rpg would you say Dark Souls? Because even if they were looking for something with more action oriented content versus a turn or pseudo turn based system there are simply games that fill the role much better. On the flipside if they asked you for a hard action game you might say Dark Souls.

They're action RPGs, yes.

As an aside, Sekiro is a straight up action game.

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zelda 2 having enough narrative to qualify as an rpg but dark souls doesn't (and if it does it doesn't count because it's bad) is a nuclear god damn take

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KokoroAkechi posted...

NBA 2K has a career mode where you take control of a new player. You play games to raise stats like shooting, passing, etc and raise your overall rating. It has a sort of built in story where you rise from scrub to super star. No one calls NBA2K an rpg (I say everyone as like almost all people being that I'm sure someone has at one point). Despite it technically meeting some mechanical requirements.

Some racing games have you race (fight) to gain more prize money (exp) to get better stat upgrades (better parts) or gear (better cars). And sometimes has a story mode (although not always). No one calls these rpgs.

Without so many words

A game where a player takes control of an avatar meant to represent a character(s) in the game that provides a sufficient level of story telling which is presented in some sort of narrative (usually a mix of cutscenes, a DM talking, etc and dialogue with npcs but that can differ).

What is actually a sufficient level will vary, but Dark Souls has like nearly none. The only thing that makes Dark Souls anything like an rpg is that it has stats and xp. Like lets say on a scale of 1 to 100 on how rpg is a game with 1 being the least Dark Souls would be like a 20 and 3D zelda games would probably be closer to 40 imo since it fulfills the narrative and storytelling and has more interactions with the world and characters etc.

The term RPG for games is very similar to Slice of Life in anime. Technically the tag can be used for nearly every single work with a individual in it in some form. But it's not because we often have more fitting and specific genres to put things into. (And yes I have talked to people who think things like Cowboy Bebop are slice of life).

So in general I ask this question. If someone just asks me "Do you have an rpg you'd suggest" and if I would not suggest said game it's already in a bad spot for being called an rpg. Even if they said action rpg would you say Dark Souls? Because even if they were looking for something with more action oriented content versus a turn or pseudo turn based system there are simply games that fill the role much better. On the flipside if they asked you for a hard action game you might say Dark Souls.

dude you can just not like dark souls, it's ok

I never said zelda 2 has enough to qualify. I just said it leans closer to being an rpg. It's why I mentioned that if it had the story of future Zeldas it would probably be an rpg. Like zelda has been pretty close to being an rpg for a while but less and less people seem okay with calling them rpg simply because it lacks the mechanical keywords that often inhabit them like "levels" and "exp" etc and that it falls more firmly into action/adventure.

A movie like Avengers Endgame is going to have comedic moments in it but you are not going to say it's a comedy to anyone.

Dark Souls is an RPG

The only one that I need
It's the RPG for me
Dark Souls is all that I play
All other games are lame
It puts them all to shame

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I'd actually say Zelda 2 does qualify as an action RPG but no other Zelda game is remotely close to being any kind of RPG. Super interesting how so many people dating back to the 90s have gotten hung up on that, though!

KokoroAkechi posted...

The term RPG for games is very similar to Slice of Life in anime. Technically the tag can be used for nearly every single work with a individual in it in some form. But it's not because we often have more fitting and specific genres to put things into.

I straight up disagree with this. RPG isn't some vague term that a ton of games can fit - we know exactly what they are. RPGs are all derived mechanically from DnD; you hand-waved strict adherence to mechanical keywords but if they don't have those mechanics then they're actually something else.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

I straight up disagree with this. RPG isn't some vague term that a ton of games can fit - we know exactly what they are. RPGs are all derived mechanically from DnD; you hand-waved strict adherence to mechanical keywords but if they don't have those mechanics then they're actually something else.

the fact that people are calling dark souls an rpg i think pretty much qualifies it for being a vague term. We don't know exactly what they are that's why a very large amount of subgenre rpgs exist. So like if someone wants to argue that it doesn't matter what type of game mechanically an rpg is and that it just has to follow a set of known mechanics that rpgs tend to have (like exp) means its application is pretty vague or I guess too liberal would be a better term.

All shooters are technically action games but you usually will not suggest a shooter when recommending an action game. It's just that the "action" genre is also very broad so it fits into a lot of things, we just have better classifications for things. If anything I'd say Dark Souls is like an Action Dungeon Crawler. I know that dungeon crawlers were derived from RPGS but I think by now it's been accepted that they've become its own standalone genre.

Xiahou Shake posted...

I straight up disagree with this. RPG isn't some vague term that a ton of games can fit - we know exactly what they are. RPGs are all derived mechanically from DnD; you hand-waved strict adherence to mechanical keywords but if they don't have those mechanics then they're actually something else.

I agree with this interpretation although I would add to it that it's not necessarily directly derived from DnD, but rather I call it a "lineage" of sorts - from pen-and-paper RPGs to DnD, to the earliest video game RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima, to the early japanese RPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and from there you have the most basic mechanical foundations for what makes a video game RPG - almost any video game you'd describe from an RPG found its inspiration in the genre conventions laid down by those early series. Not every RPG follows every rule - I would say there are RPGs where you don't level up, for instance - but it provides a pretty clear picture of what an RPG generally is, mechanically, which is generally what defines whether or not something is an RPG.

People get the etymology of RPG wrong a lot I think - in video games, RPG isn't "a game where you roleplay as something" since that describes a lot of games (or on the other hand, doesn't describe most of them well at all, compared to what a "real" RPG is like), rather, it's "a game that is similar to the mechanics of a pen-and-paper RPG" which is where the term roleplaying game was originally derived from. Video game RPGs don't really have anything to do with narrative content since you can be an RPG with bare minimum story (such as the early games I mentioned before) and you can be a complicated story without being an RPG. It's just something that you expect from the genre as a rule.

^ Beautifully said! I agree wholeheartedly.

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Demon's Souls is directly derived from Wizardry, which is directly derived from D&D. the main difference in Demon's Souls is that you have full control over a single character and you have targeted control over your stat gains instead of them being random.

Dark Souls did remove some of the best features from Demon's Souls, but it didn't remove anything that would prevent it from also being an RPG.

KokoroAkechi is just dumb and wrong, unless he would literally argue that Wizardry is not an RPG because it has very little story.

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If a level of story (since people are arguing an rpg doesn't need one) or gameplay mechanics (because people are also arguing they dont matter). Then what? We are left with a set of game system applications like levels, exp, stats and so on that simply get applied to a ton of games under different names.

So let me ask this. If you slapped on these game systems and rules to another game does it make it an RPG. Because adding experience points and levels to a game to call it an RPG is way different than changing actual game mechanics to differentiate different genres or in some cases "style" or the end goal (puzzle, casino style, simulation would fall here).

While I admit the call for a "certain level of narrative" is also not a game mechanic and the level needed is open to interpretation I can only conclude that the other ways to really see if a game is an RPG or not (be it mechanically or based on the game systems in place) have even more problems when trying to categorize games. Because if we are going to argue using things like dungeons and dragons systems I can very well bring up that the actual narrative, story telling, etc is important not only to an individual session but to those who are designing each official campaign and world. If dungeons and dragons was simply moving from one encounter to the next with a rest every now and then I could see it but that's not really how things go a lot of the time.

this is dumb

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KokoroAkechi posted...

If dungeons and dragons was simply moving from one encounter to the next with a rest every now and then I could see it but that's not really how things go a lot of the time.

Actually, this is how D&D originated. It was a dungeon crawling combat simulator. It's evolved to become narrative focused now, but it didn't begin that way.

D&D traces it's lineage to a purely mechanical figurine combat game named Chainmail.

1970s D&D is not 2020s D&D in the same way that 1980s FF does not recognise Prompto and Noctis.


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it sounds like you actually believe wizardry is not an RPG. this is a position that I am not willing to argue against, because anyone dumb enough to believe that is literally too dumb to be reasoned with.


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Imagine being so pretentious and self-important that this, of all things, is the hill you die on.

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i'm enjoying this discussion, but to be fair i have also never played dark souls

out of curiosity, do you guys consider metroidvanias - like actual castlevanias - to be RPGs?
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Here's an even tougher question:
Is Kingdom Hearts an RPG?

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Steiner posted...

this is dumb

this

sub genres exist for a reason

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No, it's an action game with tight patterns and hitboxes to learn. Well the hitboxes aren't very precise but they're supposed to be, like In Monster Hunter. You can grind your stats as much as you want you still need to play it like an action game by learning the timing and physical game mechanics.

I'd say no, though it's all arbitrary of course.

I usually come at it from the point of view of genre tentpole games. Final Fantasy is definitely an RPG. Devil May Cry is definitely not. So the operative question for me is: is Dark Souls more like FF or DMC? To me, it's definitely the latter, so it's not an RPG: it's an action game with RPG elements.

Something like Tales resembles Final Fantasy more than it does Devil May Cry or Street Fighter, so I'm happy calling that an action RPG.

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NeoElfboy posted...

I'd say no, though it's all arbitrary of course.

I usually come at it from the point of view of genre tentpole games. Final Fantasy is definitely an RPG. Devil May Cry is definitely not. So the operative question for me is: is Dark Souls more like FF or DMC? To me, it's definitely the latter, so it's not an RPG: it's an action game with RPG elements.

Something like Tales resembles Final Fantasy more than it does Devil May Cry or Street Fighter, so I'm happy calling that an action RPG.

By this logic tales should be an rpg with action elements. the fact that you call it an action rpg means you realize something can be more than one genre. basically defeating your entire argument

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an RPG is an anti-tank weapon

duh

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This poll is a perfect example of how no one actually knows what an RPG is anymore. Ask 10 people "What makes a game an RPG" and you get 10 different answers.

In the traditional sense, Dark Souls is not an RPG. It's main gameplay arc is real-time hack-and-slash style action, regardless of the various "RPG elements" involved in the equipment.

The skills required to master it are closer to God of War than they are to Pokemon. Saying Dark Souls is the same genre as a game like Chrono Trigger is borderline ridiculous since almost non of the skillsets involved in mastering those games intersect.

But, we're in an era where we slap "RPG" on almost everything (Horizon Zero Dawn!??) so people can always find ways to label all games as RPGs. The genre title has lost all meaning since it can apparently mean anything. People arguing in favor of it in this thread pretend that they know the "rules" for how the label works...but no one actually follows any guidelines. Genres are marketing tools now and nothing more.

Hotel_Security posted...

This poll is a perfect example of how no one actually knows what an RPG is anymore.

Ah, the self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Keep reading. It has a conclusion. RPGs mean nothing. Everything is an RPG.

I am an RPG. As are you.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

Ah, the self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Hotel_Security posted...

People arguing in favor of it in this thread pretend that they know the "rules" for how the label works

We aren't pretending. The term RPG was literally derived from games which had core mechanics developed from D&D and other pen and paper games. This is indisputable, historical fact. The people who are acting like RPG is some kind of post-modernist definition that is up to subjective interpretation are, ironically, the ones who actually have no idea what they are talking about... and will just continue to refuse to accept it no matter how many times they are told.

Hotel_Security posted...

but no one actually follows any guidelines. Genres are marketing tools now and nothing more.

The only reason you have the luxury of believing this is pure ignorance. you don't know the definition of what an RPG is, and so you purport that no one could possibly know the defintion.

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Hotel_Security posted...

I'm too dumb to understand the basic definition of RPG so I'm gonna pretend the term is meaningless

Damn chill out


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KokoroAkechi posted...

Dark Souls has a lot of lore packed into the game but its actual story telling is a piece of garbage.

Regardless of all the RPG arguments ITT, this part is just totally absurd. The story in DS1 is awesome, and yes it is delivered through an unconventional more environmental narrative, but by the time you get to the Gwyn fight everyone understands the importance of what is happening in this world. It's honestly a pretty typical RPG story, just with a genius and risky presentation. If you think it's just bashing skeletons you missed out on the whole game.

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Also obligatory:
Dark Souls is a WRPG
Mass Effect is a JRPG


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SeabassDebeste posted...

out of curiosity, do you guys consider metroidvanias - like actual castlevanias - to be RPGs?

This is why metroidvania is a terrible term

SOTN is clearly an RPG at heart. Metroid is clearly not.

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Was wondering how in the hell this was being argued so much and it's literally just KA on a hill being crazy.

foolm0r0n posted...

This is why metroidvania is a terrible term

SOTN is clearly an RPG at heart. Metroid is clearly not.

what about castletroid?

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