Whoever that was, must be shot. 
Halo is an RPG. Splinter Cell is an RPG. Hell, FIFA 2005 is an RPG!
It’s all bullshit…
The problem with using the term “RPG” for a video game is that virtually no game falls into that catagory if you take it literally. Sure, some games allow you to make decisions or chose between being “good” or “bad”, but in truth you can’t really role-play the character ANY way you want. What if you wanted to ally with the bad guy rather than fight him? What if you agree with the people who killed your town/father/brother/second cousen/cat? What if you wanted to awaken that ancient god that would plunge the world into darkness for the next 1000 years? Unlike pencil-and-paper RPGs, you don’t really have the option to do anything the creators of the game didn’t plan for. Sure, performing any of the aformentioned actions in a pnp RPG would probably have your character voided and turned into an NPC, but it’s the illusion of freedom that you CAN do that if you want that really matters (not to mention the fact that you can doom your entire party of fellow players in the process, muahahahaa 
).
But yes, it is rather strange to think that the term “RPG” is applied to pretty much any game you can gain skills/levels in, but I guess it’s hard to really say they fit into any other genre and that building skills is seperate from being an RPG. I think of skill-building as simply another aspect of RPGs and that the word RPG can be used to describe a multitude of different games, much how “shooter” can be used to describe first-person shooters, rail shooters, flight combat games, top down scrollers, and pretty much any other game that involves pressing a button to fire a projectile.
Most console RPGs are essentially multimedia novels where all the slushing through the jungle and fighting tons of nasties is actually done painstaking by the player instead of summed up in two paragraphs. I presume it only keeps the genre title because it somewhat resembles its pen and paper origins. Generally if a game doesn’t have an HP meter I won’t call it an RPG (I still have trouble thinking of Zelda as an RPG), but just because it does have one doesn’t automatically make it an RPG either.
Basically I just keep playing them because I like stories and RPGs are generally more story-laden than other games.
[quote=“Solis”]What if you wanted to ally with the bad guy rather than fight him? What if you agree with the people who killed your town/father/brother/second cousen/cat? What if you wanted to awaken that ancient god that would plunge the world into darkness for the next 1000 years? ).
[/quote]
What about Fable? (sp?) You get to choose whether you kill your blind sister or not, if you don’t, all is good. If you do the world is plunged into darkness.
The fact that she’s blind either deterits away from the killing or draws you nearer to it.
Hmm…I think they missed out the toilet rule (which I dunno if I came up with but no one else seems to mention it shrugs) of no matter how much you eat and drink you never need to go.
Like I said in my post no RPG let’s you change the linear path.Fable doesn’t.
And Abadd : it depends on what kind of puzzle game we are talking,
What’s in a name? As long as we roughly know what to expect of a game. XD
Well your preformed idea of an unreleased game can be heavily influenced by by it’s categorization.
Yeah although I can useally spot the crap by the fact I haven’t heard about it on the net.
So games you never heard of are not good?
Of course an obscure game someone mentions on a forum may be very good yes but, I’m talking of games in my local shops which are generally not good, unless Ive read about them. Of course yuor average RPG is obcurbe in the eyes of many, but not for someone who read rpgamer, rpgfan, the magicbox, gamesarefun, gamepsy, gamespot, ign, ugo and 1up every day.
Yes I know Im obsessed… :anjou_embarassed:
Obsessed is an understatment 
Well how about people who prefer to read magazines rather that have the opinion of websites?
No one would know the previous Panzer Dragoon games before Orta exist past SSM 
[quote=“Berserker”]
No one would know the previous Panzer Dragoon games before Orta exist past SSM [/quote]
I prefer both really.
All you have to do is follow these rules, and you’ve got a bestseller
Why, at times I wonder if Squaresoft doesn’t actively use this list when making the latest FF.