By the way, each of my characters in Diablo II had a name and full fleshed out backstory that was constantly expanding in my head as I played it.
You can have it in other games, too.
It's just a matter of how much imagination you are willing to put in it.
Action-RPGs, I call them a "sub-genre" of the ovverall RPGs.
Action-RPGs are reduced to the absolute core :
- no talk
- no socialization
- only combat
- only collecting items
- extremely reduced story (no matter whether there is more background lore outside of the games - it's just nver shown)
ction-RPGs made by Blizzard are so much reduced like ... Spaghetti is in terms of nutricions and vitamins.
Action-RPGs are "the fast food side of RPGS" - and what I personally find absolutely HORRIBLE is when people know no other way RPGs are and then DEMAND that all other RPGs should be like this !
At RPGWatch I've come across the term [of] "old school RPG". That's very much what fits the rest, the "non-action" part of the RPG genre.
This is why I love Drakensang : It contains a good story, it contains social interaction ( you can actually talk to persons !!! ) , no item-collecting, the game's beginning is much, much, much more difficult ( you really need to learn about everything ! ) , and the combat is not the overwhelming game feature.
I have played the first and the secong action-RPGs by Vlizzard, and the second one even with its expansion ... When I "woke up", it was like as if I hd been drug-addicted or something, and I soon began to detest these games simply because of the lack of variation ...
Action-RPGs repeat the same kind of theme again and again, again and again, agin and again ... Only the look differs. Nothing more. And the difficulty, maybe.
That's too much "flat-bed" for my taste. My brain screams for intellectual food !
That's why I don't play action-RPGs anymore.
And now, there's another direction the "gaming indistry" has taken : "RPG light", leading into Mass Effect ...
This is the curse of streamlining for mass market appeal ... It just becomes flatter and flatter ... more nd more shallow, no more intellectual food anymore ...
Plus, the "gaming industry" actually follows right ow the same patterns as the "music industry" : Sequels, sequels, sequels, sequels ... The same idea exploited again and again and again and again and again ...
No, not for me.
And that's why so many people look towards Europe : That's the only market left where not the rules of profits are being carried out in terms of making gams, but rather where game are still kind of demanding, unique stories etc. ...
