Is the legend of zelda an RPG ?

richymcdermott

some people say yes , others say no , me personally i feel as if its an adventure action game with rpg elements but its very confusing

what are people thoughts is it , or isnt it a RPG ?

Retr0gamer

The correct answer is no, unless you are talking about Zelda 2. Character progression and customisation is based on abilities gained and not on stat increases. There's no character customisation or control over character growth either. The only thing it has in common with RPGs at the time was the overhead perspective. To call Zelda a RPG would mean you'd have to call games like Super Metroid a RPG, which clearly isn't one.

It isn't even correct to call it a game with RPG elements because other than Zelda2, the series has none, with only limited and frankly useless levels of it in the recent Skyward Sword. Secret of Mana, Symphony of the Night or Call of Duty's multiplayer would be games with RPG elements. Zelda is an action game with exploration elements based on gained abilities.

Star Lord

I'd say they're just out and out adventure games.

Myrddin

Agreed, adventure games.

Nollog

It's a mis-conception.
I too thought it was an RPG series.
But it's adventure.

sure you play the role of link, and at certain times you seem to gain powers, but those are through tools, you're not assigning stats to your character.

A bad example:
CoD isn't an RPG but you can change your weapon too.

Kinski

Action-adventure game, for want of a more precise term. Really, Zelda is Zelda, almost a genre unto itself at this stage.

As an aside, Football Manager is arguably a text-based RPG.

Retr0gamer

Kat Bailey who does a lot of RPG podcasts and is possibly the most knowledgable person on RPGs around plays sports games because she see's them as stat heavy RPGs

Kinski

Hmm, must have a listen to those.

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Kat Bailey who does a lot of RPG podcasts and is possibly the most knowledgable person on RPGs around plays sports games because she see's them as stat heavy RPGs

That quite pretentious, dare I say it, hipsterish behavior if you ask me.

'Do you play RPGs?'

'yeah! I love the Final Fantasy games!'

'Pff, they're not real rpgs. Sports games are real RPGs. I can't believe you didn't know that. Moron. Get out of my sight'

/dons fedora and walks away with an air of supreme superiority.

Retr0gamer

Well she never said it like that. She did a podcast on what an RPG was and was talking about how nearly all games now have RPG elements and how stuff like CoD multiplayer or even sports games could be classed as RPGs.

Anyway if you like your stats there's nothing better than a sports game with a complex campaign system.

ruabriongloid

I'd consider it more of an adventure/rpg game...


then again with majora's mask I'd consider that horror. :Y

Retr0gamer

ruabriongloid wrote: »

I'd consider it more of an adventure/rpg game...

What elements has it got that define an RPG? None. Except Zelda 2 which does have a levelling up system.

o1s1n

As the game progresses, Link collects more hearts - 'leveling up' his HP and enabling him to progress further into the game

Myrddin

Retr0gamer wrote: »

What elements has it got that define an RPG? None. Except Zelda 2 which does have a levelling up system.

I always found that 'it's not an rpg unless you can level up etc' argument a bit, nerdy to be honest. I suppose o1s1n does have a point, you can increase Links heart containers but it isn't required either, you can also complete most Zelda games without getting all the items, meaning finding items you don't need only serve to 'level you up'.

I know now its strictly an action/adventure game, but in the strictest sense, an RPG is a Role Playing Game. I take on the role & persona of Link when I play, & for me thats all I ask. It's all a bit Warhammer to be saying for it to be an RPG it has to be turn based combat & a level up system.

The blogger is right though, as then you can call CoD an RPG which isn't really right either. Someone said it above, Zelda is a genre unto itself really r& is a bit grey/hard to quantify as either action/adventure or rpg

Star Lord

I'd heard it described before as "RPG-Lite", which is almost it... More like "RPG-Really-Really-Really-Lite"!

Azure_sky

I can't help but think of Zelda as an RPG.

ruabriongloid

I just remember reading in nintendo power it was described as an rpg

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

As the game progresses, Link collects more hearts - 'leveling up' his HP and enabling him to progress further into the game

I can collect extra weapons in Contra to make me more powerful. Would you call that an RPG. Also in Gunstar Heroes depending on what order I do the levels in I can increase my HP. Does that make it an RPG. It's nothing to do with having a exp or levelling up system and more to do with a combination of things. I harkens back to tabletop RPGs. It's more to do with the level of choice you have over character progression. Then again a lot of JRPGs that follow the later Final Fantasy model have stripped this to a very basic level. Nearly every game has RPG elements but zeldas heart collecting hardly makes it an RPG, it's more an RPG element.

A good case could be made for the first zelda being a RPG due to it's open world and non-linear structure. Zelda 2 is a flat out action RPG but anything from Link to the Past onwards is just Metroids structure applied to a top down perspective.

Defining a RPG is a grey area so I take the approach of Jeremy Parish. 'It's like the difference between porn and art, you know it when you see it'. And for me zelda definitely isn't a RPG. As for Nintendo Power, it's not the most reliable source of information. A lot of game journalists will claim that later zelda games are RPGs but the majority of game journalists are hacks, just look at giantbomb and ign. The most knowledgable ones I hear talking about this subject don't class it as a RPG. That said Kat Bailey does include it in her podcast but it's more an excuse for her to talk about.

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I can collect extra weapons in Contra to make me more powerful. Would you call that an RPG. Also in Gunstar Heroes depending on what order I do the levels in I can increase my HP. Does that make it an RPG..

Did you smash your sarcasm detector when you were over in America by any chance?

I was mocking the arguement. It's a silly one. Is it an RPG? No, yes, maybe - does it really matter?

Banjo

All games are role playing games -Zelda TP and SS more than most since they reduce the dissociation between your actions (pressing buttons) and Link's actions (smashing monsters over the head with a big sword) by introducing first the wavy-wavy wiimote controls and then the slightly more accurate wavy-wavy motion plus controls. What you do and what Link does are now a little more closely aligned and the line between you.... not blurs, but at least wobbles a little.

Immersion is the key here. When you realise at the end of OoT that Zelda no longer remembers who you are don't you feel an emotional response? One that is neither measured nor defined by the game but by you and how invested you are in the character? Hell, maybe she did recognise you and was surprised to see you but when *I* played it she was surprised by an unknown intruder and after all we'd been through together that hurt. (And on that point : Deus Ex - did you stand beside your brother? Did you both die? Did you leap out the window like an electrocuted squirrel while he gave his life to buy you some time? Did you cave in the MIB's skull with your non-lethal nightstick or pull a gun and violate your brother's code of ethics to save his life? I love that moment, you get served more choice in that one second when there's a knock on the door than most run-of-the-mill JRPGs manage in 36 hours of linear progression.

I've only ever played 2 RPGs that I would consider proper role playing games (well, with the Aurora toolset Neverwinter Nights came pretty damned close but you needed a DM for that) : Daggerfall and Morrowind. Both gave you a world, a set of rules and a gentle nudge towards what you were supposed to do but just like a tabletop game you were free to spend your time collecting flowers or slaughtering townsfolk rather than saving the world if that's the role you wanted to play. And that's why so many people find those games boring - they invest nothing in the character they created, and so that character is shallow and empty and not fun to pretend to be.

Retr0gamer

I think you are taking 'role palying game' a bit too literally as in 'you play a role therefore it's a role playing game'. Some people would call them CRPGs as in a computer role playing game. It's more to do with the roots that a game has in table top RPG games and how many elements from them it brings across rather than playing a role since nearly every game could be classified as a role playing game then.

Table top role playing games give the players unlimited choice over what they can do, unless you have a dick of a DM, and lots of options on how to build your character, well the good ones like Pathfinder do. The closest to them would be western RPGs like Fallout or Planescape Torment. Japanese RPGs that follow the modern Final Fantasy model are pretty linear with little choice but there are some like FF5 or FF Tactics that have complex player progression or even the Shin Megami Tensei games that are much closer to their western counterparts since they are more influenced by Wizardry and Ultima than Dragon Quest.

So other than the Fantasy setting does zelda really come anywhere near close to the table top RPG experience like a proper cRPG does?

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So other than the Fantasy setting does zelda really come anywhere near close to the table top RPG experience like a proper cRPG does?

So then -

A tabletop RPG offers unlimited choice.

Final Fantasy and other JRPGs offer very limited choice.

Zelda offers very limited choice.

Therefore - does Zelda come anywhere near as close to a tabletop RPG as much as a Final Fantasy game do?

Well no, neither do - as per your own admission, both have limited choice.

It's pretty easy if you ask me. RPG (videogame ones specifically) generally have one or a combination of the following. The first two being more important than the last.

Leveling up via experience points/stats
Battle driven menus
Strong story in which the player plays a 'role'

Sometimes if a game just has the last one, people think it's an RPG (ie Zelda) - and they are incorrect...unless they want to start getting pedantic and redefining what 'RPG' means in a gaming sense.

Anyway, as I said, it all doesn't really matter. Why people feel the need to pigeonhole games into specific genres baffles me.

Retr0gamer

I'd go so far as to say that from link to the past onwards zelda offers no choice. It's a linear game unless you want to exploit bugs and sequence break it but that's not the original creators choice.

So now we have Zelda with no choice and the standard FF style JRPG with no choice either. However the JRPG has a levelling up and customisation system which Zelda doesn't or in the case of Skyward Sword there is one but it's so limited why bother with it. So JRPGs are an awful lot closer to tabletop RPGs than zelda is. Zelda has as much in common with one as Metroid and would you call Metroid a RPG? Also most people only really associate the rather limited later FF games as the games that define JRPGs when there's a whole wealth of others like Shin Megami Tensei or Etrian Odyssey that come close to western RPGs like Fallout.

Anyway RPGs are a grey area and it's getting greyer with most genres now adding RPG elements to add depth. Cliff Blezinski said that the future or FPS games is in RPGs and wer're going to see RPG DNA in a lot more games from now on.

Banjo

OK, I'm being deliberately pedantic about the RP in RPG, but not without reason. I cast Wall of Text!

The stats and levelling system of a proper tabletop game is a secondary system, it's purpose is to create an analog of how the hero of a typical epic grows in strength and ability as the story goes on. It also allows the DM to give the players the freedom to do what they like within the game world but force them to play ball with the narrative framework - eg areas where survival rate approaches zero for low level characters, areas accessible only when wearing the cloak of Anglothor and wielding the dagger of Wesiristuun, that kind of thing - if they want to progress the official story that they all sat down to play.

Yes, the stats are important but from a role playing perspective only because you choose where they go - they create a bond between you and your character, your character is unique because you made them that way. In that sense their weapon loadout is equally important because they fight the way you want them to fight. Customising the look of the toon is just if not more important because it's so much easier to identify yourself with something you can see (be it a purple cloak, a naked night elf or whatever) than something you can't (ie a stat). An RPG would work just as well if there were no customisable stats provided you had some sort of system to reward accomplishments, something to make your actions feel like they had in-world meaning. Ultimately, your character is defined by what they've done and who they did it with / to, not the 8 points they poured into Constitution.

Anyhoo...
The primary dynamic of the RPG is choice. Here is the world, here are it's rules, now what would you like to do first?

In that respect Zelda approaches an RPG. It gives you a small world, a sparsely populated world, a world where really there's not a lot to do but it gives you the freedom to spend your days doing what little there is. Go chasing chickens if you're not interested in saving the world!

As such, Zelda is an RPG with one class - Hero - and one stat - Hearts.
I didn't say it was a good one

______________
To address O1s1n's post
I think one really important aspect of the tabletop RPG is the persistent game world, which is why most shooters with RPG elements can't really be considered RPGs - while your character can develop the world in which they live never does, you're just cycling through the maps. This is why narrative is so important in a cRPG, it's really the only way to give the impression of a developing world, and why Zelda gets classed incorrectly as an rpg. Yes I know I just said it was but we all know it should be filed under Arcade Adventure

Retr0gamer

What choice though is there? Your character progression and the story is totally linear?

Fysh

TBH to try and compare almost any game to a table-top RPG in the arena of freedom of choice offered is a bit of a fool's errand.

You could argue that the likes of Elite are true table-top RPG games, but the constraints on informational resources that game development involves as compared to being a DM mean that for any kind of a structured narrative, choices have to be limited. So you get some wiggle room (your Deus Ex style "we'll tell you the objective, but you have more than one possible way of completing it, and there's not really an objectively best way") but very rarely do you achieve that comparable level of freedom, and I'd argue that a truism of achieving that freedom is that you lose the option of having the larger structured narrative. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but if the general audience for games is perceived to primarily want linear structured narratives in their games (as they are perceived to want their equivalents in other media, whether or not this is true) then it does mean that you're making life difficult for yourself as a commercial developer by choosing that approach.

Anyway, I remember Zelda being the game that had me going "If this is what RPGs are, gimme more of 'em!" I have relatively little interest in the mechanics of the kind of turn-based RPGs that came out in the 16 bit era (yeah I know, I've missed out on numerous great games, but honestly I tried them and I invariably get bored or frustrated before anywhere near the end...) and Zelda was the game that had me going "Wow, it's like all the stuff I like from RPG games without the annoying combat structure and the stupid stats stuff!".

Retr0gamer

Well of course there's no way to emulate a tabletop RPG but I feel games that would be classed as actual RPGs come closer to that than zelda which I feel is nothing like a RPG.

I'll put it this way again, do you think that Super Metroid is a RPG and if not then why is zelda an RPG. Both games have the same progress structure, the only difference is that one is top down and the other is viewed side on.

Also what similarities do the Zelda games from link to the past onwards have to tabletop RPGs, because I can't think of any.

Fysh

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well of course there's no way to emulate a tabletop RPG but I feel games that would be classed as actual RPGs come closer to that than zelda which I feel is nothing like a RPG.

I'll put it this way again, do you think that Super Metroid is a RPG and if not then why is zelda an RPG. Both games have the same progress structure, the only difference is that one is top down and the other is viewed side on.

Also what similarities do the Zelda games from link to the past onwards have to tabletop RPGs, because I can't think of any.

Weird, I would've sworn I posted a reply to you yesterday. Anyway...

Broadly speaking, I agree with you - the majority of Zelda and all of the Metroid games are adventure games with RPG-like elements rather than "true" RPGs.

However, it's worth noting that how you define "true RPG" muddies the water here - because as far as I can tell, the last 20 years or so of developments in gaming have seen jRPGs (generally held, at least in the 90s, to be the pinnacle of proper RPGs) shift substantially toward the more rigidly structured narrative model where the player is taking the role of a particular character, rather than a role they make their own through choices of alignment, costume, behaviour etc. To a certain extent this is understandable - a single-player game with an open-ended "true RPG" structure is much more challenging to develop than a more linear one, and even a well-made single-player RPG is going to be hard-pressed to compete with MMORPGs for that open-ended aspect.

Retr0gamer

Well I'd have to disagree with you about JRPGs except in relation to the Final Fantasy series but they are hardly the pinnacle of the genre. Square have been making their games very linear for a long time and limiting character customisation and they're heading very far from what an RPG is. Probably since FFVII when they really simplified the battle system they have been doing this with a few exceptions. I'd still class them as RPGs, just very simplistic beginner ones and have more in common with tabletop RPGs than Zelda.

I'm more interested in JRPGs that aren't final fantasy though so stuff like Tactics Ogre, Shin Megami Tensei, Sting RPGs, Etrian Odyssey etc. are much closer to proper RPGs than FF is.

Fysh

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well I'd have to disagree with you about JRPGs except in relation to the Final Fantasy series but they are hardly the pinnacle of the genre. Square have been making their games very linear for a long time and limiting character customisation and they're heading very far from what an RPG is. Probably since FFVII when they really simplified the battle system they have been doing this with a few exceptions. I'd still class them as RPGs, just very simplistic beginner ones and have more in common with tabletop RPGs than Zelda.

I'm more interested in JRPGs that aren't final fantasy though so stuff like Tactics Ogre, Shin Megami Tensei, Sting RPGs, Etrian Odyssey etc. are much closer to proper RPGs than FF is.

I will happily defer to your clearly much greater knowledge of the genre