http://extra-credits.net/episodes/western-japanese-rpgs-part-2/
I believe that my original rebuttal still addresses their argument. This is because, as I expected, the Extra Credits folk's argument is based on broad assumptions. Why they believe they know what "emotional reasons" everyone plays a title for is beyond my ability to rationalize as anything but arrogance. In particular, they make the claim that people play Fallout 3 because they like the first person perspective, but I can assure you the first person perspective is the thing I least like about Fallout 3 (hell, even in Elder Scrolls titles I dislike it but it's necessary to play in first person mode in order to effectively target enemies). And in contrast to myself I know there are many people who prefer the first person perspective in games. The argument the Extra Credits guys have made seems to have been formed in a bubble where discussion with hardcore fans of the games was absent.
So if you didn't get it before from my original post, the hard truth is that how players "feel" about a game and the specific reasons "why" they play are very diverse and based on taste which may or may not have any rational basis. When you make any product, you make it with the full knowledge that a significant portion of people are not going to see things your way, thus why you need to make a product for a target audience who will "get it".
I would think the Extra Credits guys would get that since they often take positions others strongly disagree with. It's impossible to even say people watch their show for the same reasons, let alone that people play Fallout 3 for the same reasons.
And oh yeah, also as expected they made the argument that "WRPGs" always give you a blank slate character and "JRPGs" do not. An argument that is factually incorrect by just looking at a recent title like Lord of the Rings: War in the North (as I pointed out in a different post).
But let's talk a little about the argument that "WRPGs" as a genre allow you to "become" the character in the world whereas "JRPGs" simply let you play as a character in that world.
The basis of the argument is that playing a silent protagonist lets you better feel like "you" are the hero, because they don't have any dialogue and characters seemingly talk directly to the player.
To this I say that Chrono Trigger (a JRPG) does the same thing, as do all the games in the Dragon Quest series. They feature a silent protagonist and NPCs address "you" most of the time.
I supposed some might argue that,
"Oh no, it's not the same thing because Chrono has a detailed backstory and a mother and a childhood friend and blah blah blah, he is his own character separate from the identity of the player!"
....and to this I will say,
"True, but so does every Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Fable and Fallout character you play; they have memories of that world you do not share. They were born in that world and had a life long before you came into it.
Therefore, "You" the player do not exist in that world. You simply use that character as an avatar to explore and interact with the world, the same way you use Cloud to explore and interact with the world in Final Fantasy 7."
I know that the goal of using silent protagonists in a game is to better allow immersion than a game where the protagonist has their own highly detailed personality. I don't agree that silent protagonists allow better immersion, because I think there is a specific level of immersion that the silent protagonist strategy attempts to reach but fails to obtain, because the player is awake in the real world and has their needs of food, and tiredness and needing to use the bathroom (have you ever tried to stay immersed when you need to take a leak? It's pretty impossible) that are separate from the character in videogame land. "Full immersion" is not possible, and the same level of "unawareness" of the real world can be reached in games where protagonists have their own personalities and dialogue. And on that note, the same level of immersion can be obtained by watching a movie or reading a book.
Discussions about "immersion" have become rather distorted in recent years; the discussions originally came about from the desire of writers, film-makers and game designers to improve the experience their entertainment provided, with the rational being that anything which broke immersion reduced the enjoyable experience the media was providing. The goal was to reduce the number of things in a design that caused immersion to break (for example, plot elements that make no sense, or frustrating game mechanics) and not to design a product that led to "full immersion", because that was acknowledge as impossible. Unfortunately the understanding of these discussions has been wholly misinterpreted by laymen gamers, including those who became game journalists and the discussion is now muddied into the kind of nonsense Extra Credits is talking about concerning silent protagonists vs "talkie" protagonists. Sadly even a few game designers have bought into the idea, logic be damned.
Basically, the argument of "silent protagonist" = "better immersion" isn't a rational one, but a subjective one. It seems to be rational rather than actually being so, because it relies on the assumption the player is living in a space that has nothing to keep them from remembering that the game is a separate world. The argument is based on the idea that only the videogame is capable of reminding the player that the real world exists and that just isn't true. The goal of good gameplay is a level of immersion, but it cannot be a deep one because deep immersion is impossible so long as the player remains aware of the "real world"-- and they always will be because we exist in the real world.
The best use of "silent protagonists" and "talkies" doesn't really have anything to do with immersion, it has to do with the kind of message you are intending to send to the player. I mentioned this in my review of Dragon Age: Origins, that the game's "moral system" is capable of delivering a higher message than may be obvious. For some types of messages, it may be best to use a talking character who doesn't have dialogue trees, and for other messages it may be best for dialogue trees. It has to be handled correctly, of course, but that is how the different narrative styles ought to be used. Not for immersion, because that is a pointless pursuit; both types of protagonists are just as good at it.
(EDIT: This article was written 10:03 am PST on 3/7/2012. At 6:40 pm one of my readers let me know that today at GDC Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand also expressed similar sentiments at GDC. )
Also, I respond to the, "WRPGs let you change the look of your character and JRPGs do not because they have different immersion goals" with, "Originally it had to do with file size limitations of the media the games were on; a SNES cartridge has a lot less space than a game like Ultima 7 that could be released on several floppy disks. Images consume a lot of space; it's not always wise to dedicate crucial space to changing costume of the characters. These days it actually depends a lot more on if the game is using a lot of FMV sequences or not. FMV sequences require the characters clothing to be consistent in the movies as in gameplay, as FMVs are not a scripted event (like in Dragon Age) but a rendered movie file so the creators have more cinematic options."
Also some players of Elder Scrolls and Fallout might choose equipment based on how they want the character to look, but many players (such as myself) would wear a clown suit if it had the best stats in the game, and don't care that much about the look of characters- what we care about is efficiency. Whether I build an Elder Scrolls or a SaGa Frontier character, I'm not doing it to express myself as an individual but to play the game in the most optimal way I can think, so that I don't die left and right. Again, the guys at Extra Credits are focusing too much on why THEY play games without regard to the very real possibility that other people may approach the game differently-- I shouldn't say possibility, because people actually DO approach and play the games differently than the Extra Credit people do.
I just don't know why people persist in spreading these fallacies when they are so easily disproven. The whole problem here is that they don't think about how anyone might prove their beliefs incorrect. That is the difference between me and other reviewers; I actually think a great deal about the weaknesses of my arguments; to predict how others might prove them wrong. And that allows me to form strong opinions that can stand up to intelligent scrutiny, because I've already talked myself out of all the stupid stuff before I present my views to the world.
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