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[Where have the vital Japanese role-playing games gone? Game Developer's production editor Jeff Fleming looks back at the past year of Japanese RPG releases in North America in a piece that's already been controversial on Gamasutra - claiming troubling signs of a genre in decline.]

The post-PlayStation 2 era has not been kind to the Japanese role-playing game. At the start of the decade it was easy to imagine Japanese RPGs taking over the world. Titles like Final Fantasy X and XII, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Xenosaga, Shenmue, Shadow Hearts, Skies of Arcadia, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and Phantasy Star Online were just some of the highlights of time when another new JRPG was added to the stack faster than we could play them.

But as console hardware transitioned, JRPGs began to drift into the background. Some might say that no one except the hard-core aficionado is very interested in them any more. Sure, there are a few exceptions. Final Fantasy XIII will sell like crazy. Western-developed RPGs like Dragon Age and Fallout 3 are doing very well. However, the unique style of Japanese developed RPGs is in distinct abeyance.

But what makes a Japanese RPG different and worth preserving? Beside the obvious points that they are made by Japanese people and generally have something to do with magic and dragons, they can be tricky to define in concrete terms.

Linear narrative, turn-based combat, anime-style art direction are all good points of reference. Perhaps more than any other mechanical aspect, the defining characteristic of Japanese role-playing games is their unapologetic sentimentality. Feelings of nostalgia, wistfulness, and longing are the emotional currency of Japanese RPGs. Emotions that I struggle to conjure, as I look across the JRPG landscape in these last days of 2009.

Senescent Paedomorphosis

Nintendo's DS handheld has been the platform of choice for the bulk of this year's new JRPG releases, and it is this fact that I find most troubling. What was once a grand adventure of color and sound has shrunk down to a three-inch screen. This is what we have to sustain us.

Atlus published some of the best JRPGs of the year and their SMT: Devil Survivor for the DS was a terrific entry in the long running Shin Megami Tensei series. The publisher also brought over experimental titles to the DS such as The Dark Spire and Knights in the Nightmare that were less successful, but welcomed for their unique art direction that dared to step away from anime stereotypes.

Square-Enix brought a few original titles to the DS including one of tri-Ace's better efforts -- Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. The game deviated from the side-scrolling action/RPG play that the Valkyrie Profile series is known for, and instead presented itself as a tactical RPG. Although Covenant of the Plume stayed closed to genre conventions, its somber storyline was given extra weight thanks to a smart translation from Alexander O. Smith. For those who like spiky haired teens and Disney characters, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was money in the bank for Tetsuya Nomura.

While not strictly a RPG (although it does contain a fully realized out Dragon Quest clone called Guadia Quest), indieszero's Retro Game Challenge was one of the year's best games. However, like so many games, the high critical praise it received in the press totally failed to translate into strong sales.

NIS America brought the kid-oriented titles A Witch's Tale and Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island to the DS. Sega revisited Ragol with Phantasy Star 0 and Nintendo gave us another finely polished Zelda game in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Media. Vision, the creators of Wild Arms tried something different with The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road but it was a hard sell, straddling the line uncomfortably between children's game and role-playing. Based just on its name, Nostalgia from Red Entertainment and Matrix had a lot of expectations to live up to. Unfortunately, it didn't quite hit the emotional mark that its title inspired.

Despite having been extremely popular, I suspect that the market for the DS is quietly eroding. The hardware will soon be in its fourth revision and there is no stated plan for what comes next from Nintendo. A quick look around on local public transportation will show that most Americans are far more likely to be fondling a cell device or an iPhone/iPod during their idle moments than a Nintendo DS.

Once the generous slate of announced DS games for 2010 clears the deck, it will probably be apparent that many of the developers who had previously been focused on the aging handheld will have already left the party. But where will they have gone?

PSPooped

Despite having the highest technical specs for a handheld, Sony's PSP continues to be under-utilized as a platform for RPGs. Marvelous Entertainment's Half-Minute Hero was one of the more interesting games of the year with its sly deconstruction of JRPG tropes -- but other PSP titles seemed less compelling. NIS America gave us two PlayStation 2 ports in Mana Khemia: Student Alliance and Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days.

Square-Enix dropped Dissidia Final Fantasy in our laps, which was about as welcome as Ehrgeiz was back in the day. Capcom had some success with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, but the series has yet to really capture the North American imagination the way it has the Japanese. Sega kept trying with Phantasy Star Portable, a game that attempts to emulate Monster Hunter, which is itself inspired by Phantasy Star Online. Atlus published Class of Heroes but most buyers played hooky.

Wiither Thou?

It could be argued that Nintendo has done more than any other company to bring the Japanese RPG to worldwide attention. Nintendo hardware has been home to such touchstone games as Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, Earthbound, and of course, Zelda. But that was a long time ago. Nintendo consoles have not been a significant platform for new JRPGs since the SNES days and the Wii is no exception.

This year Square-Enix brought two entries in its action-oriented Crystal Chronicles series to the Wii, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. I'm not sure where the audience for this series is coming from but I'm increasingly reminded of Square's ill-conceived Final Fantasy Mystic Quest for the SNES. I doubt that any but the most obsessive Final Fantasy completionist will spend much time with them.

Little King's Story was an under ppreciated title from ex-Love-de-Lic staffer Yoshirou Kimura, who had previously produced the obscuro game Chulip. NIS America brought Phantom Brave: We Meet Again to the Wii, a remake of the original 2004 PlayStation 2 title. Those Wii owners with ken for radish farming interspersed with some light dungeon exploring can look to Rune Factory Frontier, part of the long running Harvest Moon franchise.

The Old Man of the Mountain

The PlayStation 2 continues to soldier on. NIS America brought Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy and a buggy version of Ar tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica to the console but the real reason to keep the machine hooked up was to enjoy Atlus' Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon.

Released in an absurdly oversized collectible package, the game was overlooked by all but the most die-hard Mega Ten fans. Too bad, because it was as slickly playable as the more popular Persona 3 and 4 games but with the addition of Kazuma Kaneko's deviant art direction.

In Case You Missed It The First Time

Another sign of the declining Japanese RPG market is the proliferation of rereleases and remakes of the genre's classic titles. While it certainly helps maintain the audience's flagging enthusiasm and is invaluable for preserving the history of JRPGs, it can't be a healthy development for some of the best games of the year to be revisited classics.

This year the PlayStation Network got Final Fantasy VII, the 1997 PlayStation game that brought JRPGs to a mass audience. It's fashionable now to dismiss Final Fantasy VII as a jumbled mess of a game that hides an incoherent narrative behind visual smoke and mirrors. The game's memory is not well served either by Square-Enix's determined efforts to extract every last bit of emotional (and physical) currency from players with the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" project.

However, spend some time with Final Fantasy VII, and you'll find a game that is still as engrossing as you remember it. The next game in the series, Final Fantasy VIII, was a late December release to the PlayStation Network store. Perhaps I can finally figure out the "correct" way to play this game so that it is fun.

Square-Enix also brought Final Fantasy Tactics to the PlayStation Network. Designed by Yasumi Matsuno (Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII), Tactics is the art house alternative to Final Fantasy VII's blockbuster aspirations. Be warned however that this is a straight port of the original PlayStation release, with all of its garbled translation intact.

The PlayStation game Star Ocean: The Second Story was remade for the PSP by Square-Enix as Star Ocean: Second Evolution. Presumably so that players of Star Ocean 4 can discover just how little progress the series has made over the decade plus of its existence. The PlayStation Network also got Wild Arms 2, which was a solid, workman-like entry in a series that has never quite earned the love that its contemporaries enjoy.

Atlus is to be commended for bringing the first Persona game to the PSP in a remastered form that corrected many of the heavy-handed English localization cuts from the game's 1996 PlayStation release. However, the original Persona was the product of an earlier time and many of its awkward game mechanics will come as a shock to players who were introduced to the series by the smoothly playable Persona 3 and 4 entries.

Despite the lack of JRPGs on the Nintendo Wii, the console's Virtual Console service remains a compelling reason for RPG fans to embrace the hardware. This year saw a number of classic titles added to the list including Yasumi Matsuno's Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, Phantasy Star, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and the original Final Fantasy. The Virtual Console was also home to Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (a cell phone port no less!), which presents a newly created sequel to the almost two-decade old game with a retro-style graphics.

The Nintendo DS was home to some nicely executed remakes. Atlus started the year off with a deluxe release of Legacy of Ys Books I & II. Nintendo revisited the very first Fire Emblem with Intelligent System's Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Square-Enix gave us perhaps their best title of the year in Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride which marked the game's first appearance in North America, despite having been originally released almost two decades ago.

Letters To Santa Will Be Shredded

Conspicuously absent from under this year's Christmas tree is Final Fantasy XIII. For the past decade Final Fantasy games have traditionally been released in North America during the fall season but this year Square-Enix has decided to join the general publisher flight from Christmas by pushing Final Fantasy XIII to March of the new year, where it can the join a slew of other high-profile Q2 releases.

It will certainly be a big event when the game arrives in the spring, but I doubt that it will signal a flood of new RPGs from the company. Here we are, over four years into the current hardware cycle, and Square-Enix has been slow to commit its signature widescreen adventures to the new consoles. Instead, the company has largely traded on its past with RPG remakes for handhelds, and now seems more focused on action and strategy titles for the bulk of its future catalog.

The company's only big console release of 2009 was tri-Ace's Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope for Xbox 360 and that offering was a distinctly stale and soulless affair. I single Star Ocean out for extra vituperation for its ridiculous "Children are the future!" message, its shameless pandering to the recursive obsessions of anime fandom, and its reliance on tired game design modes that are long outdated.

The first Star Ocean was released thirteen years ago and one would imagine that the developers of the series (as well as the fans) would have undergone some life changes during the intervening years; moving through adulthood, taking on new responsibilities, experiencing love and loss. Absolutely none of these concerns are reflected in their work.

It's Over Johnny!

There are a variety of reasons why the JRPG has been diminishing in recent years and Japanese RPG developers will find themselves increasingly sidelined unless they begin to acknowledge the pressing need for change.

Everyone has a story. In the past, one of the key selling points of an RPG was that it had a fairly involved narrative; something that was usually lacking in most other action oriented video games. However, video games as a whole have become much better at telling a story. For example, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves tells a story that is at least as literate as the average RPG, better paced, and in a fraction of the time.

RPGs are labor intensive and expensive to create. The hardware transition to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hit Japanese developers hard. The demand for high fidelity visuals made asset creation an order of magnitude more difficult. In the West, sophisticated middleware solutions have sprung up to help mitigate some of this complexity but many Japanese studios have been slow to adapt to the new development landscape. Because of their large scale, RPGs have been particularly squeezed by the technological demands of the new consoles, resulting in only a handful of truly next-generation titles.

The anime and manga bubble has burst. The late 90s saw a tremendous surge in Western interest in Japanese pop culture. Book and comic stores rushed to create floor space devoted to vast piles of manga. Video retailers that had previously only carried the odd Akira or Ghost in the Shell tape suddenly embraced anime with shelves of outrageously expensive box sets and bizarrely titled movies, all delivered on the new DVD format. Kids were buying up anything sporting multicolored hair and big eyes and JRPGs benefited greatly from this hunger for all things Japanese. The current reality, however, is that the teens that were driving all this economic activity are now adults with different priorities and like all fads, anime and manga has somewhat run its course in the West.

Grown-ups don't like kids stuff. Despite the industry's fixation on serving a youth demographic, the audience for games is aging and it will age out completely unless developers create work that is relevant to adults. Western RPG developers seem to understand this but Japanese studios continue to target 13 year olds. From Software's Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3 was one of the most successful Japanese RPGs of the year in North America, both critically and commercially, because it refused to conform to genre expectations. Here was a game that was serious. It demanded focus and attention and in return it gave players a meaningful experience that was refreshingly free from the adolescent cliches that are so prevalent in JRPGs.

The Sun Rises in the West

None of this is to suggest that the RPG genre is going away for good. On the contrary, North American and European developers are making some of the most compelling RPG experiences in recent years. Western developers seem far more willing to take creative chances and push game play in new directions. They also have the money and manpower to tackle big, ambitious projects.

While the future of RPGs is secure in the hands of the West, I fear that as the Japanese become less relevant to the genre something essential will have been lost. As more "badass biotic bitches" take center stage, the RPG will slip away from the world of dreams and longing. The fantasy will be gone.

[One of the first of a host of neat Tokyo Game Show interviews conducted by Christian Nutt, we managed to speak to ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus creator Fumito Ueda on his inspirations and creativity - and here's the oblique but fascinating result.]

What makes the director of Shadow of the Colossus tick? Drawing Fumito Ueda out on the subject isn't precisely easy -- on inspiration, he says, "I've gotten this question many times, but I actually don't intentionally think about inspiration."

The Sony-based creator is known for his careful approach to gaming, as seen in his trilogy of titles - ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus for the PlayStation 3 and the upcoming, much-awaited The Last Guardian for PlayStation 3.

As referenced, there's obviously a very deliberate method to Ueda's style of game design. And with that in mind, Gamasutra spoke in depth to him at Tokyo Game Show to try and get a handle on that process, in a rare interview:

All the games you've worked on are centered on a really important relationship, like with Ico and Yorda, or with the boy and the creature in The Last Guardian. What do strong relationships mean to you in your games?

Fumito Ueda: Well, there's a significant relationship between the main character controlled by the player, and then the AI character -- Yorda for Ico, the Colossi, and also the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, and in Last Guardian it's the beast -- but I don't have an intentional plan or some big concept, or anything like this.

But I think, maybe, I'm thinking that there's something that can be said about relationships, between the AI and the player, that can only function in the computer entertainment world.

A lot of games try to tell a story in a way that's very typical to other media, like film, whereas the interactive nature of the game allows you to build an emotional relationship with the character without telling it in a linear narrative...

FU: You're exactly right -- I exactly agree with you. I think that I tried to sort out within myself what exactly can be done only through video games. I think one way to use the computer is to use it like dice in The Game of Life, or something like that.

But I don't think that's the most effective way to use the computer; I think it's having AI, or having characters that have some sort of personality to them. I think that's the way to use computers.

Many of your games have a really young protagonist, too. Children are vulnerable, not quite so strong, whereas most game characters are strong people. What interests you about creating these vulnerable characters to play?

FU: It's not that I particularly like younger characters, or something like this, but I think it's really trying to figure out a cohesion with the game design, and what would be the most persuasive form of expression. And having a younger age was the answer that I reached.

What are you trying to get across, then? What kind of emotions are you trying to evoke in your games?

FU: Of course it's different for each title, but something that they have in common would be that to really illustrate or communicate that the world that you see is real. That it's a really existing world, and to actually have this reality to the world that's in the screen.

A lot of works that have really well-developed worlds have a lot of background data, and the background data never makes it directly into the product, but the creators know about it. Is that part of your process?

FU: It's not that we don't do it at all -- create this background setting -- but I think that perhaps compared to other teams, we don't do it as much. So I think maybe you're referring to background setting situations.

But really, compared to the amount of data information of the setting, we actually have more information about the actual details contained in the particular scene, or particular screen shot; in order to create this actuality, reality, tangibility to the screen. So, less background setting, more detail in the actual image.

So it's more about creating a world that has architectural believability, and the details that make sense, rather than saying that you know the history of the country, or something like that.

FU: That's exactly correct. I think somebody said that "God is in the details," and that's really what I'm looking at.

Where do you draw the visual inspiration that's the foundation of that -- the details that make the game believable?

FU: I've gotten this question many times, but I actually don't intentionally think about inspiration. Meaning that I don't really value or cherish it, inspiration, and specific sources of inspiration; rather, the reason why it looks the way it does is because of game design, and the necessity of game design -- the constraints of level design.

So, what comes first, then? Is it something like building a level, testing it, seeing how it plays, and then saying, "Okay, now I see how this is, and I see what it is, formally..."

FU: It's what you said. Actually building it, and seeing how it looks -- and then also looking at if it's a place that players would easily get lost in, and place some kind of landmark, or some kind of guide post, or something. If it's a dark setting, then open some windows. And also, then, to make it visually, aesthetically enjoyable, and pleasing.

It's easy for me to speak about Ico, and the castle; some of the areas in it were like set pieces. Do you think "Oh! I can do a gameplay design that will work in this environment!" and this is how you do it, or do you think, "Oh! This is a logical room, and what can I build out of that?"

FU: Actually, that is true, that sometimes we do have a visual image first, and then go into the level design -- I mean, what you described. But actually, for Ico, all the stages were made as individual, separate spaces, and then they were compressed together, and somehow made so that they had some compatibility, cohesiveness.

The PS3 will soon have motion control -- and it made me think about the closeness of interaction in your games, particularly between the characters, and I was wondering, does motion control appeal to you? In the way of bridging the gap of distance between the characters?

FU: I do have an interest in motion control -- just the technology itself -- but I don't think that perhaps it is most compatible for the themes that I'm looking for now. So, the motion control is a new, involved form of input to the game, but I actually have a stronger interest in what enhancements can be made to the output, so...

Does the power of the Cell processor allow you to have more complex AI, and more complex behavior from the beast character?

FU: Actually I don't really feel the enhancement of the PS3 through the AI, because we don't really use such complex AI. Actually I feel more the enhancement in the information density; how much information can be put onto the screen, in terms of the details, and how much more we can have.

[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly new GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time, a spoiler-including (warning!) discussion of BioShock and free will.]

In linear games, there’s always the lurking danger that players will think they’ve got a shred of influence on how the game unfolds. In an effort to resolve this, many games employ a narrative voice to let players know what exactly what they’re supposed to do and give them at least a bit of motivation for doing. Despite how commonly it’s used, this device has a tendency to backfire when the commanding officer/mysterious stranger/computer geek is annoying or patronizing.

So it’s nice to see BioShock not only manage to make this narrator and guide an interesting character, but also critique the entire relationship between this figure and the protagonist and player.

BioShock isn’t the only game to play around with this relationship. In Portal, the increasingly malicious AI begins asking your character to politely die, and the original Zone of the Enders withheld the tutorial until after your first fight in order to simulate the feelings of a panicked child forced into combat for the first time. But BioShock not only involves the betrayal, but really makes players conscious of how much the game controls their actions, rather than the other way around.

Despite the fact that BioShock’s story plays on the conventions of a linear narrative and the lack of free choice inherent to that, most of the discussion around the game revolves around issues of choice. The Little Sisters, and the hold the player has over their lives, is provocative enough to monopolize most discussion of the game. It’s easy to see why, as a life or death choice like this is so stark it can’t help but inspire a strong reaction.

But this limited binary choice and the unsubtle endings that resulted from them didn’t sit quite well with players (or BioShock’s developers, for that matter). An, unambiguous choice with nonsensical consequences like this doesn’t really make the player feel in control. Since this is the one of the reasons for letting the player choose in the first place, it’s a bit of a step backwards.

Control is extremely important, and one of the greatest annoyances of authoritative voiceovers is that they take that feeling away. It’s easy to tell a player do something, but what’s less easy is to make players feel motivated about their place in the narrative. They may be happy with killing monsters, but if they’re patronized every time they try and do anything else it becomes grating.

Life in a Collapsing Underwater Hellhole

If the Little Sisters are the face of the game, it’s Jack and the ugly secret of his birth and brainwashing that is Bioshock’s heart. This is the core of why the player should care about their narrator as more than just a voice that tells them what to do.It’s where the story’s narrative strength and player motivation come from, and It’s what makes the relationship with Atlas and Fontaine so interesting.

The impact of Atlas’s betrayal is made through strengthening the player’s trust of him throughout the first half of the game. Atlas feels trustworthy, and it’s due in no small part to the fact that his motivations mirror the player’s. In a collapsing underwater hellhole, escape is the natural conclusion. Not to mention that, with Andrew Ryan doing everything he can to kill Jack, trusting his enemy is a fairly logical step. Ryan’s dispassionate and patronizing attitude towards the player also gives the tension a personal touch.

BioShock takes advantage of videogame conventions to set up a relationship of trust between the player and Atlas. The player is forced to trust him to certain extent because he provides the player with the means to progress through the game. Even though there are moments that cause the player to question their relationship, the player is helpless without him. In this way, at least some degree of trust must be built up between the player and Atlas by the time it’s revealed that Atlas isn’t what he appears.

Players like to feel in control, but this sensation doesn’t necessarily come from having the ability to choose. Having control is as simple as doing what you want to do. It’s possible for players to feel in control even if they don’t actually have the ability to choose, as long as the what the game asks and what the player wants aligns. A good narrative should foster this.

Would You Kindly Do As You Please?

So when it’s revealed that Jack has been controlled by the person he thought of as an ally, the violation of trust stings that much more. Before, the player is free to imagine their relationship as anything from genuine trust to an alliance of convenience. The effectiveness of this moment all comes through exploiting the fact that players aren’t often able to question what they’re told.

The control phrase, “Would you kindly?”, which seemed like nothing more than a quirk of Atlas’s speech, now inspires a retroactive horror. Before this point, trusting Atlas felt like an option, but at the most critical point, when the player really wants the chance to exercise free will, that option is firmly denied.

It is a very disturbing sensation, but an effective one, an original twist of plot and emotion unique to the medium. It forces the player to seriously thing about their own agency. Being betrayed by others is a common twist, but being betrayed by yourself is something else entirely.

And it’s this feeling of violation that drives the rest of the game so well. First, there’s the desire to take back your freedom and remove Jack’s mental conditioning. Technically, Jack was never free, and for that matter neither was the player. But the sensation of freedom was real, and the loss of that feeling is more than enough motivation for the player to want to regain it and ultimately seek revenge on the person who took it in the first place. The player’s reaction to this violation of a freedom they never had is exactly what’s necessary to move them through to the game’s conclusion.

Choose The Possible

Even Rapture itself is constructed with the intent of inspiring driving emotions in the player. It’s a horrifying place, dangerous, oppressive, and the threat of the city’s collapse always seems imminent. Rapture never feels like a fun place to live, despite its wonders. Rapture’s final destruction is coming, and soon, and escape is a high priority. Although there’s no danger of this happening in game, the constant oppressive reminder is enough to make the player feel that rapture is a place that must be escaped.

This is a game that alternatively takes and hands back the player’s free will while the whole while keeping them on an unbending linear narrative. Nothing changes from the first half of the game to the second but the player’s perception of their free will. Just because there’s only one option that feels right doesn’t mean that there isn’t choice involved.

This examination, in this way and of this nature, is something that was only possible by capitalizing on narrative strengths unique to video games. For this reason alone, it’s important as an example of what games can achieve when they get over their cinematic inferiority complex and spot trying to become a movie anytime they want to tell a story.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which discusses videogames and videogames, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]