RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

As our pasttime grows more complex and intricate, so too does our means of classifying it; by this I speak of genres, which at the most basic level are simply common traits and similarities between certain movies, music and video games. There is ongoing debate as to which games qualify as shooters, adventure games, strategy games, and role playing games; at what point does a shooter become more focused on the adventure, or the strategy game become more geared towards storytelling and character building, and so on. Obviously, it is RPGs with which we are most concerned here, but it is not our goal to define what constitutes a role playing game beforehand, and decide thereafter which games to review or not.

It is not RandomNPC’s intent to draw a line and say what falls on one side is an RPG, and what doesn’t is not. Nor are we here to say whether western/PC or Japanese/console RPGs better qualify as ‘role playing’. These arguments have been made countless times by people better and worse than us, and little more can be gained from rehashing them here.

We intend to review games that are deemed as RPGs – by us, by you, by the gaming community at large – but there are many games which don’t neatly fall into such classifications. Does Alundra qualify as an RPG where Zelda does not? Does Deus Ex squeeze across the line while System Shock 2 is left with the other shooters? Not everyone can answer these questions so quickly and easily, and there is debate over where they belong. It is with this in mind that we are adopting a category called Blurring the Line.

This category will mark those titles somewhere between genres, those games with just enough role playing to interest someone who wouldn’t otherwise give the title a second glance, or vice versa. The only way this will differ from the normal reviews is that it will mark solely those borderline titles; anything that’s not definitively or solely an RPG.

This doesn’t mean every game with a shop system or a character sheet will get reviewed here, but we will cover many of the more noteworthy cross-genre games. In doing so, we hope to better understand what forms the core of an RPG, and what room that core allows for things other than the genre staples.

Blurring the Line isn’t to label, but to examine labels. Stick around, won’t you? We’ll keep the pretense to a minimum or your time back.