kohlrak: Christian and Christian-like narratives are really prominant in Japan
dtgreene: But so are, it seems, many anti-Christian narratives.
For example, there are some JRPGs where, it turns out, the church is evil, or at least serving an evil deity.
Also, some games have, as the main villain or final boss, an enemy that could be described as the all-powerful god, like the one in Christianity. Some of the Shin Megami Tensie games even put YHVH, which *clearly* relates to the Jewish (and therefore Christian) god as described in the Old Testament. (There's a reason the games didn't get localized prior to SMT3: Nocturne, which, IIRC, doesn't feature YHVH at all.) (Also, to be fair, the SMT series borrows from all sorts of mythologies, not just Christian mythology.)
Which i've found intesting, as other than the bosses or anti-church sentiment, those very same games will still be positive. I've found it ironic that when they focus on Christianity or organized religion in particular, their target is almost always catholicism, which also is one of the major groups (jesuits in particular) behind the spread of communism into Japan. While final fantasy tactics accused Jesus of being the antichrist, it was otherwise wholly focused on the catholic church, and in particular the features the jesuits have known for for IRL centuries (involvement in political affairs). Final Fantasy as a whole seems to have a positive view of faith, yet not blind faith, praising those who simultaneously keep faith while also testing the logic, while boldly condemning those with strong, blind ambitions (often religious leaders). the XIII saga (including 15, where Ardyn is evil Jesus) is particularly interesting. In the XIII trilogy, all the gods were evil except Etro (the closest to YHWH being Mwynn, but even that's a stretch). In FF15, the presumed YHWH is the unknown god, the crystal itself. It's also fairly obvious, then, that the gods of the world are actually angels, and thus Satan clearly being Ifrit for the most obvious parallel (not sure why Jesus/Ardyn was chosen to be the primary antagonist, but in an alternative ending Ardyn is saved and Bahamut is the villain, though it's not hard to see him as such even with the canon ending, and it then becomes obvious that Noctis is a sort of heroic antichrist). And then we have Dragon Quest which doesn't seem to hate religion at all from what little i've seen. Usually i've seen religion play most of a role such as "healders," savepoints, revivers, etc. Having Christian looking people from Final Fantasy, wizardy-likes, etc bringing people back from the dead is actually quite positive.
SMT is worth mentioning separately: the YHWH of SMT has the name, but is a grossly misinterpreted version. In particular, he is a god of order, while in Judeo-Christian tradition His domain is existance itself, which includes both order and chaos. Similarly, "The Accuser" implies order (like a prosecutor in a court room), not chaos, where Satan represents Chaos in SMT. In it's own odd way, it seems to me to be more reverant given all the "gods" in SMT that are ultimately subordinates to Satan and YHWH, especially given the nature of SMT to suggest that there is no good, rather just evil and not-evil.
The SaGa series has some interesting takes on the handling of deities in game, from SaGa 1's final boss to Romancing SaGa's pantheon that's reminiscent of ancient polytheistic mythology (the RS1 remake even has a quest that boosts your favor with both the god of good and one of the 3 evil gods, and it actually makes sense for that quest to do that), to the SaGa Frontier games having no deities at all (not counting things like the MecGod boss as deities).
Minor SaGa 2 spoilers (4th world) follow:
In fact, the SaGa series has one of my favorite handlings of deities in one of the worlds. Here, there's one town where there's talk of the mountain god Dunatis, but a scholar thinks it's just the wind. In another, there's talk of the sea god Neptune, but a scholar thinks it's just a volcano. Do these gods actually exist? (Answer: One does, the other does not.)
Which i find an amusing way of handling things. Other than the feature to have NPCs randomly lie to you in DQ11, it's a terribly common trope in JRPGs that every rumor turns out either true or almost true.
kohlrak: That's interesting: seeing as by that definition you defeat the purpose of a game. Your abilities of your characters would also include decision making, no? Contrarily, i think that's precisely what RPGs are about, and this nuance must be precisely why we disagree on ARPGs: for me, it's about your ability to assume the role you are given, whether that's a fully fledged character, or your ability to adapt yourself (when you create your own character like in TES or Fallout) to the world you live in and the cards you've been dealt. We wouldn't exactly say when playing sonic the hedgehog that we progress through the game while necessarily seeing the world through sonic's eyes, like we would Khajiit named Kohlrak #587 in Morrowind. Of course, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles is considered an ARPG, and i'll even tell people such, but i don't necessarily consider it the same kind of itch scratching. To me, the choice between playing Fallout 1 or Fallou 4 comes down to how much caffeine i've had today.
The way I see it, in an RPG, the player's role is to make the decisions on what to do, not to execute them. Essentially, there's a bit of indirection between the player (who decides what the character does) and the character (who actually performs that action).
Simple example: The player decides that a party member should attack, so the player enters the command. Then, when it's the character's turn, the character does the attack without further input from the player, and it's the character's stats and the RNG that decides what happens as a result.
Right, but this is often contrary to the whole purpose of RPGs. Often you can make a decision that the character would never make. Of course, well beyond just battles, usually, such as how the party's money would be spent at a given time. Think about the last time you went grinding for levels, what your party makeup was, and what they did with the money and how they went about combat and ask yourself how the conversations in those parties would have really gone. Hint: i highly doubt the white mage was happy using up all the mana healing instead of spending the money on some potions. Probably something like "i know we could use more practice, but you know, looking for trouble and relying on me to tend to your wounds when i could get stabbed from behind by a brigand is a really, really bad idea and, frankly, all this isn't making me a better healer. Why don't i just hang out at the temple or something while you spend all your bounty money on some potions and something while i do something productive like looking at the ancient tomes looking for better spells or some prophecy of beating Arch-Villain #2?"
