this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's leads have some conflicting opinions on the term JRPG (www.vg247.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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In a recent interview, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth leads Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase shared their feelings on the term JRPG, both having different perspectives on it.

Earlier this year, Final Fantasy 14 and 16 producer Naoki Yoshida spoke about the term JRPG, and how he doesn't like it as when it first started to be used it felt like it was "a discriminatory term." It's an understandable point of contention, as while the genre is quite popular now, go back a couple of decades you'd find plenty of people being rude about the games just because they were Japanese. Now, in a new interview with The Guardian, Nomura, creative director of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Kitase, producer on the game, have shared their thoughts on the term.

Quite notably, Nomura expressed distaste for the term, whereas Kitase wasn't as put off by it. "I'm not too keen on it," Nomura said. "Certainly, when we started doing interviews for the games that I started making, no one used that term – they just called them RPGs. And then at some point – I can’t remember exactly when – people started referring to them as JRPGs. And I’m not really sure what the intent behind that is. It just always felt a bit off to me, and a bit weird. I never really understood it – or why it’s needed."

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

[Nomura] And I’m not really sure what the intent behind that is.

You can't be sure of the "intent" (whatever this esoteric word means) behind anything except your own actions and words. As such, it's useless to ponder about it.

[Nomura] It just always felt a bit off to me, and a bit weird. I never really understood it – or why it’s needed

JRPG and WRPG are effectively two RPG subgenres. They could as well be called "storyline-driven RPG" and "mechanics-given RPG", but given the relative prominence of Japanese designers behind JRPG, they ended being labelled based on being made in Japan vs. Europe+Canada+USA.

And just as any words referring to media genres, you aren't supposed to take those as well-defined groups. It's perfectly possible to get a bunch of Japanese game designers make a WRPG, or a bunch of Western/Canadian/American ones making a JRPG. In fact you'll often see mechanics from one subgenre in the other. (Good examples of that would be Pokémon Red/Blue on one side and Undertale on another.)

[article writer] it's always good to keep in these kinds of perspectives, and consider whether we need to drop it or not.

The association isn't even remotely othering, given that it highlights the relative prominence of Japanese games in the RPG market.

[Nomura] Certainly, when we started doing interviews for the games that I started making, no one used that term – they just called them RPGs

And I bet that plenty people simply called it a "game". Context. Use it, Nomura.