Quote:
Originally Posted by Foobar
And I don't think it can be argued that SMT hasn't been influenced slightly by western RPG design. I always have seen Altus as one of the few japanese compainies that met the styles of eastern and western RPGs halfway. They're still story driven games, but players are allowed a lot of influence over where the story itself will end up and how thier character grows.
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I think the problem here is that there are people that still believe there is such a thing as "Eastern" or "Western" RPGs, when the fact is that it is simply a wave that most RPG developers in Japan having been riding for quite some time after Final Fantasy VII and Tetsuya Nomura started the trend of injecting emo protagonists and Japanese pop-culture fashion. In the end, their audiences became so niche that they had to specifically keep pandering to the base because of Japan's economic downturn in the games industry. This in turn affected most development to the point they're scared of trying out something new in fear of losing their audiences.
Atlus tends to be successful because of their word-of-mouth approach, and the fact that they themselves have a dedicated base of loyal followers (not dissimilar to Nintendo's). I also think that the Megaten franchise in itself is a cult classic that has the potential to become mainstream, with Strange Journey being one of those approaches.
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