The director of JRPG-inspired GOTY sensation Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 says he prefers linear stories to the sprawling open narratives of Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Skyrim.
Speaking to Automaton Media, Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche admits that "'RPG' is a very big term" that includes a wide variety of games, but says that when he considers Western RPGs, he thinks "more of games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or Skyrim, where the character you play changes the story and you kind of become the protagonist yourself."
In those games, "you make choices that affect how other characters react and how the story's ending plays out." As a general rule, "Western RPGs let you make your own story." But in Japanese RPGs, he says, "the story being told is quite linear," and that's something Broche prefers.
"You get a protagonist, you get the characters," he explains. "I feel like it allows you to tell a stronger story and make more memorable characters." It's a fair assessment of the games he cites – Tav, the Dragonborn, and Fallout 3's Lone Wanderer are all fairly blank slates when compared to Maelle, Gustave, and Verso.
That focus on player choice and character agency, Broche says, is the main distinguishing factor between JPRGs and their Western counterparts; "there are a lot of very good Western RPGs where you feel like you are directing the story yourself because of the choices you get to make. In JRPGs, you do get some smaller choices, but in general, the story is linear, the ending is the ending, and the beginning is the beginning, from A to Z. I feel like that's the main distinguishing factor."
