Just now getting around to this, my sincerest apologies. I suppose it'd be best to start with my philosophy. I've been a gamer for pretty much my whole life. I'm not able to remember the first game I ever played - at some point in my life, when I was around 5 of 6, I got to play Luigi's Mansion at a Children's hospital, but I think before that I had been playing some Flash games on the internet. Playing games was so incredibly fun to younger me. There was something so stimulating about them; about my actions having immediate 1:1 feedback, about reading dialog and listening to music, about the process of discovery, not only within the world of the game itself but also meta-discoveries - how certain mechanics worked, the most efficient ways to do things, etc.

I've always believed video games to be art, a position that is maybe less than controversial today but was definitely in contention decades ago lol. They're like intricate puzzle boxes, delivering hand-crafted experiences, telling stories, and asking questions. Even a game as simple as Pac-Man provides some level of depth. Each ghost behaves differently, predictably, and manipulatibly (is that a word?), and the skill in deriving these behaviors and discovering applications for them injects an element of purpose and replayability into the game.

I like to put games on a sliding scale between "pure game" and "experience". Take, say, Quake 3. Quake 3 has no singleplayer, no dialog, and basically no lore. The soundtrack is comprised of nondescript metal-esque background music. You are a guy, you shoot people in an arena. Compare that to a game like Detroit: Become Human, where the gameplay is very limited and is almost solely a means to an end. There's nothing wrong with being on either end of the scale. Many of my favorite games are; Quake 3, Pump it Up, Panel Attack, Tetris, Counter-Strike surfing, all of these games are Pure Game. Same goes for some of my other favorites; 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, or Ghost Trick, or Ace Attorney, games that are essentially one step away from being books (you should play Ghost Trick if you haven't).

However, it's my opinion that some of the best games fall somewhere in the middle of the scale, seamlessly combining elements of strong narrative experiences with those of gameplay that is in some way inherently engaging or challenging. Most games that truly stand out to me as special, like Portal 2, or Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, or Final Fantasy 7 (Really adventurous choices, I know :3), are in this category of game, and I've noticed most of these games are either adventure games or RPGs. In my opinion, those genres can best create a wholly engaging experience from start to finish.

The first game I had ever played that made me think games could be something more than simple timewasters was a series of Flash games called "MARDEK RPG". It took place in a fantasy world, with the titular character wanting to become an adventurer (just like his father, of course) alongside his best friend Deugan. One day, a benevolent alien ship crash-lands in the woods behind the duo's houses, thrusting them into a quest bigger than they could have imagined and with the fate of their planet on the line. I like to downplay MARDEK a lot - it's Flash games, the art is pretty basic, it's got a lot of the usual generic fantasy stuff going on, the dialog is frequently stilted, and the plot is a little ham-fisted - but I got a lot out of playing it, and I'd go so far as to say it was pretty transformative for a younger me. It was the work of just one man; the code, the art, the music, and the writing were all entirely done by him. It was (and still is) inspirational to me. Even though I wouldn't personally want to do all the art for my game by myself, he showed me it's possible to do so with no budget and no professional training, just hard work, passion, and a vision.

I've diverged a little from the prompt here, but I think it helps provide context for why I want to make an RPG specifically. I want to make a game that is a beautiful work of art, that anyone in the world can appreciate, and I think the RPG genre is the best way of doing that. And as I write that, I'm reminded of a quote by Brad Bird: "[Animation]'s not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre. You know, it can do a detective film, a cowboy film, a horror film, an R-rated film or a kids' fairy tale... it doesn't do one thing." And I think you can take his quote, and fill in the blanks, and say there is no such thing as the "RPG Genre", and maybe you'd be right lol. But you know what I mean. I think it's the best medium through which to experience the story that I want to tell. In addition, I think there's great room for improvement in the traditional JRPG combat system.

If I may go on a brief rant - I think most JRPG turn-based combat is not good. I think the design of, 'I'm going to have health and mana, I'm going to have a basic attack that I can use for free, I'm going to have spells that use mana, and I'm going to use my moves, and use items, and fight enemies that have their own moves and attacks, and one of us will die' is so incredibly boring, and to me weakens games I would otherwise consider phenomenal (i.e. Final Fantasy 7). I don't like mana in general. I understand the purpose, but I think there are better, more interesting ways to gate casters. Healing spells are another blight on RPG combat, in that not only does mana now convert directly to health, but it also creates an arms race where enemies must outdamage a healer in some way and directly leads to damage creep/lower TTK. Lower TTK means low interaction and less interesting game systems. I know that games were experiencing with real-time elements in otherwise turn-based combat systems before I was born, like in Super Mario RPG and in Chrono Trigger, but I think there's a battle system out there that would truly be fun. The Paper Mario franchise, Mother 3, and Undertale/Deltarune among others come close, but I still think there's improvement to be made. And I will make it. (Don't ask me how).

But that's about as far as I've come. I know I want to make an RPG, I know I want to have turn-based combat implemented in such a way that is interesting, and skill-expressive, but I don't really have a Complete Vision yet. Sometimes fragments of a story will come to me, and I'll give them some thought. I had this one idea about two childhood friends that discovered a magical fantasy world, grew powerful within, then when a calamity merged their two worlds together, they had power in the "real" world and one turned on the other. Evil. The runner-up idea so far has been a world where Plankton killed spongebob, and you have to reassemble the krusty krew years later to get back at him. Which, dare I say, is not a very good story. So the idea has yet to come. But that's okay. I'm in no rush. One of these days I'll start work on the magnum opus and maybe I'll finish it. Who knows where life will take me?

The end! Thanks for reading. Would love to hear your thoughts, if any.