Top RPG Cliches

Magitek85

Magitek85

CAG Veteran
I'm shooting around ideas in my head for things I can write fro the blog I contribute to. One of them is a list of rpg cliches. Hero lost his memory, best friend betrays you, hometown burns down, some sort of forest maze in which you endlessely run through the same screens until you get some item or character to trigger the real path for you. Anyone have any other cliches and examples of games that they appear in? Thanks for any help.
 
Yeah, I assumed there were already a million things like that when I thought about it. Just wanted to do it for fun though, I'm not trying to be the first or the best about it.
 
[quote name='Mr Unoriginal']http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html[/quote]

I don't like that list, many of the "cliches" seem directed towards a single RPG or RPG series.

Anyway, my pet peeve is the "mistaken identity". This is the one where a guy automatically assumes you are the one who killed his father/stole his sword/seduced his gf/whatever as soon as he lays his eyes on you. He rushes into a fight without discussion, and only afterwards does he realize his mistake (somehow your ability to defeat him in battle convinces him)
 
[quote name='Drizzt']In JRPGs, at east one character will have blond hair with blue eyes, and can often be the main character.[/quote]...

How is that JRPG-specific?

I don't like that list, many of the "cliches" seem directed towards a single RPG or RPG series.
Click to expand...
A few are, but not most. Garrett's Principle ([FONT=Arial,Univers,Helvetica]Let's not mince words: you're a thief. You can walk into just about anybody's house like the door wasn't even locked. You just barge right in and start looking for stuff. Anything you can find that's not nailed down is yours to keep. You will often walk into perfect strangers' houses, lift their precious artifacts, and then chat with them like you were old neighbors as you head back out with their family heirlooms under your arm. Unfortunately, this never works in stores.[/FONT]) applies to most any RPG I've ever played. The Thousand Year Rule is also insanely common, and one of the reasons that I liked Fire Emblem 7 so much - it's set 980 years after a great evil thing was sealed away. Now, some, like rule 170, "Luke, I am your..." are pretty rare in my experience, but most of them show up in a very large number of games in a large number of series'.
 
someone is trying to take over the world with a massive power,

theres always free lancers roaming and u meet them and are willing to forget whatever the hell their original intentions are to help u beat the game.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']...

How is that JRPG-specific?
[/QUOTE]

I don't really play western single player RPGs like NWN and such, so I couldn't comment on them. Hence, I felt it necessary to mention JRPGs specifically since I know it occurs in them, and heaven knows that if it wasn't JRPG specific, I would have you or someone else telling me so ;)
 
[quote name='Drizzt']I don't really play western single player RPGs like NWN and such, so I couldn't comment on them. Hence, I felt it necessary to mention JRPGs specifically since I know it occurs in them, and heaven knows that if it wasn't JRPG specific, I would have you or someone else telling me so ;)[/quote]
...

Well, it isn't.

And most WRPGs are have far more character customization than JRPGs, hair colour included.

And 'sides that, I'm pretty sure you can find a decent number of blonde people outside of RPGs.
 
You hardly ever start out with a plane, boat, airship, car, or whatever but about half way through you'll earn one or all or some combination there of and then be able to freely travel about the map/world.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']
And 'sides that, I'm pretty sure you can find a decent number of blonde people outside of RPGs.[/QUOTE]

Ah, but do they have blue eyes? :D
 
Nowadays in JRPG it seems like a requirement for a majority of the characters to have very dull, vacant facial expressions.
 
I still haven't fully fleshed this out but I was thinking of doing a more specific list like the top rpg dungeon cliches. I've got a lot of good suggestions on that front from another forum, like ghost ships, and I already wanted to say something about forest mazes. Or maybe most ridiculous rpg dungeons because someone said trains but I can only think of 1 rpg (ff6) that has that, its just so ridiculous that I want to mention it though.

Anyway, any dungeon suggestions? Maybe I'll do some more rpg cliche lists based around specific topics if I can think of any, or if anyone has any suggestions.
 
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