Square Enix game designer and scenario writer, Miwa Shoda, was shocked to be told that RPGs did not need a storyline. Shoda has worked on titles such as Final Fantasy XII and Legend of Mana and her main responsibilities are designing the story, world, quests, tutorials and scripting.

Shoda has spoke about her designing experiences before on Twitter and tweeted the following:

I’ve worked all over the place and gained a great deal of valuable experience from all sorts of people, and learnt approaches to writing games I would not have been able to do on my own, but the one approach I could never understand is the notion that “games don’t need storylines.”

Now, I don’t think all games need storylines. But when I was told that RPGs don’t need storylines, I was really shocked. They said players weren’t after a storyline, so the bare minimum of events would suffice.

I’ve enjoyed RPG stories ever since I was a child. A thrilling adventure in a new world, with interesting companions. Events are how you enjoy that, together with a storyline, or so I thought.

So I can’t believe it when people say a storyline is unnecessary in an RPG.

I was a bit shocked to read this. I prefer a game that has a good storyline along with good gameplay. If games didn’t have a story, I would probably get bored very easily. I would think, “Okay, I did this and that and beat so and so but what’s the point?” It would feel like I’m repeating the same thing over and over again with no purpose. Also, I personally like to feel connected to the characters I am playing with. It makes the gaming experience more enjoyable.

There are only a few games that can pull off the no storyline and all gameplay scenario like puzzle games, racing games, sports game, party games etc. But RPGs? That’s a big no-no. RPGs usually take tons of hours to beat which requires quite a bit of patience. If there’s no story, people would probably get irritated more easily and question their reasons for playing the game. What would I get out of playing this? At least with a story, people can look forward to the conclusion once they beat the game.

Basically, an RPG is like an interactive movie. Would you go see a movie with no story?

What do you think? What’s more important in your opinion? The story or the gameplay?

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