Japanese vs. Western RPGs; story vs. gameplay

Gamasutra posted an article a few days ago about the 20 essential Japanese RPGs. It's pretty long but worth a skim. I've spent most of my gaming life (until recently) fairly insulated from reviews and online chatter about the quality of games I played. As a result, I knew what I liked, but I didn't know if anyone else agreed. It was fun to read someone else's take on those games.

Turns out I have played quite a few of the ones listed, including:

• Final Fantasy IV
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Final Fantasy X
• Final Fantasy XII
• Chrono Trigger
• Chrono Cross

Lots of Square games on that list, obviously, but they were only one of two or three outfits creating US-bound RPGs in the 80s and 90s. Plus, I liked all their games, so I tended to go out and buy them.

I've never played Xenogears, but I did play the first installment of Xenosaga, and I definitely agree with this article's take on that game:

Still, once again, the plot [of Xenosaga] was simply far too ambitious for its own good, and the number of planned installments was cut down from six to three, compressing the plot even more. It didn't help that the first two games were saddled with terrible pacing issues, plodding cutscenes, and boring battle systems.

Japanese vs. "Western" RPGs
This article also intrigued me because I'm still working on Oblivion (which will no doubt be a looong process), and I've only just begun to understand the differences between Japanese and Western-style RPGs. This is yet another way in which I'm a little slow, but I have never really spent much time with any Western RPGs before Oblivion.

I tend to like story-based games with interesting characters, and Western RPGs have leaned away from story and more toward gameplay, with their open-ended worlds and emphasis on first-person role-playing.

To avoid launching into a rant about the state of stories in games (which you can find here at Blog of War, and also here and here), I'll just say that so far I still prefer the Japanese model. Most definitions of narrative require an some act of telling (by an author and/or narrator). It's this author who interprets events and helps shape their meaning.

Japanese-style RPGs tend to acknowledge the existence of an author/narrator and adopt a more cinematic style -- they tell a story. Western RPGs tend to drop you in a world and let you, in a sense, create your own story. The trouble with this model is two-fold for me:

1. Most of us aren't good story tellers. The things we do in these spaces probably isn't very interesting. If I choose to spend my time in Oblivion on alchemy, I'll just run around collecting seeds and roots all the time. Nothing riveting there. Sure, I could play the thief or the wizened wizard, but these are just types; they're not characters with flaws and emotions. I want characters.
   
2. There's no one to tell the story to. If a story needs a teller, it also, out of necessity, needs an audience. If a man tells a story in a forest and no one is there to listen, is it still a story? Sorry... The point is that I can certainly entertain myself in a sandbox-type game -- where I'm the story-teller with no audience -- but I find it far more compelling to be an active audience member, using the available gameplay to move a story along.
   

That's my two cents. What's your preference?