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A very old and yet still somehow relevant term WRPG. Why did it need to be specified as Western? What are its key features and are there some cool WRPG titles to enjoy? Time to find out!
The original term Western RPG was most likely created to create a distinction between the RPGs created primarily in Americas, Australia and Europe and the new JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game) genre that started to grow in popularity internationally.
Despite being a bit “outdated” as a genre, WRPG is still often used when talking about action RPGs, narrative-focused RPGs or even immersive sims. Even the Souls series have a very strong WRPGs influence.
The downside is that it's a rather broad search term and makes it a bit hard to find exactly what the player is looking for. Not very helpful with the amount of titles and subgenres present today.
Because of its strong TTRPG influence, there are some core features that are often associated with the WRPG genre.
Ability to roam the world to explore it and interact with freely, the importance of player choice and its consequences, realistic world building to immerse players are just a few of the important ones.
They’re not present in every WRPG, of course, they are quite common in the majority of the titles though, making them easy to recognise after playing a few games.
While not all WRPGs are a full open world, there’s often plenty of freedom to explore expansive areas as the player sees fit. So long as they can deal with the dangers in each new location of course.
An important aspect of any open world lies in the content it can offer. To explore, means to discover something new and (hopefully) interesting. Having a huge but empty world is often a huge detriment to the game and should be avoided at all cost, no matter how breathtaking it looks after its initial discovery.
Another influence of the TTRPGs, the non-linear storytelling. Most WRPGs have the overarching main storyline that the players can pursue at their own leisure.
The “good” thing is that they can be (mostly) ignored.
Allowing for spending time to dive into some interesting side quests, explore the world and uncover its lore and of course the good old fashioned combat with challenging enemies. Even if the world needs saving (eventually), someone has to slay those pesky rats first!
Just as the Dungeon Master (DM) in Dungeon and Dragons Table Top games would adjust the story depending on how the players handled encounters, puzzles and decisions they’ve made.
WRPGs often offer various alternative plot relevant choices that affect the world and potentially the ending of the game. Depending on the game, some content cannot be enjoyed until a second or third playthrough, giving an incentive to play a game differently to either discover more story or get that dreaded 100% achievement.
Both can be quite rewarding, if not time (and sanity) consuming.
Ideally, in WRPGs, the players themselves decide who the protagonist (PC) is. Whether it’s their appearance or abilities, skills etc. these decisions give an extra layer of engagement, since it’s a character that players themselves created and wish to role-play as.
Alternatively, if the game focuses on an already established hero/heroine, the in-game system should give enough customizability that allows creation of their very own and personal take on them.
For a WRPG to successfully immerse a player into its universe, the world needs to be “believable” enough. That doesn’t mean it has to mimic the “real” world, quite the opposite! The players are more than able to suspend their disbelief when it comes to magical dragons or sci-fi space civilizations.
What's important is how this world itself is presented. Vast political strife between factions, everyday struggles of civilians or simply locations that “make sense” for people to live there. If players can’t imagine themselves existing in this world as regular people, it can really take them out of the story, leaving them uncaring about its fate.
As mentioned previously, freedom of tackling quests whenever the player chooses to (with few exceptions) is quite a core part of WRPGs.
It’s not unusual to have 10+ open quests (or way more) while exploring new locations, since with each new hub location, whether a large city or a small friendly hamlet, there are more missions to tackle. On top of it, certain quests require travelling to yet undiscovered locations to complete, often far away and too dangerous to attempt at the moment of its acceptance.
The end of the world can wait, after all.
Sometimes the story can demand that the player commits to some more serious decisions. Decisions that can shape narrative in new and interesting ways.
It could be a decision to slay or spare a villain, save one character at the cost of the other or perform small acts of evil for the greater good (and vice-versa). Quite often these choices carry over permanent changes in the storyline and require the player to act on their own morality (or their characters).
Depending on the quality of writing of the game, these choices often stay with the player even after its completion. Potentially giving a reason to replay the game and try to achieve the “best” outcome possible.
But sometimes you just can’t save everyone…
There’s quite a few popular series that embody a lot of the WRPG spirit. Most have their own flavour and design but they share a lot of the key features between themselves.
The Elder Scrolls series got the formula of a huge world and massive lore worked out well. Each game allows the player to create a “blank state” (but often playing some bigger role in the plot) character and explore the continent of Tamriel (or at least a big part of it).There’s plenty of places to visit, explore, learn about and of course fight through.
Since the introduction of the third title, Morrowind, each new title was released in 3D with first person perspective. Along with that, there are tools provided by the developers that allows players to mod each game to add new things or change already existing ones. Some may argue that this is one of the major reasons for its popularity.
Either way, the Elder Scrolls series is a great example of WRPG and worth trying out. If you’re particularly interested, you could start with The Elder Scrolls: Arena.
Witcher Geralt and his journey to find his adopted daughter Ciri was concluded in the third installment of the series.
The first title focused on him attempting to recover his memory and give players a chance to learn about the brutal world on the Continent, filled with monsters, demi-humans and magic.
Second one focused on him trying to prove his innocence of regicide, take sides in a human vs demi-human conflict and being thrown into a complex plot orchestrated by the Nilfgaardians.
The third game in the trilogy focused on Geralt's ultimate goal of finding Yeneffer (his lover) and aforementioned Ciri, returning to where he was before his “awakening” in the first game.
Each new installment was an improvement from the previous, with Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt being the perfect culmination of the trilogy. A great action RPG series with important choices, expansive and immersive world and a great storyline (with stellar voice acting!), absolute recommendation for each individual game in the series so far.
When talking about the Fallout series, there’s an important distinction. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 were developed by Interplay Entertainment and played as an isometric turn-based RPG.
Fallout 3 and each future title was developed by Bethesda Game Studios, using first/third person perspective fully 3D world.
The first two titles were part of the great RPG revival after its decline in the 90s and have a cult following to this day. Bethesda played to its strengths and used their game engine to create a fully 3D world of Fallout, allowing more casual players to enjoy its crazy alternative reality post apocalyptic world.
Both “series” offer different styles and gameplay and should be considered as “their own thing” that exists in the same universe. A hearty recommendation for both the older isometric RPG fans and action RPG fans.
The Mass Effect series was developed by Bioware. The main character, Commander Shephard, is an established character within the game world but with a choice given to the players to choose his background ,name ,class, skills etc.
There are plenty of choices that affect how certain plotlines play out, future quests, the character that can be met in the future etc. Interestingly enough, each sequel had an option to export existing characters from the previous game, carrying over the major plotline choices, meaning that players get to play their own Commander Shepard to the very conclusion of the series. Offering an amazing adventure to those who started from the first game.
A fantastic action RPG with great plot, world building and memorable companion characters (and voice acting for every single character in the game). Definitely worth playing from first to the last (or replaying)!
Mass Effect: Andromeda should be treated as its own thing…
The sense of adventure, fantastic storylines, enjoyable gameplay, immersive new worlds and simply the joy of all of these combined.
WRPGs are quite extensive when it comes to types of games that fall under its umbrella, making it hard to pick specific types of games. But after playing some of them, it’s easy to tell that it’s a WRPG or it’s been influenced by it.
If you enjoy RPGs, then you’re definitely going to enjoy some awesome titles (if you haven’t already!).
A large number of WRPGs offer open or semi-open worlds. But there’s plenty of genres that fit under WRPG so it’s not entirely “typical”.
Most WRPGs have some sort of console port, not every console though, unfortunately.
Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is very easy to pick up by virtually anyone. The Mass Effect series is also a decent choice, despite its age.
There are some titles that have some level of multiplayer support in them. Diablo series, Divinity: Original Sins series, Baldur's Gate 3 to name a few.
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