Gaming Why are all JRPGs set in english medieval times?

[Reveri3]

Simple question, why on earth all the japanese RPGs set in english medieval times? this is one of the main reason which takes all the attraction out of the game for me to play JRPGs. When playing their games, the ONLY thing which remains japanese are the characters and combat style. Everything else seems heavily "influenced" by the medieval culture and this really pisses me off! forgod sake even their names are english medieval!

I dont have anything against medieval i just dont like the combination of japanese culture with it.

Before people start giving me examples i know there are games out there which do not show medieval influence but still, EVERY game i touch or have played has this issue for me, therefor i would say more than 90% JRPGs titles has this.

Japanese culture has great culture that can create even more beautiful scene settings for games than the medieval times. Instead of kings and queens, they can stick to the shoguns and empires.

Scene settings contributes greatly towards my opinion of the game and it matters a lot to me! it is JUST NOT JAPANESE!

To me this seems like they dont respect or see their own culture in these games and feel heavily inclined towards using setting stage in medieval times

 

[Foxi4]

Not exactly "English Medieval times", rather the "bog-standard Fantasy setting", it's the legacy of D&D and original RPG's which JRPG desperately tries to imitate.

 

[Reveri3]

So you make the exact point at the end of your statement "which JRPG desperately tries to imitate"

question really is, why!

Wonder how many other people feel this way. There is just something about these old settings that really bother me.

 

[Flame]

this is a complicated question.

but a part comes down to dragons.

dragons are from the medieval times, the invention of dragons is from that period.

alot of jRPG use dragons..

dragons!

 

[MajinCubyan]

Should change the title to "most" instead of "all." I mean Final Fantasy VI through VIII and X aren't and I can think of quite a few JRPG's set in feudal Japan as well. It's kinda like asking why most First-Person Shooters take place during wartime; cause it just works.

 

[Pippin666]

this is a complicated question.

but a part comes down to dragons.

dragons are from the medieval times, the invention of dragons is from that period.

alot of jRPG use dragons..

dragons!

I am sorry. but dragons were not invented in medieval times ... big LOL there ! Chineese workshiped dragon as far as 4700 before Christ.

Pip'

 

[Reveri3]

Should change the title to "most" instead of "all." I mean Final Fantasy VI through VIII and X aren't and I can think of quite a few JRPG's set in feudal Japan as well. It's kinda like asking why most First-Person Shooters take place during wartime; cause it just works.

I was already aware of FinalFantasy and i do like it although even in finalfantasy, there is very little you can relate to japanese "culture". To begin with, i cant think of any character which had japanese name in finalfantasy. I already said that its not ALL, so im not going to comment further on that. First person shooter, yes its all about war, but in what time/age settings? theres the old call of duty with old guns set in old war times, and then theres "modern" warfare. If they kept making all the FPS games about WW1 then ya you can relate that to my question but its not the case, most are all set in modern times now.

Coming back to the point, there are still hell lot more games with that use old medieval setup for JRPGs. Its not even about age/time its about culture, like i said the only thing you can relate to japan in most of these games are character drawing and combat style.

Keeping focus on why so many set in medieval times? make few but not majority. Why not use the old japanese culture?

Dragons, as pippin pointed out has been a chinese icon/symbol for centuries wasnt created by medieval, PLUS, even if you want to consider it the fact that medieval started dragons, then just take the dragon, WHY change the whole scene setting to medieval times just to adapt dragons? Dragons do not have any ethnic identity, they can be in or from any part of the world.

This is really to help me understand myself better and get views of other people on this

 

[The Real Jdbye]

This might be true for a lot of JRPGs but far from all.

this is a complicated question.

but a part comes down to dragons.

dragons are from the medieval times, the invention of dragons is from that period.

alot of jRPG use dragons..

dragons!

Can't have a JRPG without dragons.

I am sorry. but dragons were not invented in medieval times ... big LOL there ! Chineese workshiped dragon as far as 4700 before Christ.

Pip'

The dragons used in JRPGs are usually Western or European style though.

 

[MajinCubyan]

I was already aware of FinalFantasy and i do like it although even in finalfantasy, there is very little you can relate to japanese "culture". To begin with, i cant think of any character which had japanese name in finalfantasy. I already said that its not ALL, so im not going to comment further on that. First person shooter, yes its all about war, but in what time/age settings? theres the old call of duty with old guns set in old war times, and then theres "modern" warfare. If they kept making all the FPS games about WW1 then ya you can relate that to my question but its not the case, most are all set in modern times now.

Coming back to the point, there are still hell lot more games with that use old medieval setup for JRPGs. Its not even about age/time its about culture, like i said the only thing you can relate to japan in most of these games are character drawing and combat style.

Keeping focus on why so many set in medieval times? make few but not majority. Why not use the old japanese culture?

Dragons, as pippin pointed out has been a chinese icon/symbol for centuries wasnt created by medieval, PLUS, even if you want to consider it the fact that medieval started dragons, then just take the dragon, WHY change the whole scene setting to medieval times just to adapt dragons? Dragons do not have any ethnic identity, they can be in or from any part of the world.

This is really to help me understand myself better and get views of other people on this

Well, I never said that you didn't know about Final Fantasy. I was pointing out that those one's aren't set in medieval times and what not. Cyan in VI is a samurai, Yuffie in VII is a ninja from a very Japanese based village.

But in the end, thats just how some are. If you want one all Japanese cultured up, play Inindo, a JRPG set during Nobunaga's conquest of Japan.

 

[prowler]

Honestly sounds to me you just want to play anime games to get that Japanese feeling, which is fine I guess but if you want to get lost in the world of Japan I suggest not limiting yourself to JRPGs.

It's in the name, JRPG. If you get down to the core of role playing games, you come to PnP games - Dungeons and Dragons. J/WRPGs will always have that essence of "old-world" to them; swords, magic, crossbows, mythical creatures, races, etc. there is no escaping it. Obviously that doesn't all boil down to medieval, for example Final Fantasy summons go into Islamic, Hindu and other ethnics. You're confusing medieval with old world and you're obviously not happy with this whereas some people take escape from it.

 

[emigre]

Simple question, why on earth all the japanese RPGs set in english medieval times? this is one of the main reason which takes all the attraction out of the game for me to play JRPGs. When playing their games, the ONLY thing which remains japanese are the characters and combat style. Everything else seems heavily "influenced" by the medieval culture and this really pisses me off! forgod sake even their names are english medieval!

I dont have anything against medieval i just dont like the combination of japanese culture with it.

Before people start giving me examples i know there are games out there which do not show medieval influence but still, EVERY game i touch or have played has this issue for me, therefor i would say more than 90% JRPGs titles has this.

Japanese culture has great culture that can create even more beautiful scene settings for games than the medieval times. Instead of kings and queens, they can stick to the shoguns and empires.

Scene settings contributes greatly towards my opinion of the game and it matters a lot to me! it is JUST NOT JAPANESE!

To me this seems like they dont respect or see their own culture in these games and feel heavily inclined towards using setting stage in medieval times

IIRC, the use of a medieval-lite setting is a genre trope. If memory serves correct, a lot of it originates from the OG Dragon Quest which in itself was imfluenced by old school dungeon crawling PC RPGS. Which in turn were an evolution of them pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons ergo the influence of the fantasy medieval-lite .

IMO you should play:

Spoiler

 

[the_randomizer]

Final Fantasy IX has a steampunk setting, what about that?

 

[Sliter]

this is not this hard ... european medieal fantasy stories even take atention from who are outside, sometime your country have good base material for creating an RPG but what are from outside even looks ne and different from something you are used to ...
It must be a kind of trend, don't mena you have to be stuck on that but is where they are working in more ideas and stuff

but idk, pokemon is an JRPG that take parts in " actual japan" (exept Bw and XY) but the localization even change everything to make it look like it's western so who cares? XD

 

[tbb043]

I am sorry. but dragons were not invented in medieval times ... big LOL there ! Chineese workshiped dragon as far as 4700 before Christ.

Pip'

Chinese dragons are a lot different than the type of dragons most people think of and which show up in RPG's . Thank Dungeons & Dragons (on which all the early RPG's were based on/ripping off), which in turn can thank Tolkein.


But anyway, onto point, I don't think the medieval thing is nearly as prevalent as it once was, I mean, even by the PSX era it seemed to be getting less and less common, other than maybe in some incredibly superficial ways. Just because there are kings and castles and stuff doesn't mean it's medieval.

 

[Liberty]

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/style-guide-influence-of-japan/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Meiji_Japan#British_alliance
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523367.2014.936393
http://www.quora.com/What-explains-the-influence-of-French-culture-on-Japanese-culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome#Susceptibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism
http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/2ft54p/why_is_japanese_anime_so_obsessed_with_germany/