The Oblivion of Western RPGs
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Western RPGs focus on the characters, and the world around them is a tool to let the player-as-character do and see more. Eastern RPGs focus on the events unfolding around the characters, and how the characters affect the world around them. Western RPGs are based on the experience of tabletop role-playing games, limited only by the imaginations of the players and the game master, where Eastern RPGs are more re-creations of traditional storytelling. Oblivion has taken huge strides toward meeting fans of MMOs halfway by building A.I. that really lives alongside the player and ensuring that the actual missions are easily pursued. But is that enough to bring people back to the single-player PC RPG? Are enough people tired of running Molten Core or getting a boot squad together to get their advanced job to give a single-player game a chance? We'll see if Oblivion is a successful experiment or a last, nostalgic nod to the past when The Elder Scrolls V is released and we see if it's got a multiplayer mode.
