This is going on my steam deck so fast.

God damn, I wish it was a fighter, but I'll take an ARPG. Will give it a shot when it comes out

Hell yes

Tough.

I know nothing about it but I love it already.

We've only seen 2 seconds of gameplay, how can you be sure it's not a rogue like or something? Did I miss it being stated somewhere or you're just guessing?

Also, this comment reminded me how ridiculous I find it that we have genres such as "metroidvania" and "souls like", "auto shooter" , "survivors like" and etc. Yet we can't come up with subgenre names other than arpg which can describe everything from Bastion, to Horizon Zero down, to path of exile. What's up with that?

I've never seen Horizon Zero Dawn called an ARPG but that does seem to be the consensus. I've always considered games like that or new God of War to be "adventure games".

We need more subgenres! What do you call breath of the wild or the spiderman games in that case?

Imo god of war/ horizon are aptly named because they're action focused RPGs.

We need new, better name for the "diablo-like" games, however. I feel like those are different enough that there's not enough "rpg" left in them beyond the character building elements. Survivorslike aren't RPGs despite them having character leveling and stuff so why should diablo 4 /Poe be called rpgs?

Charlie conspiracy.jpg

Video game genres are one of the few fields in which I'm not a prescriptivist. But survivorlikes only aren't called RPGs because Vampire Survivor is embossed on the whole subgenre. The suite of mechanics rose to high prominence on the back of one game (or franchise, in the case of Soulslikes) rather than refined through years of experimentation.

We aren't going to get more, simple names unless they're similarly derived from a single, famous ancestor like your "Soulslike". But you can always just be descriptive. Diablo/PoE are "top-down gear-grind RPGs"; it's jargony but all subgenres are.

Survivorslike is just one option, auto shooter is the same thing and doesn't use vampire survivors' name.

And well, in this case, I just saw op say that this game was gonna be an arpg and because I play a lot of PoE, last epoch, etc. I was expecting something in that vein. Then I open the link and I see 2 seconds of something that looks more like hades or god of war and I was disappointed. So if me wishing we had better terms for various genres makes me a prescriptivist, I guess I am one, in this case.

Also tdggrpg is too complicated of a subgenre name, I feel xD

There already is a Steam page and the description says co-op action RPG.

I mean, perspective matters, I suppose: you could use isometric/top down and 3rd person to make a distinction between PoE and HZD, but then again I don't play either, or ARPGs in general, so that's as nuanced of a take as I could have on this.

Wu-Tang’s latest music video is just AI slop. I’m not gonna buy anything Wu-Tang related if they aren’t willing to pay for real artists and workers to make their music video.

Nah, that wouldn't be enough to differentiate PoE to hzd, imo. It's like comparing Max Payne to CSGO. Or I dunno.. rocket league to Football manager.. or Mario party to street figther.. trying to cover as many bases here to cover the games that you might be more familiar with. xD. Point is, in both games you get a character which you level up and customize by doing quests and killing mobs, but that's pretty much where the similarities end, as far as the gameplay, mechanics and goals of fans go.

And for the record, despite this also being called an arpg, it'll be very different from both PoE and hzd. ARPG seems to be as vague as "driving game" or "shooter".

Yeah, it's not trendy but I don't think we can do trendy unless we do like I said and derive from standout games with identifiable suites of mechanics. You just have to be descriptive or accept heavy overlap.

"Auto shooter" is not very descriptive. In 10 years, someone would be having this same conversation about that term. Asteroids is basically an auto shooter because there's no reason to not always be shooting, it's effectively a QOL change. Some bullet hells too.