This depends entirely on the game and what it's trying to accomplish. A game's dialogue options can just as well be mechanically deep or constitute failure and success states just like any game. Drawing a line in the sand over this is fucking retarded. Some games treat it like an interactive movie part, some games don't.
Depends. Most games just put an arbitrary number on how much skill points you need. So some jackoff would just put enough points in charm, persuade, or charisma skill trees and win every time.
If you removed all the dialogue and choices from Baldur's Gate 3 you would get a far shittier game. If you are an unsophisticated buffoon that only wants to unga bunga then play a different genre, that's my take.
Games like Metroid Prime and Castlevania SOTN have no dialogue trees, and yet they're classics because of the exploration and the combat. Meanwhile, you can have a game that has great dialogue, but shit exploration and combat, and that game would be considered bad by the public.
I don't even know what this means. The primary difference between western RPGs and JRPGs is how narrative is handled - the fundamental mechanics of combat are conceptually very, very similar, with RNG that's modified by stats and equipment.
It's all dice rolls.
Not really. JRPGs are less dependent on dice rolls than CRPGs are, making the arithmetic of combat more solid.
Its not a system if it has predetermined isolated outcomes instead of a spectrum/samplespace of possible outcomes. In technicality it is because a system converts input A into output B but in gameplay terms systems have reactivity, dialogue systems are not reactive because theyre isolated outputs for isolated outcomes, all of which are predetermined by the developer. A more authentic system would be something for which the developer has engineered the functionality instead of matching X input to Y output and is something which can be leveraged by players in ways the developer did not intend or foresee. For example the Zelda weather systems, MGSV AI and associated systems.
Oh, no wonder CRPG fans hate Skyrim. Skyrim is pretty random with how the game plays on every playthrough. I once did the same mission in the Dawnguard DLC twice, first for the humans, then the vampires. It was some scouting mission around a town; when I did it for the Dawnguard, it was a quiet affair that ended quickly. When I did it for the vampires, two high-level dragons attacked the town and we had to defend the town against the dragons before the dragons killed everyone. It was a boss fight that basically happened on the fly, and that was a really fun experience for me. Challenging, too, since doing the mission for the vampires entails you becoming one, and vampires are weak to fire, so having two high-level dragons breathing fire was a big challenge for a vampire character that has a weakness against fire.
Skyrim is a very organic game, which I imagine is the big reason why CRPG fans hate it and why normies love it. Normies love unpredictable games, CRPG fans are used to remembering every detail and don't like unpredictability.
Coming to the combat argument. Its a gameplay system which has a large spectrum of possible inputs with corresponding outputs. The developers might have designed the basic functionality of each weapon or item but did not design it to be a bunch of predetermined singular outcomes. A gameplay system with a functionality is different from a gameplay system designed with predetermined possibilities.
A good WRPG would be KOTOR, where the combat is very much a different beast from the dialogue aspect, and if you try to tackle it in the same lazy-boy way you would tackle CRPG ''combat'', you're dead meat, because the combat system is a real-time/turn-based hybrid, and you need to stay focused and keep on putting commands while reacting to the enemy. I can imagine a CRPG player who maxxed out charisma and persuade skills thinking he can talk his way out of any situation because he's not a combat-heavy class, only for him to get slaughtered by the end because the final boss thought it'd be funny to send a legion of imperial troops and Sith warriors in a disorganized mob against the player.
To this day the Star Forge level is still challenging, because of how random it can be. Especially since at any time, once you've gotten exhausted after fighting off tons of soldiers and Dark Jedi, the game can just decide ''fuck you, you don't get to recover'' and send more Dark Jedi and soldiers your way, and you die and have to start all over again.
You can say the same thing about Skyrim, where like I said before, the game is unpredictable with how it proceeds. You can get different combat scenarios every playthrough. In one playthrough, it took me forever before the Dark Brotherhood and the Thalmor went after me. In another, both groups were sending assassins after me before I even hit level 20.
The key here is predetermination. If any part of the gameplay in a game is completely predetermined by the developers beyond just a rough design of mechanics, it is staged inorganic and unreactive thereby being just a flowchart of options.
Like I said, if you know the game, you can just apply the right amount of points to the right skills, and utterly fuck it into the dirt. And with CRPG combat being slow, turn-based affairs, you don't even get the rush you'd get in a game like Mass Effect or KOTOR where the combat is partially realtime and you can die if you don't keep up your guard.
