But it's something we all discuss from time to time, and we all have differing opinions on what makes a Legacy game an RPG.
Story choices and different endings?
No. lots of Action-Adventure's and shooter's have story branches and multiple endings. The existence of which does not make the game a Roleplayer. Heck, you could even say Outrun has branches and multiple endings!
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Is it stats allocation and skill trees?
No. Again, Action-Adventure's and shooters also have these functions ocassionally. And a large portion of RTS's have skill trees, and stat/resource allocation.
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Is it creating your own character to follow any path you want?
Mostly this. While you're not always given the option of creating an entirely new character, the one you're given should be a 'base-model' for you to evolve and upgrade however you wish. Also the world in which your character develops should not be linear and existent solely because of the Primary quests/missions. Because you're supposed to be playing your own role, not watching the developer's idea of what you should be.
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Admittedly i also fall into the laziness of referring to games as RPG's when they're not (Fantasy Action-Adventure's are most commonly misidentified), but it's almost an industry standard that swords and sorcery + levelling = RPG.
Levels are no different to Achievements, they give the player a sense of getting somewhere from the hours they're putting in, sometimes they offer rewards too.
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Short version: A game that plonks you in the middle of a world/land, tells you who the next big-bad is, then leaves you to figure out how you're going to go about finding it, preparing yourself and where you're going to start looking; that's an RPG.
There aren't actually very many of them and it would be a niche-genre if it wasn't so misused.
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