What's the deal with towns in RPGs that are in high level areas?

[cubicle47b]

In the original Dragon Quest the towns in high-level areas are surrounded by water, a wall (with a golem), or destroyed.

 

[Desi]

That's the same time period I discovered Morrowind, where "monsters" were rooted in rich lore, towns had a reason for being in the "end game" areas (if there were any towns at all), and the majority of civilization was in the safer southern climes of its setting. Narrative through world design was on another level, and most JRPGs still haven't clued into that, especially the FF series.

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Not to add to this but FFXV also has a video about habitat and inworld explanation for a lot of monsters. Not to mention that many unless it's night (when people fear to travel) are not automatically agressive.

 

[XaviConcept]

Theres a manga about pretty much the exact same question!

 

[J-Tier]

Theres a manga about pretty much the exact same question!

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I think I'm going to read it. Though I think I'd really like a premise set in the actual village with the standard NPCs (the town greeter, innkeeper, baker, merchant, blacksmith, etc) being total badasses and to them, it's just normal for a baker that can "bend" dough and take down a massive dragon for their daily dragon pot pie.

 

[Darkstorne]

Ffx doesn't do this well, but you should replay FfXII and read the beastiary entries and do the hunts. Actually that game does contextualize the monsters in a logical way and does it well, probaly best of any FF.

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The bestiary of FFXII gives us backstory of every monster encountered in the game. One of my favorites are the zombies, described as unearthed corpses controlled by magick and employed to do menial tasks. Basically the same as the original voodoo zombies.

Similarly, both the zombie warriors and zombie knights are soldiers who fell in battle that are forced to continue to fight from beyond the grave through magickal glyphs branded into their bodies, something the game points out has been deemed illegal by most governments and the zombie magicians that are spell casters who employed forbidden magicks to expand their natural lifespans through unnatural means to name a few.

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FFX does it pretty well because monsters explicitly don't fit into the ecology because they're vengeful spirits of the dead. Also the towns and cities near stronger monsters tend to be either secluded like Guadosalam or heavily defended like Bevelle, and the ones out in the open are explicitly vulnerable to being attacked by Sin.

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FFX is a very specific case, because every monster in the game, from the wolves to the Iron Giants, are evil ghosts. They are all fiends, which are magical beings made of the same stuff as the Aeons: pyreflies/i.e. human soulstuff. The game is pretty consistent that the stronger ones tend to gather in places where a lot of people have died and remained Unsent, or where very angry/bitter people perished.

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Lots of people replying along these lines. I think I just expect more from games than flavour text. Bestiary entries about the monster don't explain why they stand around doing nothing in games like XII, not interacting with the environment, not visibly affecting the ecology of the area. I specifically remember feeling this strongly in a section of XII where you're exploring... inside a giant crystal? It was so long ago. But there were bomb mobs just... chilling out... on all these pathways, serving no purpose but to delay the player and create a combat scenario. And I thought "Man, these guys literally just exist here waiting to be killed for EXP."

Even in X where the "monsters" are all departed spirits, there's very little effort put into visually portraying their impact on the people or the environment. No thought put into ecosystem balances. It's all just flavour text and nothing beyond that. Which is especially frustrating in X because with Sin they delivered on the impacts this monster would have on environments incredibly well =P