I actually find it strange how "character growth" (in the loosest sense, even if it's just about equipment) is such a necessity in all games genres, except adventure games. People feel easily lost, in current shooters, if the weapon's skin and baddies' skins don't elvove in a way that makes them feel that their 1 shot 1 kill has become 5'433'865 damage on 5'433'865 health. Exact same gameplay, but ooh big numbers big power.

I contrast it with adventures in action movies, where the heroes keep their same fists, or handgun, or rapier, throughout the story, which isn't less thrilling or more repetitive for that. Of course there are also huge sagas about dragonball-ish characters reaching over 9000, and a lot of RPG-ing is about this (some define them through this). But if you define RPG through, well, role playing (defining a role, defining a character's behaviour and identity, and acting freely in an open world), then this growth is useless. You can perfectly have a whole adventure, with all sorts of twists and encounters, "at the same age".

What I'm saying is that I sometimes wish for more open world "adventure games". And "adventure games" elements are often what I prefer in RPGs. If the focus was a bit more on that, RPGs would be more RPG-ish and less hack-and-slashy.

But the general trend goes the other way, even in pure action games.

Actually it wasn't whole Beamdog, it was only their (one) writer. In fact after the whole commonito she was booted out of the stodio.

Also Beamdog promised that they rewrite the dialogues for their (supposedly) trans character. But the last patch was put on hold (I don't know why, as I really wasn't looking to the situation that closely).
But that's actually not true. The whole point of "defining a role and character's identity" is to restrict progression and character groth in one direction. The most obvious example are "alignments" - if you start your game doing good deeds and thus making your character good, the only way to ensure your character to follow this role to the end is to make a "good-evil" stat and make it influence dialog options.

P.S. All this talk about adventure reminded me. Star Control 2: The Ur-quan Masters doesn't have character growth or any character stats. But you can upgrads your ship or acquire ships from other races.

I don't remember Circle of the Moon or Harmony of Dissonance having any mechanics like that. (That's 2/3rds of the GBA castlevanias.)

It's a computer game, it's made of maths and stored parameters. Any adventure will have little digital flags about the items you collected, the puzzle you solved and, in case of branching non-linearity, the way you solved them. So what you did in one place does affect what you can do in another place. This has nothing to do with character stats or character growth. You could have a "Quest for glory" without the abilities stats (i mean strength, agility, etc), or a very open "Conquest of Camelot". With options opening and closing without XP and HP (or max HP) increases.

So no, you don't need a character chart, or an evolving character chart, for a roleplayed adventure.

Then how you know that adventure is "roleplayed"?
Than you should refresh your memory. In Circle of Full Moon you colect abilities in form of cards (from Earth Demon drops Earth Card, for example) - you use two cards at a time to get one of abilities. And in Harmony of Dissonance IIRC that is even more direct.

As I said, this is in the case of defining "roleplaying" in the sense of playing a certain character with a chosen mentality in a somewhat open world. So, just have different solutions for each problem (good/evil/diplomatic/physical) and have the world evolve a bit depending on how you behaved here and there (helped this instead of breaking that, so next person will propose that in addition to this, etc).

It's more about events and solution flags than about character stats. Some games like "last crusade" and "alpha protocol" had elements of that. It's also easy to implement in gta-likes.

Oh, hey : "Blade runner" was an excellent exemple of it.

And that's what I am asking - if you play as a good character and at some point deside to play evil (or vice versa) is it still roleplay? Aren't you breaking the rules of your role if in QfG you play as rogue, but a couple of tasks you completed using magic?

Now playing a random lunatic is also possible in 99% of cRPGs. And in real life. RPGs are mostly toys, supports for you to create your own character with the consistency you desire. And karma stats are not a solution (it's actually very strange when your action on some island have repercussions on your mainland adventures, as if echoed by some mystical twitter or overwatched by an existing god). But if characters have a reason to know of your deeds, then "helped cousin" flags work better than abstract karmas.

As for abilities and available solutions, they can be partially pre-limited, owned or acquired in a very boolean way just like knowledge or items, for instance depending on which character you preselected ("maniac mansion", "fate of atlantis"), which technique you learnt ("loom", "monkey island"), etc. It doesn't have to be about raising character stats.

They're not the enemies; abilities, and in HoD, they're not even earned from enemies in the first place.

Honestly, I couldn't remember the subtitle of the one wherein Soma Cruz is the protagonist.

And that's why many people (including myself) don't consider "roleplay" a definitive feature of cRPG genre.

That's what I am trying to tell you - you basically say that it is a player who is responsible for "roleplay". That of course totally true, but that also means that "roleplay" doesn't really a part of a game itself. You can rolaplay in any game of any genre you want. There are just some games that encourage roleplay better than others.

And yes, to encourage roleplay the game should grant enough freedom and also make consequences for your actions, so you would feel that "the role" you chose matters. But such game doesn't need to be cRPG - it can be any genre from point-and-click adventure (Blade Runner) to online shooter (Team Fortress 2).

And? What you describe is also a progression/groth system - just "boolean".

That's Aria of Sorrow. (Also, Dawn of Sorrow on the DS.)

And, conversely, cRPGs don't need to be about roleplay, despite the genre name. For example, the Final Fantasy series is pretty much devoid of this, while the Dragon Quest series has very little. (With that said, both series do have good, even great, games in them.)