Has anyone played Divine Divinity?

[LennyLen]

Mind clarifying a bit Lennylen?

Not at all.

I chose those games as examples of RPGs because those are the two games I've heard people mention most when they talk about the genre. Out of all the Black Isle games, I've only ever tried playing BG, and I didn't like it at all, and never even left the first map. I always assumed that the whole idea of the infinity engine was to allow greater freedom to change the way the game evolved (I say greater freedom because there's only so much variation that can be coded into a game) and thus be able to have multiple outcomes for the game.

But if, as you say, the gameplay is basically the same as Diablo's, and the outcome is the same no matter what you do, then I would call them Adventure games.

If I changed the paragraph you quoted to "Well, in the Real World, what genre a game is classified as is based on what the majority of the game elements are. Diablo has much more Hack n Slash elements, which is why it is considerd an Adventure game. Games where most of your choices effect the outcome of the game are considerd RPG games, even though they're not compared to Pen 'n' Paper systems, because that is what the majority of the game elements are. Simple really, isn't it?" would that sit with you better?

Perhaps the question that needs to be asked then, is what makes a game an RPG game. I've always been under the assumption that what made a game an RPG instead of just a fantasy/sfi-fi Adventure game was the ability to drastically effect the outcome of the game. In this regard, Diablo obviously isn't as there is only ever one ending to the game, no matter how you play it. Any other takes on what makes an RPG?