Ack wrote:With Borderlands though, I ask: do you need the guns? If a simple swap to knives and swords was done, how would we feel about it? Are the guns really so integral, or are they just a window dressing means of interaction for the real core of the game? ... Conversely, if we took a definite FPS like Doom and removed the guns, we'd get...well, probably something more akin to Heretic and Hexen, which we still consider FPS. With Borderlands, I don't think we'd feel that way if the central means of proving player dominance in combat was a sword instead of a gun.
Heretic and Hexen removed the guns but just replaced them with "magic guns". It's still primarily ranged-weapon shooting, for the most part. Borderlands has already demonstrated it can do fantasy themed (Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep). And while you were still using guns, those could just as easily have been magic wands. Borderlands is fundamentally dependent upon the shooting, I think. If you removed the shooting it would end up being a completely different game. Whereas I can imagine a version of Borderlands without the character builds still feeling and playing like Borderlands. For me the shooting action and the random gun selection is the meat of the game. The character builds are important, but I don't think they were as central to my experience (short of the core differences between characters generally).
o.pwuaioc is right, though. Gatekeeping with genre purity tests is unhelpful to discussion (though I do like discussion ABOUT genres and why and how they work). I would say for a game like Borderlands that is a lot more genre-straddling and isn't a clear and easy example, it's helpful to discuss it in terms of the RPG elements (not simply write "I'm playin' it, yup"). To use REPO's post as an example, maybe some elaboration on what skill base or build he is pursuing to highlight the RPG case. That would even be helpful with a game like Skyrim which I think has crossed over as much into an action game.