>>1062089
>why have no Japanese companies ever attempted their own ridiculous fun anime grand theft auto type game?
Shenmue, Yakuza, and Way of the Samurai come to mind.
>Side tangent but also why hasn't bandai or some other company that owns all of these crazy space anime ever made a space-style Grand theft Auto or Mass effect type game where you go around in a spaceship (or giant transforming robot) and collect a harem of alien girls and do mercenary and bounty hunting work like something out of outlaw star or cowboy bebop?
Spectrobes? It could also be because the Japanese tend to prefer less open-ended narratives compared to people in the West. Need look no further than how the
only "originator" of the RPG genre that has remained intact and thriving in it's transition over to Japan was the Wizardry series, meanwhile Ultima and M&M fell by the wayside over there. And how while the West focussed more open building upon the CRPG aspect of exploring a large open world where you can do "anything", the Japanese were more focussed upon dungeon crawlers and linear character-driven narratives (To the point that even "open-world" games are still linear in their progression).
In addition, it's likely that you'll never get that kind of game because
people are tired of sandboxes and open worlds. They take up too much of the player's time, and developers almost never take advantage of the game's design nor structure a coherent narrative around it.