Dark Fantasy and Video Games @ Wired Controller

Zohaib sends in this article titled Dark Fantasy and Video Games, which is actually about grey moral choices in games. Dragon Age and The Witcher are their main examples (spoiler if you haven't played the first game):

However, take The Witcher. Towards the beginning of the game, you are given the choice to side with a witch to destroy the village, or turn the witch in to be killed by the villagers. This seems pretty simple. Witches are supposed to be evil, they are supposed to terrorize people and turn them into newts. However, in The Witcher, this is not the case. The witch has done nothing wrong, and the villagers have blamed their own crimes of murder, rape, and theft on the witch as a scapegoat. The choice is obvious now, isn’t it? The witch is innocent, burn the town! But what about the multitude of innocent bystanders in the town, the ones that had nothing to do with murder, rape, or theft? Should they be condemned to death because of the actions of the few in the village?

Click to expand...

More information.

The point of gray moral choices is illustrated by the part about The Witcher, but illustrated poorly. The author evidently never realized that there was plenty of incriminating evidence against the witch as well. She could hardly be declared completely innocent. The fact that it is a gray moral choice is the same, but not for the reason described in the article.

Are video games becoming more mature? I doubt it. The author takes the introduction of sex as a sort of evidence to support his claim but well, sex can be dealt in an immature way.

It is somehow funny that people want to see gray choices that are black and white.

What about the first example he used as an example of black or white morality cases, what about if the man has family, is a good family man or gave to charity? This simple addition, by the author's criteria, is enough to turn what he depicted as a black/white decision into a gray decision.

His The Witcher's example, which once again, involves extremistic stances(just like the other example taken from TW2 in another thread), is neither a gray issue. On the contrary, both sides of the argument help to define whether or not you see those issues in black or white. Certainly not in gray.

the witch was hardly innocent, but if its a mob versus a loner i'll side with the loner/underdog everydamntime

i'll never forget the first time i played the witcher and how emotional that scene coming out of the cave was--to me this was the least gray decision of the game. a whole lot of other choices were escpecially since their impacts had much more of an effect on the game. it been a couple of years since i've played through witcher and although i was tempted to do another one i think that wouldn't do the sequel justice as it would make it to easy to make quick comparisons rather than harness the hopefully same witcher "soul" for a great ride again. i hope theirs still bar fights again...

and lest ye forget
zoltan chivay is my copilot

I talked about several people on the RPC yesterday - and quite a lot of them agreed that "Dark Fantasy" ist currently a trend, a fashion in gaming.

And - now it is in full swing. The peak hasn't been reached yet.

My anticipation is that the peak will be reached in let's say 5 years or so.
(Especially considering how long development time is … )

Anyway I'm sure that this dcade will be THE decade of Dark Fantasy …


The bottom line is how the other side of the pendulum's swing might look like ? Biedermeier ?

I personally didn't find the decisions in the Witcher to be very difficult. I also sided with the witch, and would find it a near impossible stretch to think I would EVER side with the mob (unless I was just curious to see what happened).

I thought the other decisions in the game were kind of bland as well. The problem was there weren't any sympathetic characters... everyone (or at least the factions) were painted as *ssh0les so I didn't care what kinds of bad things happened as the results of my actions.