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Default Western fantasy games no longer fantastic?

January 18th, 2017, 18:06
Originally Posted by JDR13 View Post
If by "Eastern" you mean Japanese, I have to strongly disagree. I still find Western fantasy games far more engaging. I don't like the characters in most JRPGs, and the gameplay tends to a lot more linear.

JRPGs also tend to have a much lighter atmosphere and also a lot of silly humor which is a big turn-off for me.

This is one of those things that will always just boil down to personal preference though.
I am not talking about characters or even game play here. I think western games does them better than the eastern games I have played.

I mean more in relation to world and monster deigns and I use Dark Souls as an example. Its an eastern game which uses many western ideas at the same time evokes wonder and mystery unlike the similar western made games. While playing the game, I was stopping to see the environment/mobs to in order to figure out whats going on here. What is the purpose of the this monster, who made this building and why this is here and it doesn't make sense with that building over there etc. Stuff like this doesn't happen to me in big AA western games. I loved Witcher 3 for the story but even that game does not evoke the same feeling of mystery and wonder like Darks Souls 3.

I have also played few Korean made MMORPGs and finding the same about their mob and world designs. I am playing a game called TERA and it has one of the most boring quest chain ever but I am sticking with it since it has one of the best monster designs ever in any MMO I have played! The world design is also pretty good. I am playing the main quest chain as way to travel the world of TERA. If a western game had the same boring story I would have quite by now!

Edit : One thing TERA has going for is the combat system. Its one of the best action combat in MMO. This actually makes fighting and *grinding* in that game so much fun!
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January 18th, 2017, 18:09
Originally Posted by lostforever View Post
I am not talking about characters or even game play here. I think western games does them better than the eastern games I have played.

I mean more in relation to world and monster deigns and I use Dark Souls as an example. Its an eastern game which uses many western ideas at the same time evokes wonder and mystery unlike the similar western made games. While playing the game, I was stopping to see the environment/mobs to in order to figure out whats going on here. What is the purpose of the this monster, who made this building and why this is here and it doesn't make sense with that building over there etc. Stuff like this doesn't happen to me in big AA western games. I loved Witcher 3 for the story but even that game does not evoke the same feeling of mystery and wonder like Darks Souls 3.

I have also played few Korean made MMORPGs and finding the same about their mob and world designs. I am playing a game called TERA and it has one of the most boring quest chain ever but I am sticking with it since it has one of the best monster designs ever in any MMO I have played! The world design is also pretty good. I am playing the main quest chain as way to travel the world of TERA. If a western game had the same boring story I would have quite by now!
Sounds like you're just experiencing fatigue from certain settings. Dark Souls is way different than your typical RPG, so it's fresher for you. Maybe take a break and come back to the medieval swords n' sorcery at a later time (when you've burned out on Dark Souls. )

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January 18th, 2017, 18:11
Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark View Post
I would say the older we get and the more we play the same type of games the less fantastic they will seem as even the most bizarre will become commonplace over time. You probably see the eastern games as fresh and new because to you they are.
I think this is the main reason. The problem is with me in that i have been playing lot of western fantasy games and never really played many eastern games at all. Having said that I still think western games can expand the type of fantasy they do. Most of these games stick with "medieva/LOTR type" stuff. I think they should try out "pulp" fantasy like Robert E. Howard.
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January 18th, 2017, 18:14
Originally Posted by Fluent View Post
Sounds like you're just experiencing fatigue from certain settings. Dark Souls is way different than your typical RPG, so it's fresher for you. Maybe take a break and come back to the medieval swords n' sorcery at a later time (when you've burned out on Dark Souls. )
Yes I agree and I think I have burned out This is why I am trying eastern type s of games and once I overdoes on them, I will like western stuff again
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January 18th, 2017, 18:20
Originally Posted by Pladio View Post
I think you may be surprised at the indie games. Some of them have interesting fantasy settings.

Even Banner Saga has a new type of low-fantasy setting. Masquerada has a setting of masked powers. Then there's even games like Lords of Xulima whose lore combines dinosaurs with standard fantasy tropes
I have played Lords of Xulima for few hours. I loved it but I didn't think it was "fantastic" Simply because we are used to dinosaurs a lot and they don't evoke any sense of mystery anymore for me
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January 18th, 2017, 18:50
Originally Posted by Fluent View Post
Sounds like you're just experiencing fatigue from certain settings. Dark Souls is way different than your typical RPG, so it's fresher for you. Maybe take a break and come back to the medieval swords n' sorcery at a later time (when you've burned out on Dark Souls. )
Dark Souls is very "fantasy medieval" and "swords n' sorcery". It has awesome monsters design though, even for stuff that could be considered "classic monsters" (it has few of them). Well except the basic skeletons, they looks like normal skeletons.

I don't think lostforever is having a burn out of "fantasy medieval" as much as a burn out of streamlined Tolkien-inspired fantasy design used in most Western games.

By the way, Robert E. Howard is considered the father of sword&sorcery sub-genre (via Conan).
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January 18th, 2017, 21:12
I think the problem is two-fold.

1 - Games development costs have soared as it is, and RPGs are probably the most expensive to make. I think I need some 30,000 pieces of art for my game. Tiles, portraits, and so forth. That's for a first-person dungeon crawler.

As a result, all games (not just RPGs) now tend toward the safe bets. Yes, there's the odd Torment or Age of Decadence, but for the most part, publishers are going to go with what they know sells well.

2 - More for indie developers, but many create what they know best and enjoy. Medieval-style Fantasy is very popular, so many of the developers tend toward that range as well, even when they don't have to. I'm in the same boat, even if mine is closer to Early Renaissance than Medieval. Even with non-standard races, it's really a sword and sorcery game. I have no interest in a modern, industrial age, or futuristic setting.

That said, just because the style is well-used, doesn't mean that you can't create good games out of it.
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January 18th, 2017, 22:07
I think a lot of it has to do with where the creative talent is going. There's a lot of yap about the golden age of television, and, personally, I think a lot of it is overated. But, talking to the young creative talents I know in London, TV is where they see their best chance. Movies are a long shot that requires the ability to wait years between project uptake, novels are a very poor living unless you become a relative rock star, and the decent earnings as a videogame writer are rare as hen's teeth.
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January 18th, 2017, 22:24
Originally Posted by azraelck View Post
1 - Games development costs have soared as it is, and RPGs are probably the most expensive to make. I think I need some 30,000 pieces of art for my game. Tiles, portraits, and so forth. That's for a first-person dungeon crawler.
If a company or person is not aiming to make a work of art but to invest as little as they can and get as much as possible, there are always Candy Crush Sagas. Also it worked for Konami.
On the other hand, if a game is priced $60, hell I want it to be worth that cash.

Any publisher/developer can make up their mind. Sell me an overpriced/overhyped garbage (Watch Dogs) at a full price and count me out of your next game(s). Offer me a phonegame, you're so dead for me till doomsday.
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January 18th, 2017, 23:11
Originally Posted by joxer View Post
If a company or person is not aiming to make a work of art but to invest as little as they can and get as much as possible, there are always Candy Crush Sagas. Also it worked for Konami.
On the other hand, if a game is priced $60, hell I want it to be worth that cash.

Any publisher/developer can make up their mind. Sell me an overpriced/overhyped garbage (Watch Dogs) at a full price and count me out of your next game(s). Offer me a phonegame, you're so dead for me till doomsday.
No arguments with me on that. I'm just pointing out that with budgets of 200-300 million, you want to make sure you get a return on that investment (Call of Duty: MW2 cost around $150 to make, then 3 times that in marketing reportedly).

Budget has little effect on quality though. How much did Duke Nukem Forever cost in then end? Watch dogs was big budget, and it apparently sucked (never played it, going by your comment).

Also, as far as phone games, for every Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga, there are a hundred failures. Only less than 1% of people pay for anything on a phone game; that is the last place I would invest money in.
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January 19th, 2017, 02:52
Originally Posted by lostforever View Post
Actually Dragon Age is the type of "western" game I had in mind when was writing this. I think western games sort of need to move away from "medieval fantasy" in order to be fresh…
That was one of the better things about City of Heroes. CoH and Freedom Force are basically it for superhero RPGs - and Freedom Force is really more of a tactics game than RPG.

(P.S. TERA? Guess I should have used this shot!)
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January 19th, 2017, 05:03
Huh, I loved Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny. I thought they were pretty "fantastic" - also with Numenera coming up I can say that looks pretty fantastic as well.

Lords of Xulima was good for lore, etc. I suppose it all depends on your definition of fantasy.
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January 19th, 2017, 06:37
What I'd like to see is some quality games with immersive gameplay that makes you think and figure out the game and this is where eastern view point has some of my favorite examples.

I thought Shadow of the Colossus (and sibling Ico) was amazing for its time and few games approached its creature design and integration with gameplay in my opinion. I loved just having to figure things out with an intuitive interface and no hand holding (inverse pun intended). I sort of think that Dark Souls had a similar vibe but definitely not as uplifting.

Morrowind was a western game that really tried to push it where research and reading books and getting directions was done in a fairly organic way and was required in a lot of cases but unfortunately I think it may have still been mostly optional content. Recently the Stanley Parable tried to do something like this though I only tried the demo and didn't finish so don't really know if it really fits here.

What are some other current examples of games with a strong immersive design like that?
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January 19th, 2017, 11:55
Originally Posted by Zloth View Post
That was one of the better things about City of Heroes. CoH and Freedom Force are basically it for superhero RPGs - and Freedom Force is really more of a tactics game than RPG.

(P.S. TERA? Guess I should have used this shot!)
TERA has few good things going for it and the above picture is one of them
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January 19th, 2017, 14:21
Originally Posted by figment View Post
I thought Shadow of the Colossus (and sibling Ico) was amazing for its time and few games approached its creature design and integration with gameplay in my opinion. I loved just having to figure things out with an intuitive interface and no hand holding (inverse pun intended). I sort of think that Dark Souls had a similar vibe but definitely not as uplifting.

[skip]

What are some other current examples of games with a strong immersive design like that?
If you liked Shadow of Colossus and Ico, you should like The Last Guardian (PS4) which released in December.
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January 19th, 2017, 16:01
I must admit, I am a bit bored of the traditional fantasy stuff. I'd like more eastern fantasy, but with a western style, such as Jade Empire. I just can't handle the whole anime style, or the wacky gameplay that often comes with it.

And, of course, more sci-fi. I keep coming back to that, as we simply don't get a lot of proper sci-fi RPGs, so there's never enough to satisfy me for a longer period of time (unlike regular fantasy).
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January 20th, 2017, 00:20
There's no real problem with the traditional Tolkienesque/Forgotten Realms fantasy world, there's just a problem of creative talent. It's a classic case of trying to polish a turd with an awful lot of games where they take something popular and then just trot out tired old formulaic garbage, not because that's their intention, but because that's all their talent allows them to do.

Great creativity is a rare commodity and applying creativity successfully in a game which people will like is even rarer and then getting the necessary promotion for said game is even rarer. So the problem is not that the settings themselves are becoming tiresome, its that all the real creativity has vanished. It's possible to get games with some creativity, like with Pillars of Eternity, but the mundane still overwhelms the bright lights of brilliance like a cloud of smog.

Creativity is something you can't just go out and purchase. It doesn't matter if you spend 10,000 or 100,000,000 trying to make your game have that spark, if the people involved lack that special something then all money does is polish the shit and let more people know of its existence. Another useful idiom:

"The idiom "throwing good money after bad" refers to spending more money on something problematic that one has already spent money on, in the (presumably futile) hopes of fixing it or recouping one's original investment."

Forgotten Realms could be an amazing place… if only someone made it amazing. To put it in modern terminology: Make Forgotten Realms Great Again!

Dragon Age is another good example of typical recent 'nearly interesting' settings, where you feel there's something really good here, but it keeps falling back on mediocrity like a hack paperback writer. The sheer blandness of Darkspawn, the lightweight, almost inconsequential delivery of The Fade, the constant recycling of Mages versus Templars as if entire populations are somehow either magic users or swordmasters and everyone splits 50/50, which is so utterly black and white and juvenile in concept the writers probably don't even know what words like nuance even mean. And the list goes on and on. But, yeah, wow, that cutscene was beautiful, or that one specific background I can screenshot is nice, etc.

Take the big three Infinity Engine games, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment - three games using roughly the same 'concept' or, if you prefer, 'setting' and each providing something so completely different from each other that some people might hate one but love the other and visa versa, as if all three are possibly even entirely different genres within a genre. Now take some recent examples from that kind of setting, Sword Coast Legends, Dragon Age: Origins and Pillars of Eternity, do you get the same sense of sheer variety within a theme with these three, or is it all just much of a muchness, small tinkerings with the BG2 'method' but with half the creativity, and that half being the 'concept' half rather than the visual design half.

When you think games like Dragon Age 3 have oodles more money spent on them than Icewind Dale, but have barely 25% of the bestiary. Oodles more money than BG2, but have barely 25% of the spell complexity. Oodles more money than PST but barely 25% of the intellectualism.

And its not just about finding that one guy who waves a magic wand and creates genius for everyone else, relying on that to work will just lead to weird obscurities like Octogeddon or the failed realisation of anything Molyneux. It requires a whole team of people who all take pride in their own department and who all want to improve their reputation as much as their bank account and who all have some form of creativity to give, to create something greater than the sum of their parts.

Only then will you realise its not the settings, its the sheer lack of talents which could make even heaven itself feel like a mundane routine of drab cliches.
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January 20th, 2017, 03:35
Originally Posted by azarhal View Post
If you liked Shadow of Colossus and Ico, you should like The Last Guardian (PS4) which released in December.
Alas I never bought a current generation console. But thanks for the info.


Originally Posted by lackblogger View Post
When you think games like Dragon Age 3 have oodles more money spent on them than Icewind Dale, but have barely 25% of the bestiary. Oodles more money than BG2, but have barely 25% of the spell complexity. Oodles more money than PST but barely 25% of the intellectualism.
Some of this is technology. Basically lots more effort to do proper 3d than sprites. BG2 and PS:T were basically sprites weren't they? I know the backgrounds were just bitmaps which is also why its still stands up as well as it does compared to pure 3d games of the same era.

I've been playing more text based games (Interactive Fiction and rogue-likes) because they can actually be more stimulating intellectually due to fewer engine constraints. The problem is there is little money in it so the communities are small.
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January 20th, 2017, 03:57
Originally Posted by lackblogger View Post
Great creativity is a rare commodity and applying creativity successfully in a game which people will like is even rarer and then getting the necessary promotion for said game is even rarer. So the problem is not that the settings themselves are becoming tiresome, its that all the real creativity has vanished. It's possible to get games with some creativity, like with Pillars of Eternity, but the mundane still overwhelms the bright lights of brilliance like a cloud of smog.

Creativity is something you can't just go out and purchase. It doesn't matter if you spend 10,000 or 100,000,000 trying to make your game have that spark, if the people involved lack that special something then all money does is polish the shit and let more people know of its existence. Another useful idiom:
I agree creativity is rather rare these days. I think it has alot to do with lack of iteration time and the size and complexity of modern games (in terms of production values) that takes precedence over furthering game design elements which is required for the true next generation rpgs.
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January 20th, 2017, 06:03
Originally Posted by lostforever View Post
TERA has few good things going for it and the above picture is one of them
This shot is from Skyrim, in case you didn't know….It looks like Vilja, a Lydia mod, and Blackreach dungeon right next to a falmer nest. P.S. It is the TERA armor though.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspeci…on/mods/5227/?

The main character is holding Sanguine's Rose too.
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