This is mainly about sword & sorcery type of fantasy games. By generic setting, I mean anything that copies D&D Forgotten Realms 1:1. You know, elves are nimble, long lived and good with bows, wizards have long white beards, orcs are evil or at the very least aggressive and violent.
Original settings are more like a Brandon Sanderson novel, where there might be magic but maybe not, we don’t know how it works, or what the society is like. It could be fun to read about in a book, but it requires too much explanation (or exploration) in a computer game.
In games especially, it’s useful to have stereotypes to fall back on. That way the game doesn’t need to spend so much time explaining things, and can go to the more interesting things straight away: Tactical combat (gameplay) or character interaction (story). When you see an orc, or elf, you know what to expect, they’re like shorthand. After all, most of the time in games, a fantasy setting is only an excuse as to why people fight in melee, why there’s mana and spells, in short why there are game mechanics. So there’s really no point in trying to “be creative” by changing up established tropes. (If you want to make an allegory about society, use a sci-fi setting!!)
(feel free to disagree and discuss)
the use of the word “better” is always problematic because you then have to explain how you define “better,” which you did; then you have to justify it, which you did; but it has become entirely subjective during this journey. the hurdle is truly justifying why “tactical gameplay” or “character interaction” has more value than original world building, which is nigh impossible.
considering this is computer games, you could make the argument that gameplay rules all, but doing shooty-shoots-at-bad-guy can happen regardless of setting, it’s all about mechanical fidelity and input-response feedback at that point; the setting is not relevant. if someone plays a computer game primarily for its unique setting, then the uniqueness of the setting becomes the prominent value judgement for that individual; that person would be disappointed if the setting was just a DnD-rip, for example.
i do think there is merit in your viewpoint from a general perspective; to appeal to the masses, using familiar tropes helps ease the average player into a comfort zone. but too much reliance on this idea of “familiar is better” stifles creativity. you could argue that unique settings should be left for novels/etc, but i think computer games should push boundaries, and the idea of what constitutes a computer game changes every day. you could argue that a non-DnD setting falls into the realm of “scifi” as well, but this is a semantics game; genre labels are typically vacuous, functioning only to give a potential audience some general understanding of the material they’re about to engage with.
that being said, i can’t think of many “fantasy” settings that don’t borrow from Tolkien on some level. even the example i was going to use to counter your point, Morrowind, has a setting heavily inspired by Tolkien; albeit, very far removed and unique with elements of Hinduism thrown in. i don’t think this validates the theory that sword/sorcery settings are “better,” only that it validates the theory that human beings have a hard time being truly unique. even Tolkien was heavily inspired by the Norse Volsunga Saga. it’s like a long game of telephone.
good post.
Ah yes, Morrowind! I’d say Arena and Daggerfall felt a lot more generic in how they presented their world. So Morrowind was the third game in the Elder Scrolls series or 5th if you count the two spinoffs. To me, Morrowind feels a good bit different from established fantasy tropes, but it also builds heavily on the prior, more generic games and their established world and mechanics. If you look at the Elder Scrolls series from that point of view, it gradually eased its players into the more exotic setting of Morrowind. I’ll make the claim here that if the previous Elder Scrolls games didn’t exist, Morrowind would have been even more of a hidden gem than it already is.
Yes, Morrowind is a good example of an exotic setting done right. Such simple things like having giant mushrooms for trees are effective at creating a foreign atmosphere without having page long explanations of dark elf gods and rituals (even if these can be found in the game as well)
I think I understand what you’re getting at, that having expected archetypes make a smoother entry into the game itself. The fantasy setting is just an excuse to use certain game mechanics.
But what if you want new mechanics? What if instead of mana, you want a consumable item like runestones? It’s going to be harder to fit that in the pre-established tropes.
Additionally, there’s no reason that “spending so much time explaining things” has to be a negative. After all, world building is a fundamental part of storytelling.
That’s a good example. Do runestones exist in any game? I’m not familiar with the term, so from the word itself I wouldn’t think of a consumable item. I’d say if you want consumables, make them potions or scrolls. It’s probably pretty clear that potions are one-time use items, but you would expect them to have an effect only on the one who
drinksquaffs them. Then we have scrolls, and without any gaming knowledge you probably don’t expect a scroll to vanish upon using it…? But so many games, like everything DnD based, or the Diablo series, have scrolls as consumables for spells. It has become like a shorthand, so I’d say that whenever possible it’s better for games to go with these things.I agree with you that world building is a fundamental part of storytelling, and if done well it can be entertaining. But when I try to think of examples, I’m thinking about Disco Elysium and such, i.e. not fantasy settings. I guess the risk is high that it starts to feel like a load of exposition (if done wrong), and in many games it’s ultimately… pointless? For example in Dragon Age, if I remember correctly, elves were kind of an opressed minority. But the game never had any nuanced takes on the idea, other than “racism is bad”. So I wonder what’s even the point of changing this up.
The only example I have for runestones would be RuneScape, which uses runes as a way to cast spells. Each spell has a defined cost of runes, varying between elemental and catalyst types.
And at least for RuneScape, runes have become a sort of core to the entire magic discipline, with lore behind their discovery and creation, and eventually spawned a skill to create these runes (runecrafting).
In regards to exposition becoming pointless in certain instances, personally I love just pure exposition. Even if it doesn’t directly amount to something in the game, it lets me feel more a part of the world, politics, and general atmosphere of that universe.
Some examples would be appreciated.
For exampe Larian’s game before Baldur’s Gate 3 was Divinity: Original Sin 2. In that game you had starting characters like an undead, with a skull for a head, or a lizard man. This creates so many questions, like if there’s maybe an entire population of skull head people, or if they’re some sort of lich that regular people will be suspicious about etc.
BG3 is of course set in the Forgotten Realms itself, which you could see as something of a “baseline” for western fantasy, and many people are familiar with it. Calling the setting “unoriginal” or generic might sound like a devaluation, but it’s not meant as such. (I guess it’s debatable wether the NPCs and story are original, but most people seem to agree they’re interesting and well made.)
In reality it’s of course a matter of license, and not a 100% creative decision. But Original Sin 2 is critically acclaimed and yet it often seems overlooked. I can’t help but think that if it had been set in the Forgotten Realms but had otherwise been the same game, a lot more people would have played it, because they would have instantly felt at home in the setting.
In the skull/lizard person example, can you extrapolate on why “this creates so many questions” is a bad thing? Is the goal to have no mystery in the games, and somehow this makes the game better? I am not following.
As to why Baldur’s Gate 3 is more popular than Original Sin 2: they’re both made by the same developer, which has always been a smaller, lesser-known studio; Baldur’s Gate 3 piggy-backs off the success of BG1&2 before it, which were both created by different developers and both games were critically acclaimed during the CRPG boom. Divinity has always been a niche series, partially due to the small studio’s lack of advertising and smaller budget, but when you piggy-back off an already highly successful series, you would expect a higher adoption rate; which is exactly what we see with BG3.
In the skull/lizard person example, can you extrapolate on why “this creates so many questions” is a bad thing? Is the goal to have no mystery in the games, and somehow this makes the game better?
Mainly it can be overwhelming during character creation, when you have so many things you’re not familiar with. It might be that you don’t know what your characters race is about (i.e. the skeleton guy), or when a game gives you cryptic stats where you have no idea how they influence the game. Things like that.
I’d say a good type of mystery is, when you’re familiar with a setting and its characters, and then something unexpected happens and you’re wondering why. But that requires a baseline to be established. Which requires either that the player spends some time with the setting, oooor: if the setting is so generic that it’s familiar to begin with, it has its merits too, which I’m arguing for. :)
A good example, though not a game, is the manga / anime Frieren Beyond Journey’s End. It basically starts where the most generic fantasy story would end: A party of heroes, including your typical cleric, elven mage, dwarven warrior have defeated the evil demon lord and are returning from their journey. Because it uses so many established tropes, you immediately have an idea about what the story leading up to the first chapter would have looked like. The interesting things are then how it goes on from there.
Divinity has always been a niche series, partially due to the small studio’s lack of advertising and smaller budget, but when you piggy-back off an already highly successful series, you would expect a higher adoption rate; which is exactly what we see with BG3.
Valid points with the lack of advertising. BG3 also had little advertising, but it got such a lot of word of mouth, it overshadowed all of that. It’s hard to say what would have happened if it had been almost the same game, except without the DnD license. I’d tend towards saying that if it wasn’t Baldur’s Gate 3 and not DnD either, but something very close in rules and setting, it could have piggybacked—not of the established name, but off the tropes that these names (DnD, BG) have established.
That makes perfect sense, thank you for the explanation.
