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)
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.
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.
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.