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)