Elves and Dwarves Don't Define Fantasy

[shiajun]

I'm all in with Yahtzee's arguments. I love things that stray from traditional settings, be it Sci-Fi or fantasy. It's why I like the Dune saga from Frank Herbert, and everything I've read from Isaac Asimov. It's space and whatever, but there's not a gazillion different sentient species running around and all in contact with each other in the sunday market. It's just humans who expanded and specially in Dune, if something different comes along, there's usually an explanation of why they are there and their origin. It's the same in starcraft. Humans do not get visited on casually by two alien races that picked some random spot in the universe to make contact. That always appealed to me.

As for fantasy, I still find Rangar Tornquist's work in the Longest Journey and Dreamfall impressive. It feels familiar yet you can't find things that can be directly linked to Tolkienesque mythology. Its logically based more on Scandinavian legends than anything else, but he makes it all so fresh. He even goes to the point of doing sci-fi and fantasy at the same time and make it all coherent. That's talent, my friends. I look forward to what the Secret World will provide considered all of the work in creating massive lore for those two games.

 

[Casual Shinji]

No mention of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee?... Huh.

That's like the one game that immediately springs to mind when thinking about highly original fantasy settings.

 

[Susurrus]

But one of the primary reasons NOT to do exactly what Yahtzee suggests is something he even mentions in this column - a new game already dumps substantial amounts of information on you right from the word go. Using tropes lessens the load a great deal.

Consider Baldur's Gate I, or Two Worlds II, which I started yesterday. The one has an established fantasy setting, but there are still lengthy dialogue options explaining all about the different menus you have access to.

Two Worlds II's tutorials lasted an hour for me, and in addition I had to read several lengthy books to understand armour types, crafting etc. They also had to explain enough backstory for the world to vaguely make sense.

If the world isn't a NORMAL fantasy setting, that backstory explanation can take a lot longer, and it's considerably more difficult to know where to start the game for the benefit of the player. I can certainly understand any company taking the easier option and using generic fantasy.

 

[NortherWolf]

a modern world where magic and monsters have always existed and are just kind of there. I can't think of many video games that do that, except maybe Shadowrun on the Genesis.

Umm, aren't you basically describing Final Fantasy VII, and several others in the same series? Which, hey now, I know isn't everyone's cup of tea, but regardless of your feelings on the game, it's not fair to disregard them completely. If there's one thing I love about the Final Fantasies, it's their ability to create a brand new world, each with it's own unique history and cultural context, to explore in each new mainstream title.

Except no, in the usual Final Fantasy game there's magic and monsters...As a side effect.
Sort of like...Photoshopping a guy onto a picture where he wasn't from the start. Sure, in some of the latter they've addressed that but jrpg's are pretty much clichés in themselves, just of a different genre.

Shadowrun is more interesting, as is Dresden Files etc because they try to be different rather than Medieval European Setting or Weird Japanese Setting.

 

[Megacherv]

Erm...Magic the Gathering?

To be specific, Mirrodin/Scars of Mirrodin, Ravnica: City of Guilds, Champions of Kamigawa and Phyrexia in general

 

[Krukmeister]

I'm just going to post this here... http://www.guildwars2.com/en/

 

[kazriko]

It's a terrible couple of games, but the Rocketmen series is a style that I'd like to see more of, and it's somewhat similar to the Steampunk Space he's talking about, though it's more the Pulp Era to early Golden age of SciFi with rocket ships, laser blasters, and deathrays...

 

[beleester]

I don't really like the Steampunk in Space idea. While I definitely want to get away from the cliched "Brick with guns" standard design of human spacecraft, I don't think using an even *more* cliched art style is the answer. Why not have glossy, organic designs like Mirrodin from Magic: The Gathering, or the spiky mayhem of Warhammer 40K Orks? Why not have something even stranger, like a game where you ride nuclear-powered surfboards from planet to planet? Why steampunk?

 

[Chirez]

So, ok, the elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins and trolls are all present in folklore dating back past the point where people learned to write things down. The reason they are so prevalent is that they are so deeply embedded in north european mythology as to be broadly recognisable.

Amalur, it's worth pointing out, does not have dwarves. It has humans and 'alfar' who, in fairness do appear to be elves. I never bothered learning what that was all about. The Fae, however, are essentially the fairies of irish and english myth, even down to using the Celtic names. Gnomes appear in many different countries, small, clever, tinkering and secretive people.

While originality in fiction is rarely a bad thing, rejecting traditional forms out of hand is blithe and nearsighted. While the races of World of Warcraft may not have deep things to say about the nature of humanity, they do come from a place which has been attempting to explain what people are for a very, very long time. That's worth holding on to.

 

[Susurrus]

SNIP

I studied Old Norse at University. What was quite interesting is that there's a passage (I think in the Prose Edda, attributed to Snorri Sturluson, though it could be another text), where the names of pretty much EVERY dwarf that turns up at Bilbo's house at the beginning of the Hobbit, AND the name "Gandalf" are contained within a single 7 line paragraph. Food for thought, at least.


EDIT: I was right (hurrah!)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hos4o7xpxLYC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=prose+edda+gandalf&source=bl&ots=7OZwoxBkho&sig=eeVzBTKKgxU3kgNz2bFB_lJU_wA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DGdWT7CeAYa98gOzpe34CA&ved=0CG0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[Ragnarok2kx]

Now that "space steampunk" is mentioned, I'm reminded of Treasure Planet, a sadly underrated disney movie which I totally loved.

Also, as it's already been mentioned several times in this thread, JRPGs are the ones that will usually stray away from the stereorypical "Elves and Dwarves" setting. I'm curious as if Yahtzee didn't make the connection or he's intentionally avoiding it.

 

[kyogen]

Considering that Tolkien himself ripped off the ancient texts he spent his professional life studying, I'd hardly say that copying is new. I wouldn't even strictly call it a problem. Creativity thrives on finding new ways to use existing material. If something is done well, it's done well. If it's clumsy or lacks a fresh perspective, then it's clumsy and lacks a fresh perspective.

YMMV on that. Tolkien didn't merely 'rip off' Norse mythology. He took the ideas and norms of Scandinavian mythology, combined it with his knowledge of Catholic mythology and morality, then brought in ideas alluding to or inspired by myths, stories and epic legends such as the fall of Atlantis, Shakespeare's MacBeth and John Milton's Paradise lost, pasting them into an entire continet he'd created that combined elements of Saxon-era Britain, Roman-era Italy, and Victorian-era England.

In short, he took a whole bunch of inspirtaions and ideas, and fused them into something new and unseen. Which sadly cannot be said for the legions of copycats who decided to simply re-write Middle Earth, but with more sex and racism added.

Writers such as Clive Barker and Nail Gaiman show that it is possible to not write fantasy fiction that doesn't borrow from Tolkien. Fantasy is not defined by orcs and trolls. It is defined by how willing you are to allow your imagination to take flight and soar.

Generally speaking, that is a far more thorough and eloquent version of my point. I object to dismissing specific elements of fantasy simply because another has already made use of them. If someone makes poor use of them, that's a failure of craftsmanship, not an inherent weakness of the material. Tolkien was a great craftsman.

I think this is also essentially Yahtzee's view: that too many fantasy authors lack real creativity. However, his preference for a particular style of hyperbole lacks nuance (intentionally so for the most part because that's part of the humor). Unfortunately, it also seems to misdirect the emphasis of his argument.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I do think that if you set a game in a vision of space assuming that everything people popularly assumed about it circa 1800 was true, that would be a fine setting indeed for a pulpy, swashbuckling adventure. So the planets of the Solar System would all be inhabited by various colorful civilizations and they'd all be within a few hours' drive of each other. And in-space battles would be more like naval warfare as you perched along the side of your wooden space ship and fired blunderbusses at oncoming pirates.

Sounds like Disney's Treasure Planet. Which apparently got a lot of flak for being too unrealistic or some shit. (Yes, because Star Wars and the like are totally believable portrayals of outer space and the travel thereof and technologies that could really exist.) So even outside the realm of video games, getting too creative with your setting and premise apparently doesn't go over well with audiences.

Come to think of it, the only media I know of that can get away with that are kids' cartoons on TV. The setting of Adventure Time, for example, feels like a game from the '80s or early '90s, where you could slap together any random creatures and structures and people would still buy into it as long as it played well. And on a more down-to-earth level, you have Equestria from that new My Little Pony series that all the cool kids are talking about: Everything is powered by magic in some form, to the point that the ponies themselves have to use theirs to control weather and the growing cycle; you have about half the D&D Monster Manual hiding out in the forbidden woods just outside town, along with original, cleverly-named creatures like "parasprites" (exactly what it sounds like) and the "ursa major" (a giant bear made of a piece of the night sky). And that's just scraping the surface. Simple enough for kids to take in, deep and creative enough for adults to appreciate.

Would that more writers were able to cook up stuff like that, and would that we could get some of them in our video games.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Just gonna...awkwardly..place...Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei...on this spot, yeah, completely unusual and non cliche fantasy games/settings right there both modern, post modern, steampunk-ish...and most of the main characters don't need the describing of everything, FFX does literally everything good with it's world

 

[Seabear]

Dresden Files game would have the potential to be incredible. Free roaming Chicago with random encounter events, portals to the Nevernever, and with a detective plot if taken from Dresden's perspective? my GOD.

 

[Wolfram23]

Nox was a pretty awesome and funny fantasy RPG that fits that "contemporary" idea like a glove. Your character is more or less a low income trailer park guy who gets sucked into his TV (I think) by an evil sorceress from the world of Nox. You then fall from the sky and into a Zeppelin (think WoW style) with a crazy captain who becomes a bit of a guide for the rest of the game.

And then for the second idea, well sadly not many games are like that, but I'd like to highlight the His Dark Materials saga, aka "The Amber Spyglass", "The Golden Compass", and "The Subtle Knife" which are basically exactly that idea. More or less a modern world but completely fantastical.

 

[themind]

I realize there are a shit-load of elves vs dwarves w/ man in the middle type fantasy games, but it is *the* achetype. The rivalry between elves and dwarves is at the stage where it may as well be the Yankees vs Red Sox, it's engrained in the conscience of most fans of fantasy books, games, TV shows, etc.

Expecting game developers to stray away from this formula is real folly in my opinion. I enjoy games that try to do things differently to switch up playable races or introduce an altogether different dynamic, but I just can't agree with Yahtzee's topic title that Elves and Dwarves don't define fantasy, at least from the archetype perspective.

I agree with him that fantasy should encompass anything you can imagine, and even that the elf/dwarf dynamic has dulled out a lot of fantasy games, but to divorce elves/dwarves from the fantasy genre is ridiculous. If a game has elves, dwarves, magic, swords & shield, and is set in an "olden times" setting it can't really be classified as anything but fantasy.

As some posters have pointed out, there hasn't been that many attempts at a fantasy fusion with modern times. Steampunk has many of those elements, but you still don't see elves in rocket ships or dwarves on a cell phone (although Tolkien dwarves may have difficulty with their reception underground). How a company would go about making this sort of game is anyone's guess, but it has a ton of intriguing possibilities. Magic along side machine guns, cities of skyscrapers populated by elves, a nuclear threat from a dissident orcish race... the sheer notion of it makes me think if it was done well it would be a smashing success.

I think elves/dwarves define fantasy in the minds of the majority of people, and just because a large number of avid gamers/readers/viewers of fantasy are tiring with the same old dynamic doesn't make them correct in asserting that the majority are sheep to continue to believe in the value of the classic definition of fantasy.

I'm all for expanding the genre and trying new things, but elves/dwarves still retain value, it's simply a matter of making the setting, characters, and plot engaging and fresh. How companies do that, well, that's a discussion for someone with far more creativity than I.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

While I quite like your ideas, and indeed like reading fantasy which doesn't fit the confines of traditional Tolkeinean. I do like a bit of elves and dwarves every so often, but I don't want it all the time. So why do I disagree with you on the general point?

Maybe because there are fantasy books that don't fit the established mold. So why haven't more people heard of them? Eeeexactly.

Whenever anyone writes a fantasy book that doesn't fit the mold, no one buys it. It's why Bruce Wayne will always be Batman, EA can release a new sports game every year and still make massive profits, and Blizzrd, as you once so eloquently put it, have recently bought their fourteenth yacht. People like what's familiar, and Tolkeinesque fantasy is nothing if not familiar.

And of course, your term is kind of incorrect as well. The real term for modern fantasy would probably be Lewisean, because he was the first author to use mythological kitchen sinks (using creatures from multiple different folklores and mythologies in one setting.) Tolkein actively discouraged his friend from using multiple different folklores.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Screw it! JRPGs are awesome and this article proves it!

Spoiler: Final Fantasy X

Oh, Tidus is from another world and gets things explained to him because...he needs it?

Spoiler: Valkyria Chronicles

Set in essentially World War 2, oh wait, it's a fantasy Third Person Shooter Strat-RPG

Spoiler: The World Ends With You

So it's set in the real world, in Shibuya Tokyo but yeahhhh it's a fantasy game with a ridiculously original battle system

Spoiler: Rogue Galaxy

yeahh, it's a JRPG set in space that's AS good as Mass Effect

Spoiler: Nier

yup it's a JRPG starring a middle aged man trying to save his daughter

Spoiler: .hack//quadrilogy

how about a game set in a game? Awesome setting, yes?

Just saying, JRPGs are the best for fantasy.

 

[XMark]

I love the idea of fantasy set in a modern setting, like an alternate present if Lord of the Rings actually happened in the past and all the magical fantasy stuff stuck around. I really don't see that much in games or media or anything, and I think it's a seriously untapped well of awesomeness.

The last few Final Fantasy games seem to have that kind of setting, and I'd say they use it quite well. That series also manages to have its own set of unique races without resorting to traditional elves and dwarves.

Even if we're sticking with traditional fantasy roles, placing them within a modern context could be great! Mass-produced technology augmented with magic, modern-day civil rights movements for orcs who are unfairly discriminated against, elves with blogs, frickin' internet trolls who are actually trolls!