Pirates Are Way More Interesting Than Elves

[Strazdas]

It is a logical fallacy to say that pirates are interesting.

P.S. capcha: little bird told me. So dont argue with the little bird.

I mean, Tolkien wrote a pretty generic story and gave us a generic terminology for fantasy creatures.

Tolkien pretty much invented orcs (there were ogres before, but they looke different and was never named "orc". Tolkiens books are the oldest written usage of word "orc". The elves and other lores were nowhere close to being that much in depth either. People are not wrong when they said Tolkien invented fantasy rpgs, he invented the whole fantasy world whereas before it was bits and pieces there, but never the whole thing together.

 

[Georgescu Catalin]

I find it annoying and a bit hypocritical to exchange one basic speculative fantasy genre with another. Sure, we don't have many pirate or cyberpunk games, but we're still getting the same generic stuff that we always did in literature, movies or whatelse.
Take this paragraph for example:

But I'll reiterate one thing from the video: pirates have way more personality than elves. I reflected on this at one point in Risen 2 while two pirate captains were brokering an exchange of rum and gold, exchanging foul-mouthed insults with each other and breaking into raucous laughter when agreement was reached. And it occurred to me that you'd never see two elves talk like that.

Sure, elves wouldn't talk like that, but dwarves totally would! Meanwhile you'll never really see pirates trying to be more than "drunk fools with big beards and eyepatches". Hell, Monkey Island parodied the over-used trope of pirates before other games even had the chance to use the setting.
Unless you write a good pirate-themed story, or a good fantasy-themed story, or a good cyberpunk story. The theme is up to a personal preference when you decide to not really be original and just stick to one of the classics.

I also find it insulting how people blame Dungeons and Dragons for the overuse of elves and dwarves and dragons. Planescape Torment is set in an D&D setting, here's the wikipedia description on the game:

Planescape: Torment is set in the Planescape "multiverse" of AD&D, a setting which consists of various planes of existence, the creatures which live in them (such as devils, modrons, and even deities), and the properties of the magic that infuses each plane.The first part of Planescape: Torment takes place in Sigil, a city located atop an infinitely tall spire at the center of the multiverse, that connects the planes with each other via a series of portals.

Doesn't really sound generic, does it? Other interesting D&D settings are Eberron, Ravenloft or Dark Sun. Not to even mention the multitude of other interesting tabletop RPG settings which may or may have not seen a video game adaptation. I've played more Deadlands or Shadowrun than anything else in my life.

The problem goes deeper than "hurr elves do not want" or "only japan knows how to be original roflmao".

 

[BlackStar42]

I like how the Japanese have made badass RPG's like Persona which has a High school combined with demons setting and yet western developers are content eating Tolkien's leftovers!

You thing COD is generic and same-y? Well so are most RPG's now a days! Do something new!!
Make it based on Dresden Files, American Gods, Hellboy, Hellblazer/Constantine!

If it was done well, I would so very definitely buy a Dresden Files game. I'd even upgrade my computer just to play it.

 

[Mike Fang]

"Because they're just "good".

Usually offered as a reason why the character goes out of his way to rescue the imperilled wife of some bloke he's never met and will never meet again, or indeed save a kingdom they show no sign of familiarity for. Anyone who risks their own life and expends potentially vital resources to save something they might not have any stake in simply because they were asked nicely is probably a complete arsehead. And it's not even being "good", strictly speaking. It's like giving money to random charity workers canvassing on street corners. That doesn't make you a good person. You wouldn't have spared a single thought for the orphans if you hadn't been badgered about it. You're doing it to temporarily feel good about yourself, a sort of moral masturbation. And if a wandering adventurer doesn't take time out to rescue every imperilled wife in the kingdom then he's clearly only taking on an isolated case to gain XP and a pair of the husband's old armoured trousers."

Long response to this: I think this is unfairly and unreasonably cynical (yeah yeah, I know it's Yahtzee, I don't care, it's still a crappy attitude to take). It would be stupid motivation if it caused the character to act like a posturing, melodramatic, self-righteous attention whore, but believe it or not, there -are- some people out there who honestly are willing to help people just because they asked for help. It's not completely unreasonable to expect a character to show some semblance of genuine charity, to do something just because it's the right thing to do. Take for example the movie "A Fistfull of Dollars." Clint Eastwood's character *SPOILER ALERT!!!!* rescues a young woman held captive by a gang of gun runners and gives her and her family money to start a new life somewhere. Why? The only thing close to a reason we're given by Eastwood's character is "because I knew someone like you once and there was nobody around to help." That's it. It's never explained exactly who that someone was, if it was the protagonist's mother, a relative, or what, just "someone." You do get the impression it may have been someone close to Eastwood's character, but it's never explained who or why he himself should have cared or had a personal stake in it. In short, he did it because he'd seen the situation before and knew that helping the woman was "the right thing" to do. And this from a hard-bitten gunslinger who'd been playing two gangs against one another to milk them for as much money as he could.

So a sense of morality and charity isn't a completely stupid or creatively bankrupt concept to use as motivation. As long as the character has some depth to himself/herself otherwise and more personality than just being some two-dimensional super hero, there's no reason to just throw it aside.

Short response to this: Oh f**k you!

 

[Therumancer]

Pirates only seem fresh because they haven't been used as much as elves recently. As a stereotype the whole pirate thing falls apart a lot faster than your average fantasy game.

How?

I mean I know real pirates didn't act like movie pirates but they do show some similarities. Mainly being motivated by greed and robbing ships and being old salts.

Not to mention that there have been a lot of pirate/seafaring games out there over the years, but most hadn't caught on due to problems with implenetation.

Monkey Island, Sid Meier, Risen, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat (and obscure PS2 game that was actually quite fun), Pirates of the Carribean Movie tie-in games (including the Lego ones), and I literally can't name anything else. So that's like 5 or 6 franchises based on pirates (2 of them haven't had a new game in long time) vs. how many generic fantasy games?

I wasn't saying there was as many of them, just that they had a solid prescence, we see one every couple of years. Granted we don't see them heavily promoted. Pirates Of Black Cove, Puzzle Pirates, Age Of Pirates 1 and 2, and of course various hidden object games and such. It's not a major genere like general fantasy is, but it's still one with a reasonable niche prescence.

The problem with the entire pirate genere is that there are only so many things that pirates do, you sail around, sink and loot ships, and maybe look for treasure. The whole pirate stereotype is pretty one note, to the point where 99% of the games out there wind up having to turn it into a parody and toss out bad jokes just to have enough material for filler.

Now granted, the same can be said of fantasy games, but the thing is that there are like a hundred differant ways to stylize the same basic material, where Pirates are kind of confined to pseudo history and fit a very specific look and attitude. Not to mention that you can put pirates into a generic fantasy game and hit all the right tropes, without much proble, but sticking fantasy tropes into something that is supposed to be based around pirates is touchier. Some attempts to do this like "Pirates Of The Carribean" carried it for a while, but as you can see that lost momentum, and arguably became a prisoner of it's own tropes.

Then there is the whole historical aspect of things. See, when people use the term "pirate" they tend to think in terms of a seafaring adventurer and free spirit, rarely do you see pirates in games or movies do anything paticularly bad, even if it's implied behind the scenes. In the final equasion pirates were not romantic figures like most people think of, because they were ultimatly a group of raping, murdering, scum. The nature of modern morality means that pretty much any pirate you see as a hero has to be an exception, or have such things remain in the past and be glossed over, which kind of limits the entire thing, as well as prevents a certain examination.

In your typical pirate game/story you want the person watching to be cheering for the pirates, and hoping they get away from/defeat national navies and such. If piracy was ever properly portrayed and deconstructed, it doesn't matter how much of a bastard you typical crown officer is portrayed as, that's who your going to be cheering for.

I'm not saying it can't be done well, because it has been, just that it's fairly limited, and works best in doses. It works well as a niche alternative to other fare, and it has been doing fairly well as exactly that. You will see far, far. less pirate games than generic fantasy games, BUT at the same time there hasn't been a drought. Sure a pirate fanatic doubtlessly wishes there were multiple big releases in that genere, as opposed to it being a sporadic thing, but the point is that it's always been out there on the fringes.

I'll also say that Risen 2 isn't the best example of a pirate game someone could use. It's a sequel to Risen and the character is the same protaganist from the first game (albiet inexplicably stripped of his power). Right from the beginning they make referances to the inquisitors Eyepatch/Monocle from the previous game. I thought it was a bit odd that Yahtzee went on about the character's ambigious motivations for doing some of the things he does and moving forward, and being on the side he is on, when it's 100% clear when you understand what happened in the first game, and how the world got all fragged up to begin with. Your character was pretty much at ground 0 of the cataclysm, trying to stop it.

Perhaps I'm forgetting something, but to be honest I was actually a bit irked that there wasn't a more robust magic system, instead just "Voodoo" part way through the game. I typically play Risen/Gothic as a mage (well I play most things as a mage) and I not only liked their schools of magic and associated quests, but can't really figure out how the character could have gone from a spear swinging, fireball tossing badarse to someone entirely reliant on swishy-poke fighting. Granted I can understand the need to reset skills, but I found that as a sequel it was kind of a "WTF" thing since it barely seems like the same world, even allowing for the cataclysm. I kind of feel that instead of making "Risen 2" they should have just made a new pirate franchise, especially seeing as those jumping into this going "wow a pirate game" doubtlessly are going to have similar issues to Yahtzee, in wondering why certain things are going on and what motivates the character, not that it much matters because it might as well be an entirely differant universe. Even if magic doesn't work like it used to, a guy who fought with spears/bladed staffs or more traditional swords (which is what everyone was carrying) suddenly fighting with those types of weapons is a bit odd. Not to mention the whole "damn, I wish I had a gun in the first game, it would have made thing so much easier".

 

[Jacked Assassin]

The only thing I get out of the Title is "Occupation Is Better Than Race". Which seems kind of pointless if you're an Elf who's Occupation is being a Pirate. Or if you point out the "Pirates" in Elder Scrolls. But the reason as to why Pirates are more interesting than Elves is because the 2 tend to have different time setting & locations.

Elves usually being part of the Dark Ages. A point in European history that utterly stinks when you realize that it was more Barbaric than the previous age, The Age Of Enlightenment. Because the Greek Gods were replace by some Middle Eastern fellow. And the stink didn't go away until The Renaissance. And then you eventually get the pirate setting once The Americas are discovered. And I'd considered that the most Advance setting a Western Time & Location based fantasy. hmm.... I'd say why but that would break forum rules probably.

But as far as Elder Scrolls being part of "The Elf Problem".... I have my doubts. Because at least you get the chance to play as an Anthro.... Er.... "Furry".... Because a Fantasy setting is the only setting where Anthros should belong. And in every other Dark Age Fantasy Game I instantly hate for reminding of The Dark Ages. In any other game Anthros seem way out of place. And when I see a Fur Suiter, in SR3, chances are I'm going beat them to death with a Giant Purple Dildo.

Because the World Must Be Saved!
Quite frankly the world doesn't have to be saved. Just be given the option to be destroyed by you if you want to destroy it. Saving the World or whatever is much more interesting when the phrase is "Because The World Must Be Destroyed. In Skyrim the 2nd coming of Alduin ushers in the end of that world & the beginning of the next. The Greybeards agree with this. However if you speak to their Dragon because it must be save, he'll call you a tool. However if you choose because you don't want this world to end he'll come to terms. Though I'd rather had made a treaty with Alduin on who he could & couldn't kill. I'm given the same notion by FF7 Advent Children where the 2nd coming of Sephiroth meant the destruction of the world & beginning of the next. Or in FO3 where The Children Of Atom wanted to basically destroy everything for the beginning of new universes. Or in Halo where "The Prophet Of Truth" wanted to destroy everything for a better place to live. If you haven't figured it out yet I hate Harold Camping & his ilk.

Because an authority figure told them to.
If it comes down who has the "better" authority figure then it can be kind of dull. After all the people you're probably fighting answer to a different authority figure. So switching sides just changes who told you to.

Because they're just "good".
In a world where Video Games can branch out into various stories Good & Evil should be decided by the player. The creator shouldn't even get a say of what is good or evil. Because then we may disagree with on what's good or evil. Like somehow killing innocent people is somehow "good" in FO3 via virtual Chinese Soldiers. BTW where was Timmy during that slaughter? Seems like the creator didn't want to be considered evil for killing a child.

Because it's the only way to proceed in the game.
I absolutely agree that this is a bad idea. And in most cases it makes wanting to finish a game that much harder because I tend to like it more prior to that situation. In the case of GTA4 I didn't want to kill Mikhail. If anything I wanted to blow up more buildings as that was fun. In FO3 I should have been able to kill or save James as I saw fit. But he's killed by someone else just because you turned a valve.

-

Just for laughs how Skyrim should have ended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyyIp3pHVwI

 

[Bostur]

At the very least the hero should ask the question, "Why me?".

Saving the world is not as much fun as it is sometimes made out to be. It's not fun to sleep in the muck, or get stabbed by orcs. Anyone chosen to save the world would at some point try to transfer the responsibility to someone else. Frodo constantly tries to sneak away and let go of the responsibility.
"Why do I have to do it? Why can't Boromir go to hell and drop off the package, he is big and strong and brave."

It doesn't need much narrative work to create motivation. A pistol to the head, or a shiny ring as promise of reward is all it really takes. Come on, give us a reason why we have to fight 101 ugly demons.


Some of the races in DA:O had great motivations, at least initially:

Spoiler

You will be hanging from a tree by noon, if you don't join the army right this moment.

There is no questioning that motivation.

 

[Dickdatduck]

I kinda get the impression that a lot of people here are just focusing on and responding to the title of this article rather then the article itself.

 

[Jacked Assassin]

I kinda get the impression that a lot of people here are just focusing on and responding to the title of this article rather then the article itself.

If I had to focus on the article I would've just pointed out that it already admits defeat before it even tried to state why "Occupation Was Better Than Race". It complains about how bad Risen 2 was before moving on.

Maybe he just played too many bad Elder Scrolls wannabes & needed to vent. But even then He'd probably enjoyed Skyrim more than he enjoyed Risen 2.

But putting that aside maybe he should write an open letter to Volition (Or Rockstar if he's that desperate) & ask for a pirate themed game. Although I'm guessing Volition would screw up by becoming too goofy. And Rockstar would fail at steering a giant ship.

Or maybe he should play Cutthroats: Battle For Black Powder Cove. The only problems there would be having to play with other people on PS Home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwEfKFs_BWk

 

[Kahunaburger]

The only thing I get out of the Title is "Occupation Is Better Than Race".

I do think that in general, this is correct. With very few exceptions (middle-earth, bas-lag, and... um...) fantasy settings don't do anything interesting with non-human sapients - they seem to mostly be in the setting because they were in Tolkien's setting.

 

[Wilco86]

King of Dragon Pass had quite original plant-like elves, and their favourite sport was to kill humans:

http://lparchive.org/King-of-Dragon-Pass/Update%20431/10-FedarkosIsNotDead012.png

http://i913.photobucket.com/albums/ac331/TraxMax/15-6.jpg

 

[KarlMonster]

At the very least the hero should ask the question, "Why me?".

...and this is why I do not accept Bioshock as an exception.
The nameless "hero" (who is also me?) has a hidden agenda, or may possibly just be schizophrenic?

Uber-linear Bioshock had many spots where you couldn't continue until you did something. I didn't want to inject myself with the Electro-Volt plasmid. I was warm and dry, there weren't any people left in the area who were trying to kill me, and there were snacks to... ooops... OK there were snacks to eat. But there's a comfortable chair right over there. I'm gonna go have a lil nap after the big long swim I just had. But what do I get? I really did it because I had to?

Bullshit. It was no different than that stupid part in F.E.A.R. where the game can't proceed until you've killed Paxton Fettel. That happened why? Because the player is supposed to be a police officer? It doesn't fit the alleged motivation.

Now I truly did like Bioshock (go ahead and see my post #1 if you don't believe me), but there are OTHER ways to tell a story besides saying that the butler did it - AND you're really the butler, who is suffering from a bout of amnesia. Give me a section (or three of four) early on, where I can only watch my own actions while I do something that I don't want to do. At least try to presage the big stupid reveal. Don't flash pictures in front of my face without context, I'll just wonder if my fillings are picking up the local kinetiscope channels. I can accept that the Sploicers are victims of pheromones in the air, or even something in the plasmids - until I breathe the same air and use the same plasmids. No. seriously, I'll go along with it until you give me too much time to think about it.

If Bioshock were a novel, I would burn it. If Bioshock were my novel, I would put it in a dark place until I could figure out how to re-write it so that it made sense.

Everyone can take lessons from Valve. Before GF even saw a Civil Protection thug, HL2's verbal and visual storytelling made me want to kill every single last one of them. And their little dogs too. For Twing-Twang! Now that's motivation.

 

[Therumancer]

Pirates only seem fresh because they haven't been used as much as elves recently. As a stereotype the whole pirate thing falls apart a lot faster than your average fantasy game.

How?

I mean I know real pirates didn't act like movie pirates but they do show some similarities. Mainly being motivated by greed and robbing ships and being old salts.

Not to mention that there have been a lot of pirate/seafaring games out there over the years, but most hadn't caught on due to problems with implenetation.

Monkey Island, Sid Meier, Risen, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat (and obscure PS2 game that was actually quite fun), Pirates of the Carribean Movie tie-in games (including the Lego ones), and I literally can't name anything else. So that's like 5 or 6 franchises based on pirates (2 of them haven't had a new game in long time) vs. how many generic fantasy games?

I wasn't saying there was as many of them, just that they had a solid prescence, we see one every couple of years. Granted we don't see them heavily promoted. Pirates Of Black Cove, Puzzle Pirates, Age Of Pirates 1 and 2, and of course various hidden object games and such. It's not a major genere like general fantasy is, but it's still one with a reasonable niche prescence.

The problem with the entire pirate genere is that there are only so many things that pirates do, you sail around, sink and loot ships, and maybe look for treasure.

You also loot on land, and if you're a privateer you also fight in military struggles.

Then there is the whole historical aspect of things. See, when people use the term "pirate" they tend to think in terms of a seafaring adventurer and free spirit, rarely do you see pirates in games or movies do anything paticularly bad, even if it's implied behind the scenes. In the final equasion pirates were not romantic figures like most people think of, because they were ultimatly a group of raping, murdering, scum. The nature of modern morality means that pretty much any pirate you see as a hero has to be an exception, or have such things remain in the past and be glossed over, which kind of limits the entire thing, as well as prevents a certain examination.

Games that let you play a bad guy are not new and some are quite popular. I'd love to play a raping pillaging plundering pirate, or one where I'm somehow the good guy despite being a thief.

I remember Disney had a cancelled pirates game where they just ran with the whole 'evil by default' thing and instead of a good and evil morality bar they had respected vs. feared.

In your typical pirate game/story you want the person watching to be cheering for the pirates, and hoping they get away from/defeat national navies and such. If piracy was ever properly portrayed and deconstructed, it doesn't matter how much of a bastard you typical crown officer is portrayed as, that's who your going to be cheering for.

Not always. See Kratos, GTA, Hannibal Lecter, etc. I think having an interesting protgaonist is good enough.

Thanks for the reply though.

Err, well perhaps I conveyed that badly. The point isn't so much that you can't have a game about bad guys, and have it work, but that the general fan base for pirates isn't there for a realistic version. Pirates are one of those things where it's been sanitized to the point where it's something parents expect, or encourage their kids to play aroiund with or act out as, and even adults tend to see it more as "swashbuckling adventure" rather than "spree killers with a boat". As a result just about everything to do with pirates has very little to do with what makes them pirates.

Your point about making the pirate into a good guy or anti-hero is kind of valid, and that's how most creators do it, by pretty much glossing over, or making the protagsnist(s) an exception to everything. My point was more or less about breaking that mould, especially seeing as it's pretty limiting and has become PART of what has held it back since the need for acceptance given what pirates have become limits the options. After all if some guy buys a pirate game, expecting a fairly sanitized "Pirates Of The Caribean" experience, and instead gets the equivilent of a Hannibal Lector & Pals depravity simulator with the addition of a boat, that's not going to go over well.

I think that for things to work we need to see people weaned off the typical portrayal of pirate anti-heroes, and I think that has to start with Hollywood actually.

Of course opinions are going to vary, we will probably have to agree to disagree.

 

[ZexionSephiroth]

I have a clue about what I'd like my heroes to say when asked about their motivations:

King: "So why ARE you saving the world anyways?"
Hero: *shrugs* "I got bored, and late one night I couldn't sleep so I decided 'hey, you know what would be fun? Disrupting a thieves guild', and from there, it kinda snowballed into some grand plot to save the world from demons. But you know what? BEST ADVENTURE EVER!"
King: *stunned* "Wow, charming."

 

[TheUnbeholden]

The very fact that elves have become a cliche serves only to show how creatively bankrupt the fantasy genre has become, especially in gaming.

The whole idea of 'fantasy' is to create something new and intriguing that sparks the imagination. The clue's in the title, after all. When Tolkien created Middle Earth, he combined a variety of different mythological sources with stuff of his own invention, and gave us all something we'd never seen before. A completely unique mythological world, with its own creatures, people and history. The elves of Middle Earth weren't just simple stuck-up snobs, they were deliberately portrayed as aloof because their immense lifespans (and thus their very perception of time), manic-depressive emotions and ability to see things waaay beyond the mortal realm kind of hamper their ability to mingle with everyday folk. Add to that the fact that Tolkien made his elves human-sized and totally bangable, and you get a drastic reinterpretation of a mythological idea that's been around for hundreds of years.

This is the sort of thing missing in fantasy now, and it's why we have this stagnation of the genre that Yahtzee alludes to. Instead of following Professor T's example and going to great efforts to build new worlds with new sights, new races, new takes on mythological ideas, etc, game developers are happy enough just aping his work, and changing a few of the particulars. Even something like The Elder Scrolls boils down to being a more metropolitan Middle Earth, complete with elves, orcs and dragons.

There are great fantasy writers out there. Writers like China Mieville and Clive Barker are able to come up with whole new universes that have next to nothing to do with Middle Earth, and the views they offer are so much more spectacular and memorable because of it. We need western developers to step up and realise that fantasy doesn't begin and end with Lord Of The Rings, and that fans of the genre are craving something different and unique, not yet another take on a well-worn formula. Japanese developers seem to understand this pretty well. You don't have to like the gameplay of JRPGs, but typically Japanese developers are pretty good at creating unique fantasy worlds that don't rehash the same old Tolkien archtypes.

Yeah!! Like Rainblood.

 

[Xakk Zeliff]

You forgot "For Large Sums of Money". Because all men lust for bling bling.