Why can't fantasy RPGs be more original?

[Digitalpotato]

What many people never seem to give credit to J-RPGs to is that unlike their western counterparts, they actually LEAVE the freaking British Isles. I do realize that there are some like that one Ultima game on Mars that was steampunk or the other games that are sci-fi.

To be honest, I'm just bored looking through many of today's ye olde british isles games because we've only been seeing and imagining it since the 1970's when we were playing DnD and maybe reading Tolkein and struggling to not sleep through his writing style.

But anyways, what I am very surprised that no one has tried to do is instead ditch the stereotypes of orcs being all musclebound "KILL WE ARE STRONG!" warriors and elves being bigger snobs than Yahtzee and make them act like people may now. Heck you know what'd be REALLY cool? Putting them all together in a place that's like New york City or London! Heck if Japan can do it with The World Ends With You (sans elves and orcs) the developers out here can do that.

 

[mark_n_b]

Fantasy is premised on European mythology and medieval culture. Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien have driven the popularity of the genre, which has lead to some hugely repeated themes as core components of the form (Elves and Dwarves)

It is hard to escape from these components, if it had cowboys and schoolmarms it would be a western, if it had space marine and alpha centurians it would be sci-fi, if it had bootleggers and private dicks it would be... well you get the idea.

Because it has wizards and dragons, it's fantasy. And there are many fantasy themed games that don't include elves or dwarves (fable for instance) but like many genres, sometimes it is just silly to mess with some established themes, especially when it is those themes that make the genre so appealing to many people.

I agree though, fantasy is one of the least innovative and creative of game themes. The solution lies in layering on an interesting story that does something new with the themes allowing the player to interact with the game world in unexpected ways. New and interesting styles of game-play help. Right now so many fantasy games are the same old statistic tweaking, grindalicous, pen & paper variant.

 

[PersianLlama]

If it didn't have those creatures, how would it be a fantasy RPG?

I love you.

 

[hagaya]

Because they're all trying to imitate final fantasy. Lets face it, the original six games were pretty good and unbiased by angst, and after VI then they just started going off antidepressants and liquid anime and made advent children. FFVII was really good but its the fan base and everything that came out after the original that ruins it for me. My idea is SE tried making only the multiples of three (not including the original six) good or not having a fanbase that never played the original game. That brings me to the point; They suck because they're imitating Final Fantasy or WoW (that is, with limiting myself to Fantasy) and never try something like "hey, lets make a hero that has reasonable hair and sword size with no angst and playfully friendly but still having a core baddassery!"

If one thing was a good idea at the time, then developers think its a good idea to rip it off. This is what happened with Wii Sports, and its no doubt going to happen some time again; probably on the wii because that is the easiest place to make a good gimmick(which is more than I can say for said gimmick's implementation because they mostly fall short).

 

[hagaya]

You know there are lots of games that don't follow these cliche's.
Off the top of my head. The following series.

Xenosaga
Shin Megami Tensei
Suikoden (an elf or 2 here and there but alot of original races as well.)
Disgaea

Note these are all J-RPGs and they aren't exactly perfect but they try something fresh. Also Xenosaga is Sci-Fi complete with anime cliches.

 

[Dr Spaceman]

It might not be so bad if they at least changed the time period or something.

Imagine a game with elves and orcs, only it was set in modern times, with all the swords and stuff replaced with guns, daggers and power tools.

I know it's been brought up before, but you basically just described Arcanum (PC game from 2001). It seems a lot of the posters here want to see some of the different kind of fantasy worlds explored in novels to be explored in an RPG. The Witcher is a good start with a bit darker take on a Tolkienesque world, but there are numerous other fantasy works (like the Golden Compass) that have totally unique, different worlds that would provide fantastic settings for a fantasy RPG.

 

[bittman]

Or the next game that creates short midgets gives them a name that isn't dwarves. Plenty of fantasy genre games can create excellently unique races without resorting to elves, orcs, dwarves and dragons though most fall into the trap somehow.

You do know why they do it though? Because every other successful game does it. If World of Warcraft started with Dranei and Undead with none of the standard fantasy races it wouldn't be nearly as accepted...it's sad really...

But doable. Ivalice's Viera, Bangaa, Seeq and Moogle from Final Fantasy is the perfect example of what can happen if you put some brain behind making non-standard fantasy races.