Final Fantasy X Config Pc
Amabella Tevebaugh
The imminent launch of Baldur's Gate 3 has filled my head with thoughts of elves and dragons and enchanted swords, all of which I've realised I'm utterly exhausted by. My tolerance for fantasy inspired by European folklore and Tolkien has entirely run out, leaving me wishing game developers would delve into weirder places to look for a new muse.
Baldur's Gate is, of course, beholden to an existing universe, one of the most familiar ones, so these mainstays are inevitable. But the world of Toril, where the Forgotten Realms are situated, is one of the least exciting locations in D&D, especially when compared to the wonderful mess of the planes or the void between worlds that plays host to Spelljammer campaigns. Gimme some of that cosmic fantasy.
That said, Larian deserves credit for still embracing the odder side of D&D. The focus on mind flayers and body horror, the introduction of characters like The Dark Urge and, of course, having sex with a druid using the Wild Shape spell ensure that Baldur's Gate 3 stands out. The studio is clearly having a lot of fun within this otherwise conventional setting and trying to push it in unusual directions. But we are still inundated with the overly familiar, where even the most celebrated of fantasy games feel obstinately conservative, ticking off a dizzying array of ancient tropes.
Unfortunately, Bethesda ended up going in the opposite direction. When it followed up Morrowind with Oblivion (a big European forest) and Skyrim (Scandinavia) I didn't suddenly kick the series to the curb, but my enthusiasm for exploring these locations never reached the heights of my journey through their predecessor. I'd seen the light, and generic fantasy ceased to float my boat.
For those looking for a mix of classic fantasy and lots of novelties, Shadowrun has a lot to offer. This tabletop setting, which has inspired a variety of videogames, including the excellent Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong, splices urban fantasy with elves and orcs. Big corporations run the show, but they exist in a world where magic is very real and where they might be hacked by a cybernetically enhanced dwarf. This combination of cyberpunk and traditional fantasy results in a unique concoction with plenty of surprises bubbling to the surface.
Even more than sci-fi, fantasy allows creators to eschew the rules of reality, where anything can make sense if you give it enough context. But it often feels like developers want to make fantasy settings even more familiar, encapsulated by the trend of tackling issues affecting the real world, like how the plight of Dragon Age's elves mirrors real-world bigotry and colonialism.
Failbetter's Fallen London setting, which spawned Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies, is perhaps my favourite example of a world that strikes the perfect balance between the familiar and the alien. It has all the trappings of Victorian London, but a Victorian London that was dragged beneath the ground by bats, which sits next door to Hell, where devils were once bees. It is, at all times, unhinged and surprising, now boasting multiple games full of indescribable horrors and oddities. And its brand of horror is novel, too, looking beyond the usual sources of inspiration.
At a time when Lovecraft is a touchstone for so many videogames, Failbetter instead looks to writers like China Mieville, whose weird tales are even more bizarre and unsettling, but without the pervasive racism. I was rereading Mieville's Perdido Street Station recently and there's still nothing like it. Instead of elves casting spells, you've got scarab-headed women making art out of fruit and saliva, murderous betentacled moths who can get you high from their excrement and a dog possessed by a sentient hand. With every chapter there's something new to wrap your head around, but rarely does it ever get too baffling.
That, I suspect, is a fear developers have when crafting a setting: "If we go too weird, will players just get confused?" For the likes of BioWare and Bethesda in particular, they're interested in something with a broad appeal. When you enter a world heavily inspired by old fantasy tropes, you immediately understand it. Instead of spending ages swotting up on esoteric lore, you can just start stabbing stuff with your enchanted sword. But I'm convinced developers can have their cake and eat it too.
Just look at the success of Elden Ring, a game where the narrative is anything but explicit and you make friends with a heroic jar full of blood/wine/whatever that is. Now it is baffling, but that didn't stop a vast number of people from becoming absolutely obsessed with it. There's not just space for the weird, there's a hunger for it.
It's not just more oddities that I desperately want, though. It's new experiences. At the very least, it's about time for more fantasy games to leave Europe behind. The well of European folklore has well and truly run dry. That's why I'm excited about The Wagadu Chronicles, an afrofantasy MMO inspired by African mythology. And it's intriguing beyond the setting, promising a world where players are fully in control, even playing the role of NPCs with emergent quests.
The Wagadu Chronicles is not alone in shining a light on the folklore of other places, but this task is mostly left to smaller, independent studios who don't have the budget to spend on huge marketing campaigns and probably won't ever get introduced on stage by the likes of Geoff Keighley. It's not enough that they're getting made; they also need more attention, more influence and the kind of success that will inspire risk-averse, larger studios to follow suit.
Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog. "}), " -0-9/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Fraser BrownSocial Links NavigationOnline EditorFraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.
I'm writing a fantasy story set in an imaginary world. For the first time, I'm giving geographical information and... I don't really know how to give it, actually. My alpha reader told me it was hard to use my current information to visualize anything because it was too scarce and imprecise.
I could give measurements in kilometers for instance, but I feel like it ruins the magic of the fantasy setting, as well as being too precise compared to the characters' knowledge (my narration is very close to their points of view and the characters are mostly illiterate, being brought up in a military orphanage).
Of course, I considered giving time estimations, but I'm not really satisfied with it either, because of both the previous argument and the fact that my characters will have to walk to Country B from Capital City, but not in a straight line and with stops in various cities, so it will be longer than it could.
We lived in Dvernik, which wasn't the biggest village in the valley or the smallest, or the one nearest the Wood: we were seven miles away. The road took us up over a big hill, though, and at the top on a clear day you could see along the river all the way to the pale grey strip of burned earth at the leading edge, and the solid dark wall of trees beyond. The Dragon's tower was a long way in the other direction, a piece of white chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains. (Naomi Novik, Uprooted, chapter 1)
So gradually we learn the name of the country (Polnya), and that there's another country (Rosya), that the court of Polnya is some distance from the valley, that there's a place called "Yellow Marshes" and it's close enough for villagers to be familiar with how their lord acts. All of this information is interwoven with the narration. Because the cartography information is interwoven with the narration, it creates a general picture that fits into the story, instead of requiring the reader to remember details that are not connected to anything.
Distances in kilometres are less important than "how long it would take to travel from point A to point B". If there's a mountain range between point A and point B, they're for all intents and purposes farther apart than if there were fields there instead. It used to be quite common to measure distances in days of travel (on horse, on foot), and that's information you can expect a common illiterate person to know; not from one side of the country to another, but from one village to another, to the nearest city, etc. A person would know quite well the area within which he routinely travels (whether it's a farmer who travels as far as the nearest market, or a peddler who does somewhat longer journeys, or a soldier who's being sent every which way). Beyond that, they'd have an idea of what's around, gleaned from what they head at the market or in a tavern. And further away it's names of important locations and "here be dragons". If you think about it, there was no reason for an average person to care about distance in km, but every reason to care about distance in travel-days.
d3342ee215