119 réponses à ce sujet

[DarthCaine]

Cristi wrote...

Legacy of Kain series is in my opinion a very good dark fantasy series, a general feeling of everything being beyond salvation

Legacy of Kain is a Horror Adventure.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) is Dark Fantasy (which compared to Dragon Age is like comparing AC/DC to Justin Bieber)

[DarthCaine]

simfamSP wrote...

DarthCaine wrote...

Cristi wrote...

Legacy of Kain series is in my opinion a very good dark fantasy series, a general feeling of everything being beyond salvation

Legacy of Kain is a Horror Adventure.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) is Dark Fantasy (which compared to Dragon Age is like comparing AC/DC to Justin Bieber)

Actually as I've mentioned in a Literal sense it's High Fantasy.

Legacy of Kain being a horror adventure game is set in a Dark Fantasy setting due to it's horror elements.

High = not of our world.
Dark = horror
Low = of our world

By that logic almost every single fantasy story in existance is dark fantasy.

LOTR, Dungeons & Dragons (NwN, Baldur's Gate etc), Fable, Elder Scrolls, Harry Potter heck even Twilight, all contain elements of horror, and none of them classify themselves as dark fantasy. Dragon Age is no more darker than any of them and had the bright idea of marketing themselves as "UBER DARK".

Modifié par DarthCaine, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:16 .

[Il Divo]

Cristi wrote...

Legacy of Kain series is in my opinion a very good dark fantasy series, a general feeling of everything being beyond salvation

Hehe, yeah.

[schalafi]

google_calasade wrote...

Elements of horror, adult oriented, layers within layers, depressing, without hope, just around DARK. IMO, Dragon Age series doesn't fit.  I would say DA:O is high fantasy (I'm about halfway through my first play through).  I'm not sure what I would call DA 2 besides disappointing at this point (very early on with it, doubt I'll play it more than once judging by the lack of fun I'm having with it).

Honestly, I can't think of a good current example fitting the term dark fantasy that I've played. The Witcher series couldn't be placed there, either, really (though the first game came fairly close).

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

[DarthCaine]

schalafi wrote...

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

Again, there IS a line between horror , dark fantasy and high fantasy, but people can't seem to see it.

Alan Wake, Legacy of Kain would be Horror.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire), The Witcher would be Dark fantasy.
Dragon Age, LOTR, Dungeons & Dragons would be High fantasy

Modifié par DarthCaine, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:23 .

[Il Divo]

DarthCaine wrote...

schalafi wrote...

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

Again, there IS a line between horror , dark fantasy and high fantasy, but people can't seem to see it.
Alan Wake, Legacy of Kain would be Horror.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire), The Witcher would be Dark fantasy.
Dragon Age, LOTR, Dungeons & Dragons would be High fantasy

How exactly is Legacy of Kain anything close to Horror? None of the presented material even resembles the  approach writers take in order to scare the viewer.

[DarthCaine]

Il Divo wrote...

DarthCaine wrote...

schalafi wrote...

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

Again, there IS a line between horror , dark fantasy and high fantasy, but people can't seem to see it.
Alan Wake, Legacy of Kain would be Horror.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire), The Witcher would be Dark fantasy.
Dragon Age, LOTR, Dungeons & Dragons would be High fantasy

How exactly is Legacy of Kain anything close to Horror? None of the presented material even resembles the  approach writers take in order to scare the viewer.

Actually yeah it's not, the more I think about it. I dunno

[schalafi]

DarthCaine wrote...

schalafi wrote...

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

Again, there IS a line between horror , dark fantasy and high fantasy, but people can't seem to see it.

Alan Wake, Legacy of Kain would be Horror.
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire), The Witcher would be Dark fantasy.
Dragon Age, LOTR, Dungeons & Dragons would be High fantasy

I would say that in many games there was some element of Dark Fantasy.  and even Horror. I think DA2 brought in a bit of Horror in Hawke's mother's death, and also Orsino's transformation.

Modifié par schalafi, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:29 .

[Bayz]

simfamSP wrote...
And by that logic everything is a bit of everything.

We just have to define the genre by what it wants to be. LOTR may have some horror elements (the king of the dead) but it never wants to be a horror story.

The same goes for RPGs. Nearly every game has RPG elements stuck into them one way or the other, but they are not all RPGs.

King of the dead? Bloody Sauron turning into a werewolf and tearin Bhelem into pieces scared the crap out of me, despite Bhelem's epicness afterwards...I know that was Silmarillion but still the same universe. Let alone Morgoth being Cthulhu++ etc...High Fantasy has many stuff that is horror but it's just how the characters react to it what makes a difference there.

If Bhelem had just screamed and died there, that would make it horror, because of his attitude of "Now is my turn" it made it High Fantasy.

[Bayz]

I mean, I apologize for all the people I am offending with this, but consider the book of Genesis.

In chapters 6 to 9 we have a guy who is told by an strange entity to build an ark, collect animals and take his family in so said entity sends a flood and exterminates all life on earth...

...
...
...

Said entity is the Lawful Good guy, imagine if the Chaotic Evil bastard that lies below make his hands on you what would happen.

I do believe that stuff like this, turned into a fantasy setting, what makes said "fantasy" dark, when the goody two shoes have to do attrocious crap in order to avoid evil to prevail, and no not "I might do but there is a workaround that..." no, when there is a workaround there is NO Black and Gray morality, workarounds make the setting Black and White all over again, and Black and White in fantasy makes it High/Low Fantasy.

Sorry if by using people's sacred scriptures I offend anyone, I was just illustrating an example.

[Il Divo]

simfamSP wrote...

The movie scream doesn't scare me but technically it is a horror film (ok a slasher film but you get my point.) Horror elements (in my opinion) are things that are in a general sesne 'scary.' Vampires, ghosts, ghouls all have to do with Legacy of Kain. These are in general 'horrific' monsters, thus they relate to the term 'Dark Fantasy.'

You have to take things in context here :-)

I'm not certain I entirely agree with that. I won't dispute that vampires tend to find themselves used in scary movies, but I think the tone is substantially more important in identifying the horror genre. It's possible to make a horror film using elements which avoid vampires/supernatural creatures, relying entirely on a "real" setting. And in the opposite way, you can have vampires/zombies in a film that most would not consider scary. Ex: Blade, Zombieland, which are an action movie and comedy respectively.

With respect to that, Legacy of Kain doesn't really treat the content in the way which a scary movie would. Kain is essentially a superpowered Vampire going around murdering people. I still consider dark fantasy (since we're all using our own variations on the term), but not simply because vampires are present.

[thats1evildude]

Portions of Dragon Age match the general definition of dark fantasy, (ie. fantasy with horror elements). The confrontation with the Broodmother qualifies, as does the abandoned orphanage in the Alienage. Broken Circle is pretty close. The entire Golems of Amgarrak DLC is basically a straightforward horror story that happens to have fantasy elements.

Modifié par thats1evildude, 16 décembre 2011 - 06:36 .

[PsychoBlonde]

Ukki wrote...

I see it also includes "reality" a la TW2. Living landscape and down to earth colours which can turn into rainy, muddy and gray. Murder and mayheim, despair and death. A world where heroes and their friends die horribly and sometimes without reason (caused by something unexpected). Kind of like the world in George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire". Bright pastel colours with anime characters like in DA2 do not belong there.

I would say that this is the definition of "gritty" instead of "dark".  Grit is, among other things, being explicit about pus, gore, rape, disease, bugs, sweat, ******, etc.  Dragon Age is NOT gritty, and, in fact, this kind of thing is usually reserved for other mediums--this kind of visceral approach doesn't work well in a sort of hands-off experience.  In a game, people are hurt when their health bar goes down, and you fix them by casting a healing spell.  In a gritty work, however, people are hurt by taking a spiked club to the leg, which you *attempt* to heal by removing the worst splinters of bone sticking out of their skin and trying to realign the bone fragments.  Later, when they get gangrene, you get the hacksaw and a couple of buddies to hold them down while you saw through their femur and pour boiling tar over the stump in an effort to cauterize it.

Dark and grit occasionally go together, but not always.  I'd say the primary difference between dark and light works is that in dark works there is always a sense of limitation and flaws--and this is more of a continuum than two strictly defined categories.  In lighter fantasy, the hero has antagonists (not enemies, antagonists) that they eventually manage to bring around and teach the Magic of Friendship or whatever.  In darker fantasy, yeah, you may get to save the girl, but in doing so you cosmically screw up and wreck your relationship with her and she hates you forever after.  You can even trace this back to Shakespeare--in his tragedies, people are always undone by some "fatal flaw".  That's what makes the play dark and tragic rather than light and comic.

Dragon Age *flirts* with darkness a bit.  In a truly light fantasy, for instance, you'd get rid of Meredith and give a little speech about the Rights of Man and Cullen would take over as Commander and everything would just be great from then on.  Can you do this?  No.  You're limited.  You have to deal with people's flaws and stupidity.

What stops it from being really dark is that they can't casually assign flaws and stupidity to the player character by basically forcing you to do the "wrong thing"--and even if they deny you the satisfaction of getting what you wanted from a choice, due to the fact that you were basically railroaded into that outcome, there's not the same sense of regret and personal flaws/limitations.  In a novel or a movie, however, the writer can freely assign all kinds of mistakes to the protagonist.  So it's different.  Now, some games DO do this, but they don't give you the same kind of control over the protagonist's personality and decisions.

[Bayz]

Another example would be the grimm darkenss grimmdark of grimmdark, that is warhammer (specially 40k)

There the humans (calling them good guys just doesn't make sense anymore) fight every day for survival, but underlying the setting they know they will be destroyed. They fight and save their sorry asses just one more day.

Then you have it when after fighting Chaos an inquisitor comes and tries to make an exterminatus on the planet, you go and do the "right" thing, to stop said inquisitor as he is surely exaggerating chaotic influence, after all you just killed the evil demon right?

WRONG, you save the planet just to see how the chaos taint spreads all over and the system is doomed.

It is not in the horror (for me) as it is in the nihilism of the setting. The Despair,"no future" bit is what make fantasy "dark".

Crapsackworldiness on hold for a better expression...elements of horror might or might not be in it, A song of Ice and Fire doesn't have many elements of horror and they are not central to the series (yet)...still is waaaay far from a fuzzy and comfortable Low Fantasy Setting.

Modifié par Bayz, 16 décembre 2011 - 08:35 .

[DreamwareStudio]

schalafi wrote...

google_calasade wrote...

Elements of horror, adult oriented, layers within layers, depressing, without hope, just around DARK. IMO, Dragon Age series doesn't fit.  I would say DA:O is high fantasy (I'm about halfway through my first play through).  I'm not sure what I would call DA 2 besides disappointing at this point (very early on with it, doubt I'll play it more than once judging by the lack of fun I'm having with it).

Honestly, I can't think of a good current example fitting the term dark fantasy that I've played. The Witcher series couldn't be placed there, either, really (though the first game came fairly close).

Have any of you played Alan Wake? That, imo, is a DARK fantasy and one of the most scarific games I've ever seen.

I think I'll have to give that a try.

[Nerevar-as]

Will it scare me after playing Amnesia?

[Bayz]

Depends on the kind of terror that works for you. I played it and had no problems at all, but I am quite unsensibilized in general with stuff...I kept dying because I came too close to the enemies to see what they were and stuff like that.

If Silent Hill scared your bones, Amnesia is going to creep the **** out of you, it is the same kind of horrow but x100

[Maria Caliban]

Creid-X wrote...

I thought that "all that remains" was a very good dark fantasy point in DA2, haven't seen anything similar in any other of the fantasy games I've played not even The Witcher, that's one quests where I though BioWare were honoring the label.

I agree that "All that Remains" was a dark fantasy story.

See also: Broodmother.

Il Divo wrote...
How exactly is Legacy of Kain anything close to Horror? None of the presented material even resembles the  approach writers take in order to scare the viewer.

The main character is a vampire that constantly gorges himself on the blood of innocent people to stay alive. The world he lives in is rotten from within, he's brought back from hell to take revenge on those who killed him, and he 'saves' the world by be carving a bloody swath through it. He then brings about an era in which humanity exists merely as cattle to be devoured.

Because of Kain's nobility and charisma (Simon Templeton did a wonderful job there) it's easy to forget that Kain is a monster. Not just 'monstrous' but an inhuman monster.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 16 décembre 2011 - 10:22 .

[Bayz]

YMMV but I consider Raziel's history an epic not horror. The monster is the main character who at the end of the day is at the top of the foodchain.

I believe VTM handled the horror bit better with the antediluvians and stuff but that's just in pnp...

Now now if you consider Raziel History as one of gothic Horror, not unlike Frankenstein of Mary Shelley I can agree with you to a certain extent...

[Il Divo]

Maria Caliban wrote...

The main character is a vampire that constantly gorges himself on the blood of innocent people to stay alive. The world he lives in is rotten from within, he's brought back from hell to take revenge on those who killed him, and he 'saves' the world by be carving a bloody swath through it. He then brings about an era in which humanity exists merely as cattle to be devoured.

Because of Kain's nobility and charisma (Simon Templeton did a wonderful job there) it's easy to forget that Kain is a monster. Not just 'monstrous' but an inhuman monster.

But bearing in mind that we are playing the monster, not running in fear of him. I consider that an important distinction. I wouldn't place Legacy of Kain in horror the way I (for example) would place Alan Wake, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Call of Cthulhu, the Shining, etc. Horror, the way I typically interpret it, refers specifically to making the player/viewer/protagonist feel vulnerable through fear of physical or psychological pain.

Kain is great, but the material is never presented in a manner to scare the player. Sure, there might be a few gruesome deaths, crucifixions, etc. But the description you provide is more how I would describe dark fantasy, as opposed to horror.

Modifié par Il Divo, 16 décembre 2011 - 10:42 .