Grimwulf
Arcane
Requesting. Genre doesn't matter really, I'm just in for a good story.
But I gotta make one thing clear: I'm not necessarily looking for grimdark. People use this word when talking about anything these days, but grimdark doesn't always feature despair. Take Warhammer 40k, the father of grimdark - do you feel desperate when playing Warhammer? I certainly don't.
Here goes my personal list of such games, starting from the best and descending all the way down to Mass Effect 3. The only criteria is THE STORY and the feeling of DESPAIR in it:
0. The Impossible Game. Just kiddin'
1. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. No comments there, the essence of despair all the way. "Good" ending isn't true ending. Not much of a game tho, more like a very short and sometimes buggy quest.
2. Disciples 2. Well, maybe not all of campaings. Playing humans you feel like constantly being betrayed, deceived and fucked around, living a false hope. But the dwarves, for example, swallow it from mission 1:"This is fucking Ragnarock. The world will die, we all will die, and there is no hope, no fucking good ending. But hey, let's do one final battle at least!". Or my favorite Undead - Mortiss doesn't give a fuck about anything. She WILL resurrect her husband, she WILL kill anything standing on her path, be it a man, an animal or a fucking forest. You look at all those dead lands that she leaves behind and have dat feeling, you know. She was once a beautiful woman in love and now she is desperate Godess of the dead. And her ending is the best ending in whole Disciples 2.
3. Demon/Dark Souls series..? I played them all and this is more like a collection of short and quick stories about despair. You have to really puzzle up the pieces to make those stories clear and actually making sense. But players usually don't give a flying fuck about lore and setting and just play it for multiplayer. A pity really.
4. Game of Thrones (the RPG one, not the fucking strategy-like abomination). Ok, so I guess it wouldn't be anything special if you never read the book. The main characters of the game were never mentioned in the book, but you meet a lot of familiar characters along the way. And you KNOW from the start that things will fuck up pretty fast and - mainly - IT WON"T END GOOD, coz it's George f-ng Martin. And the game doesn't disappoint, of course. Best story among recent RPGs.
5. The Suffering, mainly the first one. You may get out of prison in the end, but you'll never be free from your demons. If you attempt to play it "the good way", try to atone for your sins and other bullshit, you'll never dig the charm of the game. It is supposed to be played as fucked up as you possibly can. Backstab people, do not listen to dead wife, let your inner beast outside and discover what you REALLY did in the past. The game is more about insanity than anything else, but being desperate about things that cannot be undone - events that happend before the game starts - it's all a big part of insanity. The second game continues the story nicely, but it lacks the thee charismatic "ghosts" that follow Torque in the first part.
6 and below. Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 3, any-generic-rpg-about-EVIL-bullshit. They can all be compared to Hollywood blockbusters: you see how the world is in danger, you see how GREAT EVAL WANT TO DESTROY/RULE things, and there is a lot of DRAMA being hyped around that shit, BUT you know from the start and for certain: you will be the fucking Hero who's gonna save the world in the end. Do you doubt that shit or feel desperate at least ONCE during gameplay? NOT. AT. ALL. So while the end of the world theme is somewhere close, those Hollywood-hero-type games are not exactly what I'm starving for.
1293812938. Horror games. Even in "Call of Chtulhu" the player doesn't feel desperate. He may be tense or freaked the fuck out, but never desperate. He just doesn't have the time for desperation.
Rock bottom. Any post-apocalyptic game. Fallout, Wasteland, any zombie-survival - that's not the case. In those games the WORST already happend, (long)before the game starts. You don't feel desperate, in some cases you actually feel hope. In other cases - just live your daily routine survival, not a big deal. Wha? "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" is post-apocalyptic too? I double dare you to play it first and comment later. That's a whole different thing.
Hope I didn't forget anything. So, what are your suggestions?
But I gotta make one thing clear: I'm not necessarily looking for grimdark. People use this word when talking about anything these days, but grimdark doesn't always feature despair. Take Warhammer 40k, the father of grimdark - do you feel desperate when playing Warhammer? I certainly don't.
Here goes my personal list of such games, starting from the best and descending all the way down to Mass Effect 3. The only criteria is THE STORY and the feeling of DESPAIR in it:
0. The Impossible Game. Just kiddin'
1. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. No comments there, the essence of despair all the way. "Good" ending isn't true ending. Not much of a game tho, more like a very short and sometimes buggy quest.
2. Disciples 2. Well, maybe not all of campaings. Playing humans you feel like constantly being betrayed, deceived and fucked around, living a false hope. But the dwarves, for example, swallow it from mission 1:"This is fucking Ragnarock. The world will die, we all will die, and there is no hope, no fucking good ending. But hey, let's do one final battle at least!". Or my favorite Undead - Mortiss doesn't give a fuck about anything. She WILL resurrect her husband, she WILL kill anything standing on her path, be it a man, an animal or a fucking forest. You look at all those dead lands that she leaves behind and have dat feeling, you know. She was once a beautiful woman in love and now she is desperate Godess of the dead. And her ending is the best ending in whole Disciples 2.
3. Demon/Dark Souls series..? I played them all and this is more like a collection of short and quick stories about despair. You have to really puzzle up the pieces to make those stories clear and actually making sense. But players usually don't give a flying fuck about lore and setting and just play it for multiplayer. A pity really.
4. Game of Thrones (the RPG one, not the fucking strategy-like abomination). Ok, so I guess it wouldn't be anything special if you never read the book. The main characters of the game were never mentioned in the book, but you meet a lot of familiar characters along the way. And you KNOW from the start that things will fuck up pretty fast and - mainly - IT WON"T END GOOD, coz it's George f-ng Martin. And the game doesn't disappoint, of course. Best story among recent RPGs.
And not a single "good" ending. It may not feel like game about despair from the start, but at one point you come to realize, that no matter what you do, you can't possibly find a solution to the whole situation at hand. And you never will.
5. The Suffering, mainly the first one. You may get out of prison in the end, but you'll never be free from your demons. If you attempt to play it "the good way", try to atone for your sins and other bullshit, you'll never dig the charm of the game. It is supposed to be played as fucked up as you possibly can. Backstab people, do not listen to dead wife, let your inner beast outside and discover what you REALLY did in the past. The game is more about insanity than anything else, but being desperate about things that cannot be undone - events that happend before the game starts - it's all a big part of insanity. The second game continues the story nicely, but it lacks the thee charismatic "ghosts" that follow Torque in the first part.
6 and below. Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 3, any-generic-rpg-about-EVIL-bullshit. They can all be compared to Hollywood blockbusters: you see how the world is in danger, you see how GREAT EVAL WANT TO DESTROY/RULE things, and there is a lot of DRAMA being hyped around that shit, BUT you know from the start and for certain: you will be the fucking Hero who's gonna save the world in the end. Do you doubt that shit or feel desperate at least ONCE during gameplay? NOT. AT. ALL. So while the end of the world theme is somewhere close, those Hollywood-hero-type games are not exactly what I'm starving for.
1293812938. Horror games. Even in "Call of Chtulhu" the player doesn't feel desperate. He may be tense or freaked the fuck out, but never desperate. He just doesn't have the time for desperation.
Rock bottom. Any post-apocalyptic game. Fallout, Wasteland, any zombie-survival - that's not the case. In those games the WORST already happend, (long)before the game starts. You don't feel desperate, in some cases you actually feel hope. In other cases - just live your daily routine survival, not a big deal. Wha? "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" is post-apocalyptic too? I double dare you to play it first and comment later. That's a whole different thing.
Hope I didn't forget anything. So, what are your suggestions?