Black Cat said:
You and I are talking of entirely diferent things. You are seeing settings as real places, or as imitation of those, needing a story and an inner logic that can be understood by following normal logic. I'm talking about settings as in the scenery where a story (or game) happens, with no more use nor existence beyond either helping to build mood and atmosphere, be pretty to look at, create interesting challenges, and convey parts of the plot or meaning by their very presence.
Well, that's my point altogether. It's supposed to look pretty (when it's not even that). End of story.
It's incredibly superficial. Doesn't invite to thinking, to imagine, to get lost in the world as if you could walk inside of it and see the cogs moving behind the wheel. In terms you'd like, I think, it's all akin to Plato's allegory of the cave.
This is kind of obvious in your opinion of The Witcher monsters. You tell me to read the bestiary, while all i care about is there are monsters who look kind of ghoulish, in a crypt, and i kill them. They are lacking in the mood department, since for all uses and purposes they are ghouls (and then you have evil plants too) and they are not trying to convey any meaning either, so why should we care?
So you only care about the creature's external appearance? You don't care why it's there, how it came to be there, nor when? Nor how can you trace it's existence tied to previous events? You just take it in without questioning, I see; I'm sorry but this speaks terribly shallow of you.
You ask about the history and reasons behind the building of a fantasy castle, for fuck's sake. Do you care about that when listening to an allegory that happens in a castle, or a fairy tale that does? No, the entire point of the castle is to have shit happen inside of it. That's the only point of it's existence, and it's only function as a setting is to be a cool place for the shit that will happen inside of it, be moody and atmospheric, and, if the story has a purpose or meaning beyond kill shit and get loot, how well does it convey that message. All other crap is, like, i don't know, stupid. Who cares about that kind of stuff in a fantasy game?
I don't care when I listen to the world "castle" in a fairy tale because my imagination does all the work of creating a plausible castle that provides the fertile ground to break the wall between fantasy and reality that is the purpose of fairy tales themselves.
When a game draws the castle out for me, it better not break the purpose of fantasy which is to provide a link between imagination and reality. A link which all Japanese games shatter.
It's like questioning the biology of the Colossi in SotC, or the rationale beyond there being a huge roguelike tower dungeon in Baroque. Who cares? It's reason is to be there and be aesthetically consistent, aesthetically pleasing for its target demographic, and to convey the plots themes when the plot has themes.
I mean...
I'm not questioning the biology of the Colossus. In fact, I particularly didn't find the Colossus to be unbelievable, just the landscapes. I don't care for a giant golem's particular inner workings as long as its existence is justified in the mind of a believable creator - I don't know, maybe a god: but if this god were to add unnecessary glowing runes and twisting sparkly fiery balls spinning around it as most jRPGs tend to do, I'd ask myself "Why the fuck did he add all that if gods don't give a shit about fashion design and in fact precede nature". Believable creation -> Believable creator -> Disbelief is still in suspension -> Good art direction.
Sure, I'm glad you think over design is wrong and vile, cool, but we live in a pretty superficial society ourselves, and most of the current western styles are victim of being over designed and lacking both purpose and direction too. So regardless of your opinion of it we are talking of something universal, not gook based nor inspired. Or do you think gook thingies are so popular with people of my generation because it corrupts our very selves and turns us inside out instead of because it gives us exactly what we are looking for? It isn't the cause, dood.
Of course not. We've adopted Japanese stuff into our culture and we're suffering the consequences, blatantly apparent in games like WoW, for example.
But still that doesn't mean that at some point we didn't create a Fallout, a StarCraft, a Diablo, a Thief, a Witcher, a Deus Ex. Did the Japanese ever create something of that level? No.
Who cares? First, those haircuts where not even in the medieval like games, so meh, but are you asking for internal cultural consistency in a bloody fantasy game? Are you the king of escapist storyfags or something like that? In most japanese thingies the haircuts and colors and fashion are used to convey the character and it's themes to us, so it has to talk our language, not the language of the, like, low medieval or something, and that goes regardless of how cool or insipid the character is. The entire point is to you being able to tell the general themes and aspects of the characters because of their speech patterns, fashion, and colors. They aren't complex psychological constructs, they are either incarnated gameplay mechanics or devices to convey a message. Who wants to invest their lives in learning the subtleties of people that does not exist? D:
This I can understand, and it's true; but isn't length, curliness and opaque colors enough to portray those themes? Do they really have to go spiky and fluorescent to get a character's theme right? I don't think so.
It's just a modern fashion statement. It doesn't even qualify as artistic, if we have to be serious. So no, I still think it's a terrible way of providing symbolic cues.
And
really big swords are just guys compensating, that's not my fault. The japagooks just go kind of overboard with it, but really, Geralt going all dancing murderous hopping dervish with a sword, like, as long as i am tall, or about if i don't recall it wrong, is not precisely less compensating or ridiculous, less so when he is somehow choping and dicing four foes at once while doin so. Let's be honest, please.
The Witcher isn't perfect. If there's something in particular that I loathed in the game and can't stop commenting to my friends is how ridiculously bombastic the combat is - the sad part? At one point the directors hired professional fencers to motion-capture medieval messer handbook techniques, but ultimately ditched it in favor of pleasing the gimmick crowd.
Uhm, pathetic excuse? There is no excuse nor need for one, and why limit the symbolic meanings or gameplay uses of some random fantasy place to either realism, common sense, or fantasy logic when there is no need to do so? It was built there to be a nice backdrop for the game's story and offer interesting challenges, jumping puzzles, battle arenas, and lots of indirect routes after getting all old and rusty and ruined, because last time i checked there is no real people living in there and thus no real motives to build big magic castles. Just like the colossi are representations of forces and concepts and there is not logic to their beings other than being so and then getting killed by a jerk with a horse and a sword so we can all feel sad and go down the path of black eyeliner. The stories and settings are the excuses themselves, you don't create excuses for the excuses.
Couldn't they have copied European castle design, added some rust, some soot, and collapsed segments instead of going the floating tower with green/blue/red bricked tower caps and chains and unnecessary twisting arches route? Less is more. And this is an axiom in tasteful art (you know, the whole "tell without showing" thing and stuff), let me inform you.
Also there you again with the reason of being being none other than being (pardon the redundancy). Even if there's no people living there, some entity must have imagined it, and if his or her imagination includes themes and concepts that are out of place with the game's world, time and setting then it's still shallow to forgive complete dumbfuckery of expected aesthetics, functionality, and purpose of form. People don't build and create stuff just "for the lulz" you know, or at least we adults don't. Perhaps in your fantastical excuse of a reality this kind of thing is the norm - maybe we're disagreeing because we're on two totally different frequencies.
I mean, like, people in Fantasy Land lives only to either be walking stores, gameplay elements, walking hints, and storytelling devices, and they did not exist before you put the disc in the drive, and they stop existing once you get bored. And time stops in their universe when you let the game on pause to get some food or go talk to your parents or go on a date with your boyfriend. So if you think a thing other than either what was the writer trying to convey or how do i use this on the gameplay challenges or this shit is totally pwetty and moody when exploring i don't really understand you, sorry.
And if you see it like this, well, then it's just subjective judgement on how pwetty or cool it is, and there's, like, nothing to discuss.
Cute. I think all of those
while I'm playing, as long as what is conveyed is logical and coherent. That's the point of my original post, to be honest. You're still not understanding (or wanting to) what I'm trying to explain here; the reason why art/creative direction in most games nowadays is vomitive.
What's the point of being original on the language you are using to express the ideas you are trying to convey? Babel was no fun, you know? Why go and create an entire symbolic system from the ground up when it is not needed to express your ideas nor is it going to be understood by the people you want your ideas to reach? What kind of retard learns the five hundred Gods of fantasy land when they are in no way more meaningful in their symbolism than the already big enough pantheons we have over here? And if you are going to try to pull an but Lord Blah of Faerun is as meaningful and symbolic as Shiva i'm calling no life retard, sorry.
First, because the gods are ultimately tied to the history of the fantasy land and their actions and convictions
I
really have nothing against you, and i actually think you have interesting things to say every now and then, but i don't really follow the way you are seeing fantasy worlds as anything but, like, fantasy worlds, and if someone really expects me to learn the five hundred gods and three thousand magical creatures and six thousands year of history and twelve diferent made up ideologies, which are actually simplified and superretarded versions of real ideologies and symbologies and pantheons and stuffies, of their fantasy world to convey a message that could have been conveyed by using the gods and symbols and philosophies we already have, well, fuck them and it is them who are the pretentious ones if they think they have something so totally groundbreaking to convey in a bloody videogame that thousands of years of folklore, mythology, symbolism, and mythology is not enough to convey it. They have
way too much time on their hands. And they write for people who does the same. And when a
fifteen year old girl eighty year old degenerate pedophile of a retired catholic exorcist thinks someone has way too much time in their hands, believe
her him, it's
her his area of expertise.
I have nothing against you either, just your opinions. I just think you built them on sandy ground, that's all, since art is destroyed as soon as we judge it solely by its "prettyness".
To the point: do we have a Hammerite god in our culture? Do we have a Trickster, too? Even if we did have them, do they fit in tightly with the game's world parameters?
Anyway, I'm on the same level with you when you say five hundred gods and/or pantheons are boring when they convey just lore you can read for flavor purposes. If they aren't tied to gameworld events, people, or philosophies that affect your character(s) (or sparked a sequence of events that ultimately led to such an effect), then they're completely needless and filler. This happens particularly in The Elder Scrolls games, which's filler lore sadly gets lots of props here in the Codex.
And I did not really went any deeper on Thief lore once I saw it was basicaly Pillar of Force vs Pillar of Form with basic hermetic gnosticism done all over again, thank you very much. I like their clothes, though. And I like the way they draw their magic thingies in the cutscenes, too. :3 I love Thief all the same, though. We are like brothers in Christ, but in Thief instead, regardless of we liking it for totally diferent reasons, i guess.
Please explain more.
Not really smart dead things that stumble around in crypts and need to meet my magical silvery sword of evil monster anihilation = Zombie, maybe Ghoul, a gaki or preta if they are motivated by unsatisfied material lusts, etc. I do not need to learn an entirely new set of symbols to convey the same basic concept for all things that are holy and pretty and fluffy and cute, like, everywhere!
I'm not going to make it easy for you. Read the fucking bestiary already.
As opposed to, like, all the vastly inhabited keeps in those videos i posted? Or did you really took those walking skeletons and evil hungry demons and zombies and, like, thingies falling apart and dust and piles of rubble and the broken masonry and the total lack of living non hostile things outside the main character and sidekicks as a sign of them being cultural, economic, and social centers of some kind?
YES. I imagined a necromancer raising them for the purpose of fielding his own personal army; maybe the demons from the Nine Hells commanding their minions to rise against from the Underworld to establish a forward post for their terror campaigns; or some ghostly murder that echoes in the halls of forgotten keep, a spirit waiting for the truth of the matter to be known so as to finally rest in peace. As much as stuff in our world doesn't happen without a cause, so in our imaginations events should be conceived under the same rule, lest we become beastly purposeless in our thoughts.
That thing you posted turns all thing i posted into outside of the wide range of modern anime, so either it is wrong or you just said, like, super kawaii black kitty is right and i'm wrong, thank you. So don't try to be a jerk when no one's being hostile and i'm just talking around, dood.
Really? I still
saw the very same stereotypes, design conventions and visual style that plagues modern Japanese culture. But maybe I'm wrong, I'm just a one-eyed king after all.
