I am sure some of you are familiar with RuneQuest. Now that's a grim bronze age tech-level setting, and I can't help but see similarities with Lunar Empire and Tyranny's setup.
Now, for me, Gloranatha's design has been always above that of, say Forgotten Realms, given its unforgiving, primitive society and visceral combat. If Tyranny could capture even a little bit of that magic (or in this case the lack of it, since RQ isn't that high magic a setting), we might end up getting a decent game.
Erm. Tyranny is written for wider audience, they even hired that girl who gushes over Sherlock, Walking Dead, Fallout 4 and other assorted "tee-hee I'm soooo nerdy :wink:" shit. She isn't the sole author in this, but she can double as a focus group. Do you really think that they can write even a fraction of KoDP, for example? Or that their audience would understand and like it? The same audience, who adores Dragon Age and wants more of the same, but with more indie and nerd cred?
Yes, I do believe you have a point there, but I still have some hope. Though I must admit that I enjoyed the first DA:O when it came out, far from adoring it though. It could be my lackluster standards. It was enough to see the trailer for DA2 to not continue with the series.
Allthough more generally, I would like to point out that I do not buy the idea that deriving inspiration from pop culture would be necessarily a bad thing. All culture, nevermind whether it's classified as highbrow or lowbrow aims at entertaining its consumers (no matter what the high-brow consumers may insist), and this whole distinction seems just self-serving classfication conjured up and uphold by folks who probably are bad in natural sciences but somehow want to tell themselves that they are smart, and elevate themselves above the masses. Writing in Dark Horse comics could, in principle, be of as high quality, as say works of high-lit authors. As mentioned earlier in the thread, it's the skill of the creator that dictates the quality, not the subject matter or medium per se. The same goes for films, music etc. For instance, I can aknowledge that music by Lady Gaga has high production values and quality, and flawless execution, even if I do not like it much at all.
Though I still do not want this to reduce to some post-modern credo like 'Anything Goes'*, there's is quality differences in everything
* or its Codex parallel: everything is shit
Highbrow and lowbrow distinction is often based on cultural trends and meaningless at times. Fantasy, which before GoT success story was considered lowbrow genre, can, of course have multiple positive qualities, elevating it above contemporary prose. It can be psychologically valid, plot can be very intricate, it can have layers of meanings, metaphors, references. It can explore philosophical questions, play with scenarios inspired by historical periods and events and present a before unheard of point of view on them. But. There's always but.
First of all, while there are few gems in genre, most of it its accessible, fun fluff, power fantasy and whatnot. And then there tons of actual smelly shit. Not surprisingly, both fluff and even shit are often very popular, and if people don't have education and taste - they use it as baseline, and want more of the same, And so the genre stagnates and rots.
Secondly - if we're talking about both that girl
and DA audience - she and an average Bioware fan often doesn't read. They consume only visual media, be it TV, comics, youtube, twitch or something similar. At most they read fanfics, and YA novels, and the novels made popular by TV adaptations. And thus they don't have baseline. They can't even compare what works and what doesn't in writing, they don't know their predecessors works, they mistake pandering to some groups as the ultimate goal, they can't conceive that someone can have a different opinion than they and can be right. Because they live in a bubble. Because millennials and GenZ not only like trendy things and ideas, they worship them. Uncritically and unconditionally. And so, to pander to them, you must push all aforementioned buttons, you must design by checklist.
Not surprisingly, the products made exclusively for them I don't enjoy. Not because I'm older, or smarter, or have better taste, no. I simply have a different mentality, and was raised on different cultural works and entertainment, which was structured and made differently. I'm also an "other" for anglo culture, and such an "other" hating whom is accepted. Granted, most can't give two shits about Russians, but I find it's very amusing that many of both regressive left and cuckservatives often can unite only on one thing - the Russian menace. My values, most of my country's values, are an anathema for regressive left. Which is ironic, given that they often proclaim themselves marxists, maoists, socialists and whatnot. And gamedev is seeded with them. For them, my country's history is on par with North Korea and Pol Pot's regime, which is ironic. So forgive me if I laugh at idea that the uniting the disorganized tribes and cultures is somehow EVUL. They should've marketed it as USSR IN BRONZE AGE!11 or something.
But fuck the cultural difference, I don't really care, I don't need pandering. But at least give me non-degenerate gameplay and story, which isn't catered exclusively to hipster crybabies, who died in DA:O on Easy (or whatever that mode was called). But I'm not the target audience, they are. So I don't really have any hope for this game.
