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New settings' fatigue

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
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May 13, 2013
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Space Hell
I feel a severe "new setting" fatigue.
I am too tired to get into another bunch of brand new titles, reading another walls of texts of lore etc. I was happy with Baldur's Gate 3 because I know Forgotten Realms, I am okay with Mass Effect because I am familiar with Mass Effect universe, I can manage Warhammer lore, same goes for VtN, but when game industry spawns a whole new bunch of new RPGs with new settings I simply don't like to get into it.
For example, a usual situation when "founding father of [insert genre]" is going to make their own game - like Exodus by Karpyshin, or Heretic Prophet by Druckman etc.
 

NecroLord

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
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Sep 6, 2022
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15,708
Just play better games. Karpyshin and Druckman are hack retards.
Should try some more indies me thinks.
Take Fear and Hunger for example.
Pretty cool setting inspired by real world history and nations, also great monster designs.
It is a RPG Maker game however with jrpg design.
 

POOPERSCOOPER

Prophet
Joined
Mar 6, 2003
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2,889
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California
It's perfectly fine to have new settings, it's just most are badly and over written. You don't need tons of back story and it doesn't need to bombard the player all the time. Less you know the better and leaves the player to find a bit more. Old games were much better at this.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
4,115
Location
Mosqueow
I have severe modern garbage fatigue.

Nothing new being made is believable or interesting. When oldschool devs were being imaginative it resulted in Morrowind, Arcanum or Planescape. When new devs make something... well you know how it ends: PoE, Forspoken etc. Cringe, boring or both. Instead of acid creativity of Kirkbride you have lulrandom of schizophrenic stuff.

On top of that modern writing makes even dark fantasy look like safe space for feminists and cucks. There is no nuance or logic. An isolated society that doesn't accept outsiders is all of a sudden all diverse. Or low fantasy medieval setting without magic where 50% of combatants are women. Even indie devs are a bunch of faggots afraid to offend 3 people who wouldn't even play their game so they lick boots and include pronouns into their opuses. I was browsing a steam forum of some crappy indie rpg with it's own setting and one of the biggest threads was about how women acting like medieval characters is offensive and bad. Medieval woman being a maiden is offensive and outdated... lmfao.

Is it possible to enjoy settings and stories written like that? You supposed to just eat the slop and not think about it to have fun? Fuck that.
 

Butter

Arcane
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Oct 1, 2018
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8,813
Just play better games. Karpyshin and Druckman are hack retards.
To expand on this, it's rare that we even get new settings. Forgotten Realms was just some pervert's Middle Earth xerox, and most fantasy settings are either a FR xerox or a FR xerox except Dark & Gritty™. People lamented when TSR published 6 million new campaign settings, but those seem like halcyon days in hindsight. Imagine getting new settings half as interesting as Ravenloft or Planescape or Dark Sun or Spelljammer or Al Qadim anymore.
 

Skinwalker

biggest fear: vacuum cleaner
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Mostly because these new settings aren't new at all, to the point where most popular works inside of a genre begin to blend together into variations on the same thing.

Star Trek, Halo, Mass Effect, Warhammer, Starcraft, Shitfield, No Man's Skyrim, how many more times must we be told about ancient precursor aliens who mysteriously died out millions of years ago but left behind functioning crystalline structures, and a horrible all-devouring hivemind controlling an amalgamation of a bunch of different species out to destroy us all, and some galactic government that resembles the UN, and how you need to stick a thing in a hole to save the galaxy, etc. etc. etc.

What if I just took some of these things and switched them around a little bit. There, "new" setting.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
13,265
tranny was cool and presented in such way that one wanted to learn more.

Myself i have more of a systems fatigue. I hate it when i spend 30min with excel only to learn that it doesnt matter
 

MrMarbles

Cipher
Joined
Jan 13, 2014
Messages
447
It's perfectly fine to have new settings, it's just most are badly and over written. You don't need tons of back story and it doesn't need to bombard the player all the time. Less you know the better and leaves the player to find a bit more. Old games were much better at this.
Exactly. It can be done subtly; rewarding curiosity with lore and letting players plow through if they don't care. Some new titles also get it right, like CS, Vagrus or Drova.
 

Serious_Business

Best Poster on the Codex
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
3,962
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Frown Town
Go get some sleep if you're so tired. Being familiar with something doesn't make it interesting. For example, I'm familiar with your posts, even though I never read any before. They are like every shit user post on this forum. It tires me. So I go to sleep. Everybody happy.
 

Harthwain

Arcane
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
5,570
For example, a usual situation when "founding father of [insert genre]" is going to make their own game - like Exodus by Karpyshin, or Heretic Prophet by Druckman etc.
My problem is not new settings, but poorly done settings. I was fine with Death Stranding, for example, because it had character and gameplay was tied very strongly with the universe (even though from the perspective of a bystander the world is pure insanity and on paper you'd thought it shouldn't work as well as it does in practice).

Disco Elysium was fine, because it works well with the main character being an amnesiac (regardless of how tried and tired that cliche is) and the Encyclopedia skill is there to help you out (or not, because the encyclopedical knowledge is not always useful. But surely it helps to fill in the gap in the lore in a new strange world).
 

canakin

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2011
Messages
437
You are just making the classic mistake of reading/listening to story shit. Just ignore the lore, story and similar faggotry and play rpgs to kill shit and abuse systems.
 

ShiningSoldier

Educated
Joined
Jul 21, 2024
Messages
190
I agree with OP. Every time I start a new game and it dumps 10 000 years of it boring lore on me on the start screen, I feel myself really overwhelmed.
"In the Beginning Times, before the Age of Men, the world was shaped by the Ancient Ones, powerful beings who descended from the stars. The greatest among them were the Twin Gods: Fucker the Fuck-Bringer and Asshole the Shitty One..."
 

Onionguy

Scholar
Joined
Dec 23, 2018
Messages
104
Just play better games. Karpyshin and Druckman are hack retards.
To expand on this, it's rare that we even get new settings. Forgotten Realms was just some pervert's Middle Earth xerox, and most fantasy settings are either a FR xerox or a FR xerox except Dark & Gritty™. People lamented when TSR published 6 million new campaign settings, but those seem like halcyon days in hindsight. Imagine getting new settings half as interesting as Ravenloft or Planescape or Dark Sun or Spelljammer or Al Qadim anymore.
If there is one DnD setting that feels like Tolkien, that would be Dragonlance. Faerûn, geographically speaking, was mostly inspired by Conan's Hyboria with its towns modeled on the bustling nature of Lankhmar from Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Furthermore, its spell and magic item availability is only slightly higher than in Dying Earth series. So yes, it is mostly a chaotic American S&S mashup of ideas. The only truly Tolkienesque place in the whole realms seems to be Dalelands, and the only typical Anglo-Saxon fantasy would be found in Cormyr. What we are talking about here is a vast and savage land with a strong focus on its many cultures, nations and their buried secrets. Thay feels a bit like Stygia, Anauroch like Dune and even the Sword Coast (north of Baldurs Gate) was a Howard's inspired Pictland- with its lack of big settlements and wild west frontier vibe.

It is not the Forgotten Realms setting that is so generic, but the way it was used by game devs i.e. the safest and the most unoriginal way possible. At least games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale had a certain aesthetic charm and consistency to them. Most of that is missing from the obnoxious superhero-style theme park ride of bg 3.

Since modern devs cannot get sth as simple as classic fantasy right, then what are the odds of them ever making anything new and original feel good?
 

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