@ Deniszi
"And nice try dodging, Black Cat."
You have to accept it almost sounds convincing! :3
@ 1eyedking
TL;DR: I see your wall of text and raise another wall of text! Also, we are talking
settings from completely diferent points of view so we are never going to see each other eye to eye in this topic, but no hard feelings and stuffies.
Long and ranting version follows, abandon all hopity hope...
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.
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?
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?
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...
"They all sport the same exaggerated over-design lacking purpose and 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.
"Gothic, low medieval, and Renaissance men and women didn't sport those haircuts."
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:
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.
"It's OK if surrealism explains monsters, hallucinations, and a twisted take at basic structures; maybe the facade of a certain building if your character were falling into insanity, but from what those trailers showed "surrealism" is just a pathetic excuse for GRAND MAJESTIC IMPOSSIBLE CASTLES CONSTRUCTED IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE."
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.
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.
"Pretentious crap, that's what it is. Unoriginal."
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.
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.
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.
"Also there's no zombies in The Witcher."
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!
"Kaer Morhen? An abandoned keep;"
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?
"This is the supposed "wide range of modern Anime" characters."
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.
