I found a quote today over there at RPGWatch, in a news article about another article about Dragon Age :
"A lot of fantasy games, traditionally, have been high fantasy - Tolkienesque fantasy, where good battles evil. And there's another end of that spectrum, the low fantasy, which is a lot darker."
I noticed that it is set as
low fantasy = darkhigh fantasy = light, brightI was wondering, why this is.
Why can't there be low fantasy = light, bright and high fantasy = dark ?
All in all, I rather tend to agree to Morbo here. I'm a person who is pro bright colours, and making games dark & gritty just depresses me.
Whereas I think I've found that many people believe that
dark & gritty = maturelight & bright = childishin games, in general.
Which just means - if true - that there'll be no game aimed at a mature audience which is at the same time light & bright, not only in colours, but in all themes. There'll be no game like that, EVER.
When you look around you in a gaming shop, you'll clearly see that ALL brightly coloured & themed games are children's games.
And since it is "uncool" to be or act or even considered as a child - or with the even slightest hint towards being or having something like a child - most gamers would clearly prefer the dark & gritty version.
Like Gangstarappers wouldn't ever rhyme about the beauty of a rose / of roses.
That's imho because the future of gaming becomes brown - or at least dark & gritty - : Because everyone wants to be or act like a full grown adult, which means no bright colours or themes in the game involved.
If I'm following this thought, this would also mean that the games become not only more & more mature - with all coming implications - but more & more brutal and cynical, because these are signs by which people usually in a cliché recognise - or at least seem to recognize, because everyone believes that without ever asking whether this is true at all - a full-grown adult: Strength, bruutality, a dark & gritty look on the world around him/her, resulting in utter cynism.
This is just an extreme view of that, the result of trying to follow the thoughts to the end.
As a sidenote: There are exactly TWO parts of Larian representing this model:
Light & Bright = Ketnetkick, Adventure Rock, Superia
Dark & Gritty = LED Wars, the Divinity series
I very, very strongly believe that they will not meet somewhere in the middle, ever.
That would be a breach of "gaming industry standards".
