[
Well, I have read several comments at RPGWatch, whoch calöled Drakensang "refreshing" BECAUSE of so many "dark & grotty" RPGs nowadays ... I have serious difficulties remembering ANY "good alignment" RPGs in recent times - EVERYTHING tends to be "the darker, the better" nowadays.
In fact, we are getting flooded by dark fantasy settings, and even TDE was influenced so much by dark settings (which you can't see in Drakensang, by the way), that there have been erupted serious discussions whether the current, dark-influenced TDE is still the original, "real" TDE setting ! (TDE = The Dark eye).
Me, I have gained the impression that there are currently 2 groups of people trying to push and influence games into their directions, no mstter whatr other people say :
- gamers who want MP above everything else
- gamers who want a "dark & gritty" game above everything else.
Nowadays, I find myself as being in the minority, because I want SP-only games with a fairy-tale like setting. EVERYINE believes that this is complete crap and must be thrown out immediately !
"The darker, the better" is the current fashion in gaming, and if you manage to tell me 5 role playing games with "good alignment" fairy-tale like settings, you'll get 10 virtual rubber points from me ...
Sorry for quoting basically all of your post, but I must say I do agree with everything you stated here. To tell the truth, I like both the "dark and gritty" and the "colorful and shiny" (my eyes however tend to be naturally attracted to the latter of the two).
What I don't like, it's how the dark setting is becoming predominating, and not only in modern rpgs, but in modern videogames in general. I say it's a mirror of our current society and thus sadly it can't be avoided until the times change. It may not look like that, but we're not living in a good period.
To return to the moral choices thing: I like that, because I myself often don't know wether I'll make my character be good or evil during my gameplay. I tend to like playing Lawful Evil types of character, but anyway, I don't think it's just a matter of being given the choice to be evil (I can still accept that a videogame would rather prefer you play as the good hero/heroine), it's more of a matter of being given CHOICES. For example, Drakensang has no real choices apart from "do the quest/ refuse the quest"???
