>year 16 of waiting for folksy fantasy games to come back
>>729474737There's nothing "folksy" in your picture
>>729475045>blind ESL retard
I dislike the constant kvetching about oldschool fantasy art on /tg/ and the like but the artstyle does have some merit. Maybe AI (lol) can do it. Baldur's Gate 3 was pretty close honestly, minus the gayness.
>>729474737>tfw classic Zelda is the closest vidya will ever get to LotRfeels bad
>>729474737What I don't get is that the oldschool folksy fantasy games like The elder scrolls and such are super popular and beloved. Yet all new fantasy games are just edgy and dark slop.
>>729476010it goes no further than MBA shitters>there's more adults than kids>so we need to make our games for adults, not kids>that means nothing whimsical, it's gotta be grim if we want to make sales
>>729474737I find it funny how people initially thought Diablo 4 is going to be just like diablo 3 in terms of tone but playing it right now and it's easily the darkest game out of the 4, perhaps only beaten by 1 in terms of pure atmopshere.
>>729474737You can thank the edgelord anti-Token takeover of the genre that started in the '90s for this. With GoT cementing itself into everyone's collective consciousness, the desire for and expectation of fantasy has irreparably shifted towards the grim dark.
Right is the gestalt ancestral memory of the Anglo Saxon race, left is what it appears as to DEI hires.
>>729477884trvke
>>729477442Which is funny because the intended aesthetic of GoT is very much classic fantasy like OP'sThe TV show is what made everything grey and brown and removed all the bright heraldry
>>729476010It's WoW and Clash of Clans that poisoned the well, everyone wanted to distance themselves from that sort of fantasy and be taken seriously which meant the vintage colorful fantasy style also got shunned by default
>>729474737name the media on the right hand side right now or shut the fuck up, retard. you literally don't know what you want.
I fucking love Tim and Greg Hildebrandt's art. They practically defined how fantasy looks in my head for decades and are part of the American great artists in my book. RIP in peace to the brothers.
>>729474737>right sideChristian art>left sideSatanist art
>>729478180Not just WoW but also Diablo 3. It didnt help that blizzard got so miffed by the complaints about the art style that they replaced the secret cow level with a literal rainbow pony land as an ultimate fuck you to gamers who wanted a dark fantasy game. It really highlighted how fed up gamers at the time were of the colorful gay fantasy aesthetic. Really is fun in hindsight because you saw people praising dark souls as the chad's fantasy setting while they scoffed at elder scrolls for being whimsical.
>>729478180The Blizzard school of design doesn't even look like classic 20th century fantasy media. It looks like 1990s peak superhero comic book excess because that's what inspired it.
>>729478308Man that looks clean.
>>729478676I know, I'm saying that the vintage style was collateral damage in the industry's attempt to distance itself from Blizzard's style
>>729478676It's actually a cartoon, as in the literal term, of the Warhammer aesthetic. They just made it kiddie friendly. But it does have traces of Rob Liefeld's style, at least 90s-early 2000s Blizzard.
>>729478052It's funny how George made them make HOTD more colorful, and they did make some of the initial heraldry and costumes more vibrant, only to slather the whole show in a grey and brown filter killing that entirely He spent so much time describing the heraldry and house colors but everyone thinks of GOT and HOTD as muddy brown shows
>>729479019That's why the subversion works. It looks like a fantasy world, the armor, the buildings, it's history. But there's no magic and it plays like a historical drama. And when the magic comes back it's very dangerous and fucking terrifying.
>>729474737the term you are looking for is retro fantasy or pulp fantasy
>>729479149Yeah the historical setting and aesthetic and meticulous details about the houses and their histories are meant to enhance the feeling that this is a world that stopped believing in magic and is just playing out as an alternate history where you don't know how much of the history and lore is real and how much is old wives' tales
>>729479254based Elmore anon
>>729474737Me too man, I just get it in other forms now like Frieren or Slayers. Sometimes I replay morrowind with mods again because it scratches that itch but we can't have a simple dark wizard or big dragon in a lighthearted game. Still liked dragon's dogma though
>>729474737I have no idea why you put DD2 on the left side.
>>729475915>Baldur's Gate 3 was pretty closeBG3 played well but the fantasy atmosphere was nonexistent, it genuinely looked and felt like a modern day LARP convention, there was ZERO flavor to it
>>729479520Frieren doesn't have even a fraction of Slayers' charm.
>>729479708probably because it's wokeshit
>>729475852it literally says 'folksy' right there
>>729479942>he continues
>>729479772That wizard does not look like he was expecting a dude in a loin cloth
I was going to say DD2, despite being a massive piece of shit, was aesthetically on the right side, but then I remembered there's literal nigger and tranny NPCs walking around, so it doesn't even have that much
>>729474737Name one game that is supposed to be the stuff on the right.
>>729480040gen x core blobbers and crpgs
>>729480040Anvil of Dawn
>>729480092Not sure what schizo description is the first one you named but crpgs tend to be all grimdark shit.
>>729480040HOMM
>>729480187Alright, first game named in this thread that actually does fit the bill.
>>729480040heroes of might and magic, ultima, age of wonders, everquestmost of the fantasy games in the 80's and early 90's
>>729480040This fantasy vibe went out of style by the late 90s but it's basically in every PC fantasy game prior to that
>>729480254Age of wonders is soulless.
>>729480040ALttP
>>729480157Retard
>>729480328the new ones, definitely
>>729476010The dark and edgy isn't the problem, it's just done poorly. No charm.
>>729480326I mean you can see with remakes of games like Master of Magic that it's just not doable anymore even if they try. The modern 3D graphics are just too soulless compared to the charming 2D ones.
>>729480040Gothic 2Divinity 2 Ego Draconis Sacred
>>729480040King's Bounty
>>729474737oy vey, stop noooticing the satanic imagery goy
fantasy media stopped being made for this guy, and everything went wrong
>>729480585Gothic 2 ruined the alien fantasy vibe they had going with the first game.
In the age of remakes and franchise rape, I'm surprised a new Dragons Lair hasn't cropped up.
>>729480689Boris and Frank were based beyond belief.
>>729474737Wouldn't it be tight if left and right existed in the same game? The lighter parts would make the darker parts feel even more dangerous while the darker parts would make the lighter parts feel even comfier.
>>729480978Bg3?
>>729480689>doesn't change his hairline in his daydream versionBased and confident.
>>729481021Kinda but it's somewhat weakened by being isolated in chapters.
Generic fantasy feels kind of AI generated. I prefer works creating their own unique spin on fantasy like most JRPGs.
>>729477442Grimdark fantasy is actually more about the themes of the story (pessimism) than it is any sort of aesthetic quality. I think the culprit you're actually looking for is just Dark Fantasy, which has a lot of its most major roots from novels in the 1980s. Funnily enough the 90s were actually a bit less dark. I actually find that if you take a look at what is most likely the "father" of dark fantasy, The Black Company, it was actually at its bleakest both in style and tone, with some of that grimdark pessimism, in the 80s. I find the 1990s Black Company books to somehow have a lighter feel even if it's still firmly dark fantasy. I also find that Martin's works aren't really as grimdark as they're made out to be, I'd blame Bakker and Abercrombie more for starting the grimdark wave personally
>>729481428>Generic fantasywhat do you even mean by that??
>>729481428Which generic fantasy? There's more than one, and none of them are Tolkien!
>>729481592dnd style fantasy with token fantasy races like orcs and elves.
>>729481642how is that generic? how did you even come to that conclusion?
>>729481592>>729481624Shit like heroes of might and magic. It just throws in every fantasy creature and character it can think of in the game without any substance. The game is good but the setting just sucks ass.
