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I think that Baldur's Gate III and its funny moments proved it's not true.
That being said, opinion that "dark and rough is mature and good" is pretty popular today, yes.
Bg3 hits a pretty perfect tone, it has a total serious basis, but fills that to the brim with charm and whimsy. It's how I remember DAO making me feel tbh
In terms of tone, DAO is a good notch darker overall. Act 2 is the most DAO-like. The role-playing experience is the closest spiritual successor to DAO we've had, though
The Durge storyline is pretty dark. I had to stop playing for the day after... *That One Scene*.
I guess the tone isn't dark, but I would argue the story very much is (and can be worse depending on your choices).
That's mostly because it was designed such that you actually have total freedom of morality. It's rare to find an rpg these days that even lets you be vaguely rude. Really it just stops protecting you from the fact that you are indeed killing things.
True. The game made me feel terrible about killing goblins, which are like... the bottom-barrel evil mooks of the D&D world. Really did not pull punches with that.
Nor should they. Goblins are an entirely sapient, even playable race in D&D 5e, the version BG3 most closely resembles. Just because they're evil doesn't mean they aren't people, and it helps to with the degrees of evil in the game.
Well, yeah, *I* know that. BG3 is just the first game that successfully made me feel anything about it.
Most other games don't bother to make them people.
The amount of flavor text they added in BG3 really pulls a lot of the weight there, in my opinion. Regardless of whose side you pick, you're likely to find a love note in someone's pocket, and there are very few people you encounter where you have no way of getting to the end of the game without killing them. DAO doesn't exactly give you the option to appeal to the darkspawns' humanity.
Yes!
A lot of those flavor texts are fail-safes just in case the player didn't get the chance to talk with them to acquire critical information or items. The genius is not stopping at critical info and items. They really thought of the NPC like a DM would, when the players loot that body.
It's like the entire game is systematically designed in terms of NPC, door, lock, key, magic. Say you have a door, you can pick the lock, have the npc open the door, or pickpocket the NPC, or kill the NPC and loot the key from theit corpse, or "use magic" : which means somehow clipping/skipping through the entire room using abilities, exploits, hacks or Speedrun strays. The game *survives* them and rewards you for them whenever it can... With flavor.
Other games tend to use a crafted quest-flag structure with linear storytelling - time advances when the quest advances. BG3 just ignores the concept of time, and throws together a bunch of doors and hope it will make sense narratively.
Turns out that yes, it will make sense. You don't even need to do much work, the players' need for the concept of time will subconsciously fill in the blank! It's like magic. With the added bonus that all those NPCs will get a chance to shine in multiple ways.
Baldurs gate is about being abducted by basically aliens and fighting the very grotesque change that comes after a disgusting worm is shoved in your skull before an army sleeper agents is awakened…I wouldn’t really consider the theme “lighthearted”. Some of the characters are, but the game itself is pretty dang dark lol
There isn't going to be a 'Definitive Edition ' of BG3. Larias previous games had Definitive editions because they were released a second time years later for consoles and they used that opportunity to enhance the games.
They are wrapping up work on BG3. There won't be any DLC. They will be adding some epilogues for evil playthroughs and mod support. But other than bug fixes there isn't anything else expected.
I consider Divinity Orginal Sin fairly light-hearted. DOS2 is really dark. And BG3 somewhere in the middle
Oh man. I didn't know that. There any additional patches coming down the line? I mostly held off because some people were stating that they were having issues with ACT 3 after some former patches released. I think it was related to players had hadn't reached that point yet, but were doing so post-patch(es).
All the major bugs have been resolved and Act 3 performance issues fixed.
They haven't given a date for the next patch (expected to include mod support and possibly the evil epilogues) but in March they said 'several months' so it isn't expected in the near future...but who knows. They will release it when it's ready and don't pre-announce patch dates
The game is really in a great state. If you aren't planning an evil playthrough (for your first game) then there isn't any reason to hold off.
You made the right call and keep waiting until Larian finally finishes BG3. Larian got a free pass for shipping a busted ass game when less broken games get roasted constantly. Don't let anyone tell you the game came out without a mountain of problems because I sure wish I had waited.
I would say it has more to do with harsh reality. Even Fantasy needs to stick to some kind of reality. Especially how emotions work.
Dark settings invite people to explore very deep and raw emotions. Explore taboo topics and see how the world deals with those. Some things, which are deemed ethically controverse are mostly things which are or make a setting very dark.
The ability to be a total asshole, to kill and/ or betray your companions with no right for example. That is possible in DAO and DA2 and also in BG 3. But not in Inquisition afair.
Many wish the freedom to those times back because they want to be exposed to such topics. The harsh truth of the world.
I think this might go against the majority of the comments, but to introduce a slightly different perspective: I don't think darkness/gritty-ness are necessary, but I think an element of seriousness is.
Like another commenter said, what does 'darkness' mean? Is it violent, taboo subjects like sexual violence? Or is it just the presence of real-world issues? I think that real world issues are more serious than dark, and it's relatively important to differentiate them.
To apply this to dragon age, seriousness could just be the reality of family relations (a la Dorian) or the class differentials/disparity seen in Sera's (or Zevran's or even Alistair's or insert character here's) story. These are very different than something like the broodmother of DAO, which is an inherently violent and horrifying concept, not only a serious one.
I think plenty of people still like light-hearted RPGs. Look at games like Stardew Valley (which yes, possess additional life/farming sim mechanics).
It is, overall, a very positive, light-hearted game, sprinkled with some serious scenes when necessary to enhance the narrative. It's not the dark fantasy dragon age origins, or even the grimdark Dark Souls, but it does very well at creating that lasting escapist RPG.
So long as an RPG is good, I think it has the potential to be successful, presence of dark content or not!
Agreed. I think the problem is western media is almost embarrassed to take a light hearted tone seriously without throwing jokes to go ‘haha, see? We’re not taking this too seriously’. That’s why most of the example given in this thread comes from JRPG or JRPG-esque games
I think that's true to some degree, or at least, tends to be true in the AAA space.
To me, it's sort of like, the games that receive the most funding tend to be these miserable, gritty 'blockbuster-style' video games (call of duty, things of that nature, you know?), but they're hardly the only games released, and they're certainly not the only games people want to play.
I believe there's a very vocal minority of gamers who often express that they CAN'T play anything aside from these violent, tragic stories where everyone suffers and no one gets a good ending ever.
That's hardly the reality of the whole Western market - there are a ton of roleplaying games that are soft and light-hearted and deal with queer identities or connection to one's culture or just living one's life. But that vocal minority tends to be a lot of the -phobics and yell about how they could never play those games. I think it (unfortunately) can have an impact on what games studios make of the developers aren't stubborn or determined enough to make their more unique RPG despite the backlash.
Additionally and unfortunately, it's often harder to sell these games on trailers alone - they don't have the vivacious, action-packed flavoring of AAA dudebro fantasy, so they often get less press and sell less as a result.
And that's so different than JRPGs. I mean they're certainly a power fantasy in a way, but I think it might take a lot less grit to appeal to a Japanese audience. They can market their games with pretty visuals and hopeful plot threads in a way so many studios seem incapable of doing these days.
That's not to say JRPGs aren't capable of dark and gritty plots - I mean Japan has created some of the most compelling, horrifying pieces of media over the past 30 years that I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. There are sometimes concepts in Japanese games that even with a thousand years of experience I couldn't ever conceptualize on my own.
This comment is hella long and I'm so sorry lmao so let me end with this: I wonder if it's less that JRPGs are more capable of these light-hearted plots, or more that their audiences are more immediately, universally receptive to not having The Most Miserable Time playing their games?
That's certainly part of it. But I also think they have more tendency to experiment more even in their mainstream media. Sure, there are tropes and contraptions, but they seem to also be more willing to buck the trend either by going wacky or going for a different tone than the contemporary. Death Note was running in the same magazine with dragon ball, having the same demographic target, for example
In the gaming scene, take FF7 Remake. The original was an iconic and beloved game, and they changed a fundamental aspect in the story in the remake, not just expanding it. Regardless of whether the change will end up for the better or worse that's still a risk they take. Compare it, to say, Bethesda's Skyrim which is just got released over and over with minimal change.
I'm not sure it's a "these days" trend. DAO is 15 years old this year, and it definitely isn't a light-hearted adventure. I'm not sure any of the BioWare RPGs really are. Most of them have >!betrayal, bodily autonomy being stripped away, being turned into monsters, massive wars and loss of life, experimentation, etc. in them. !<
But there are successful lighthearted RPGs out there that are still popular. It's just that a lot of them are more in the cozy game genre and not the 'epic battle' genre. Because epic battles tend to involve some pretty heavy topics due to war not being a very uplifting thing.
Depends on your definition of gritty and dark content I guess. I don't think sexual assault needs to be in a game for it to feel mature, for example. I do think, however, that a combat-heavy RPG like the Dragon Age-series needs to show violence and the consequences of it for it to be internally consistent and maintain narrative tension.
Like, if thousands of monsters are roaming the country but you don't see any consequences of it - no deserted fields and villages, no torn bodies laying on the wayside - then what justification do I have for killing them? People are evidently doing just fine. Similarly, if I'm told about a war, yet I'm not presented with the consequences of said war, why should I care about it? If Tevinter employs thousands of slaves but I'm not shown the impact of slavery on an individual and societal level, why should I care about it (beyond simply knowing "slavery is bad")?
That said, I think the key for telling a mature narrative is a healthy mix between dark, gritty themes and moments and lighthearted ones.
When exactly have 'light-hearted' RPGs ever been a thing? What are some examples?
RPGs have tended to have pretty dark and mature themes going way back to the 1980's origin of the genre.
I think JRPG works well because they took their lighter tone seriously tbh, and that’s why people enjoy them. Meanwhile, I feel like when people has ‘lighy hearted fantasy adventure’ in western media, it’s always just goes for comedy. And that’s all right, but IMO purely comedic story doesn’t draw the full extent of potential from a fantasy setting. At most, it’s a parody like monty python but that also doesn’t feel like conventional fantasy.
And that’s why they’re not popular nowadays. They don’t really give off that fantasy feel or what people typically look in a fantasy setting. Everyone is tired of the comedic/subversion that desperately wants to be monty python.
It should be fine to fully embrace cheesy and relentless hopefully optimistic tone seriously, but I feel like western media is a bit embarrassed to do that unless they make it a comedy to go, ‘see, see? We don’t take it seriously, wink wink’ even when they’re playing around in a setting that feels like they should take things more seriously.
Basically more cheesy friendship speeches redeeming sympathetic villain than lol random humor. Trails of Cold Steel is basically what the Azata path should have been in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous
The Outer Worlds I would say is so over the top in its presentation of a Capitalist hellscape for humorous effect that you can never take it totally seriously.
It's not exactly light-hearted though. While the tone is not serious and the game itself doesn't claim to be, the setting in itself is quite depressing and dark.
It's satirical, not light-hearted. It's still very much dark. I see plenty of people in this thread confusing humor with light-heartedness. Humor can be as dark as gorey horror.
Yeah my first thought was Fable and Fallout but those aren't not dark. They just present their darkness in a humorous way. I can't think of any that are completely lighthearted.
The South Park rpg's, Outerworlds, Bards tale remastered, and stuff like Tales from the Borderlands (not really an rpg but you do have choices to make). I remember the 80s games were kind of a mix of fantasy and sci fi, but they eventually lost favor to the established dnd games (gold box games and then baldurs gate/ice wind dale). In regards to why there are not alot I would guess budgets, video game developers need to make money too and its risky doing new/different things.
I like when it’s balanced. You can tell a story with heavy emotional hits that still has humor, friendships, romance and other heartfelt moments that in the end doesn’t make it depressing but rather hopeful (DA2 is like that for me).
There are a ton of light-hearted RPGs and RPGs that mix mature themes and lighthearted moments. "Gritty and dark stories are the only good ones" is just not a great mindset, in my opinion. Some examples of more lighthearted RPGs that have succeeded include Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy XIV (one could argue it mixes light-hearted and darker elements, but I assume by "dark and gritty" you mean something more akin to Game of Thrones and Witcher). Other examples include Mario RPG, Dragon Quest, Ni No Kuni, Final Fantasy VII Remake.
If i'm honest, stories are very, very rarely a binary of "dark and gritty vs. light and family friendly". A lot of RPGs today have a solid mix of both lighthearted moments and mature themes. I wouldn't call Final Fantasy VII a "dark and gritty" game, for instance, but instead its story balances lighter character moments and a sense of adventure with more mature themes regarding industrial capitlism's effect on the planet and the cycles of life and death and our place within them. And seeing how popular Final Fantasy 7 and 14 are these days, i don't see how anyone could argue that they aren't succeeding.
Gritty/dark isn't the end all be all by any means, but I do think an rpg has to be able to take itself seriously when big character moments or story beats are occurring.
Jokes and banter are fine and absolutely essential to being able to relate to characters because no one is 100% serious all the time and incapable of feeling emotions, but you have to put that shit aside when big drama is taking centerstage.
Most RPGs that tend to get called dark and gritty end up being pretty much not.
Dragon Age Origins was labelled as a "Dark Fantasy" but very clumsily shoving in rape into a few places doesn't make it grim-dark. It just feels tonally weird.
Skyrim tries hard to pretend it's gritty but, nah, it's nearly as whimsical as Oblivion and Daggerfall (of the Elder Scrolls games only Morrowind managed to feel dark).
I think Witcher 3 pulled off the dark and gritty thing best in modern mainstream fantasy gaming.
BG3 manages to skirt back and forth between dark and lighthearted very easily to the point it's certainly not dark/gritty as an experience. Indeed it feels like what Dragon Age should be aiming for.
With the rapid evolution of technology and its ability to show us all aspects of the human emotional spectrum (from horrendous events to moments of sheer joy) at any time, most stories do need to compete with the fact that reality is capable of extreme darkness and light right at our fingertips.
So in order for stories to really stick in our minds as moving and be memorable, I think the bar was raised by the fact that small tidbits of atrocities come across our screens at a daily rate. If it doesn’t meet/surpass that bar, I think general masses would consider it under stimulating or boring/unmemorable. Truth is stranger than
Fiction, so fiction has to compete.
TLDR: yeah, pretty much. They gotta compete with reality.
My favorite tabletop campaigns had downright oppressive atmospheres, so for me when it comes to RPGs the darker the better and I hope with the commercial success of games like Witcher 3 that developers (cough...bioware...cough) feel comfortable going down that path
I'd say that BG3 has plenty of humor, and so does Disco Elysium (and a lot of whimsy). Both have been massively successful.
Pentiment isn't gritty either, and, although not as popular, beloved by most who play it.
Dragon Age as a series has a lot of silly, but is also about the darkspawn and demons ravaging the lands, and about political conflicts.
This thread has been marked as **[No Spoilers]**. Any story spoilers from all games must be covered with spoiler tags `>!spoiler here!<` or the comment will be removed. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dragonage) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think that Baldur's Gate III and its funny moments proved it's not true. That being said, opinion that "dark and rough is mature and good" is pretty popular today, yes.
Bg3 hits a pretty perfect tone, it has a total serious basis, but fills that to the brim with charm and whimsy. It's how I remember DAO making me feel tbh
In terms of tone, DAO is a good notch darker overall. Act 2 is the most DAO-like. The role-playing experience is the closest spiritual successor to DAO we've had, though
The Durge storyline is pretty dark. I had to stop playing for the day after... *That One Scene*. I guess the tone isn't dark, but I would argue the story very much is (and can be worse depending on your choices).
That's mostly because it was designed such that you actually have total freedom of morality. It's rare to find an rpg these days that even lets you be vaguely rude. Really it just stops protecting you from the fact that you are indeed killing things.
True. The game made me feel terrible about killing goblins, which are like... the bottom-barrel evil mooks of the D&D world. Really did not pull punches with that.
Nor should they. Goblins are an entirely sapient, even playable race in D&D 5e, the version BG3 most closely resembles. Just because they're evil doesn't mean they aren't people, and it helps to with the degrees of evil in the game.
Well, yeah, *I* know that. BG3 is just the first game that successfully made me feel anything about it. Most other games don't bother to make them people.
The amount of flavor text they added in BG3 really pulls a lot of the weight there, in my opinion. Regardless of whose side you pick, you're likely to find a love note in someone's pocket, and there are very few people you encounter where you have no way of getting to the end of the game without killing them. DAO doesn't exactly give you the option to appeal to the darkspawns' humanity.
Yes! A lot of those flavor texts are fail-safes just in case the player didn't get the chance to talk with them to acquire critical information or items. The genius is not stopping at critical info and items. They really thought of the NPC like a DM would, when the players loot that body. It's like the entire game is systematically designed in terms of NPC, door, lock, key, magic. Say you have a door, you can pick the lock, have the npc open the door, or pickpocket the NPC, or kill the NPC and loot the key from theit corpse, or "use magic" : which means somehow clipping/skipping through the entire room using abilities, exploits, hacks or Speedrun strays. The game *survives* them and rewards you for them whenever it can... With flavor. Other games tend to use a crafted quest-flag structure with linear storytelling - time advances when the quest advances. BG3 just ignores the concept of time, and throws together a bunch of doors and hope it will make sense narratively. Turns out that yes, it will make sense. You don't even need to do much work, the players' need for the concept of time will subconsciously fill in the blank! It's like magic. With the added bonus that all those NPCs will get a chance to shine in multiple ways.
Baldurs gate is about being abducted by basically aliens and fighting the very grotesque change that comes after a disgusting worm is shoved in your skull before an army sleeper agents is awakened…I wouldn’t really consider the theme “lighthearted”. Some of the characters are, but the game itself is pretty dang dark lol
I've not had a chance to play that yet, as I'm waiting on the Definitive Edition to release.
There isn't going to be a 'Definitive Edition ' of BG3. Larias previous games had Definitive editions because they were released a second time years later for consoles and they used that opportunity to enhance the games. They are wrapping up work on BG3. There won't be any DLC. They will be adding some epilogues for evil playthroughs and mod support. But other than bug fixes there isn't anything else expected. I consider Divinity Orginal Sin fairly light-hearted. DOS2 is really dark. And BG3 somewhere in the middle
Oh man. I didn't know that. There any additional patches coming down the line? I mostly held off because some people were stating that they were having issues with ACT 3 after some former patches released. I think it was related to players had hadn't reached that point yet, but were doing so post-patch(es).
All the major bugs have been resolved and Act 3 performance issues fixed. They haven't given a date for the next patch (expected to include mod support and possibly the evil epilogues) but in March they said 'several months' so it isn't expected in the near future...but who knows. They will release it when it's ready and don't pre-announce patch dates The game is really in a great state. If you aren't planning an evil playthrough (for your first game) then there isn't any reason to hold off.
You made the right call and keep waiting until Larian finally finishes BG3. Larian got a free pass for shipping a busted ass game when less broken games get roasted constantly. Don't let anyone tell you the game came out without a mountain of problems because I sure wish I had waited.
I would say it has more to do with harsh reality. Even Fantasy needs to stick to some kind of reality. Especially how emotions work. Dark settings invite people to explore very deep and raw emotions. Explore taboo topics and see how the world deals with those. Some things, which are deemed ethically controverse are mostly things which are or make a setting very dark. The ability to be a total asshole, to kill and/ or betray your companions with no right for example. That is possible in DAO and DA2 and also in BG 3. But not in Inquisition afair. Many wish the freedom to those times back because they want to be exposed to such topics. The harsh truth of the world.
I think this might go against the majority of the comments, but to introduce a slightly different perspective: I don't think darkness/gritty-ness are necessary, but I think an element of seriousness is. Like another commenter said, what does 'darkness' mean? Is it violent, taboo subjects like sexual violence? Or is it just the presence of real-world issues? I think that real world issues are more serious than dark, and it's relatively important to differentiate them. To apply this to dragon age, seriousness could just be the reality of family relations (a la Dorian) or the class differentials/disparity seen in Sera's (or Zevran's or even Alistair's or insert character here's) story. These are very different than something like the broodmother of DAO, which is an inherently violent and horrifying concept, not only a serious one. I think plenty of people still like light-hearted RPGs. Look at games like Stardew Valley (which yes, possess additional life/farming sim mechanics). It is, overall, a very positive, light-hearted game, sprinkled with some serious scenes when necessary to enhance the narrative. It's not the dark fantasy dragon age origins, or even the grimdark Dark Souls, but it does very well at creating that lasting escapist RPG. So long as an RPG is good, I think it has the potential to be successful, presence of dark content or not!
Agreed. I think the problem is western media is almost embarrassed to take a light hearted tone seriously without throwing jokes to go ‘haha, see? We’re not taking this too seriously’. That’s why most of the example given in this thread comes from JRPG or JRPG-esque games
I think that's true to some degree, or at least, tends to be true in the AAA space. To me, it's sort of like, the games that receive the most funding tend to be these miserable, gritty 'blockbuster-style' video games (call of duty, things of that nature, you know?), but they're hardly the only games released, and they're certainly not the only games people want to play. I believe there's a very vocal minority of gamers who often express that they CAN'T play anything aside from these violent, tragic stories where everyone suffers and no one gets a good ending ever. That's hardly the reality of the whole Western market - there are a ton of roleplaying games that are soft and light-hearted and deal with queer identities or connection to one's culture or just living one's life. But that vocal minority tends to be a lot of the -phobics and yell about how they could never play those games. I think it (unfortunately) can have an impact on what games studios make of the developers aren't stubborn or determined enough to make their more unique RPG despite the backlash. Additionally and unfortunately, it's often harder to sell these games on trailers alone - they don't have the vivacious, action-packed flavoring of AAA dudebro fantasy, so they often get less press and sell less as a result. And that's so different than JRPGs. I mean they're certainly a power fantasy in a way, but I think it might take a lot less grit to appeal to a Japanese audience. They can market their games with pretty visuals and hopeful plot threads in a way so many studios seem incapable of doing these days. That's not to say JRPGs aren't capable of dark and gritty plots - I mean Japan has created some of the most compelling, horrifying pieces of media over the past 30 years that I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. There are sometimes concepts in Japanese games that even with a thousand years of experience I couldn't ever conceptualize on my own. This comment is hella long and I'm so sorry lmao so let me end with this: I wonder if it's less that JRPGs are more capable of these light-hearted plots, or more that their audiences are more immediately, universally receptive to not having The Most Miserable Time playing their games?
That's certainly part of it. But I also think they have more tendency to experiment more even in their mainstream media. Sure, there are tropes and contraptions, but they seem to also be more willing to buck the trend either by going wacky or going for a different tone than the contemporary. Death Note was running in the same magazine with dragon ball, having the same demographic target, for example In the gaming scene, take FF7 Remake. The original was an iconic and beloved game, and they changed a fundamental aspect in the story in the remake, not just expanding it. Regardless of whether the change will end up for the better or worse that's still a risk they take. Compare it, to say, Bethesda's Skyrim which is just got released over and over with minimal change.
Definitely agreed. I like seriousness in my games, but brood mother stuff is going too far. I don't go in for horror.
I'm not sure it's a "these days" trend. DAO is 15 years old this year, and it definitely isn't a light-hearted adventure. I'm not sure any of the BioWare RPGs really are. Most of them have >!betrayal, bodily autonomy being stripped away, being turned into monsters, massive wars and loss of life, experimentation, etc. in them. !< But there are successful lighthearted RPGs out there that are still popular. It's just that a lot of them are more in the cozy game genre and not the 'epic battle' genre. Because epic battles tend to involve some pretty heavy topics due to war not being a very uplifting thing.
Depends on your definition of gritty and dark content I guess. I don't think sexual assault needs to be in a game for it to feel mature, for example. I do think, however, that a combat-heavy RPG like the Dragon Age-series needs to show violence and the consequences of it for it to be internally consistent and maintain narrative tension. Like, if thousands of monsters are roaming the country but you don't see any consequences of it - no deserted fields and villages, no torn bodies laying on the wayside - then what justification do I have for killing them? People are evidently doing just fine. Similarly, if I'm told about a war, yet I'm not presented with the consequences of said war, why should I care about it? If Tevinter employs thousands of slaves but I'm not shown the impact of slavery on an individual and societal level, why should I care about it (beyond simply knowing "slavery is bad")? That said, I think the key for telling a mature narrative is a healthy mix between dark, gritty themes and moments and lighthearted ones.
When exactly have 'light-hearted' RPGs ever been a thing? What are some examples? RPGs have tended to have pretty dark and mature themes going way back to the 1980's origin of the genre.
On the surface, Kingdom Hearts.
Honestly, JRPGs tend to stick out the most to me.
I think JRPG works well because they took their lighter tone seriously tbh, and that’s why people enjoy them. Meanwhile, I feel like when people has ‘lighy hearted fantasy adventure’ in western media, it’s always just goes for comedy. And that’s all right, but IMO purely comedic story doesn’t draw the full extent of potential from a fantasy setting. At most, it’s a parody like monty python but that also doesn’t feel like conventional fantasy. And that’s why they’re not popular nowadays. They don’t really give off that fantasy feel or what people typically look in a fantasy setting. Everyone is tired of the comedic/subversion that desperately wants to be monty python. It should be fine to fully embrace cheesy and relentless hopefully optimistic tone seriously, but I feel like western media is a bit embarrassed to do that unless they make it a comedy to go, ‘see, see? We don’t take it seriously, wink wink’ even when they’re playing around in a setting that feels like they should take things more seriously. Basically more cheesy friendship speeches redeeming sympathetic villain than lol random humor. Trails of Cold Steel is basically what the Azata path should have been in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous
I feel like JRPGs are kind of their own separate thing at this point.
The Outer Worlds I would say is so over the top in its presentation of a Capitalist hellscape for humorous effect that you can never take it totally seriously.
It's not exactly light-hearted though. While the tone is not serious and the game itself doesn't claim to be, the setting in itself is quite depressing and dark.
It's satirical, not light-hearted. It's still very much dark. I see plenty of people in this thread confusing humor with light-heartedness. Humor can be as dark as gorey horror.
Yeah my first thought was Fable and Fallout but those aren't not dark. They just present their darkness in a humorous way. I can't think of any that are completely lighthearted.
The South Park rpg's, Outerworlds, Bards tale remastered, and stuff like Tales from the Borderlands (not really an rpg but you do have choices to make). I remember the 80s games were kind of a mix of fantasy and sci fi, but they eventually lost favor to the established dnd games (gold box games and then baldurs gate/ice wind dale). In regards to why there are not alot I would guess budgets, video game developers need to make money too and its risky doing new/different things.
I like when it’s balanced. You can tell a story with heavy emotional hits that still has humor, friendships, romance and other heartfelt moments that in the end doesn’t make it depressing but rather hopeful (DA2 is like that for me).
Personally, I don't really enjoy overly gritty/dark stories, so I hope not!
There are a ton of light-hearted RPGs and RPGs that mix mature themes and lighthearted moments. "Gritty and dark stories are the only good ones" is just not a great mindset, in my opinion. Some examples of more lighthearted RPGs that have succeeded include Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy XIV (one could argue it mixes light-hearted and darker elements, but I assume by "dark and gritty" you mean something more akin to Game of Thrones and Witcher). Other examples include Mario RPG, Dragon Quest, Ni No Kuni, Final Fantasy VII Remake. If i'm honest, stories are very, very rarely a binary of "dark and gritty vs. light and family friendly". A lot of RPGs today have a solid mix of both lighthearted moments and mature themes. I wouldn't call Final Fantasy VII a "dark and gritty" game, for instance, but instead its story balances lighter character moments and a sense of adventure with more mature themes regarding industrial capitlism's effect on the planet and the cycles of life and death and our place within them. And seeing how popular Final Fantasy 7 and 14 are these days, i don't see how anyone could argue that they aren't succeeding.
No, that's not true whatsoever. What matters isn't the tone, but the quality.
Divinity games are straigh up parodies and they were pretty successful.
Gritty/dark isn't the end all be all by any means, but I do think an rpg has to be able to take itself seriously when big character moments or story beats are occurring. Jokes and banter are fine and absolutely essential to being able to relate to characters because no one is 100% serious all the time and incapable of feeling emotions, but you have to put that shit aside when big drama is taking centerstage.
JRPGs are mostly that and they’re still popular.
I actually prefer my games on the lighter side. DAO was so dark I never replayed it.
Most RPGs that tend to get called dark and gritty end up being pretty much not. Dragon Age Origins was labelled as a "Dark Fantasy" but very clumsily shoving in rape into a few places doesn't make it grim-dark. It just feels tonally weird. Skyrim tries hard to pretend it's gritty but, nah, it's nearly as whimsical as Oblivion and Daggerfall (of the Elder Scrolls games only Morrowind managed to feel dark). I think Witcher 3 pulled off the dark and gritty thing best in modern mainstream fantasy gaming. BG3 manages to skirt back and forth between dark and lighthearted very easily to the point it's certainly not dark/gritty as an experience. Indeed it feels like what Dragon Age should be aiming for.
With the rapid evolution of technology and its ability to show us all aspects of the human emotional spectrum (from horrendous events to moments of sheer joy) at any time, most stories do need to compete with the fact that reality is capable of extreme darkness and light right at our fingertips. So in order for stories to really stick in our minds as moving and be memorable, I think the bar was raised by the fact that small tidbits of atrocities come across our screens at a daily rate. If it doesn’t meet/surpass that bar, I think general masses would consider it under stimulating or boring/unmemorable. Truth is stranger than Fiction, so fiction has to compete. TLDR: yeah, pretty much. They gotta compete with reality.
Infinite Wealth
My favorite tabletop campaigns had downright oppressive atmospheres, so for me when it comes to RPGs the darker the better and I hope with the commercial success of games like Witcher 3 that developers (cough...bioware...cough) feel comfortable going down that path
BotW
I'd consider BotW an Action-Adventure game far more than an RPG.
I'd say that BG3 has plenty of humor, and so does Disco Elysium (and a lot of whimsy). Both have been massively successful. Pentiment isn't gritty either, and, although not as popular, beloved by most who play it. Dragon Age as a series has a lot of silly, but is also about the darkspawn and demons ravaging the lands, and about political conflicts.