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[Alec S.]

Games that try to be Sci-Fi: The Game, or Fantasy: The Game, rather than a game in the sci-fi or fantasy genres.  Like, every "Sci-Fi" game is "Star Wars style Space Opera with the military 'grittiness' of Alien, some big galaxy destroying threat, laser guns, and Magic Powers" and every Fantasy Game is "Tolkien as filtered through Dungeons and Dragons with the 'grittiness' of Game of Thrones with a bit of Lovecraft thrown in".

Mechanics taken from other games because they are popular and not because anyone thought about how or what they contribute to the overall experience.  Scrounging through trashcans held over from System Shock all the way to Bioshock Infinite despite Infinite no longer having an inventory system.  Regenerating health becoming ubiquitous after Halo.

[Hipshot]

Remove all these things and you will have no games =)

[Torchkas]

GOOD

[oahda]

Nothing wrong with big, but I do find it really tiring to see the same old tolkienesque creatures in favour of originality in fantasy games. I'm not really into sci-fi, but I suppose it would have similar problems, and from the few sci-fi things I have watched a common problem seems to be that every life form is a humanoid more or less.

And the mix of "archaic" English, faux-Norse (sometimes with hilarious results like LORTHEIM) and a bad dragon cypher in the Bethesda games is a bit painful as well. They should've either done it properly or just stuck to the "archaic" English. At least those games don't fall straight into the orcs and elves and dwarves and men cliché, tho; they were slightly more creative with the creatures.

[Schoq]

otoh everyone knows roughly what to expect from dwarfs and elves and orchs and I don't know why I should necessarily care about some analogy by a different name some game making person thought up for the sole purpose of differentiating their world

and nah the suspiciously humanoid aliens trope is more or less isolated to space opera

[Schoq]

elaboration: yeah it's more fun when people are imaginative, but if you're flying that close to tolkien anyway (magical medieval fantasy world of human races with distinct immutable traits interacting) calling your elves nahavranians and having their distinguishing trait be weird eyes instead of ears all you're doing is asking people to remember this thing you came up with for no reason. and honestly it feels disingenuous: when it's that obvious what your inspiration is it looks like you're changing things just to cover it up and feel like you made it yourself.

[oahda]

That's the point tho: I don't want analogues to elves and dwarves and orcs either; I want something different.

But honestly, yes, even if they're just analogues with a different design I still find that better.

[Alec S.]

Exactly.  There's so much to the fantasy genre outside of Tolkein.  Even if you have to stand on the shoulders of existing authors, there's so much more out there.  Give me R.E. Howard or Michael Moorcock (to be fair, a lot of JRPGs are already pretty Moorcockesque) or Ursula K Le Guin or Neil Gaiman. 

[InfiniteStateMachine]

To add to the tutorial stuff. Basically anything that prevents me from playing the game in its standard form within 10-20 seconds from starting the game annoys me greatly.

This is generally why it's hard for me to start playing newer games, especially bigger ones from larger developers and publishers. It's like I have to put aside 10-15 mins for some non-interactive intro or extremely tedious tutorial.

[oahda]

What I find weird is how Nintendo allowed the player to skip stuff in Twilight Princess but then went back to lacking the option in later Zelda games.

[Torchkas]

speaking of Zelda. They did Fantasy really well. Zoras are elves, Gorons are orcs, etc.

[oahda]

Gorons are dwarves if anything. Orcs would be the bokoblins.

On the subject, a great peeve of mine in games and other fiction in general is this concept of having all X being "good" or "evil", like all orcs. It makes no sense unless perhaps it's being used to criticise something like racism in a straightforward way, but that's usually not the case.

[Torchkas]

ok ok reminder I've never read a Tolkien or watched lord of the rings. I'm really culturally starved on the fantasy genre in that respect (despite being pretty interested in it)

[s0]

otoh everyone knows roughly what to expect from dwarfs and elves and orchs and I don't know why I should necessarily care about some analogy by a different name some game making person thought up for the sole purpose of differentiating their world

and nah the suspiciously humanoid aliens trope is more or less isolated to space opera

the worst is when rpgs have something that is obviously supposed to be a magic system but call it "technomancy" or "psionics" or watever instead to make it "fit" the setting.

the worst part of that is, 99% of rpgs do this, fallout is the only series i can think of that doesn't have "magic" or some equivalent.

so yeah, i guess fuck every rpg reusing the same dumb mechanics every other rpg has and just barely dressing them up. that's like the bottom of the barrel as far as thematic game design goes.

[s0]

speaking of Zelda. They did Fantasy really well. Zoras are elves, Gorons are orcs, etc.

speaking of zelda:

"it's not a bat it's a KEESE"
"it's not a skeleton it's a STALFOS"

i mean it's kinda ridiculous but it doesn't annoy me. i actually find the weird naming adds to the charm of the games somehow.

[oahda]

Reminds me of this, except it's supposedly Hylian and not Japanese:

[Schoq]

Thought: the opposite is to make something that clearly isn't X but call it X because it's the closest resemblance, like in Rain World. This feels like a sign of much more genuine imaginativeness, where you're introducing so many new ideas that you're concerned with comprehensiveness rather than coming up with new fantasy words.

[oahda]

Thought: the opposite is to make something that clearly isn't X but call it X because it's the closest resemblance, like in Rain World. This feels like a sign of much more genuine imaginativeness, where you're introducing so many new ideas that you're concerned with comprehensiveness rather than coming up with new fantasy words.

I like this also from a linguistic perspective. I much more like it when old, native words are repurposed or assigned multiple meanings instead of a lot of specific loanwords. That has absolutely no charm to me. For the same reason I like using words for basic colours when there is no risk of ambiguity in the context, even if a more specific word exits (i.e. using yellow or red instead of orange depending on the exact nuance). It has so much more soul to it.

[Alec S.]

speaking of Zelda. They did Fantasy really well. Zoras are elves, Gorons are orcs, etc.

speaking of zelda:

"it's not a bat it's a KEESE"
"it's not a skeleton it's a STALFOS"

i mean it's kinda ridiculous but it doesn't annoy me. i actually find the weird naming adds to the charm of the games somehow.

Yeah, plus Zelda isn't so much renamed Tolkein High Fantasy as a cross between fairy-tale fantasy and, like, 80s Sword and Sorcery.

[Alevice]

zelda is mor elike the old dnd where anything would be amomnbster or trap. the like like being a fine example.

in genmeral, japanese high fantasy feels better than western high fantasy. japanese wgot malboros, those knife latern guys, living cactii, ostriches as mounts, undead trees and trains, while western got yet another ogre, goblin, spider and troll.