“There's something terribly weird about the standard fantasy setting – not least of which the fact the phrase "standard fantasy setting" can be uttered without irony.” - Zero Punctuation.
The Standard Fantasy Setting is very common in MMOs. Perhaps too common, though I suppose I have to give a pass to Lord of the Rings Online, seeing as JRR Tolkien essentially invented most of what we now think of as the SFS. I would argue that Robert E. Howard and those that followed in his footsteps form a kind of parallel evolutionary track, and what later fantasy settings haven't borrow from Tolkien they've often borrowed from Howard, Fritz Lieber and Michael Moorcock, amongst others.
(Of course there's also any number of earlier works that have had an influence on the genre as well - Arthurian legends, Beowulf, the Greek myths and the Thousand and One Nights, and all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh - but I think it's fair to say that the modern concept of the standard fantasy setting originates with Tolkien etc.)
There's nothing wrong with this in itself – sometimes a work will
so define a genre that those that come after more or less have to
take something from it – in every post-apocalyptic book, movie or
game from now until the actual apocalypse there will be at least a
sliver of Mad Max, just as in all Western fantasy settings there's
going to be something of the writers I've mentioned.
But what about Asian fantasy settings?
That's not intended as a rhetorical question, because I don't know the answer. I have a good grounding in western fantasy literature and gaming but I can't say the same about what comes out of Korea (or Japan.)
I've been
thinking about this because Requiem feels very much like a standard
fantasy setting from that part of the world, featuring several
elements that are as characteristic of Asian fantasy games as Elves
and Dwarves are of Western fantasy. The towns have a steampunk aesthetic, and there's references to
laboratories, cloning and DNA in the quest text. There are monsters armed with
flamethrowers, and one-seater biplanes for quick travel. Swords and
armor notwithstanding, and allowing for the presence of mages
throwing fireballs, Requiem's setting is arguably more sci-fi than
fantasy; at least in comparison with the standard (western) fantasy
setting, where the tech level rarely goes beyond the medieval, or the Renaissance at best.
I've seen a lot of this in other games, and I have to wonder if there's some common origin point for Asian fantasy in the same way that just about all western fantasy can be traced back to Tolkien/Howard. I'd speculate that it comes from Final Fantasy, because that's the example(s) of the style that I know best. On the other hand, I'm somewhat aware that that series didn't actually incorporate some of these elements until Final Fantasy IV (?) and I'm very aware that I simply don't know enough about Japanese (or Korean) gaming history to be sure that Final Fantasy was the first to do so. For all I know the actual source of all this is one of those games or franchises that's absolutely massive in Korea while remaining obscure to most western gamers. There's quite a few of those.
I had no idea Requiem had sci fi elements to it. Literally all I knew about it was that it had a reputation for being a bit gory compared to most MMOs, as you discussed in your previous post. In terms of mixing fantasy and sci fi elements, certainly the Final Fantasy games come to mind, especially FFVI, VII and VIII. From the other direction you have the Phantasy Star series from Sega, that is basically a pure Sci fi setting that also happens to have a lot of magic.
ReplyDeleteI think the question of where the normal Asian MMO stylistic elements come from is also a really interesting one. I suspect that there are some strong cultural influences that we just wouldn't be aware of. I know Western fantasy fiction pretty well. Past some exposure to Asian mythology, I have almost no knowledge of what prose sources from the 1940s to 1980s in Asia could have been influential in the development of Asian fantasy RPG traditions. That's probably a lot like knowing a little bit about Greek myths, but having no idea who Howard, Leiber, LeGuin and Tolkein are and then trying to parse western fantasy RPG tropes.