Cliches you're a bit sick of

Weren't Terry Pratchett's Discworld elves arguably meme elves?

...

Fucking this.

It rustles me to no end that both makers of films and games completely ignore the importance of dyes in previous periods of history. The vikings weren't dressed in black leather; they were dressed in colourful tunics. If you were a rich motherfucker, you might have worn indigo clothes because that shit was crazy rare and thus expensive. Because of that, the colour of your clothes gave others an idea of which social class you belonged to.

But it doesn't fucking matter in stuff like Game of Thrones or Vikings because even the high nobility are wearing clothes died with shit.

>Elves and Dwarves hate each other
>Races have one culture
>Treacherous advisers

>people who think you can only subvert cliches or play them completely straight

I don't like it when people go out of their way to be contrarian about everything. But those plot structure diagrams you get in fiction writing classes don't make for compelling stories either.

>Normal unassuming teenager is suddenly the target of attention of X women
>Normal Teenager gets a "chosen one" power and proceeds to suck ass for the rest of the story
>Cute girls doing cute things for 30 minutes and nothing else
>Guy in full-body armor dodges a giant swinging a tree better than the guy who has no armor.

>spaghetti elves

In the sense they are italian cinema themed?

The "salty OP makes a lowish quality b8 thread" cliche is pretty overplayed, imho.

>Normal Teenager gets a "chosen one" power and proceeds to suck ass for the rest of the story

This bugs me to no end. I can't stand it when the protagonist is just some gormless loser who has no useful skills and only ever wins via dumb luck. Then the tuff fighter gurl still falls for him because he's "special" or "different".

If you want your character to start out weak that's fine, but he has to be stronger by the end of the story.

>Each race is split into (at most) 2 factions. 1 good(ish) and 1 evil.

I was so happy to see Witcher 3 was exploding with colors, CDPR seemed to realize that there were more colors in the middle ages than gray and shit brown.

>regional thieves guild

What's funny is Gurm actually goes out of his way to describe a wide variety of colors in his books.

was fun in TES

I was going to say that as well. The only people I ever really imagined as wearing drab clothes were the northerners (because they effectively live in bumblefuck nowhere), the men of the Wall (because their uniform is literally black), and the poor as hell commoners. The Lannisters were supposed to be rocking bright red and gold all the fucking time.

Fuck. One of the Lannisters has a solid gold hand or some shit.

Damn right.

Yep, I figure the people responsible for the costumes aren't too interested in real history. Even then, dark, nasty pseudo-medieval fantasy seems to be what's in right now.

>Cute girls doing cute things for 30 minutes and nothing else
There is nothing wrong with this.

>OP being a faggot

Can we stop perpetuating this cliche?

everything wrong you mean
quads are right

I can't blame GoT costumers for not being "too interested in real history" because they aren't making an historical biopic. They're making a work of fantasy fiction.

That said, you hit the nail on the head with
>dark, nasty pseudo-medieval fantasy seems to be what's in right now.

It's been a general rule of thumb audiences don't really take bright, colorful outfits too seriously. That's why a lot of modern super hero movies tone down the costumes so much. We can debate whether or not that's a good thing till the cows come home, but I guarantee you that is exactly the reason most fantasy tv/movies don't feature bright colors.

That's a simple narrative device known as an "arc," also a "character arc" to be more specific. Even if our hero ultimately fails or dies, or even if they're not even stronger by the end of the story, they're changed by the experience of the story for better or for worse. Many times they make a change, or gain insight into something, or confront something they otherwise would not have been able to conceive of confronting before their experience in the story.

It's fine not to have a story like this, as there's many movies where the character isn't changed by his experiences much if at all that are still enjoyable. But in a narrative where character growth or the hero's journey is a big theme, an arc is almost always necessary.

It's part of media's current obsession with "dark and gritty." Everything's dark and gritty. And if it was dark and gritty before, it's probably darkerer and grittierer now.

Want to make cash fast? Sell gray camera filters and your edgy high school fanfiction to Hollywood. That's where the trend has taken us.

I'm getting fuckign sick of that GoT 'look'

Where everyone is grungy and with dirt on their face and wears a heavy cloak with the thick fur collars, and there's at least one king or noble who sits in their throne in that real douchebag way where they're kind of slouching and has their hand dangling near their face like 'wow I am so weary of all this heavy political stuff that I am involved in' and all the women have a shifty pinched looking cunt face.

>Everyone involved in the central religion is completely psychotic. There are no moderates ever.
>If they aren't completely evil then they're too stupid to notice how hilariously corrupt their superiors are. No matter how obvious it is to everyone else involved.

It doesn't bug me so much in something like, say, 40k because there's in-universe justification for that sort of paranoia and zealotry, but I'm starting to get tired of 'the Church' being synonymous with 'snake oil salesmen.' Some genuine preachers every now and then would be nice.

The one think I really like about the GoT look is the armies. The Lannister Troops in particular look quite good.

But if you get genuine preachers, they're either:
>well-meaning but naive and don't know the Church is lying
or
>pseudo-Atheists who pay lip service to their beliefs because real faith is "within".

>Egyptians
>Black

Why are african-americans so fucking retarded

I think we're living in an era where 'too colorful' is associated with being childish, so your 'serious' fantasy/medieval story must be desaturated as fuck where the sky isn't as blue and grass isn't as green as even real life. To be honest I feel like even LOTR movies did this after Fellowship, I remember Fellowship being really vibrant but then the next two movies were gray and ROTK for some reason I remember a lot of yellow / brown.

Gah, don't I fucking know it.

I think that this is one of the reasons I've started to gravitate towards settings where the gods are active and involved. That way there's no excuse for why the church isn't held accountable for being a massive bag of cunts.

But GoT/ASOIAF is a historical biopic with a very small, localized and subtle amount of magic thrown in. Everyone in the books is dressed in clothes and armors from the real life 14th-15th century. It literally started as War of the Roses fanfiction.

In defense of the LOTR movies, the decolouring kind of made sense in a lot of cases. They're getting farther and farther East, which means closer to Sauron. And Tolkien makes it pretty clear things are dark and withering and dying when evil is around.

GRRM is writing an historical biopic. The GoT showrunners are not.

Green orcs

Noble savage orcs

>But GoT/ASOIAF is a historical biopic

Kind of, yeah. It's very much based on real history, so I think its definitely fair to compare some of its aspects to what we know of the past.

Even then, GoT is definitely high fantasy. The world itself is distinct from our own, has seasons that last decades, clearly has magic (even if its rare and often subtle; the best kind), super special steel and motherfucking dragons. Ultimately this genre debate gets very boring, but I feel like people ignore the fact that GoT *is* epic fantasy far too much and it's not doing the books or the show any favours.

>GRRM is writing an historical biopic. The GoT showrunners are not.

Basically this.

>adventurer guild
>trapped in an mmo/rpg/game

Green is best, you git.

Also, on a tangent, I can't even begin to describe how refreshing it was to see Gul'dan. It was like popping your head out of a river and taking a deep breath, as you were reminded of how cool orcs used to be, instead of the shit colored "noble savages" that Metzen keeps shoving down everyone's throats.

It's fucking gritty man, which means it's mature and adult to a generation of adults who are still stuck as mental teenagers.

I hate people who cling to realism in fantasy, when their idea of realism comes from D&D and means spellcasters are better than you.

Stop watching shitty anime.

I fucking love Gul'dan. He was my favourite orc back when I still bothered with Warcraft.

BUT ON THE SAME NOTE; I too dislike the noble savage trope, especially for the orcs. They yap about "honour" constantly, but beyond being chronically heroic, this absurd focus on honour in their culture seems to have no clear negatives. Hardline honour-based societies have some brutal issues which the orcs in Warcraft lack almost entirely. I'm more of a fan of how the orsimer in Elder Scrolls work; their obsession with being useful and dying properly in battle finds them intentionally trying to kill themselves on the swords of passer bys to avoid living on in shame as a frail, incapable elder.

>Stop watching anime
FTFY

All anime is shitty.

But then what's the purpose of the power of the main character is actually worse off for having the power and he entire story is a "let's watch how shorty this guy's life gets".

we need elf-elves
its like normal elves, but with a 2x subdivision surface modifier added in

>I hate people who cling to realism in fantasy, when their idea of realism comes from D&D and means spellcasters are better than you.

There is no "realism" in fantasy because even history buff authors generally avoid hard realism. That's because the constraints of real life don't always make for the most compelling stories. A good example is again, ASoIaF. Sword fights regularly involve people shearing each other's limbs off like they're wielding lightsabers, which isn't how swords ever worked. GRRM knows this, but he keeps it in because it's a lot cooler to the readers.

Thieves guilds in general are an annoying cliche. Skyrim got it mostly right in that it was more of an organized mafia or gang than a guild, but the idea of a group of honorless, selfish thieves getting together to build one monolithic organization to commit crime is retarded. At least go the gang or mafia angle and have rivaling gangs of criminals competing for turf and doing actual shady shit instead of just getting together to steal something hugely expensive.

Everything is shitty.

Usually by the end he comes to some realization about human nature.

I forget where the story is from, but I think it was Greek; a guy gets the power to turn invisible, and immediately he's stealing shit, spying on people, and raping women, committing crimes with impunity because he's free from association with these crimes. The story is some shit about human nature. Alternatively, a lot of the episodes of Black Mirror as well, where someone gets some tech instead of magic powers and it ruins their life. The story isn't for the benefit of the character, but for the reader. Actually, EVERY story is for the benefit of the reader.

Got a system for that right here. Also basically Dishonored: the PnP RPG.

Nice. I'll give it a read-over right now.

no it wasn't. it would be much better if even TES game introduced unique criminal factions tailored to the region than having a generic thieves guild each time. actually it's the same for all the guilds.

Companions were pretty tailored to the setting for a variety of reasons.

Dark Brotherhood is a death cult, so I can buy the idea it has cells in different regions.

Thieves Guild and Mages College could do with more fleshing out though.

>Skyrim got it mostly right
Lol.

The Thieves Guild and its' quests were a pile of shit. It failed to come off as organized crime and then it tried to turn into a religious sect of "honorable" thieves and it failed at that, too.

I know that you reddit and tumblrshits love Skyrim (For some reason that escapes me), but it's not a good reference point for anything other than "examples of shitty gameplay and unfulfilled promises".

>I know that you reddit and tumblrshits love Skyrim (For some reason that escapes me)
Possibly because it was their first TES game.

I am a bit sick of filthy weebs who cant get laid posting their fap shit all over this board. Do they think people who play traditional games also masturbate while in their hobby? Man this isnt some antisocial anime bullshit for spamming their smut and smug anime pictures, no one who plays traditional games does this bullshit, half the board is just cringy anime crap.

>their first TES game.

probably their first RPG, period. hence why every RPG today HAS to be open world

I thought Oblivion was Babby's First Open World RPG, but I guess I was wrong.

November 11, senpai. Pedro Pascal and Sam Rockwell are both voicing characters in it.

h y p e

I agree.

I used to think it was people from /a/ who forced animeshit in here, but after going there for a while, I realized that the posting patterns of animeposters here don't match with the posters there. In fact, people here don't type like anyone else on this site except for /co/ users, which worries me.

>
kek I imagine these people talking to each other 'brah I cant wait for skyrim 2 to come out', I guess there was some sort of snowball hype effect, all morrowing fans hyping oblivion, pulling more people in, and than all oblivion people hyping skyrim, and from there on even normies picked up

that's the biggest non-blizz videogame when it comes to hypes I think, only wow and diablo 3 had a bigger hype

Yes. They're stuck in a death struggle game only known has 'cowboys and indians'

GTA5 had bigger hype. It was like a fucking blockbuster release, and people talked about it constantly even though it was mediocre at best and honestly the worst 3D GTA game released yet.

> ruined civilization was more advanced than the current one in almost every regard.

No, it WAS fun in both Morrowind and Oblivion
was meh in skyrim but eh

>Thousands years old weapons are better than current weapons
>Thousands years old technology built in a pre-industrial medieval world is better than even real life current technology

Yeah but I didnt count GTA because of the 'rpg feel' that wow, diablo, and tes had, you know, magic, picking a class, playing a certain style, I count GTA, sims, cs, fifa and other games with no magic and guns in a whole different shade of normie.

>HE IS FAST

If your fantasy settings don't have past advanced civilizations, I pity you and whoever play games with you.

past advanced civs are booooriiiiinnng

If your fantasy setting has ancient aliens who built the pyramids, you should kill yourself.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. Obviously, future aliens built the pyramids.

It's not that cliches are bad, it's just most of the time people don't give them depth.

Take the traditional scotsy drinking dwarf. On its own, that's annoying and worn out. But you can still make a good character out of it. Maybe they're travelling and want to learn more about other cultures, instead of being pro-dwarf? Maybe they can be the comedic straight-man to an otherwise strange party?

It's not an idea that makes a compelling character, it's the player. You might just start somewhere and end up with something better as you go along and flesh out a character.

>>Thousands years old weapons are better than current weapons
This is passable when said weapons are mythic status. Shit like Excalibur or something, although I'll admit that I don't think stuff like this has much place in an otherwise hard sci-fi setting (I disliked the entire premise of the Crucible in Mass Effect. Just shoot the fucking space squids. God damn).

Not in Skyrim.

The Crucible was pulled out of their asses because they wrote themselves into a corner and the main writer left. In 2, you literally get a gun that can punch through reaper armor, but that's forgotten about even though it could've easily been replicated and mass produced.

>Noble savage orcs
fucking this
even if you don't want them just to be a race of angry humanoids to use as token enemies, you don't have to make them "muh misunderstood ugly greenies". I played one campaign where the orcs just sat around all day banging on drums, having sex, and doing drugs, perfectly content to do that all day rather than raping and pillaging.

Wasnt Rome some thousand years ahead of everyone else in Europe (ignore Byzantium, old Greek states and Macedon thingies pls) and when it collapses Germanic tribes believed aquaducts were made by gods or something??

Didnt a volcano wipe out all life on Earth except for a tiny rat like creature, which is why we (and most other mammals) share something like 80% of our DNA with a rat, it preserved life when the skies were filled with ash..

Arent distant and powerful quasars that are big enough to wipe out entire milky way galaxy a thing in our universe?

Also didnt dinosaurs also get wiped out, even tho absolutely nothing on Earth's surface could prey on them?

Eh, I dont know, seems reasonable to me that a 'drastic' changes can happen if we ignore just how powerful nature is. Even really, really drastic things can not only happen, but they already did happen, quite a few times..

>sex, drugs and rock-n-roll orcs
Nice.

I see a lot people here who get activated about this dual concept of "subversion" and "grey morality". They then go on tirades about how they just wanna save the princess from the dragon for once without all this "shades of grey bullshit". Like they actually think antiheroes are a meme and all fantasy media before 2010 was a bunch of stories about Lawful Good knights in shining armor.

Problem is if I were in a game where my GM just made me go rescue a blushing damsel from a greedy old dragon and then I got my reward and that was it, then I'd still be annoyed. Shallow writing is shallow writing. If something is subversive just to be subversive, it's not fun. If something is a bunch of classic tropes and cliches played straight just to not be subversive, then it's also not fun.

I would argue its low fantasy just because its magical elements are so minor. Dragons are only just coming back, seasons lasting decades isn't necessarily magical, and the lack of wizards and shit makes magic uncommon and rare. Even super special steel might end up just being damascus steel or an equivalent, not mithril or some other made up metal.

I'm not arguing it isn't fantasy - all it would have to take is it to obviously be in a world that's not our own to be fantasy. But there's a gulf of difference between the low fantasy of ASOIAF, and the high fantasy of something like LoTR - there are a lot more definitely magical items, wizards are somewhat common, there are all sorts of monsters and magical creatures, and you even have other races.

But it's not pretentious.

Nature isn't technology, champ. Also, romans were advanced, yes, but only the western part collapsed and the rest of the territories moved along and improved on their architecture, laws and army designs.

I seriously hope this is bait

This is the fucking worst.

No, I won't, BBEG, because you have massacred many people and have plans in motion to continue doing so. My stabbing you is actually an act of kindness.

>No, it WAS fun in both Morrowind and Oblivion

it was okay because the developers were more competent back then. but the guilds themselves were still boring. the mage's guild were a more boring version of the telvanni, the fighter's guild were a more boring version of the redoran, etc.

let me put it this way: if the next game was set in elsweyr, and bethesda - being the lazy shits they are - only include 3 factions, which would you find more interesting: getting to join the generic "fighter's guild" all over again? or some kind of local khajjit organization that we've never seen before and actually reflects the locale? i don't see why you would want the same content over and over when each game is about seeing a whole new country.

maybe if the guilds were interesting, but we're talking about the most bland organizations possible. there are lots of interesting ways you can handle criminal gangs, mercenary companies or magic societies, having a "thieves guild" is like having a faction literally called "criminal gang" - it's the most low-effort approach possible. fuck, the game doesn't even need to have those three types of faction. they could do anything but they always revert to the same cliches.

> Romans were more advanced.
> But ignore these people who were just as advanced if not moreso.
Uh-huh.
> Volcano.
What does that have to do with anything?
> Quasars.
Are you smoking pot?

>the developers were more competent back then

>Carmonna Tong
>Morag Tong
>Not reflecting the locale
Nigga u w0t

I am saying even the most advanced tech can get rekt by nature (as of now) so having a really advanced civilization getting rekt by nature and getting rediscovered by people who survived thanks mostly to luck can happen.

Also, for advanced tech you dont really need a civilization. 90% of the most relevant and best discoveries were made by a few people you can count on your fingers, math for example was the same for entire recorded history till they added a few new things in the 16th century, so all you really need is a few guys and a lab to discover super ultra advanced better than today tech in a sci-fi setting, doesnt bother me at all.
Idk I study electrical engineering and its not all that surprising to me under good enough circumstances.

Nature can wipe out advanced civilizations, and less advanced civilizations can discover left behind technologies that are more advanced than they have today.

more competent than skyrim? yeah.

missing the point. i'm saying those kind of factions are the potentially interesting ones i want to see more of. i want to see less of generic "thieves guilds".

>wizards are somewhat common

There are five in the entire world.