"No Brothels to be in DA4" as per Mark Darrah Tweet.

Ugh, fantasy snobs. I've encountered your pretentious ilk before.

Disagreeing with what I consider comical levels of unwarranted pessimism and incessant negative nancying doesn't mean that I "act like Bioware is immune and nothing will happen".

Nobody is immune. Not on this market. But reasonable caution in face of growing challenges on still-young gaming market that can dictate conditions and trends even to indies is an entirely different thing from what you're doing and right now, and you're acting like EA is Blight, lol. Nevermind that it's not the only gaming mogul that has been on people's sh*t list, for whatever reasons and that includes darlings like Valve (for sheaningans with Steam) or Bethesda (for paid mods).

Well, like I said, I'm fully capable of being wrong and admitting when I am. And I'm open to the possibility of Bioware proving me wrong. I'm just not getting my hopes up about that.

Thing about pessimism is that a pessimist can never be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised.

Pessimism is all fine and good until it just becomes unhealthy. I deal with enough pessimism and anxiety in life to know how exhausting painting everything with dark colors can be. For me, it's just not worth the 'pleasant surprise', doesn't feel validating on occasions when the worst indeed happened and has a way to turn people apathetic and moody. If I can, I resort to applying reasonable caution. I'm not the one who thinks that, say, departure of Mike Laidlaw is the end of Dragon Age or Bioware, but I wouldn't consider next Dragon Age as guaranteed even if EA hired all past BW devs, gave Bioware zillion dollars to develop 100 more chapters of DA and complete creative freedom. Heck, I'm not even assuming I'm going to enjoy Dragon Age in a scenario when it comes out and becomes an astounding success. There are just too many things that can happen in the meantime. But worrying too much or grumping about it at any potential occasion? I just don't think it's that productive. But that's just me.

Maybe because EA has a habit of meddling for the worse?

www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-23-the-dead-space-3-the-developers-wanted-to-make

I mean common, we literally know that BW Montreal was founded with intent of trying to keep it as independent as possible, so they could do their "own thing".


  

I know another user of this site who is also super tired of elves and dwarves. Calls the Qunari the only original idea Bioware Dragon Age had.

You must not know the creative influence that publishers have over devs. The same way major movie studios have over movie directors.

If the creative influence was solely with the Devs and not publishers, then why did EA decide to can Viscerals Star Wars game and start over? Why not just allow Visceral to create whatever they want to create?

Do you honestly believe that Activision and EA would say to devs, "We are giving you X amount of money to create X game and will give you all the agency to create whatever it is you want to create...."

Are you really suggesting that?

Frostibe is a prime example.

Actually, I hold those opinions too, and am also super-picky about my fantasy and hardly end up reading any at all. I actually work in a bookstore and I only read a couple books a year.

But the reason I don't like Tolkien or GRRM isn't because I think they're not cerebral enough or whatever. I don't like Tolkien because of the endless digressions, and I don't like GRRM because there's basically not enough actual fantasy and adventure, which is what I want. GoT has more in common with political and historical fiction, if you ask me, and that shit bores me to tears.

The stuff I like is probably what most of the posters in here would consider lowbrow: I prefer stand-alone novels over a long series, and my tastes run more towards "Young Adult" sci-fi and fantasy, because you get more variety and willingness to take risks (although you still have to dig through a million different iterations on vampire romance and rehashes on the Hunger Games). And "adult" stuff is so often trying too hard to be edgy: "This guy has a wand, but don't you DARE call him Harry Potter! His spirit guide is a dog who swears and drinks! Angels snort the souls of children as a recreational drug! Witches don't fly on broomsticks, they cover themselves in the fat of boiled children! ALL THE MAGIC IS DEAD CHILDREN!"

Okay, but I don't consume conventional fantasy, or at least I do my best not to. Maybe everything I am reading has been ripped off someone else, but I'm making my best effort to broaden my horizons.

I wouldn't consider any of the books I read the past couple years to be "conventional". At the very minimum, they didn't feature elves, dwarves, long-lost royalty, or any prophecies.

As for video games, what choice do I have? Convention is inescapable. I don't play Dragon Age so I can bitch about it, I play it because it lets me be gay.

I don't really have any preferences for setting, as long as it's different from "pseudo-medieval Britain". Hell, I'll even take literally any other period in British history. Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian, just no more fucking "middle ages". 

Obviously the political stuff appeals to a lot of people, in fact, I think that's the MAIN thing people like about it, cause there's very little actual "fantasy" to it. I have had customers who've bought stuff from other authors like Patrick Rothfuss or Brandon Sanderson because they thought it would be similar, and then came back disappointed. Probably what they actually want is more along the lines of Conn Iggulden and Robert Harris.

Thing is, mainstream "medieval" fantasy I've read strikes me to be about as medieval as Disneyland. Actual medieval literature is more creative and carries more intensity. I would love a book or RPG inspired by Beowulf, Mandeville, Arabian Nights, or even hagiographies, where some pretty wild stuff happens. The closest I've found is Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which reads much like a viking saga: "There was a man called Orm the Strong, a son of Ketil Asmundsson who was a great landsman in the north of Jutland."

But for something out of medieval Europe, I'd recommend Barry Hughart (Tang China), Susanna Clarke (Georgian England), and Catherynne Valente (WWII and... weird stuff). They are all fairly lighthearted as well, not at all part of the gritty wave of grittiness.

I come to fantasy from historical fiction, which is still second best in my book. I've had The Aztec recommended to me, but a cursory look at some reviews revealed it's packed with bizarre sexual fetishes that seem more the author's than the period's. On the same place and period, I liked Salvador Madariega's The Heart of Jade, though I read it in Spanish and cannot vouch for the quality of the English translation. These days I'm looking at The Long Ships, by Frans Bengtsson, and what I've read so far is pretty good.

This thread has gone through some strange twists and turns, hasn't it?