Just though I’d take a moment to address this, since a comment someone made in a correspondance recently leads me to believe there may be some confusion here. Basically, the comment was wondering about the inclusion of the more magical races in SoW.

People might have gotten the wrong impression when I said SoW was “realistic” fantasy. I think people interpretted that as “low fantasy”.

Now, to me they are two different things but my definition may be the wonky one, so let me elaborate.

Low fantasy settings are ones which have fantasy elements, ie things which don’t/can’t exist in the real world, but those elements are rare. For the most part, the world is fairly similar to our world. Conan and suchlike is often pointed to as low fantasy.

Because low fantasy is closer to our world, low fantasy is often gritty, darker, more realistic in it’s characters, motivations and scenarios. 

Realistic fantasy, to me, is simply fantasy where the characters, motivations and scenarios are more realistic, mature (not in the pr0n sense ). Sure, there are fantasy elements, but people react to them in a realistic manner. Good examples are Steven Eriksson’s Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, and games like Vampire the Masquerade. Still plenty of fantastic elements but the characters, their motivations and actions all reflect the moral ambiguity and difficulties of the real world, the way that things in life are rarely ever clear-cut, how problems can’t easily be solved by whacking them with a sword till they’re dead.

The reason I clarify SoWs fantasy in that way is because I feel that most fantasy video games throw out realistic characters and interactions even as they add in giant, scaled lizards. Fantasy has this association with simplistic escapism. Developers seem to aim at people who want to escape from the difficulties of the real world into a simple black/white, good/bad  setting, where players can be heroes, save the day and rescue the princess.

This is why I feel the need to call SoW “realistic” or “gritty”. Because realistic characters and interactions seem to be out of vogue, if they were ever in vogue, and fantasy by default seems to be 2D escapsim. I don’t want to call it “dark” because it isn’t especially focused on grimness, terror and gore, the aim is not to shock sensibilities. I simply aim to reflect the realities of the real world, which are themselves often complicated, uncertain and,  yes, even grim. (Also, I don’t call it that because I imagine some pimpled teenager who goes by the moniker “DarkReaper666″ online wetting his pants in excitement every time I read about a game that calls itself “dark”.) 

And why am I designing SoW in this way, to be realistic instead of escapist fantasy? Because…I’m unsatisfied. You see, I think I’ve grown away from mainstream video games. I used to think it was the fault of the game development houses, but it isn’t. It’s me. I grew up, my sensibilities and thinking changed, and the games didn’t. They are still making games for that demographic that I used to belong to, and that’s fine, in the business sense, even if it doesn’t make me especially happy. I’m grown now, my mind rejects simple story premises and easy solutions, I find two-dimensional, cliched characters uninteresting and I have become annoyed at seeing the same plots recycled, game after game. I don’t have a problem with these kinds of games existing, everyone has a right to play games they enjoy, but I hunger for titles that will satisfy my own tastes. 

With this in mind, I am creating the type of game I would want to play. It won’t be the same as playing someone elses game, sure, but creating something is satisfying in other ways.