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Can you name 5 dark and gritty themed games in the past 10 years ?
ThomasN7
87.18.7.148Member CommonPosts: 6,690
I'm really curious about this. I see so many developers cry out and say to use that " the usual " consists of dark and gritty or "we have been plagued by" dark and gritty games for years. There have been games like Diablo 3 , The Old Republic and even Guild Wars 2 where the developers chose a more "colorful" art direction but does the art really fit the games that have been criticized ? I would like for people out there to see if they can name more than 5 mmos or even 5 rpgs that has had a dark and gritty tone to them. I bet alot of you out there can have a tough time just naming 5! 
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Comments
I think Shadow of the Colossus counts as a rather dark game. Not sure if it counts as gritty though.
Dante's Inferno
Darksiders
God of War series
Vampire: The Masquerade
American McGee's Alice (the original, haven't played Madness Returns yet)
Silent Hill
Manhunt
Penumbra
Bioshock
F.E.A.R.
The Darkness
Condemed
Clive Barker's Jericho
Prey
Demon's Souls
Fallout (I guess fits here)
Planescape: Torment (was that in the last 10 years, think it was longer)
That's just what popped into my head, I'm sure I could dig up some more.
Sorry if I'm not fully understanding your question but these are off the top of my head
RPGs
The Witcher
The Witcher 2
Fear and sequels
**************
MMOs
Fallen Earth
Requiem
I forgot the Witcher, very good example.
EDIT: Also just thought of Gears of War
I'll add Dead Space to this list.
How many of those were actually good quality games that sold well ? You also can add Alan Wake.
Left for Dead 1 & 2
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
edit:
Dead Island is coming up soon
The company that originally had the WAR ip was doing a dark version
I remember when people went ballistic when they were concerned that Valve was leaving out the darkness of L4D2. It turned out pretty good for the players.
Planescape: Torment came out in 1999, so it doesn't count. Great game though.
With the Vampire games, Vampire The Masquerade - Redemption (2000) and later Bloodlines (2004). Bloodlines should count for the list.
Demon's Souls - Another very dark game but a bunch of people don't like how hard it is. Personally, it's one of the very few Console games I own and IMO it's damn good. Looking forward to the sequel, Dark Souls.
FO3 definitely counts, though the older FO1 & FO2 are much darker than the newer ones. You can't get much more depressing and grittier than a post-nuclear war world.
FO New Vegas counts due to the post-nuclear war setting still, but IMO, they were pretty close to making it look campy. It wasn't "dark" due to the western desert and New Vegas setting, but there were numerous patches of barbarism. But seeing the incompetence of the NCR and Legion brightened the mood too much.
Okay, I guess FONV doesn't count as being dark or gritty after all
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Manhunt is the only game on that list that I thought all out sucked. I enjoyed the rest of them, except Fallout 3, but it's a BIG hit so...
If your idea of 'dark and gritty' involves mature, adult themes, such as those that might be found in fiction, then I don't think the games industry is as open to those types of themes as we might think. Video games, by their very nature, are assumed to be aimed the children (juvenile) or young adult marketa (again relating this to fictional material). A really dark game, with dark themes, would be highly visible fodder for the anti-gaming crowd. Much like D&D was attacked many times over the years for 'advocating satanism', a video game with really hard themes would draw the attacks from every corner. Many companies simply don't want the hassle.
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If a company did choose to tackle a 'dark theme' in an MMO, there's another problem. Most dark themes involve a lot of disturbed mental social stigmas / taboos / etc. These are individual things, mostly internal to the psyche. As such, carrying off these themes in an MMO might simply be too difficult to simulate. And for fiction to make use of these themes, there are consequences to the anti-social behavior that authors must show so that their mostly normally-adjusted audience can / will understand the characters and even relate to them.
Implementing these themes in terms of character traits might mean that the game would need to take control over the player's chaacter. For example, a theme based on paranoia might need to have the character simply lash out at someone without warning. The group is in a fight, and one of the characters starts attacking the healer, for instance. Or maybe the healer just runs away. I'm not sure that many gamers would accept the loss of control.
Since normal fiction needs consequences to retain its social relevence, these games would need to follow suit. And putting consequence into a video game is very problematic. Throw a character in jail? They log off the character and log in to an alt. Penalizing money? It isn't going to have any impact on the player behind the character. Use corporal punishment? Really? In a game where death and revival is the norm? About the worst consequence the player might experience is that the group might boot his character.
About the only viable way I could see a really dark theme in an MMO would be in the 'lore' or 'quest' text, and the player would have to fight the 'darkness'. This puts the theme in the background, perpetrated by NPCs, with never allowing PCs the opportunity to voluntarily initiate these actions. Even an 'evil' quest option of the player 'helping' perpetrate some dark themed plot point could easily be attacked buy the anti-gaming crowd.
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I am intentionally avoiding depictions and examples of these dark themes myself; I don't know what the MMORPG.com site's tolerance is on these types of discussions. I like it too much to be banned for discussing this topic in too much detail. And personally, I wouldn't be intereted in a really 'dark' game -- I want my game to be an escape, not sand-in--the-shorts horror fests.
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As such, I don't really think many games have tackled really dark, modern themes.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I think Gears of War did a really good job of it and there wasn't a lot of backlash. American McGee's Alice was DARK and didn't get a lot of backlash. AoC should have fit the bill but FC wussed out on keeping Howard's world fully intact.
I'd like to add Farenheit, otherwise known as Indigo Prophecy. /shiver
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
This! And it meets Mendel's requirements fairly well. IIRC you lose control several times during the game and watch your characters psycosis.
One I played a bit comes to mind. Clive Barker's Undying from 2001. Not sure about gritty, but from what I remember it was quite dark and moody.
I thought of another one that was absolutely a psycho-fest watching your own character go insane. It was a console game though, made for the Gamecube and had the word.....
Sanity's Requiem?
I'm not sure if that's right, but something like that. Was an AMAZINGLY fun game. Dark? check Gritty? check
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
No ones mentioned Amnesia Dark Descent yet?
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Dead Rising (not really dark but somewhat gritty)
Resident Evil
Alone and The Dark
Kane and Lynch
Max Payne.
No, because the game was so freakin' scary I blocked it out of my mind. I'm assuming others must have done the same. That game almost made me literally wet myself. If I let my mind dwell on it too long....it will give me nightmares tonight. Great game, should definitely be on this list, but I don't want to talk about it anymore.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Red Alert 3
What about Metro 2033
and
Stalker and follow up's
Heavy Rain is pretty dark and gritty.
Amnesia is a good dark & gritty game
"You resist. You cling to your life as if it actually matters. You will learn."
So actually we need more dark games?10 good games is like 1 game/ year
With the excepton of Rift and a small handfull of other titles, most of the MMO's coming out are retina burning overly bright firework induced butterfly / panda fests, So LIke you Id love to know where all thse dark and gritty MMO's are hiding.