I agree!!

It's funny that only the other day I posed the question: <i>When did gaming get interesting again?</i>

I like interesting. I'm not so much a fan of manshoots, or traditional medieval RPGs, or things that have been done one million and one times before. I suppose it's my xenophilia. I play games for escapism, so what I'm really not interested in is games that look like action films, or war films, or are once again visiting <i>the most boring 'fantastic' location ever, that doesn't really have anything fantastic about it</i>.

It's interesting, games really had this figured out even up until the early '00s. If you look at RPGs like Mask of the Betrayer and Wizardry 8, you've got stuff that's as far detached from typical fantasy as possible. It's still fantasy, it's still an RPG, but they're telling entirely new stories in refreshingly fresh and exotic worlds, with cultures that aren't Caucasian dominated. It's like at some point around '03, developers became convinced that we're all neurotically xenophobic, and became afraid of being innovative lest they step on our toes and damage our delicate psyches by challenging us with new and interesting things.

What this meant is that every genre suddenly became stone-faced, grim, and painfully dull. If I wanted to torture myself, I'd line up a good amount of the mainstream games from the last 7-8 years and play through them all in one go. I think it'd kill me! :p I mean, here's an example that maybe more people are able to relate to, because RPG fans don't seem to get it as much. Before the late '03 crash (which is when it probably all went downhill), we had shooters like No One Lives Forever. Colourful, genuinely funny, silly shooters based around gadgets and tactics. After the '03 crash, games which were as imaginative as that were out of place. (This is why I became so clingy with the odd game, here and there, such as Mask of the Betrayer.)

But I mean... think about it. Morrowind became Oblivion, then we had Dragon Age, and it was ye olde medieval land of yore every bloody time with RPGs. Even NWN2 did that, which I didn't like, and it was only really saved by the humour of Grobnar, Khelgar, Sand, and Shandra. Those four made for the most awesome party ever, and their constant making fun of each other and the world around them sort of detached me from NWN2, it was like they realised how dull the whole medieval thing was too, and they were happy to take the piss out of it as well. But Dragon Age took itself so seriously that I just couldn't stomach it, by comparison.

Maybe that's what it is?

Maybe I just get fed up with games being too familiar and taking themselves too seriously. If they're at least set in an exotic location/culture, then I can stomach them being serious, because at least they have personality and they're interesting. They hold my intrigue and my wonder, that way. I want to learn more about this strange world and culture that I find myself immersed in, it keys off my xenophilia. And I can take games being a little familiar providing that they at least take the piss out of themselves occasionally and don't act so bloody serious. If you're going to have a boring setting, at least spruce it up with humour!

I like gaming currently though, it's doing more interesting things and that makes me happy. I mean, my current list of installed games reads as thus: Champions Online, CreaVures, Darkspore, Hoard, Jolly Rover, LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars, NightSky, and Sanctum. (That's not naming the older games that I have installed.) Those will soon be joined by Portal 2, and then at some point in the future I'll have the much lusted after Guild Wars 2. These games all have something in common. Do you see it?