Whatever character development comes out, whatever positive the game unfolds, it's still Dark. War has been set up, one of his former closest friend is the Big Bad and killed, Uriel's heart will be broken. How can you call that not crapsack?That's the difference between Dark settings and, let's say, delightful settings. Let's get this straight: in my mind, in Dark settings, bad things are likely to happen. In delightful settings, what's told is either an unlikely ("Oh, I unexpectedly created a monster while trying to do this !"), or a wanted event ("I want to become the best Chef of all!"). In the Dark setting, everything was good or bearable before the story, everything gets really bad, and then end in another bearable state, but still not good. On the contrary, a delightful plot ends in bliss in any case, with a sort of a promise of no problem anymore.
OK, you're just mixing your metaphors here and getting hung up on semantics when I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. It doesn't matter if you call it "dark," "black," "gritty" or what have you. The reason I write walls of text in response to you is specifically so I can get across the meaning of my words and make sure we don't get hung up on terminology.
The problem is, the "setting" is dependent on where the "story" "begins" and "ends". An that is the writer's decision.The problem is that, inherently, every episode or season ends "well" and then the next one begins anew with another problem. Actually, each and every story could be parallel, and entertains the idea that nothing gets sure anymore, because there will always be a new problem to face and overcome. I'm sorry, but that's not "delightful", it's near crapsack, even if it's the smurfs.
No, it's not crapsack, and you're really stretching your terms here. I'm going to die some day, and that's a set fact. You don't see me identifying my existence through that inevitability, however. I manage to live a happy, fulfilling life despite knowing I'm going to die, everyone I knew and love is going to die, everything I cared about will be destroyed and forgotten and the universe will likely eventually end. Who gives a toss? That's like saying "No matter how much crime you stop, you'll never stop it all." So? We don't stop fighting crime just because it'll never end. That's not the point. The whole point - and if you'd acknowledge that all stories that aren't MLP aren't necessarilt "dark" - is that we don't have to stop all crime and stop all evil and prevent disasters from ever happening and make sure that the world is perfect forevermore for a setting to be "feelgood."
You can never solve all problems. New ones will always show up. To expect otherwise is to construct a straw man, simple as that. This shouldn't even BE an argument. I'm not aware of any story ever written which ends in complete and perpetual happiness with not even the slightest possibility of anything wrong ever happening, and when such a concept is brought up in storytelling, it's the stuff of madness and delusion. That's what the Paladin from Serenity would dream of - a perfect world that has no place for monsters like himself. But he is insane, and the world he hopes to achieve cannot exist, hence why he is the bad guy despite his ideology suggesting that he should be the good guy. That's the whole point.
If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).
Yes, you can, and many stories have done this. Like I said - Darksides is a perfect example of this. Yes, bad things happen if you want to be pedantic, but the way the story is arranged, they aren't TREATED as a big deal, as that much of a big thing. War is bummed that Earth was destroyed, but not because all the humans died. He's war. His entire purpose in existence is to kill people. He's bummed because balance is upset and he was framed. And by the end, balance is restored by unleashing the "End of Times" properly and he finds inner peace realising it wasn't his fault after all, growing as a person. Abbadon - the Destroyer - was never War's friend, at least none that I could determine. He was simply someone he knew. Uriel's heart may have been broken, but she will heal. "Reap what you have sown, betrayer!" are her final words to Abbadon. Every action she has taken up to that point proves that she will survive and thrive. And with the Four Horsemen finally summoned at full strength and free of the binds of the council, whatever manipulators may be plotting will fall, because nobody stands up against the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
There's a reason Darksiders was as popular, and why War's final line in response to "You would fight this battle alone?!?" saying "No. Not alone" with a pan shot to reveal the other three descending from the sky... There's a reason this ending was as popular as it was, and this isn't because it's "dark." There's nothing dark about it, not in the slightest. The reason this ending has become such a trademark of the franchise that the sequel could not help but parrot it verbatim is because it's AWESOME. Not dark, not depressing, not reminding me of the futility of existence. It was awesome, and it made me want to get up off my chair and cheer along with the credits. Everything is resolved at the end, everyone has found peace and stability and all remaining problems will surely been solve because the story itself sets up the Four Horsemen as an unstoppable force that both Heaven and Hell fear. That is not "dark."
What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it, as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6.
This is not even remotely true, to the point that I can't imagine where you're even getting it from. Unless you specifically set out to write a story full of darkness, you don't have to put any into it. Any writer who claims to be unable to do otherwise is doing it wrong. Yes, I feel strongly enough about it to make such a broad statement, because I can't remember disagreeing with anything more strongly in years and years. There is never any need to be "dark." You are the writer, you set the tone, you make the rules, you decide how a story should be told. If you find yourself unable to proceed but to introduce darkness in a story, then YOU have failed, not storytelling as a concept. If you, as a writer, cannot conceive of a world written to a theme which does not turn into darkness when you detail it, then you need more imagination, and very likely a wider pool of references. And undoubtedly a more objective interpretation of other people's stories.
In anything you write, you decide how the "world" treats action. Are good people punished for trying to do the good thing, or are they rewarded for being good? If you pick the latter, then the more detail you go into, the more uplifting a story will become. Nothing can ever stop you from doing this.
Also, I dare you put out a simple game like Sonic 1 or Mario 1 today, not be detailing the story, and be called an "uninteresting game plot-wise", or even getting a rating. I mean, "the evil Doctor kidnapped every little animals. A super-sonic hedgehog embarks on a journey to free all of them by defeating the doctor". Seriously, fits in a line??
Um... Portal. Quantum Continuum. McPixel. Orcs Must Die. Serious Sam. Aquaria. Limbo. Vessel. Holdover. Gish. Blade Kitten. Alien Swarm. Sonic Adventure (Robotnik has used the Chaos Emeralds to transport Sonic and his friends to our world, get them back!). All of that's off the top of my head. So... Yeah, challenge accepted. Would you like to know more?
You can have a game with a simple story that's still incredibly good if it's done right, told right and drawn up with the right theme and tone. As a point of fact, the more complicated you make a story... Oh, 2008's Prince of Persia! The more complicated you make a story, the worse it usually ends up being. Take something like Naruto, for instance. The show was by far at its strongest when the premise was at its simplest - a boy cursed to house the spirit of the evil 9-tailed fox is hated by his peers, but fights to earn the respect and friendship of his peers. That's all it ever needed, and it's when it turned political, philosophical and soap-opera-ish that it turned bad.
Now, every game can have the complexity of MUDs, and the accessibility to kindergartens. And the oldest devs can grow tired of making dumb games, let them be. They want "twist", or a new one, and that inherently comes with twisted stories. But, that they focus on the grimmest details of the story, is a choice that I can't deny them making, but not all, it's just that most twisted stories get more spotlight. Look at the TV News.
So, wait... Are you saying that games which don't have "the complexity of MUDs" are "dumb games?" Are you seriously operating under the idea that children are stupid and games made for them need to be stupid to accommodate this? Because I've seen games made "for kids" and they're insulting to my intelligence, and theirs, as well. When I was a child, I didn't play Sonic or Mario. I played Blackthorne, Dune II: Battle for Arakis, Mortal Kombat. I played Sin and Half-Life and, yes, even the original Serious Sam. I played Star Control, I played WarCraft. I've played games that were grim and bloody and nasty. Hell, forget that, I played stuff like the Bible Black bishujo game. I've seen nasty stuff for as far as I can remember, but it's never been this prominent and it's never been this nasty. Yes, even Bible Black.
Because, honestly, I'm sick of games that remind me of the Angel Corps comic book. And no, please don't Google that. And it ISN'T just the "most twisted" stories that I'm concerned with. The stories of today aren't any worse than what's come before. Some are even much tamer. It's just that the stories of today are overwhelmingly much more often unpleasant, grim and cynical. It's like I'm living in the world of John Constantine or Dylan Dog. The real world is NOT that grim and dark, and the idea that the only way to have "complex" games is to make them grim and gritty is just... About as bad as what's been getting Oscars of late. At one point, video games used to be an exciting medium full of promise and potential. Now they're just like the news. And there's a reason I don't watch the news and have never watch the news - they don't try to inform me, they're looking for shock value to inflate their audiance numbers.
And if you want funny and delightful games, don't look at the PC roster, look at the Wii or the DS. Non-dark often intersects with Casual.
All you're doing is perpetuating the myth of the "PC Master Race" of stuck-up self-righteous players who see themselves as superior to the riff-raff of console players with their "more intelligent" and "more complicated" games that "challenge" you on more "fundamental" levels. Oh, you want games that are actually fun to play and don't leave you an emotional wreck? Go play the Wii with the other kiddies. The PC is for grown-ups. I'm a PC-only gamer and even I find that attitude detestable. There's nothing about the PC which precludes games made for it from actually being fun and pleasant. And there's nothing inherent in unpleasant games that makes them morally and intellectually superior. The primary reason I now live a happy, relaxed life is expressly because I chose to stop exposing myself to angsty drama with no real reason.
A one-dimensional, one-note game library does not make the PC more "mature." It just makes it less varied. It's easy to gloat about the PC's superiority, but the next generation of consoles will come out soon enough, and we'll continue to NOT get many decent games released for the PC, or at best given to us in shitty ports like Fall of Cybertron, and we'll keep patting each other on the back about how much the scant few games we do get are so morally superior to the "casual" console games.
That attitude is not healthy for the industry and it's not healthy for PC gaming. Variety ensures support and popularity, and until we accept that all genres are equally valid and no player should be shamed away from playing "casual" games lest he be seen as less of a gamer, we're never going to grow up as a community. And for as much as you say "gamers grew up," I get the feeling that many are still doing everything they can to PROVE they've grown up by making and playing games intentionally the reverse of "casual games for kids." It's like that episode of Cow and Chicken where Chicken, Flem and Earl were turned into rugged, burly men... Yet their final test was to play with Pencilneck Sissy dolls, because a real man isn't afraid of playing with Sissy dolls.
It's this whole retention of what's "mature" and "complex" and "adult" that gets my panties in a bunch. "Mature" games are not better. If anything, they're worse because they're made for a limited market. There's nothing intellectually superior about them, ESPECIALLY if they're actually completely juvenile like Saints Row The Third, but hiding behind a Mature Content label. It's why many people tended to avoid "Mature RP" in City of Heroes - because it ended up being the most immature, perpetuated by people who took "maturity" as a perk.
"Dark" is not "better." It's not worse, but it's not better. And we can just about do with some more variety.