WHAT'S YOUR OPINION ON "CLICHED" GAMES?

I don't really mind cliched games, it depends. Its always refreshing to play/see a game idea that hasn't been done before. But almost everythings been done now. Although a huge part in the game the storyline isn't the only aspect of it, if gameplay, puzzles and or level design is great then it can out shine the clich'e.

Realistically, (and speaking as someone who wrote his dissertation on narrative theory) there are really only a handfull of stories to be told. These are edited by the setting, characters and themes told throughout but never classically stray too far from their arch-types.

But to be honest, people save the world/their souls/their people/undo a great wrong from evil/misguided/secretly heroic individuals because that is the meat of the story. Heroes need obsticles to overcome, protagonists need an antagonist and every story needs the stakes to be high. Put any group of games (not just rpgs) no matter now 'original' next to eachother and you can pick out the common themes.

In short, cliche is fine - sometimes even revelled in such as Dragon Quest 8 did to massive fan reaction - as long as the general setting, characters and challanges presented are interesting. The Final Fantasy series recycles themes and ideas all the time, but edits the game system and world significantly. Who here would say that FF7 and FF9 were the same game with moderate changes?

Me? I like a little bit of cliche now and again.

Glad to hear it :D

I think that a lot of the things homebrew RPG creators do to make their game NOT CLICHE LOL are a lot more cliched than the core concepts of swords and sorcery that they are rallying against. See: unfunny "comedy" game starring Alex.

Also it's pretty crazy how America has taken the French word "cliche" and removed the fancy symbols from it and applied all sorts of English modifiers and such in the last 15 years.

Also it is pronounced "clitch" with a hard "i".

author=WIP link=topic=906.msg12076#msg12076 date=1208278862
I think it's because nobody wants to find the keycode to type the special e.

Stop being such a clitch dude >:(

I think that when people assign "cliche" to something in a negative connotation, they actually mean "lame."

For instance, typical stuff RMers do to RM games that are lame, are considered cliche. It's all semantics.

I'd play an "A" game with 100% swords, magic, dragons, knights, elves, and saving the princess over a scrub game with "OMG NOT CLICHE"s any day. I don't like seeing "OMG NO ELVES" in things simply because elves are considered cliche. Well, if the elves are implimented well, what's the problem? Maybe elves/dwarves/orcs are cool. Maybe there's a reason so many people use them besides Tolkien. Maybe young men like saving the princess, and using swords to do so.

author=harmonic link=topic=906.msg12097#msg12097 date=1208298280
I think that when people assign "cliche" to something in a negative connotation, they actually mean "lame."

For instance, typical stuff RMers do to RM games that are lame, are considered cliche. It's all semantics.

I'd play an "A" game with 100% swords, magic, dragons, knights, elves, and saving the princess over a scrub game with "OMG NOT CLICHE"s any day. I don't like seeing "OMG NO ELVES" in things simply because elves are considered cliche. Well, if the elves are implimented well, what's the problem? Maybe elves/dwarves/orcs are cool. Maybe there's a reason so many people use them besides Tolkien. Maybe young men like saving the princess, and using swords to do so.

I thought it was awesome in Morrowind where the dwarves are an ancient secret race and you spend the whole game looking for them and then in an optional area you meet the last surviving dwarf and contrary to your expectations he is like 8 feet tall and morbidly obese and has robot spider legs and is dying of cancer.

author=harmonic link=topic=906.msg12097#msg12097 date=1208298280
Maybe young men like saving the princess, and using swords to do so.

Man that sounded phallic.

What you just described is the opposite, demon. Plot twists are also cliche. Everything is cliche. It's all about how you make the actual game.

author=brandonabley link=topic=906.msg12153#msg12153 date=1208357610
Dude you plus phallus is a recipe for what is quite possibly the best night out on the town ever.

:o



Anyway, can you imagine trying to make a game that purposely tried to avoid all typical RPG cliches? I mean shit! I think the effort would be wasted, and the end product would be a giant steaming pile of donkey poo. Wait, some games actually do have that design direction. Boy I'm out of touch :-X