| Faction Discussion — Schism |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV |
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TrueMefista
Adventuring Hero
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posted September 06, 2025 06:07 PM |
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Quote:
Steampunk goes back at least as far as the 1880s (Jules Verne's The Steam House was published in 1880), while Magitech might be even older
Indeed, in fact, separation of fantasy and sci-fi was started by "serious" hard sci-fi crowd, and also Tolkien's books factor into beginning of fantastic-as-escapist. Before, sword and planet was the norm (John Carter was hugely popular), and nobody assumed technologies harm the magical in any way. And Forge would have been better received if this never changed.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted September 06, 2025 09:51 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
I mean, in general. Up to and including HoMM 4 HoMM is somewhat "cute". Even the Inferno. The Devils with their come-on gesture, the Pit Lords, the Imps - they are FUN. It's virtually fairy tale/Disney level.
Ashan changed it into something more "mature". Serious background story. Demons from the core of the world, invading. The Demons of Ashan are UGLY and brutal-looking. The Demons in Homm 3 are cute. Creatures don't really matter, the whole imagery got changed into seriously eek.
That's my general Ashan aesthetics complaint. The single creature art can be a bit better or not so great, hit and miss, personal tastes, but the general art style is something else, and the Ashan Infernov makes it a different faction (I actually had not much fun playing).
Ah, right, I can see what you mean. I think a part of it was due to the switch to 3D, but the Demons and pit lords going down onto all fours does make it more...bestial, I guess.
TrueMefista said:
Indeed, in fact, separation of fantasy and sci-fi was started by "serious" hard sci-fi crowd, and also Tolkien's books factor into beginning of fantastic-as-escapist. Before, sword and planet was the norm (John Carter was hugely popular), and nobody assumed technologies harm the magical in any way. And Forge would have been better received if this never changed.
Fantasy has always been about escapism. What Tolkien did was make fantasy serious and epic. Previous works, like Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and even Conan the Barbarian were all somewhat whimsical, with numerous stand-alone stories, while The Lord of the Rings had one story spread across three books, and the fate of the world hung in the balance. Also, I'd argue that the separation of science fiction and fantasy goes back to the start of science fiction as a genre. There's certainly nothing whimsical or fantastic in Frankenstein (except, in hindsight, the premise, but that's more a case of science moving on, given that the story was first penned in the 1810s).
No, I'd argue what killed Forge was its grounded elements. Guns, missiles and flamethrowers are all modern weapons, and it was trying to mix those into what had been, until then, a fantasy (not in reality perhaps, but certainly in appearance) game is what got people's backs up.
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