Quote:Original post by sirGustav
There are atleast two orc's that I can think of. The warcraft orc and the tolkien orc. They are IMHO totally different. The tolkien orc is more like an beast than a human, and the warcraft one is pretty stupid and violent(and not to mention green). In LOTR the orc's obey the evil sauron and in warcraft the orcs are a part of different clans.
Who originally obeyed the evil demons and their evil human masters as I remember. What's the big difference? [wink]
The WC orcs are just part of a longer storyline.
In Tolkien they didn't really have much time to show their personality, did they? It was just "hobbit finds ring, goes home, other hobits finds ring and everyone gets into a big battle, while he drops the ring into a volcano".
I mean, nothing really happened to the orcs as a race during that storyline.
Warcraft is practically all about how the orcs evolve and adapt.
But getting back to your point, yes, there are quite a few differences. So why the %¤"! did they have to call them orcs and instantly inherit those 40 years of clichés? Why did they have to go "We actually have enough ideas here to make soemthing interesting. But no, I think we'll just toss it into a corner and nick stuff from good ole Tolkien instead"? The thing is that even when they're portrayed differently (I actually think the WC orcs are cool, precisely because they're a bit unusual, and don't just steal everything mindlessly from other Fantasy works)
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About the goblins I cant't recall many games that contain them(although I don't play alot of fantasy games). Slaying goblins in rune was fun though.
Added later: I rcalled that goblins were in both tolkien and in warcraft. Again they differenced alot from each other(as the orcs did).
I can't recall many games with dwarfes. They were (almost) extinct in morrowind and the ones in rune were pretty boring. However having dwarfes (or similar creatures) in a fantasy game allows you to add diversity to a level with metal and alot of mashines.
So your idea of "diversity" is "let's steal some more ideas from the same source we got the rest of the game from". Funny, my idea of diversity would be something to do with thinking up different stuff, or at least, nicking ideas from different sources.
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For the 3d (total) remake I plan to keep the enemies, simply because: I need a ranged unit(elves), a close combat unit(orc), heavy close combat unit(dwarf) and some random easy slayable enemies(goblins).
See, that's where it becomes a horrible overused cliche.
Getting back to your Warcraft example, Blizzard decided to use orcs because "Hey, they're cool, and we've got some ideas for making them stand out", and the same goes for the other races really (Dwarves and gnomes and goblins aren't usually as hi-tech as they are in WC, and (almost) tossing out elves in favor of night elves is an interesting twist too).
But picking those races simply because of their most overused, clichéd properties is exactly the reason most fantasy settings suck so badly.
There's a big difference between "I need a cliche to fill out this gameplay hole", and "I have enough ideas to make something interesting, but for convenience, I'll adapt a standard race/name".
I can live with the standard races if they're at least implemented in the same way as Tolkien (or Blizzard) did. He didn't go "Hmm, I need someone to shoot arrows at people and argue with the dwarf", and then go to look such a race up in his books.
Instead, he started with the idea of fairytale elves, and then used his imagination to come up with an idea of how such a culture could work in his world. Blizzard's saving grace is that they did basically the same thing. They (probably) read LoTR, and then sat down and tried to imagine how orcs would work in the universe they were designing.
Quote:The thing is I really don't think you are against EGOD. I think you are against the standard EGOD. Each EGOD in every game are the same. Rouhly the same appearance, stats, sounds and skills over and over again.
Which is why you're implementing them in their most cliche'd forms in your game? [wink]
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I don't think a game will be better if we remove EGOD. If you want you can call the orcs Klingons and the dwarfs Malons(sp?) if that makes you feel better. (The elves roughly translates to vulcans and magicians translates to Q)
I guess that's another part of it. Once you start "translating" those races, you're going too far. That means you're reducing them from being a distinct (if overused) race, to being a set of skills and traits that can be applied to anyone anywhere.
"Elf" shouldn't equal "archer". Elf should be the name of a race that tends to appears a lot in fantasy games, and has a few, well, racial distinctions (looks pretty much like humans, but has pointy ears and are more graceful, and are connected to trees somehow). That describes a race (however vaguely), while "archer" just describes what the player wants to use them for.
Same goes for orcs. Making an orc a "melee unit" means it's not a race, it's a skill. I don't mind orcs in the sense of "big brutish and aggressive green people", because again, that means they're a distinct race/culture.