"Dark" is a Loose Term These Days...

[Kahunaburger]

Zork took a pretty dark turn right before the grue ate me.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Generally dark is something that is taboo in entertainment.

On screen:

Rape
Child Murder
Extreme Torture (cutting off genitals, ripping out eyes, removal of organs, etc)

I suppose if they wanted to win the grand prize of dark they'd have to combine all 3, but it would most likely get banned in all countries of the world.

Everything "dark" right now is so beyond cliche its just laughable.

 

[Sixcess]

All too often 'dark' just means overdone 'gritty' pointless violence and nihilism. 9 times out of 10 it comes across as posturing aimed at moody teenagers, and I suppose I did enjoy it more when I was a moody teenager.

 

[Patathatapon]

Though, pretty much every word is abused at a certain point, either by hyperbole or misuse.

Much like the word "gay" (come on people it meant happy before!)

I do my best to discourage its use to mean "homosexual".

On that note you are correct. Soon enough we probably wont even be able to say "like" as in "I like you".

 

[DoPo]

Diablo 1 ends with the hero killing diablo and saving the day.

And then the hero stabs himself in the head with Diablo's soulstone and sets off in the world trying to find a way to vanquish him, fighting for his soul and mind every step of the way against the essence of the monster. Not that cheery. Especially since they fail and become corrupted by Diablo anyway.

 

[RJ 17]

Might just be my imagination, but can anyone here name a recently released, self described "dark" game that lived up to that description? Because near as I can tell modern publishers haven't amended their definition of what constitutes a "dark" or "mature" game since the hay days of Mortal Kombat (dark = blood). Not even gore. Just blood. For a game to be gory you'd have to be able to get a clear look at the damage that's being done and you'd need the bodies of your enemies to react realistically. But that's not the case- the look of an injured character hasn't changed much in the last decade. (IE: a mannequin with a pressurized ketchup hose taped to it.)

Here's a perfect example- Dragon Age: Origins

So by any estimation, this was a standard fantasy game. Beat for beat. A hero rises from obscurity, unites the land, slays a mighty dragon, roll credits. And yet every pitch I heard before it's release described it as "dark". What makes it so "dark"? Hell if I know, but I do know I found myself coated in blood for about 45 seconds after every fight.

And then just recently I had the pleasure of seeing Diablo 3's ending in its entirety. And... it ends on a high note. A Diablo game. That ends on a high note. Diablo (y'know, THAT Diablo) was not supposed to be about triumphing over evil. Diablo is supposed to be about trying your damndest to beat evil and losing anyway.

Though I'm sure it's already been pointed out, I'd like to call attention to the fact that blood =/= "dark". "Dark" is about story, tone, and theme, not purely aesthetics.

DA: O was "dark" because of the story: an evil horde rising up and laying waste to the land, burning down villages, shattering families, and consuming the very life from the land. It was "dark" because you spend a month wandering in long abandoned tunnels in the bowels of the earth, uncovering new horrors with each new chamber you uncover, ultimately finding the grotesque blob Brood Mother and learning that she got that way by eating other infected dwarves. It's "dark" because of the coup that occurs at the mage tower.

The reason ME 2 is considered "dark" is because it opens up with the Normandy getting destroy, Shepard getting killed, and then waking up in the hands of an organization known to be a bunch of extremist terrorists. While good helpings of blood can be included into the "dark" motif, it certainly doesn't work that blood automatically defines something as being dark.

 

[Vegosiux]

Bastion did it well.

Oh, cartoony graphics you say? Must be a Hello Kitty cutesy kid stuff, right? Oh, how wrong you'd be.

 

[hermes]

These days? No... Dark has been a buzzword since the late 80s (early 90s), when they realize Batman didn't have to be campy, and The Dark Knight sold incredibly well. It saw the popularity of heroes like Punisher, Dredd and Cable, characters that were about shooting first, asking questions third.

For comic books, cladly dressed women with big guns and sex appeal is what was considered "dark and edgy", we simply inherit the marketing.

 

[spartandude]

how about the Witcher 2?

 

[Thetwistedendgame]

If you think darkness is taken too lightly these days, turn the brightness down.

 

[Emiscary]

Its still not dark, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Thats the thing with DA, ME and a lot of other games. The story line is not what makes your game dark, its the presentation, and all Bioware games fall short of that mark by a very long stretch.

This, all over and all the time. The presence or absence of a plot element that could be spun as "dark" doesn't make a game such.

Yes, DA had nasty monsters that lived underground. Yes, they feast on flesh and have a really squicked out method of reproduction. But uh... all that shit? All the really nasty stuff? It all happens off screen or in backstory- it's never anything that you (the player) have anything to do with. So the end result is a series of Disney villains whose nasty attributes are informed exclusively by the dev's word of mouth.

And sure, ME had (seemingly) weighty decisions with long reaching consequences. But seeing as how every single installment in the franchise is an exercise in invalidating those decisions with omissions and retcons- the end result is a series of hollow checkboxes.

 

[Storm Dragon]

I think Mass effect 3 is very dark,

MUCH more than the other two (ME2 was more "gritty" while ME1 was bright and campy)

sure on the surface its still somwhat bright and actiony, its not dark visually and theres not as much graphic violence as other games..but then things really get going the enitre game is jsut one punch to the gut after another..oh sure there are victorys, but then become few and far between

the sheer scale of what you up against becomes more aparent..thse charachters you met/saw or listened too? yeah they probably died, if anyone has anyone they care about out there chances are they could be dead too...everyone dying, the galaxy is burning

dragon age isnt dark...its world just has the usual complexities and shades of grey as any other well thourght out world...

one thing that annoys me (often in sci fi) is you get some world..like Dead space or whatever..and they feel the need to make the ENITRE world some horrible ship heap to live in....I think a world needs ot be more balanced to be belevable

Its still not dark, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Thats the thing with DA, ME and a lot of other games. The story line is not what makes your game dark, its the presentation, and all Bioware games fall short of that mark by a very long stretch.

2 examples - The Witcher and Game of Thrones. (Or A Song of Ice And Fire, if you would prefer that name. Both the TV series and the books will do for this.) Read their story lines on Wikipedia and it would seem like a standard fantasy tale, like one found in Dragon Age. In the case of The Witcher, elves are a tortured minority, and in the case of Game of Thrones, a bunch of people get their head chopped off, just like in most other books and films playing in medieval-ish times. And yet both AOK and GOT are dark brooding tales, while Dragon Age for example is nothing like that.

Then you play Mass Effect and you look at the deaths of major and minor characters, and its a rather different tale. Characters in Mass Effect either die off screen or slowly drift away, in a way more reminiscent of a butcher falling asleep at his job than an actual person kicking the bucket. Compare that to GOT and - well, I wont spoil anything, but I just watched the newest episode and my oh my... Its brutal.

I haven't been able to keep up with the series since I don't have HBO, but I know that they're still on the second book. The darkest is still yet to come, and anyone who has read the books knows what I'm talking about. Calling the event by its name could be enough for someone to figure it out before getting there, so to avoid spoilers, I'll just say this: When "The Rains of Castamere" starts playing, the deepest darkness is close at hand.

 

[ABLb0y]

Kane & Lynch: Dog Days is actually pretty damned dark. I mean, two desperate, morally ambiguous men trapped in a city in which the most powerful man would stop at nothing to have their heads on a silver platter.

The chapter that most strikes me as dark is one in which after rushing across half the city to Lynch's apartment, they find it trashed and his girlfriend missing.

You then spend the next half an hour trying to find her, knowing she's either dead or going to die.