Tolkien "rehashes" are fine by me. I tried a few fantasy novels after Tolkien and they were all very poor in comparison. There's nothing wrong with elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls etc. if you had a better imagination you would never get tired of these so-called "fantasy cliches", because they have a basis in mythology, which itself has a basis in profound ancient wisdom. Even Planescape : Torment, my second favourite game of all time, is overrated on here. Baldur's Gate is the better game, even if it is not (explicitly) as "deep". But many people seem to prefer, for instance, so-called Steampunk over traditional fantasy. I am not one of them. There is nothing "original" under the sun. The races in the Elder Scrolls games for instance - LOL !

so which computer rpg's you would think are realistic then? there arent too many which take their settings very seriously in -any- way in my opinion.

I think Bioware is about the only company in past many years that has atleast tried to breath some life into their worlds - but none of their games are exactly pnp level in settings creation either.

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The fact is that your average game company will sell you more or less "the usual, safe stuff". Doing something unusual is risky and any big company will do their utmost to avoid risks.
Thus:
-dragons? yes (well you kill them anyways)
-elves? yes
-dwarfs? yes
-[url=duck people?]http://media.trollandtoad.com/products/pictures/162795.jpg[/url] NO!!!

Games are simply easier to get into when you see stereotypes and familiar stuff in them. You can put anyone into your average tolkien-like game world and they will have their in no time. However if you put those same people into "Ikuisuuden laakso" (Valley of eternity) they will totally in the twilight zone since the first second - and its rare company that would willingly take that risk.

Anyways everyone can think how often they have walked past "weird" and "unusual" indie games after a half second glance - but bought semirandom generic fantasygames instead because you have some inkling its about dungeons and dragons - and thus might be worth the risk.

In my opinion any possible setting combination can be made to work in a way fitting the theme. Its just that most computer(!!!) game developers are comfortable with the usual stuff and dont bother to go in too much detail with them. There are plenty of good pnp rpgs to go around and its weird that game companies are not really taking advantage of their ready and detailed worlds.

If i was arab oil sheik id be buying licence to Heimot RPG and kick Mass Effects ass in no time ;)

More practicality than anything.

You'd have to design and animate completely different character models for nonhumanoid races like centaurs with different skeletal structures, design completely different clothing/equipment for them etc..

Arma. Imagine unceremoniously dumping fantasy creatures in a game like Arma. It just wouldn't fit.

The biggest problem that I will admit though, is that dwarves, elves and the like are inherently seen as creatures of Fantasy/Medieval works. You see an elf and what is your first thought? Bows, magic, one with the nature and perhaps, arrogant. Dwarves? Short, stout, axes and hammers, rude and speaking in a kinda Scottish accent. Even if Shadowrun, Warhammer 40k and World of Darkness have existed for years, they are not particularly mainstream products. Hell, nowadays, even D&D seems to have gone the road of obscurity. Thus, even if someone takes the time to properly establish lore and the like, the result of a modern fantasy world might still be condemned to a niche audience.

Creating a game without familiar elements is indeed risky, but so is overrelying on stereotypes without properly understanding them.

Apocalypse Meow

you lack imagination i am afraid :)

Also the magic word there is you dont "dump" anything there. You rarely achieve anything good by "dumping" anything anywhere.

edit: seriously one reason that games might be getting stagnant is also that the game developers arent probably paying enough attention to other forms of culture and entertainment.

if you just play cod, counterstrike, wow and Starcraft - what can you expect?

I disagree. There's more to imagination than "proof" that one is better than other because it has connections to real-life stories.

Also, too much feudalism in traditional fantasy. The focus on patriotism and monarchy is so annoying.

I don't lack anything, thank you very much. The consumer will see the cover of this manga and instantly dismiss it, not even giving it a chance. (Hell, most people will instantly dismiss manga and comics.) Yes, you can combine anything. Hell, you could combine World War I and Call of Cthulhu to create a game. A game like Wasted Land, for example. How about mouses with Nazis? Done already with Maus. Will it, however, make a phenomenon? Will others want to copy it? If the answer is no, then it is doomed to niche status.

Then its the loss of consumer. The way it usually goes really. You really cant complain about how you want something new, nice and fresh - and then unceremoniously walk past it the second you notice it.

In by brain this does not make any sense, but whatever.

So back to COD and Arma then i suppose. Or dwarfs and elves.

Arma is actually a niche example. Yes, it has made a lot of sequels, but it does require a specific mind to enter the series. Same case with a series like Megami Tensei. It might have survived for so long, but the sales of a single game have never really exceeded 2 millions. (even with rereleases) Not everything NEEDS to be mainstream or consist of a million dollar budget. The general complaint is that even the Indies tend to get drawn to the Tolkienesque fantasy a bit too much.

"indies" isnt really game genre. I think the term is used way too broadly these days.

The weirdest games are almost always indies, but come from many different genres which have little do to with each other.

And personally i think you dilute the quality of game when you aim for mainstream. Mainstream means alot of streamlining and that means rounding "possibly" sharpedges, making the game more "accessible" so to speak.

Getting rid of all weird races and sticking to classic stereotypes is one form of streamlining.

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As side note i find it funny how some wow players can be so adamant about their orcs, taurens and shiny eyed elves in bikinis - but when you throw panda at them they go totally bonkers :)

I disagree x2, and Nirth has it spot-on. There's WAY more to mythology than fantasy cliches. If you were just mining ancient wis-- no way, I can't type it, ancient superstitions, you'd get enough material for millions of original stories. To put things in perspective, given that Pokemon tend to be based on mythological creatures, just this list and a few hours of dedicated googling gives you 4000+ stories your audience hasn't probably heard before.

Not that there's anything inherently laudable in borrowing from RL mythology; the point is, if you set out to do it for whatever reason, there's no excuse for writing tripe. Even European folklore, if [white] people want to "stay within their cultural paradigm" and avoid accusations of cultural appropriation, for the most part hasn't been touched by fantasy, as writers write "what they know" and what they know is new works. People's concept of what makes a "believable" and "realistic" fantasy world is defined by the stuff they have read/watched/played, and it sells, and gets eaten and crapped out by a new generation of writers. And that's why we get perpetual Epic Pooh with shinier graphics.

Indeed, it isn't a genre. At least not in the same way as Action, Adventure, RPG, etc. I'm referring to the lower manpower, as well as the lower budget available than other big-name games.

I find nothing really wrong with something being mainstream. I am just cautious when they try to take a series that is not mainstream and try to force it to become one. And streamlining for me is, mostly, simplifying the gameplay, not removing character creation choices. (Dragon Age 2, I'm looking at you)

Isn't it funny that Warcraft 3 made minotaur characters popular? And isn't it even more funny that a lot of people thought that Blizzard copied Kung Fu Panda?

I actually prefer my fantasy with no, or very few races other than humans. Stuff like A Song of Ice and Fire or Gothic for example.
I can get over stuff like elves, dwarves and orcs, but I prefer not to have them. But the weirder the races get, the more immersion breaking I think the setting gets.

What I really hate are humanoid animal races like those stupid cats and lizards in The Elder Scrolls. Ugh, they just don't make any sense.

Personally i like both extremes. Same with low/no magic vs high magic.

Perfect popular examples being "A Song of Ice and Fire" and "Malazan book of the Fallen" - both are epic, but the worlds are very, very different. Still both have settings that "make sense" when you get into them and thats enough for me.

I never heard of "Malazan Book of the Fallen", what's that about?
I think that Andrzej Sapkowski did a really good job in creating a High Fantasy universe, because he thought of a pretty good way to explain all the weird creatures in his setting.

But with stuff like lizard and cat people where the females have tits, I just always ask myself how in the hell a species like that possibly could have evolved.
It's easy for me to think that elves, dwarves, orcs and humans all had a common ancestor, but why the hell have cat people evolved in exactly the same way (same height, same body structure, hands etc.) as humanoid races? That's just bullshit, in my opinion.