Blog:Musings about a potential Ways of Darkness video game, that will (probably) never be

The games that never were
Ways of Darkness started as a franchise in late 2009, with the creation of the Ways of Dakrness FRPG. It was cooked up by Kriszta and I, after the failure of the Doom FRPG. Ever since the very start, I had ambitions to create a video game adaptation from the very start, and to an extent, the 2011 Alternate World game, while not a direct adaptation of WoD, had a significant portion of the game set in Artograch. The game was released, but is extremely buggy, almost to the point of being unplayable - and sadly, it is the only released video game adaptation of Ways of Darkness to this day: it was followed exclusively by failed projects to this day, namely Emergence of Darkness, Ways of Darkness the 2012 game, Ways of Darkness the 2013 game and the even more abandoned 3D project (which was the main reason I actually began learning C++ and OpenGL in the first place). In late 2020, I even dabbled a little in modding Crusader Kings III. All of these failed projects were one-man projects, with the obvious exception of the voice-acting in the 2012 game.

Ever since the de facto death of the original FRPG in 2015 (and especially since its actual closure in 2020), Ways of Darkness has evolved from a "wannabe video game franchise" into a worldbuilding project, with video game plots and characters taking a backseat to the history. I personally don't mind that development. I love worldbuilding. I especially love making up fictional, constructed languages. I also love alternate history and speculative fiction as a whole. So, the transition away from being character/story-driven to being worldbuilding was not an unwelcome change for me. The world has expanded, what was once a skeleton of a generic fantasy world with a skeleton of an for an (F)RPG has been polished into something with more character. Kings that were previously only described as "husbands of the previous king's daughter" have been given backstories involving civil wars, realpolitik and interpersonal rivalries. The World of Artograch, my child, has become a living, breathing world inhabited by human beings with their own backstories, ambitions and agendas.

But suppose for a moment, that I, hypothetically, would like to.... not necessarily reverse this change and evolution (the shifting of focus to pure worldbuilding, that is), but to leverage what it has created, and create an artwork set in Artograch. A book, perhaps - the Jorge-Kshabdalim Saga has potential, and I had another plot in mind too. Or maybe a video game. A tabletop roleplaying game?

It's highly unlikely, that any of these will ever come to fruition. The two times I started writing a book, I lost interest. The tabletop roleplaying game and CK3 mod are on hiatus. And that's not even mentioning the aforementioned failed projects from 2012 and 2013. So all that I write in this article will be mostly empty musings, just intellectual meanderings of what might be, if I had the time, motivation, determination and money.

Just ideas
What would a Ways of Darkness video game look like?

Well, some people might say that it would be a JRPG, since that's what the 2011 Alternate World game was, and that's what the failed 2012 and 2013 projects were. But to them, I say: wrong. Not only do I not really like JRPGs all that much (though, Final Fantasy VI still holds a special place in my heart), but in both the 2012 and 2013 projects, I was doing everything in my power, to hack together something that isn't really a JRPG, by including various elements more characteristic of WRPGs, especially the SW:KOTOR, The Elder Scrolls and Baldur's Gate (e.g. customizeable main player character, ability to choose between good and evil, high degree of freedom, a day-night system, the player being a property-owner, striving towards creating a wide-open sandbox rather than a railroaded JRPG), with even a few roguelike elements (such as the main character being subject to hunger, thirst and sleep-deprivation). It's obviously, that while still working within the limitations of the engine - RPG Maker - I was trying to cobble together something that was anything but a JRPG.

Now that I have more or less vowed never to touch RPG Maker again - and recognize, that these are just random ramblings, not serious ambitions - I have more or less compiled a list of plausible video game genres for Ways of Darkness:
 * My ultimate dream: an action-RPG in the vein of the Elder Scrolls, but with more emphasis on party members like in Baldur's Gate and KOTOR, trying to strike a delicate balance between the sandboxing nature of ES and the narrative-driven nature of BG/KOTOR. Basically think of a first-person (your party-members completely controlled by AI), real-time and open-ended (no ending, finishing the main questline is not the end) version of KOTOR. Party-members would be more than just companions, and maybe the game would be designed in a way to make solo-ing a suicide in many cases.
 * HoMM/AoW meets Total War: Basically take the turn-based adventure/strategy map from Heroes of Might and Magic or Age of Wonders, and combine them with the real-time battles of Total War. Essentially Total War with more RPG elements, and I guess fantasy stuff, like magic?
 * Paradox: the CK3 mod, but as its own standalone game rather than a mod, which would allow it to have game mechanics for fantasy races, I guess, and support out of the box what I would otherwise have to painstakingly hack together in CK3.
 * A love letter to CoMM: A story-driven / narrative-driven, third-person action-adventure or action-RPG with a pre-set main character. A bit overdone, if you ask me.
 * A love letter to Heretic/Hexen: Almost the same as the previous idea, just in first-person, and without friendly NPCs, I guess.

Now, let's propose, that hypothetically, I was a competent enough programmer, to develop any of these on my own, to do all the programming. What then? Well, there is another issue...

Graphics be the heart of games
We all heard it before. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" or "Real beauty comes from within". It is considered immoral to judge people by their looks and video games by their graphics. Yet, in spite of this supposedly mainstream sentiment, unattractive people consistently face far more adversities than their attractive counterparts, people judge other people based on their looks all the time.

I won't make a judgement about that. But I will make a judgement about video games and graphics: pretending that graphics don't matter at all is nonsensical. Of course graphics matter. Yes, good graphics alone don't make a good game, and lousy graphics won't necessarily ruin an otherwise good game either, but, to a very large extent, a game's tone is set by its audiovisual presentation (which is to say, the combination of graphics, soundtrack/music and sound design/effects) : for a serious fantasy game that intends to take itself seriously, lousy Minecraft-style programmer-graphics simply won't do. But neither can I - or any hypothetical band of volunteers (paid or not) - hope to ever compete with AAA game studios in graphics.

So, if lousy Minecraft-style graphics won't do, but neither can we compete with AAA-style graphics, what can be done? Is there a third way, a way to reduce the graphical budget while still letting the game present itself in a serious matter? Turns out, there is: PS1-style graphics, maybe mixed in with some pixel art, like in the tabletop feat icons. Simply dial back the time, pretend that it's 1998 again, and go for retro-style low-poly, but still very much serious visuals. I don't know about you, but these graphics look nice enough to me, the game still looks very much serious, and these kinds of graphics look manageable to me, for a small group of volunteers - or even a single individual like myself - to create. Of course, this compromise also means giving up on the games ever having attractive characters, or any kind of eye candy or fanservice.

Or alternatively, we can just embrace the. Or maybe a bit of both? Then again, it depends on the genre: for a strategy game - Paradox-style or otherwise - graphics don't matter that much, as long as they are presentable and pleasing to look at. However, in an action or roleplaying game, where we will be seeing the faces of NPCs up close fairly often, graphics become far more important, and either need to be good (not possible), or sold as retro.

Why not though? A game made in the vein of The Elder Scrolls or KOTOR, while also being a love letter to the late 90s, with the funky PS1 graphics? Why not?