Realism vs. Fantasy

[Arkham Noir]

Video games are one of life's great joys for their ability to let us venture outside of our own world and delve into fantastic new worlds and stories. They let us marvel at things that we can't do in real life and allow our imaginations to feed on spending time as a completly different person, in a completly different world. We can become warriors, sports stars, super spies, ninjas, monsters, and even plumbers with abnormal jumping abilities. We grow to love not just the escape they give us, but the charming and fantastic worlds the let us explore.

As time has passed, video games have changed and an influx of different games begun to take their place on the market; reality based games. These are games that no longer let our minds wander into fantasy, but take everything from the world around us and thrust us that much further into it all. Warzones now shift from the evening news to best-sellers. Gangwarfare and drugs now take their spot as plot devices. We can even go bowling in our living rooms. Game developers have shifted their focus from fantasy onto re-creating our daily lives and letting us play it with a controller.

Both types of games exist and thrive among us, but which do you , as a gamer, prefer: Realistic games or those driven by fantasy?

For me, it is all about fantasy. As I stated earlier, video games provide an escape. When I sit down to play video games, it is about being apart of a completly different world. It's about letting my imagination run wild and leaving my troubles behind for awhile. Some games (example James Bond) do blend realism with fantasy, but I don't enjoy running around shooting guns and blowing people up when I known it's happening on the other side of the world at the exact same moment. I hope that the day never comes where innovative and imaginative realities are replaced with more of what we experience in real life.

 

[Lee]

For me when I'm going retro it has to be fantasy, I mean you didn't really have "realistic" games until the mid 90s anyway. Like I mentioned in my cracked style thread, back then the graphics were so generic it could have been anywhere, Link's running around Hyrule. Where is Hyrule? You imagine the woods not far from your home, with you as the hero.

However now a days it needs to be a mix of the two, yup I wouldn't mind some totally out there games but my favourite ones are ones that look like they have some sort of realism but they're detached enough to not be real. For example take Tomb Raider, this is due a gritty reboot and all in all it may do well it may not, chances are they'll go for realism. However what people forget is that there are Dinosaurs in the game. See you have you the visuals of realism, but something detached from realism that makes you think ahhh yes I'm playing a game.

 

[lenguy]

Interesting, I think I strictly prefer Fantasy because it immerses you in a world unlike anything reality can conjure up, I love that sense of adventure and to explode and find out all the things this imaginary world has to offer. I'm able to get into a fantasy game much easier than something realistic. This is why I still love Nintendo, because they offer a lot of games like this.

I don't mind something realistic though, every now and then but I'm all about the fantasy and the immersion the genre offers, those are the best types of game.

 

[Arkham Noir]

However now a days it needs to be a mix of the two, yup I wouldn't mind some totally out there games but my favourite ones are ones that look like they have some sort of realism but they're detached enough to not be real. For example take Tomb Raider, this is due a gritty reboot and all in all it may do well it may not, chances are they'll go for realism. However what people forget is that there are Dinosaurs in the game. See you have you the visuals of realism, but something detached from realism that makes you think ahhh yes I'm playing a game.

Upon further review, I have to agree with you about this. As much as I love crazy games that are as far from our reality as possible, I do enjoy games that blend reality with fantasy. A couple of my favourite games of all time are theAssassin's Creed franchise and Batman :Arkham Asylum. Both of the games are realistic in how they are presented and the way their characters function , but the stories and settings are laced with things that are purely of the imagination. In a way, they almost provide a better way of stretching your imagination because it takes the world around you and adds fantasy to it opposed to making whole new situations in different places.

It makes the games more relatable, yet still grants room for creativity.