Dark and Silly

[Tanglebones]

The original Wasteland had this really quirky sense of humour pitched half way between dark and silly (or oscillating between the two, maybe). As examples: I remember buying "hobo dogs" and "blood sausages" from a vendor, which is funny, but also hella grim; I remember having sex with a three-legged prostitute (I also remember, as a young lad really seriously pondering the implications of a three legged prostitute), but the joke was on me! I got an STD (again, grim, and funny). And again, early on, I remember like, completely draining myself of ammo fighting these cutesy mutated bunnies that just wouldn't die. Or I remember getting pissed at the stupid kids throwing rocks at Highpool and just opening fire on them and murdering them all (hella grim), but then "Red Ryder" shows up and you can kill him for his BB gun (silly). A lot of the art in the original was pretty quirky too: portly thugs wearing LAPD hats, blood covered doctors, police men in diving helmets, weird mutated things carrying dollies (I always felt a little bad about killing them... because they were kinda pathetic). And the original combat descriptions were just an awesome thing to behold.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I think it'd be a mistake to over-do the "dark" aspects of the game without maintaining the off-the-wall silliness that was shot through the original (seriously, there's way too many dark and brooding games on the market these days and not nearly enough that are willing to see the lighter side of the brutal death of everything you know and love).

[Brother None]

Heh, dollies. Were those those spineless ghoul things? I mean, with that description...Kinda pathetic indeed.

Anyway, agree with all the above. This tone will be kind of hard to execute, but it's worth doing so.

[Tern]

I can't help but agree.
Keeping Wasteland's feel intact is as important as it staying a turn-based RPG in my mind.

[rb8888]

I agree with Tanglebones. The game should continue to be dark and silly. But I also think it can be even edgier now; considering that people who played the first game are older now.
Also, since this will be fan funded, do you even need to worry about the ESRB? I'd love to play a game that wasn't targeted to children or teenagers. For example, if you watch "The Game of Thrones" and read the series "A Song of Ice and Fire", which the TV series is based on, the TV series seems very tame.

[Gregz]

I agree with the OP 100%

[shole]

Amen.
One of my big disappointments with fallout3/nv was how they missed out on the humor completely.
It just wasn't there.
It felt like "making jokes".
I think it was a symptom of the perspective more than failing of the writers.
Taking the camera down under a certain point, everything becomes much more personal, and the detached dark cynical humor and comedic gore just doesn't work up close.
It's like a literal version of charlie chaplin's saying "life is tragedy in close-up, but comedy in long-shot".

I guess what i'm saying is; player viewpoint matters in how they perceive the writing, and it informs the mood.
Also, playing with only the mouse creates a more relaxed mood and the player is much more responsive to longer dialog or more complex puzzles.

[Quarex]

But even the silly moments were so enveloped in the atmosphere of the game that they did not seem out of place. The hideously deformed mutant ghouls with their baby dolls were honestly one of the most terrifying things in the game, as you mentioned--but I do not think anything should be noticeably silly--it should be primarily disturbing/pathetic (as in arousing pathos)/intriguing, even if it is inherently ridiculous to our modern society.

[SniperHF]

I'm open to most any atmosphere/mood so long as it is consistent or makes sense in the game world.

[Tanglebones]

But even the silly moments were so enveloped in the atmosphere of the game that they did not seem out of place. The hideously deformed mutant ghouls with their baby dolls were honestly one of the most terrifying things in the game, as you mentioned--but I do not think anything should be noticeably silly--it should be primarily disturbing/pathetic (as in arousing pathos)/intriguing, even if it is inherently ridiculous to our modern society.

I absolutely agree with this point. I think in another thread, you referred to it as "playing it straight" and that's absolutely essential to making this kind of humour work. It's funny to us players that, for example, Harry the Bunnymaster wants to wreck our shit because we murdered all his bunnies. It's not funny to Harry (I guess living with the bunnies is a valid way of life in Wasteland... hell, maybe he could communicate with them telepathically or something), and it's not funny to the PCs who have this super hard to kill maniac with an axe bearing down on them. And it *stops* being funny to the players, if the game is winking at you and saying, "Hey, look at how silly this situation is."

[sync-oz]

Well said Tanglebones, I also like a bit of wry dark humour which I'm free to interpret for myself - in (what I hope) is the primarily bleak vibe of the Wasteland!

Fallout 2 went overboard with this and I enjoyed it less than Fallout 1 because of it. It'd break the immersion with all the overt jokes and pop-culture references etc.

[UlrichVonBek]

Dark\atmospheric, gritty\edgy with a dark sense of humour aswell as at times over the top silliness.

[udm]

I remember having sex with a three-legged prostitute (I also remember, as a young lad really seriously pondering the implications of a three legged prostitute)

I actually have a vague impression of this one. Was in some motel or something. The encounter came as a surprise to me.

[Arne]

It's a tricky balance, for sure. In a wacky cartoon, everyone's alright in the next scene, and the whole setting feels like "pretend". There are one-time gags with no lasting consequences.

For example,
The player runs into a village which is starving. Giant broccoli is growing there for comical effect, and perhaps the game cracks a joke (breaking the fourth wall) about no one liking broccoli - they'd rather starve. It's never mentioned again. The player is left to wonder how realistic this scenario is, or if there's some puzzle later on involving the broccoli.

Compared to,
The player stumbles upon a village that, while not starving, still suffers from some kind of malnutrition. Aha, it appears that the only thing they know how to grow is giant broccoli! The writer can research what kind of effect eating only broccoli would have on a person, and provide a realistic portrayal. The player could walk around in the broccoli forest, and perhaps be sent on a quest to acquire some giant vegetable (seeds) to compliment the nutritional needs of the villagers. This way, the giant broccoli, while absurd, might still feel like it's a part of a living world and not just a gag. Perhaps parallels to the Irish potato famine could also be drawn. Broccoli trees could also appear elsewhere in the game, perhaps being used in some "get over the abyss" puzzle or whatever, further justifying their position as a citizen of the game world.

Thinking about it, giant broccoli is kind of post apocalyptic... looking almost like mushroom clouds. Perhaps there's a poster for a movie somewhere, saying "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Broccoli", showing an ominous towering broccoli, though this would almost break the fourth wall.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

I agree, and also, with a sometimes absurd game world it is possible to do things that aren't possible in a totally serious game, because people suspend their disbelief more. In a cartoon you can depict sex and drugs and child killing and slavery and people might not take it so personally as a moral quandary. In the game world, these things can be very serious and impactful of story and character, and for the player they can be a game without becoming like training people to be murderers and rapists because the atmosphere is surreal/silly.

[Tanglebones]

This way, the giant broccoli, while absurd, might still feel like it's a part of a living world and not just a gag.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with that comment. The humour has to spring from the world, as opposed to be just a gag for the sake of being a gag. I think the Monty Python bits in Fallout 2 are examples of getting this wrong.

I agree, and also, with a sometimes absurd game world it is possible to do things that aren't possible in a totally serious game, because people suspend their disbelief more. In a cartoon you can depict sex and drugs and child killing and slavery and people might not take it so personally as a moral quandary. In the game world, these things can be very serious and impactful of story and character, and for the player they can be a game without becoming like training people to be murderers and rapists because the atmosphere is surreal/silly.

I agree with you in that I think one of the reasons that humour is so important is that it provides a forum for us to examine and test the limits of our morality in a forum that's not harmful.

[Signal]

I agree the overall mood of the game should be "dark and silly." To sum up how this should be accomplished: It should feel like the movie Kill Bill* (1 and 2).

In Kill Bill there was a lot of dark and serious moments when the Bride (the main protagonist) was out for bloody vengeance because her unborn child had been supposedly killed, was nearly cut or beaten to a pulp, buried alive, or woke up to the fact that she had been raped repeatedly while in a coma. At the same time, though, there were silly moments to take the "edge" off the afore-mentioned serious moments. Such as the over-the-top gorey action sequences, where the losers of a sword fight who were still alive were picking up their own severed limbs and running off with them while innocent bystanders were slipping around on the blood all over the floor.

*No, I'm not saying Wasteland 2 should be Kill Bill in terms of storyline and presentation. I'm only talking about how it should feel in terms of "mood" and "maturity level".

[CookieEatingHuskarl]

As much as I like to have my enemies keel over, lying on the floor in a fetal position, desperately trying to put their guts back into their now-destroyed abdomen, crying out for all that is holy and their mother, I agree. Having a dark and silly theme sells the more mature themes of the medium more easily to the audience.