[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Hey now, one quest starts when you encounter a village populated by pigs. 🐖 Granted, it too is not the happiest one, but still. Maybe graphic quests are more memorable because they are so graphic, and while there are plenty of others, they do not make quite a gig of an impression?

Lovecraft 😉. And Poe. Or do you mean something even bleaker?

To be honest, with Terry, I find it that he writes better alone. He has several books that he coauthored with others, Good Omens among them, but when he has total creative control, I think stories turn out better.

[ZaidH]

@CandelaSynth You know a book is good when it's compared to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 😄 I know a bit about Spanish football culture, but not the broader Spanish culture, so this book might be a great introduction. It's thrilling to discover new promising authors 😁

@DoctorEldritch Oh yeah, the pig village quest 😂 But yeah now that I think about it, there were definitely some fun and hopeful quests in the game, especially in Blood and Wine.

Lovecraft is on a different level of hopelessness 😂😂😂 Dude was unhinged!

Too many cooks in the kitchen can probably dilute the vision eh 😅

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH That makes sense, Blood and Wine was the "final" DLC, and one of its quests was meant to "wrap up" the whole story. Stands to reason that they would want to end it on a higher, more positive note.

Depends. Lovecraft is hopeless on a different level, but at the core of his stories is the premise that true horror and hopelessness are by definition incomprehensible to the human mind. From that angle, it may be more hopeful than, for example, Witcher books because their evil and hopelessness could mostly be traced to someone being responsible, and able to be understood, at least on a motivation level. Except maybe for White Frost, but that seems to be a more or less natural phenomenon.

Poland gave us more authors that created such bleak hopeless worlds where it is often people themselves are responsible for their misfortunes. If you like Witcher, there is a series about The Inquisitor by Jacek Piekara, they are in some ways alike, though The Inquisitor, as can be guessed from the name, may have more religious undertones in the story. But it is a rather grimdark book, and a different kind from Lovecraft.

And same as Witcher, the series got a game, but it got mixed reviews on Steam...

I think it is more that Terry had a vision about where and how he wanted to develop his universe and did not want anyone meddling in it. And this legacy is being preserved now by his daughter, she does not let anyone tamper with it. She even disavowed whatever that The Watch series was.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch I agree 100%. That makes me wonder, did Blood and Wine have a "bad ending"? My memory only seems to recall the good ones 😅

You bring up a great point about the grounded story. The people suffering in the world of Witcher experience a full spectrum of human emotions, while those caught in the grip of cosmic beings are often beyond that framework.

The Inquisitor sounds really intriguing! I’ll check it out at some point if I can find a decent translation 😄 It's sad that the uber talented Polish artists like Zdzisław Beksiński, and authors like Jacek Piekara, don't get that much exposure in the mainstream media.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Not a bad ending in the whole DLC per se, but if you make all the wrong choices in the base game, then Geralt himself dies in that ending. But in DLC Dandelion will visit him in Corvo Bianco instead of romantic interests or Ciri. But also, if you make a bad ending in the main DLC storyline, the whole region falls into civil unrest.

You can experience a full spectrum of human emotions with cosmic beings too, perhaps, but you can't really grasp their motivations. Many Lovecraftian beings do not really care about humans as such, it is just that their very presence has a maddening effect. So there are few complex plans or motivations in those stories. Nor do there have to be, they're interesting for different reasons, watching people trying to grasp the unfathomable is in itself a spectacle of a different kind.

Indeed, they usually need some sort of push, as the game did for Witcher. But I'd say it is not only a Polish thing. There are many authors out there with good stories who are not well known. It just that media exposure is a finite resource, not enough to go around.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch Ooof, imagine spending all that time on the base game + DLCs, only to end up with one of those endings 😶

That’s a great read on Lovecraft's creations!

With AI tech maturing, I'd love to get book recommendations finely tuned to my tastes from international authors without any biases 😅

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Some people deliberately wanted to roleplay to the worst ending possible. I do not do that when I need to RPG an existing character, I try to play as he would in books, but in original stories I sometimes do 2 playthroughs: Good and Evil.

Besides, the books ended much darker than how the game began, devs had to "cancel" some events and character deaths. So maybe some people saw the option for the worst ending as "bringing the story full circle and paying homage to the original book series ending".

I am not sure how much longer we need to wait for AI to be able to give us quality recommendations. What I am doing is finding book reviewers whose tastes more or less align with mine and then seeing what they read and say. Does not always work out, and true, there are many books left still that they do not know about, but realistically speaking, I would not be able to read all the books I would enjoy in one lifetime even if I was given a perfect list tailored to myself, there's just so many stories. From that angle, my current system may be good enough, I am hoping.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch I’ve been conditioned to think evil playthroughs always lead to bad endings 😭 Have you come across any games where the evil path is actually more fun and rewarding?

And for book reviewers, do you usually find them on sites like Goodreads, or do you search on YouTube, Instagram, etc?

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH I'd say it may be personal, but in some cases, the division comes to common vs. individual good. Take Jade Empire, for example, one of BioWare's earlier titles. In their tradition, it gives you two paths: Open Palm (good) and Closed Fist (evil). If you take the path or rightlessness, then the world could be somewhat better off in the end, but it would mean you would do some quests without reward and generally be a goody-two-shoes doing whatever people ask of you. If you take the evil stance, however, your reward will be greater as you are selfish, and in the end, there can be an ending where you become a ruler of all, something that a good character would not do. So here it is about personal gain vs the greater good system.

But it can also come to romanticising evil somewhat. Like in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Empire, you can either be a Jedi, or become a Sith, and in turn, lure others to the Dark Side. Many will enjoy being a Jedi, of course, but in Star Wars Siths have charisma too, and from a roleplay perspective it is an interesting experience to try on that role, and is rewarding in that regard.

Actually, I read them in a paperback journal.

[ZaidH]

@DoctorEldritch Ok, now that does sound fun as hell! Kind of like how Fable’s endings work. I’d take this any day over the MC and their companion getting thrown into the shadow realm the moment they do something evil (looking at you another Bioware series, Mass Effect 😶).

Ooo, I remember MF! I checked out the magazine’s website and found an article about an Indian novella. Now that seems like a journal that respects international authors. Time to fire up Google Translate and explore this site some more!