Summary
High fantasy is pretty much everywhere in video games: whether it’s knights in shining bikini plates, saving the world by sticking one to God, or playing with more magic than an arch-mage could shake a Wabbajack at, there is no end to games that deliver flashy, heroic stories about wacky wizards, bright-eyed princes, or working stiff necromancers. But some keen-eyed writers and game developers noticed that when everything is heroic or magical,nothingis heroic or magical.
Saving the world from elemental evils, snorting magic potions, and belching magic incantations is, of course, all well and good, but there’s nothing quite like stepping into a grounded world where magic is all but legend andacting the hero in a cynical worldreally is… heroic. Low fantasy video games, while they often take place in other worlds, remove commonplace magic and dime-a-dozen champions, giving players a chance to recapture the mysteries of the arcane and act in righteous fury when nobody else will.
In perfectly encapsulating the spirit of low fantasy,Battle Brothersis lessLord of the Ringsand more “Game of ThronesmeetsX-COM.” There are magic and impossible creatures, to be sure, but where they stick their heads out, they tend to be rent in two. Mundanity (in a good way) is hammered home in the mercenary management side of the game, which forces the player to decide whether they want to make it in the big leagues or keep their brothers well-armed and alive.
Battle Brotherscan be a grueling experience from the get-go, but the steep learning curve perfectly complements the game’s themes. A late-game necromantic invasion will remind players that they’re still in a fighting fantasy: if they can survive in the unforgiving business ofprofessional, Medieval-era warfarefor that long.
How often do gamers think about the Roman Empire? Going off the number of games that take place in that era, probably quite a bit. But very few of them have managed to capture the civil barbarism that often took place on a day-to-day basis during that age (in addition to all the law creation that underpins much of modern society).Age of Decadencedoes an incredible job of getting that across.
But low fantasy doesn’t just mean bloodshed or bruises.Orationists and other silver-tongued aficionadoswill findAge of Decadenceperfectly accommodating to their choice of playstyles, just as lore heads can sometimes find their niche in fantasy games by playing the mage archetype. However, enchantments are literally just words of wisdom, and magical artifacts may lose their luster under closer inspection, but that is for aspiring scholars to discover themselves.
Besides a few notable examples (Arcaenum,Guild Wars 2), fantasy worlds tend to be shy about edging into Industrial Revolution tech. While there might be advanced smithing techniques or even gunpowder, few are confident about introducing technology like tanks or planes into a world with magic, perhaps because there would be too many questions, such as “Why not just use a wizard’s fireball instead of guns?”
Valkyria Chroniclesis a great example of taking a fantasy timeline forward. Its low-magic setting gives the story enough leeway to veer into more personal stories (like the backstories ofall the soldiers who may or may not tragically perishbecause of one’s decisions on the battlefield), and the rare supernatural element (the Valkyria) feels all the more (paradoxically) magical. As a bonus, since the subject is so serious, the fantasy world allows the player to immerse themselves perhaps more than a historical recreation as it takes away the “spoilers” of real-world events.
One of the best features of a low fantasy setting is the depth of immersion maintained by a rigid adherence to fantasy realism. The innkeeper will act exactly as a responsible business owner would. Bandit-vanquishing heroes are few and far between (or dead), and those deep, dark woods are unknown for good reason.Roadwardenmakes every success truly count and every thoughtless action felt through its expertly delivered dialogue and narration.
Stepping foot in the nearby mercenary fortress inRoadwardenturns what would be a starting area of slaughter in other games into a life-or-death decision. Despite having limited graphics (as thegameplay is primarily delivered in text), each area feels historied, lived in, and real, and instances of magic being so rare (and of which can be performed by the PC), feel refreshingly sacred, occult, and strange.
A high fantasy setting probably wouldn’t have fit for theThiefseries, in which the player takes on the lowly role of (unsurprisingly to none) a thief. There are, of course, mages (and plenty of fancy enchanted items to steal), but they are hardly seen roaming around in random caves or flying across the sky. The world of Thief is a cynical and dark one (literally and figuratively).
As with most, if not all, low fantasy, humans run the show. The gods are real inThief, but even their struggles are less “fate of the world” and more stand-ins for issues surrounding a slowly industrializing society: the chaos of nature versus the cold order of machines and cities of metal and stone.
One of the tell-tale marks of a good low fantasy setting is its emphasis on the grounded, mundane aspects of a setting. That isn’t to say boring, as political intrigue, drama, and romance all factor into stories inThe Witcher. While the introduction of the dimension-hopping Aen Elle does raise the stakes nearer to high fantasy inThe Witcher 3, the series shows otherwise remarkable constraints in bolting the magic of the world down to Earth.
In fact, it makes sense that the human population of “the Continent” should seem low fantasy, appropriate considering they are (in some interpretations of the lore) the descendants of humans from our Earth from medieval timeswho found themselves Isekai’d to another worldduring a long-forgotten conjunction of the spheres, which explains why the world has such a variety of creatures and sentient species.
The universe ofDisco Elysiumis so low fantasy that it may even be considered a spoiler to name it fantasy at all if it weren’t for all the fictional countries and historical events. To the geographically and politically ignorant, it could simply be a weird detective RPG that takes place in the 1970s.
However, phenomena such as The Pale point to a far more “loose” set of physical laws, even if the laws of society and economics remain relatively intact and close to our own.
