(Speaking of national trends, I was surprised to run across a russian superhero movie a couple of years ago. What other non-Hollywood countries make superhero movies?)
(Speaking of national trends, I was surprised to run across a russian superhero movie a couple of years ago. What other non-Hollywood countries make superhero movies?)
In many western computer RPGs like Bethesda or Bioware games they have big decisions with assigned "good" and "evil" choices, and the game counts how many times you have choosen each and gives you good or bad ending.
And it's even visible at the level of single quests - it's a trope that when you save someone in a game and (s)he offers you a prize you should decline and you'll almost guaranteed to get a better prize.
Compared to that Polish games (for example the Witcher series, but also This War of Mine and to a lesser degree Dying Light and Call of Juarez) have no "good" and "evil" decisions - instead you have decisions where each option is good for some reason and bad for another reason. And often there's a choice that ends bad either way (this is especially the Witcher trademark - there's like 100 different quests where you have to choose between 2 parties that are in conflict, both have reasons for their position, and both hate each other and no matter what you chose someone will suffer).
I find this much more realistic than the American good-vs-evil default.
I think it's mostly caused by recent history where Poland was saved from Nazi occupation by Soviet occupation and both murdered thousands of people - we are very aware culturally that being the enemy of one evil doesn't mean you're good. The whole Witcher franchise is exploration of lesser evil and price of neutrality.
Note that D&D got this from Michael Moorcock [1], who is a British sword and sorcery author, and in whose works being Chaotic or Lawful is much less clear-cut, morally speaking. So I m not sure that D&D is a good example of "American thinking".
Traditional western fantasy is all about Good vs Evil and Tolkien was technically British as well.
Compare that to the Witcher book series where the evil slavery empire fights the evil racist kingdoms who are racist towards elves (who have their own racist empire on another plane where they genocided humans). And the only good guy is a hired mutant hunter who strives to be neutral (and through the books learns that he can't).
I agree with you Tolkien is indeed a good exponent of the Good vs Evil mentality.
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[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161013045857/http://www.revolu...
I've also read a few books about Elric and they felt a lot like Conan which I guess is another example of non Good-vs-Evil fantasy in English, so that's 2.
In a pretty good subversion of the hero's journey, Elric starts a powerful ruler and wizard (though a sickly, drug-addicted one), and doesn't set off on adventures to gain power. And his patron gods are the gods of Chaos, not the gods of Law. Elric is an anti-hero in contrast to Tolkien's more clear-cut heroes.
Even the game Dungeons & Dragons explores the implications of having interesting True Neutral or morally gray characters, or situations where being classically "good" is not possible or desirable.
As for D&D the alignment mechanic feels very artificial and is often houseruled out altogether here. Fun fact - in Poland the most popular ttrpg was (and probably still is) Warhammer FRPG, not D&D. And it's considerably more shades of gray and pessimistic than D&D :) D&D was often considered backward and "for kids" compared to the "real" RPGs, it changes a little with 5e because of Critical Role and all the hype.
But that success of Warhammer was mostly caused by being the first AAA quality RPG to be published in Poland and making a big marketing campaign in 90s, so that's not an argument for or against the cultural differences.
Warhammer is definitely more shades of gray than D&D, but I think D&D has some of that too, especially with its less common (and less heroic) settings such as Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.
PS: in case you're a Pole, how did you like Netflix's Witcher? Years ago I read the English translation of The Last Wish and it felt very fresh to me -- I really liked that the monsters are non-standard, it resembled Jack Vance's fiction in that way -- but stopped short of the novels, because what I've been told about them didn't impress me. I really, really liked the short stories though.
But it's still much better than Polish movie about Witcher from 2000. It was the biggest disappointment of my youth :)
Other then that, it matches.
Yep. And in dishonored, the bad ending is talked about as "punishment" or consequences for the player.
You simply cant make good choices ethically and get bad ending.
India of course.
I can think of a smattering of Japanese ones like Ogon Bat, there's the Western European Uderzo/Goscinny "heroes" of Asterix and Lucky Luke, and Hong Kong's martial-arts based superheroes steeped in Wuxia tradition.
(And of course Bollywood and Mainland China have shamelessly ripped off Marvel/DC heroes and plots.)