Grimdark is about both bleakness and overall agency. In Warhammer for instance, people save the day all the damn time. The 'good guys' beat back the baddies, a planet is safe for a few centuries, ect,
Allow me to link you to the last time this came up, because you can find a screencap from Discord of Tobs (who writes the closest to that tone that anybody does in this game) stating that no, CoC2 is not grimdark.
Allow me to link you to the last time this came up, because you can find a screencap from Discord of Tobs (who writes the closest to that tone that anybody does in this game) stating that no, CoC2 is not grimdark.
That is a nice link I suppose, but I have no reason or desire to click it.
My friend, I have spent more time discussing that stupid term then you have playing this game. Every time it's brought up in one of my communities, someone has to turn it into an hours long discussion and/or debate on what the hell it even means, and these tend to snowball into a day affair as more users trickle in and keep starting it back up. I have spent more time pondering this damn word then you have playing all 3 of these games.
This is on top of being a Warhammer fan as well, though it's just what coined the term anyway. Grimdark has been around long before it, with such lovely classics as Lovecraft's Mythos and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. You tend to keep up on these things very well when specifically crafting setting lore is basically your business for years going into the double digits.
And this is on top of my own projects. If writing dark shit instantly makes you an expert for that reason alone, then I suppose I am happy to accept my position as the eternal god of the subject.
The world is grimdark. That's not a negative thing. That's not a positive thing. That's how it is. You can accept that or you can not, but that is your own problem, not mine. And this Tobs as well, I suppose.
Allow me to link you to the last time this came up, because you can find a screencap from Discord of Tobs (who writes the closest to that tone that anybody does in this game) stating that no, CoC2 is not grimdark.
That is a nice link I suppose, but I have no reason or desire to click it.
My friend, I have spent more time discussing that stupid term then you have playing this game. Every time it's brought up in one of my communities, someone has to turn it into an hours long discussion and/or debate on what the hell it even means, and these tend to snowball into a day affair as more users trickle in and keep starting it back up. I have spent more time pondering this damn word then you have playing all 3 of these games.
This is on top of being a Warhammer fan as well, though it's just what coined the term anyway. Grimdark has been around long before it, with such lovely classics as Lovecraft's Mythos and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. You tend to keep up on these things very well when specifically crafting setting lore is basically your business for years going into the double digits.
And this is on top of my own projects. If writing dark shit instantly makes you an expert for that reason alone, then I suppose I am happy to accept my position as the eternal god of the subject.
The world is grimdark. That's not a negative thing. That's not a positive thing. That's how it is. You can accept that or you can not, but that is your own problem, not mine. And this Tobs as well, I suppose.
Yup sure does! That's why Serena is one of my favs. I was generalizing again (sorry!) and saying that the majority of vag champs scenes didn't connect with me. But there are definite gems in there like Serena and that's why I appreciate writers like Alypia and Skow that do take into account female champs and vag-only champs.
Despite my complaints, there has been more stuff added for vag-only champs recently so I appreciate the devs and writers for their effort!
Edit: And also B does include some stuff for vag-only champs but personally felt skow and alypia do so more often.
I mean, a lot of polyamory with another couple is going to be third wheeling. That is in fact part of polyamory, is why this isn't weird to me. As long as they're taking steps to include me, which they do, I'm chill with it.
Well, I didn't mind third-wheeling with established NPC couples like Aurera&Claire, Jaelyn& Daliza and Orlaith&Doireann (some examples) but it just felt like PC was too much of an outsider/bystander in Lia/Azzy considering Azzy is a companion, not like other common NPCs, and how involved pc was in Azzy and Lia's story like the hive quest, etc (not that saving the hive and getting them together require them to reward or include PC but still). It felt like pc wasn't as included (just my personal opinion tho and I'm not as well-versed in polyamory as you are so thank u for ur insight).
Then again I can't expect Azzy to like pc equally as Lia since that's not how emotions work and she did explain Lia isn't as open or used to polyamory as Azzy. I still very much enjoy it whenever they appear in a quest like High Ground and I'm not gonna complain if they can appear more in the story!
Allow me to link you to the last time this came up, because you can find a screencap from Discord of Tobs (who writes the closest to that tone that anybody does in this game) stating that no, CoC2 is not grimdark.
Wolframe you're smart enough to know that that's not how that works. No amount of authority can outright refute someone's interpretation on a piece of media. No matter who it is, if they're going to claim that what we played isn't a grimdark horror they're going to have to give an actual reason as to why. You're "well Tobs said this on discord so it's not" has about the same effect as "Well my mom said video games lead to violence". How about you actually try to back that up with something, or better yet try interpreting the game for yourself instead just going along with whatever someone else tells you.
Grimdark is about both bleakness and overall agency. In Warhammer for instance, people save the day all the damn time. The 'good guys' beat back the baddies, a planet is safe for a few centuries, ect,
Hell, there are literally countless agriculture worlds where the whole endless war and death stuff never occurs. People just farm to feed the rest of society.
The reason a setting is grimdark is because it is both overall bleak, and there is absolutely nothing anybody can reasonably do to change that.
On the surface, you could consider CoC2 to be those worlds I mentioned earlier. At a glance, things don't seem so bad. There's some nice people, the hero is running around trying to save the day, all that jazz.
Except, you mentioned corruption before? Corruption is awful, but look at what the world is upt to on it's own.
Directly to the east, you have roving bands of marauding rapists and thieves. Sharing this haunt is a tribe of pillaging barbarians from the sea that have come to rape and enslave with the backing of one of the gods of your world.
Underground in this region you have yet another society of slavers, with the most prosperous settlement in the region.
To the north, a settlement of, again rapists and thieves, except instead of physical currency they take your life force. These ones are part of an entire nation that lives like that and has the backing and approval of one of the seven gods in your setting. They are even more cruel in their interactions then the 2 groups listed above.
To the south, you have a society of horse people where the males go out on rape rampages when they're old enough as part of their natural life cycle.
You have living gods interacting with and governing the world, and they allow all this to occur. It's only some of the problems in the area too. Then throw corruption and the literal plague of demons that are stealing people's souls through rape induced partial spiritual and mental lobotomies.
Then you move into spoiler territory.
The gods? They're actually eldritch abominations who are completely apathetic to the plights of mortals unless it inconveniences them, they are allowing the whole demon outbreak to occur out of curiosity of their leader's soul experiments. They are completely beyond your power and the only way you can stop them is to let the sociopathic rapist demon queen win and kill/corrupt the pantheon.
These are the same beings as the wraiths that have a form of soul taking that is worse then a demon's, since they seem to just destroy the original person completely in most cases. And speaking of wraiths? There is a countless number of them, all waiting just outside the material plane for a way in. The barrier between the dream realm and the void is apparently quite thin, as we read during the bird quest.
Every experiment with portals between worlds, with walking the ways between, and perhaps even dabbling in a bit too much dream magic? The potential to fuck up and let an endless horde of lovecraftian horrors into the world, and your only real defense against this is the variable vigilance of the group of lovecraftian horrors that have taken you all as an amusing pass-time.
Hell, a tried and true wraith breaches into the material realm and only one of the Seven actually shows up to fight it, and can easily lose. The rest of them just let this happen, one of whom spends a good amount of their time literally right down the road and can instantly transport himself there at a moment's notice.
There is pretty much nothing you can do to actually fix any of the major problems. You can win the day and save a hamlet or city here or there for the moment, but at the end of the day you're just deciding how openly perverse you want your sociopathetic lording assholes from the darkness between worlds to be.
Even if you get strong enough to smite some demon queen hide and then head north to try and help deal with the bigger brewing apocalypse that is the old wraiths amassing power again, there are still the powers of your world that are probably just going to let something like this occur again if it interests them enough. Everything you went through, all the suffering of the people you met along the way, the countless people changed forever by the removal and possible reapplication of their souls, and the experiences all went through in the process, that was all because all of life is prisoner to the whims of cruel and uncaring discount outer gods.
And then everyone else will just go back to raping and enslaving eachother, just this time without risk of demonification, because again the Seven are chill with that. Until someone fucks up with magic and lets the cthulus back in that is, and then you see if this time the slightly nicer eldritch horrors are feelings like saving reality today.
It's pretty cut and dry grimdark when you get down to it, though I am not sure if it was done intentionally, or if it is a byproduct of the schizo writing philosophy of some of the people behind the game not knowing if they want it to be a power fantasy or not, resulting in a world that ensures you are effectively powerless in the grand scheme of things no matter how much actual personal strength you accumulate.
I feel you're looking at this world in the worst possible light. It's fine want to do that but by god is it depressing and I have to wonder if you look all media this way. Even so I think what's missing from this grimdark description is entropy, the overall slow decline into an inevitable death. While death, rape, and slavery can make a setting dark it needs entropy to truly be grimdark. While things are bad in Savarra right now and there are scary void creatures just beyond vale there is no sense whatsoever that things are getting worse, quite the opposite in fact.
You seem very caught up in the fact that the gods were wraths once and probably killed a lot of people but they did ultimately save the world from certain doom and in their current forms are not malicious. They may not be very helpful in the current predicament the world is facing but there's no reason to overthrow them if they're not causing any harm. as for the wraiths outside the border there's no indication of them ever getting back in with only the threat of it being possible when someone fucks around with interdimensional portals.
Elsewise the setting is pretty much the same as it was in history. There's war, death, destruction, rape, and slavery everywhere. Like I said it's a dark setting but it's changing for the better as technology slowly improves, alliances are made, kingdoms are rebuilt, ancient evils are destroyed ad the new evils are being dealt with in one form or another. The PC is more than likely to leave the Frost Marches a better place than when Kas arrived.
All I know is that I wouldn't want to get pregnant and bring new life in such kind world. If I somehow found myself in Savarra, I'd so purchase a brown leaf pouch and consume it as my first action
Now, I do have to disagree with that.
Jaelyn gets forced on us to take her as a maid, so my exceptions would be that she would be at least somewhat champion focused.
Daliza whole ordeal is how she is waiting for us to woo her so that she could get in our pants.
Yet, once you do the latter, game suddenly shifts focus on us getting them together. Where they confess how much they love each other while PC awkwardly watches. Which does make our whole confession with Dal feel like a stepping stone to get them together. Which just rubs me the wrong way.
And to turn it back to our previous topic, as Maid Jaelyn haver, I found it little funny how my vagina champ had 1 scene where she got to join the threesome, one where she could watch and 2 that required her to have penis. It is especially funny because prior to this, Daliza was speaking about how walking into the shower (or something) while Jaelyn was naked (if I remember right) made her realize that she is so gay, with male champ being exception. Yet, vagina champ can only engage with her in 2 scenes while dick champ in 4. I guess she is more into girl with dicks, which is fair. Although her whole sexual awakening was before Jaelyn gained one... Still kind of stings.
All I know is that I wouldn't want to get pregnant and bring new life in such kind world. If I somehow found myself in Savarra, I'd so purchase a brown leaf pouch and consume it as my first action
If I remember correctly Jaelyn and Daliza just had a crush and didn't act on it until you literally drag them together in the same room to deal with it, so I wouldn't call them a established couple.
I just decide not to do that choice, though I would like to have an option asking if you wanted it removed, that way it won't sit on Daliza's menu forever.
This, all this, I also feel like there should be a few wholesome scenes and not just sex with her, or at least wholesome sex, she seems just as corrupted as before and we are doing nothing to change that, at this rate she may just lose her soul while fucking her in the frosthound while being a little bit careless.
Grimdark is about both bleakness and overall agency. In Warhammer for instance, people save the day all the damn time. The 'good guys' beat back the baddies, a planet is safe for a few centuries, ect,
Hell, there are literally countless agriculture worlds where the whole endless war and death stuff never occurs. People just farm to feed the rest of society.
The reason a setting is grimdark is because it is both overall bleak, and there is absolutely nothing anybody can reasonably do to change that.
On the surface, you could consider CoC2 to be those worlds I mentioned earlier. At a glance, things don't seem so bad. There's some nice people, the hero is running around trying to save the day, all that jazz.
Except, you mentioned corruption before? Corruption is awful, but look at what the world is upt to on it's own.
Directly to the east, you have roving bands of marauding rapists and thieves. Sharing this haunt is a tribe of pillaging barbarians from the sea that have come to rape and enslave with the backing of one of the gods of your world.
Underground in this region you have yet another society of slavers, with the most prosperous settlement in the region.
To the north, a settlement of, again rapists and thieves, except instead of physical currency they take your life force. These ones are part of an entire nation that lives like that and has the backing and approval of one of the seven gods in your setting. They are even more cruel in their interactions then the 2 groups listed above.
To the south, you have a society of horse people where the males go out on rape rampages when they're old enough as part of their natural life cycle.
You have living gods interacting with and governing the world, and they allow all this to occur. It's only some of the problems in the area too. Then throw corruption and the literal plague of demons that are stealing people's souls through rape induced partial spiritual and mental lobotomies.
Then you move into spoiler territory.
The gods? They're actually eldritch abominations who are completely apathetic to the plights of mortals unless it inconveniences them, they are allowing the whole demon outbreak to occur out of curiosity of their leader's soul experiments. They are completely beyond your power and the only way you can stop them is to let the sociopathic rapist demon queen win and kill/corrupt the pantheon.
These are the same beings as the wraiths that have a form of soul taking that is worse then a demon's, since they seem to just destroy the original person completely in most cases. And speaking of wraiths? There is a countless number of them, all waiting just outside the material plane for a way in. The barrier between the dream realm and the void is apparently quite thin, as we read during the bird quest.
Every experiment with portals between worlds, with walking the ways between, and perhaps even dabbling in a bit too much dream magic? The potential to fuck up and let an endless horde of lovecraftian horrors into the world, and your only real defense against this is the variable vigilance of the group of lovecraftian horrors that have taken you all as an amusing pass-time.
Hell, a tried and true wraith breaches into the material realm and only one of the Seven actually shows up to fight it, and can easily lose. The rest of them just let this happen, one of whom spends a good amount of their time literally right down the road and can instantly transport himself there at a moment's notice.
There is pretty much nothing you can do to actually fix any of the major problems. You can win the day and save a hamlet or city here or there for the moment, but at the end of the day you're just deciding how openly perverse you want your sociopathetic lording assholes from the darkness between worlds to be.
Even if you get strong enough to smite some demon queen hide and then head north to try and help deal with the bigger brewing apocalypse that is the old wraiths amassing power again, there are still the powers of your world that are probably just going to let something like this occur again if it interests them enough. Everything you went through, all the suffering of the people you met along the way, the countless people changed forever by the removal and possible reapplication of their souls, and the experiences all went through in the process, that was all because all of life is prisoner to the whims of cruel and uncaring discount outer gods.
And then everyone else will just go back to raping and enslaving eachother, just this time without risk of demonification, because again the Seven are chill with that. Until someone fucks up with magic and lets the cthulus back in that is, and then you see if this time the slightly nicer eldritch horrors are feelings like saving reality today.
It's pretty cut and dry grimdark when you get down to it, though I am not sure if it was done intentionally, or if it is a byproduct of the schizo writing philosophy of some of the people behind the game not knowing if they want it to be a power fantasy or not, resulting in a world that ensures you are effectively powerless in the grand scheme of things no matter how much actual personal strength you accumulate.
While there are a lot of things within this world/setting which are dark, you're kind of missing the whole "grim" part of grimdark. A grimdark world is hopeless. There may be individual heroes in Warhammer, but all they can really do is kill things and perpetuate the space-fascists which happen to be the least bad because at least they aren't trying to wipe out humanity. Everything is doomed to a terrible fate, and has been from the start, it just varies on if that fate is death, insanity, enslavement, or a slightly less bad dystopia.
If CoC2 was grimdark, the wraiths would have won the Godswar, or the Gods would be doing a lot worse than they already are. They're non-interventionists because they want people to be self-reliant, so that the mortals can cultivate power and bring down great foes without needing them, and will only directly fight if they determine that people really can not handle things on their own.
While you, the hero of this story, can't fix everything on your own, you can still make things better, particularly with help. Unless you choose some bad end, the story will most likely end with a happily ever after, where your actions matter and impact the social and economic climates of the regions this story takes place in, because you're still the Champion, even if you're not a god. The world is dark, sure, but it's farm from grim. It's far from hopeless.
Now, I do have to disagree with that.
Jaelyn gets forced on us to take her as a maid, so my exceptions would be that she would be at least somewhat champion focused.
Daliza whole ordeal is how she is waiting for us to woo her so that she could get in our pants.
Yet, once you do the latter, game suddenly shifts focus on us getting them together. Where they confess how much they love each other while PC awkwardly watches. Which does make our whole confession with Dal feel like a stepping stone to get them together. Which just rubs me the wrong way.
OKAY, I've discovered something rather interesting after reexamining the threesome they have when they sneak off.
I have a post in this thread currently auto-hidden due to me editing it too many times right after posting it (darn my anxiety of not wanting to sound hostile), and in it, I went through Azy and Lia's relationship basically scene by scene. I guess whenever that gets moderator approved you could skim through that to really get my feelings, but I now see a pattern that is related to this. And my feelings on it are even more concrete than before, too. You are totally an outsider to Azy and Lia's relationship once they get together, and you have no romantic interactions with Azy to match the clear affection they have for each other. It feels...crappy.
And after feeling similarly annoyed with Daliza and Jae's stuff, I decided to do a much more brief refresh on that, too. And immediately I can see they're written by the same writer, SKoW. I think maybe...being an outsider to a couple might just be their thing. I'm not shaming, but at this point it's 0 for 2 on the "rewarding for and inclusive of the player" multipartner relationship thing.
To make it clear here, even taking into account the info someone mentioned that they just crushed on each other before but never had a sexual relationship until now, you are immediately made to feel very unspecial once they begin to seek one another out. From moment one of you catching them after they sneak off on their own, Jae has become Daliza's whole world. It even says, quite clearly, that they are intentionally excluding you before you reveal yourself. Daliza is so thirsty for Jae that she's willing to ride her flaccid dick to no effect.
I, frankly, just don't get why these relationships so thoroughly exclude the player from the heavy parts of the romance. Maybe because it just isn't my kink, but it makes it all frustrating and unsatisfying, but at least in this case you can avoid it by not bring Daliza to Jae, unlike with Azy, where just recruiting her forces the situation on you.
I do something similar with Azzy to what I do with Daliza, after you complete the hive dungeon Liaden stays waiting outside of the frosthound for you to interact with her and then go meet Sanders together, I just ignore her and leave her in that spot since she doesn't ask you anything unless you interact with her first, and since that needs to happen first for Azzy to approach the subject of Liaden it never happens in my playtroughs.
All I know is that I wouldn't want to get pregnant and bring new life in such kind world. If I somehow found myself in Savarra, I'd so purchase a brown leaf pouch and consume it as my first action
Sounds like what I'm doing in this world, so I guess reality is grimdark. Then again, not having to deal with kids is a huge time and money saver, so, not that bad actually? Ow my brain. It has hurt itself in its confusion
I, frankly, just don't get why these relationships so thoroughly exclude the player from the heavy parts of the romance. Maybe because it just isn't my kink, but it makes it all frustrating and unsatisfying, but at least in this case you can avoid it by not bring Daliza to Jae, unlike with Azy, where just recruiting her forces the situation on you.
Sounds like the author has a bit (or a lot) of an Nice Time for Roo fetish. Not something I can understand, but thanks for the warning, I'll refrain from reintroducing Jae and Daliza. I mean, yeah, for the purpose of blue elf pussy going crazy for me I also have Elthara, but two is better than one (says the guy with a double dicked character)
That's something I find weird about it as well. I mention it a bit in my big invisible post breaking down Lia and Azy's relationship.
It's not really fetishized heavily or at all--it's not like having Brint stud for you or something like that. You just become an afterthought to the two once they're together, and the same is true for Dal and Jae. Your involvement is either dismissive/straight up immature and dickish anger, or you're awkwardly pushing yourself into a situation where you're not wanted or needed, and the writing makes that quite clear.
If it were studding, or voyeurism, or humiliation, it'd be fine. That's fetish content, clear-cut and plain as day. You know what to get from that and you even have to choose to be exposed to it.
What we get from those two couples? It's not clear-cut and it's not truly an option. It's just...awkward. And a little tone-deaf.
OKAY, I've discovered something rather interesting after reexamining the threesome they have when they sneak off.
I have a post in this thread currently auto-hidden due to me editing it too many times right after posting it (darn my anxiety of not wanting to sound hostile), and in it, I went through Azy and Lia's relationship basically scene by scene. I guess whenever that gets moderator approved you could skim through that to really get my feelings, but I now see a pattern that is related to this. And my feelings on it are even more concrete than before, too. You are totally an outsider to Azy and Lia's relationship once they get together, and you have no romantic interactions with Azy to match the clear affection they have for each other. It feels...crappy.
And after feeling similarly annoyed with Daliza and Jae's stuff, I decided to do a much more brief refresh on that, too. And immediately I can see they're written by the same writer, SKoW. I think maybe...being an outsider to a couple might just be their thing. I'm not shaming, but at this point it's 0 for 2 on the "rewarding for and inclusive of the player" multipartner relationship thing.
To make it clear here, even taking into account the info someone mentioned that they just crushed on each other before but never had a sexual relationship until now, you are immediately made to feel very unspecial once they begin to seek one another out. From moment one of you catching them after they sneak off on their own, Jae has become Daliza's whole world. It even says, quite clearly, that they are intentionally excluding you before you reveal yourself. Daliza is so thirsty for Jae that she's willing to ride her flaccid dick to no effect.
I, frankly, just don't get why these relationships so thoroughly exclude the player from the heavy parts of the romance. Maybe because it just isn't my kink, but it makes it all frustrating and unsatisfying, but at least in this case you can avoid it by not bring Daliza to Jae, unlike with Azy, where just recruiting her forces the situation on you.
I'm glad you asked because I hadn't even considered it at first.
Going through it now though, it's clear from the beginning that it's just about the two of them. Jae calls you a chaperone, and talks about how she's aware that Daliza's obsessed with her. The champ just kinda dismissively accepts things and shoves the two together. Once the two are together there's some brief emotions touching on Daliza's thoughts about her demonic status, but it doesn't last long before it develops into the same situation.
The second time you bring them together, Jaelyn straight up says she's continued to bone Daliza on her own since then. Apparently not having access to her dick really doesn't impede her in any meaningful way... Which makes me wonder how she's even really a slave if she does whatever she wants anyway.
So yeah, I guess there aren't any particularly big differences. The two still kinda shove you aside for one another, though admittedly it's at least a little less in-your-face about it. Jaelyn does a better job of trying to include you, though it does seem only because you remove her ring so she can fuck Daliza, which is what she seems to actually care about and not as much that you're involved. Daliza just does whatever Jae tells her to, so her focus doesn't change much in this path. Still Jaelyn-brained.
At the very least this is the impression I get from it all. YMMV.
My complaints are purely about when they're together. The tone, dialogue, and implicated feelings during the threesomes are quite different, hence my brief little critical analysis. It's not a threesome so much as them being quite into each other emotionally and you just kind of...being there, mostly.
A lot of the sex scenes feel watered down comparing to stuff in TiTS, not sure if it has to do with specific writer or things falling to the wayside because magic but it really feels odd going between the two games.
A lot of the sex scenes feel watered down comparing to stuff in TiTS, not sure if it has to do with specific writer or things falling to the wayside because magic but it really feels odd going between the two games.
It depends on what sort of thing you mean by 'watered down' but a lot of whatever you have in mind probably is because a great deal of content written for TiTS involves writers not involved in CoC2 (or at least not nearly as much) and vice-versa.
Maybe its just me but I feel like 90% of the light armor in the game is skimpy/feminine in nature and it bugs me. Give me a masculine version of the witch outfit you get from viviane or the ninja outfit you get from the kitsune! I feel shoehorned into certain armor choices due to some scene descriptions of what my champion is wearing.
I agree, I always end up wearing the lamellar armour from Kohaku and never taking it off since I don't like the description of the other light armours.