Themes of late 90's/early 2000's games

[Anonymous No.9978191]

I've noticed 3 very common tropes in games (and anime) of the era:
>tapping into the Western spiritual canon
>creating the ultimate lifeform
>the missing link
It's something you really don't see anymore. Discuss games like this and recommend games with these aesthetics/themes

[Anonymous No.9978232]

it's because of Shin Seiki Evangelion.

[Anonymous No.9978236]

>>9978191
Fallout 1

[Anonymous No.9978239]

>>9978191
On PC we were moving away from brown and grey mazes and over to cyberpunk dystopias.

[Anonymous No.9978579]

>>9978191
In the same way that westerners would take "oriental" mythology and symbolism to milk for easy aesthetics, a similar thing happened with Japanese game devs and thd west. Kabbala stuff was pretty big in the 90's and it made for a lot of easily deep seeming stuff without the work of having to try and make sense.

[Anonymous No.9978613]

wasn't only then, kiddo.
existence-threatening superbeing is an easy way to have a weighty story with a single point of failure that a party can challenge and overcome.

[Anonymous No.9978617]

Because there's nothing to look forward too, just look at what society focuses on right now

[Anonymous No.9979676]

>>9978579
It's an easy way to make your story s classic since it has some primordial epicness

[Anonymous No.9980108]

>>9978191
Sonic is an allegory for Jesus and this comes to a head in Sonic Adventure 2

[Anonymous No.9980119]

one of the most common tropes in these JRPGs is the magical girl who acts both as the love interest for the protag and as a mcguffin searched by the villain. terra in ff6, aerith in ff7, azel in panzer dragoon saga, and you can still see it very often today, like in the last of us.

[Anonymous No.9980914]

>>9980119
>love interest for the protag
>like in the last of us

[Anonymous No.9981419]

>>9979676
Ninjas are just cool and they have an excuse to know how to do flying kicks and throw ninja stars.

[Anonymous No.9981434]

>>9978239
But the brown and grey in Quake is amazing and vibrant. Goes to show how utterly devoid of artistry the brown smear games of the mid-2000s were.

[Anonymous No.9982928]

>>9978191
Need moar

[Anonymous No.9983448]

I think you can chalk up the missing link thing to being a Jurassic park ripple effect

[Anonymous No.9983942]

>>9978613
>wasn't only then, kiddo
What's come out as of late like this?

[Anonymous No.9983965]

>>9978191
>western spiritual canon
>mako that makes everything have a "soul" including the planet itself
No, that is not a western spiritual thing at all.

[Anonymous No.9983971]

>>9981434
>But MY favorite brown shooter was actually good!
Get fucked, quakie.

[Anonymous No.9983991]

>>9983965
Gnosticism mate

[Anonymous No.9984064]

>>9978191
B.L.U.E. Legend of the Water has that aesthetic slowly build up with heavy Egyptian and alien imagery, but you need to use a guide for the best ending.

[Anonymous No.9984090]

>>9978239
There's a world of difference between Quake brown and "look, our game is very realistic" brown.

[Anonymous No.9984492]

>>9983991
Animism, pal

[Anonymous No.9984513]

>>9983942
i have no idea what you're talking about. i can only say "fucking zoomers" so many times during the day.

[Anonymous No.9984542]

>>9984513
Wouldn't it be a zoomer thing to be MORE perceptive of modern media with these themes?

[Anonymous No.9986072]

[Anonymous No.9988096]

>>9978191
Tough woman with large polygons is a late 90s video game trope

[Anonymous No.9988117]

>>9983991
Gnosticism = we're in a spiritual prison, with the Abrahamic God being the jailer and satan being the good guy. It's the same retarded cult that's responsible for all the nonsense going on in the world now. It didn't start influencing game design until gaming became popular, the earliest example I remember is talk of the "indigo child" in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, but that was more likely David Cage's autism showing than anything.

[Anonymous No.9988126]

Gnosticism/Esoteric christian and Kabbalahism shit was getting a bit overused IMO, I liked the aesthetic of it but I kind of wanted to see other mythologies being used.

[Anonymous No.9988132]

>>9988117
Silent Hill 1 had references to all that tripe from the very first seconds of the game. the industry was compromised from the get go

[Anonymous No.9988204]

>>9988132
How does that make sense? The cult were very obviously the bad guys in every game they were featured in. They ended up creating the prison they thought they were escaping from. Rusty gates and gore doesn't exactly scream paradise.

[Anonymous No.9988684]

>>9978232
Xenogears is Dune + G Gundam.

[Anonymous No.9990064]

>>9988117
>we're in a spiritual prison
Yeah and Shinra are trying to find the promised land because of this

[Anonymous No.9990141]

>>9988684
Xenogears also literally stole some shit from VOTOMS, though that's not apparent until the end of the anime.

[Anonymous No.9990170]

>>9990141
>though that's not apparent until the end of the anime.
Votoms literally stole its ending from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's not even an homage, it's straight up plagiarism.

[Anonymous No.9990343]

>>9978191
It's kind of weird how much cultural overlap occurred out of the blue in general, in the '90s. Japanese media incorporating more Western-inspired themes, anime itself gaining ground through dubbed VHS tapes, etc. MTV even did that "Cartoon Sushi" show where they'd air ""Japanimation.""