Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times: They ask: Where have all the elves gone?
That’s the question gamers and the people who love them are bound to ask this fall as they take in the latest crop of big-budget video games. Since the 1970s, dragons, orcs, wizards and dwarfs have been staples of interactive entertainment, yet this holiday season there are hardly any top new games in the traditional fantasy mode.
Instead, 2007 has been dominated by perhaps the deepest lineup of science fiction games ever.
It started in August with the sleeper hit BioShock, which can best be described as intelligent sci-fi noir (genetic engineering in 1940s big-band style). Then last month came the pop culture juggernaut Halo 3, the epitome of mainstream action sci-fi (men with huge guns saving the galaxy from an interstellar menace). Between now and Thanksgiving gamers will see gothic sci-fi in Hellgate: London (demons invade post-apocalyptic London); the first major science-fiction online game in years in Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa; and the magnum opus-cum-space opera Mass Effect.
via the New York Times
