Evolution of Fiction
Godot Tutorials is not sponsored by or affiliated with the Godot game engine.
In this article I will touch on a few things:
- What is fantasy?
- Why should you care about fiction?
- The Game Fiction Trinity
- The Core Elements of Fiction
- The Evolution of Fiction
Informational Warning
I am no professor nor a researcher.
I’m just simply a person that loves to learn from history and read books about history when I’m able to.
This episode is a summarization of what exactly I have learned and how it can be applied to the games we make.
I personally believe we can learn from our past to create and craft a better future, and for the purpose of this episode, better and more intuitive games than our predecessors.
What exactly is fantasy?
The dictionary definition of fantasy is a “literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.”
However, fantasy is simply just a subgenre of fiction.
This concept is important because if fantasy is just a subgenre of fiction, and for all the programmers out there, this means that since fantasy is a sub class of fiction, then really; we need to think about fiction.
What exactly is fiction?
The basic definition of fiction is basically something invented by the imagination.
Why should you care about fiction?
The reality is your game will most likely deal in a fictional world, and the subgenre of fantasy is a great place to start due to its history.
Naturally, fantasy feeds inspiration, and it helps us out when coming out with new and unique ideas.
Let’s take a better look at this through what I call the game fiction trinity.
Game fiction trinity
The game fiction trinity is a simple concept.
When dealing with fiction in games, you may find yourself dealing with one of three subgenres of fiction; they are fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
What is Fantasy
Fantasy involves a mythical or unexplained base that resides in the supernatural realm.
Basically, fantasy revolves around the themes of magic, mythology, folklore, and exotic fantastical worlds.
Technically speaking, fantasy resides in the speculative realm or as the famous creator of the Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling once said:
Fantasy is the impossible made probable.
What is science fiction.
Science fiction involves a world where science and technology explain the impossible.
Basically, we are dealing with a world that feels very possible.
And as Rod Serling once said in the same breath:
Science fiction is the improbable made possible.
What is horror
Lastly, there is the subgenre of horror.
Horror is unique in the fiction world as its fictional settings main driving force is fear.
Fear can be in the form of many things, in some cases it is by using monsters and creatures such as the Alien Xenomorph in Aliens Isolation and even the use of human fear itself, which is the scariest form for any horror.
Combinations
That’s not all. It’s also quite possible to use a combination of these three subgenres of fiction to create something rather unique.
These would include science fantasy, sci-fi horror, and dark fantasy.
What is science fantasy
It’s a combination of the common tropes that can be found in both subgenres of science fiction and fantasy.
In science fiction you use science to explain about how the world works, while in fantasy the laws and rules are given with no real logical explanation to how the rules and laws came into existence.
Science fantasy is a subgenre where the rules and laws are explained through logic, but also where the “magic” of the world is explained through science like logic as well.
What is sci-fi horror
It’s a combination between the genres of science fiction and horror.
The rules of the world are explained logically with science as the foundation.
However, the main driving force of the story is fear.
Aliens Isolation would be a great example of sci-fi horror.
What is dark fantasy
It’s a combination of the common tropes that can be found in both subgenres of horror and fantasy.
The worlds rule and laws are revolves around the themes of magic, mythology, folklore, and exotic fantastical worlds.
However, the main driving force of the story is fear.
Core elements of fiction
Fiction touches on two core elements:
- Imagination
- Unknown.
We are getting into the spiritual realm here, but I believe humans for the longest time have been drawn to these two elements.
Imagination
Imagination deals with things such as monsters, magic, worlds, weapons, heroes, and superpowers.
Basically if it requires imagination power to creatively come up with how an object that acts on any of the humans five senses, then it’s a product of imagination.
Five Senses:
- Look
- Touch
- Hear
- Smell
- Taste
Unknown
The Unknown deals with subjects such as death, rebirth, and of course the afterlife.
Basically, if it requires a person to contemplate deep philosophical questions, then it deals in the unknown.
The main aspect of what makes the unknown unique is that it begs these questions:
- If there is an afterlife, are we the same person as we are on earth in the afterlife?
- Will my conscious self-carry forward even in death?
- If I am reborn back from the dead, will I be the same person?
By the way, the idea of being the same person after a rebirth is a core element of the game Nier:Automata, and I believe it to be a unique game in that regard.
Evolution of fantasy
First and foremost, I want to say that the evolution of fantasy is complex, and this is my attempt at condensing it into a single episode.
In my opinion, the evolution of fantasy, and in broader terms fiction, looks more like a river where genres branch out starting from the Epic Poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
For the sake of simplicity, I will break the evolution of fantasy down as though they evolved sequentially.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/river-delta-patterns--columbia-river--western-washington-and-western-oregon--usa-dv517016-56f221043df78ce5f83ccd23.jpg)
1. Verbal Communication
Stories from the dawn of mankind started to survive the unknown.
Communities shared and passed stories from generation to generation as a form of teaching and survival.
It’s a very powerful form of communication as it allowed the generations of the past to communicate with the generations of the future.
Drawings in caves were the first form of written communication, but in terms of story we move to epic poems.
2. Epic Poems
Epic poems are essentially extremely long narrative poetry.
The settings of such stories tend to derive from a time beyond the living memory in which the even occured, often involving people doing extraordinary things.
They mainly deal in topics such as mythology and/or religion.
Epic of Gilgamesh
The first epic poem, and the first story of fantasy in recorded history is the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written in as early at 1700 B.C.
Let’s look at some things contained in the epic of Gilgamesh.
In this case we have our very first superhero, prophetic dreams, descent into the underworld, the first quest at obtaining eternal life, Creatures such as dragon and zombies are touched upon in this epic poem.
The second most important thing, is the aspect of character development. Gilgamesh is two-thirds god, and one-third man. It’s there to explain why Gilgamish is prideful at the beginning.
That ending is emotional, or at least it was emotional to me; and it shows why movies and books of our modern-day era choose to adapt elements found in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Finally, the most important aspect that would forever change the world of fiction, the first case of the Famous Blueprint; The monomyth, also referred to as the Hero’s Journey.
The hero’s journey will be talked upon in another episode but know that The Epic of Gilgamesh was the first to use it.
I like to bring this epic poem up because it solidifies the fact that nothing is new.
The ideas of zombies are not new, dragons are not new, heroes are not new.
Don’t worry about creating something new, instead focus on creating something unique that you can pass and share with the world.
Divine Comedy
The next Epic Poem I want to bring up is Dante’s Infernal.
What’s so special about this book is that it’s the first in written history that explain in very graphic detail about the inferno, purgatory, and paradiso or heaven.
It touches on elements such as descending the underworld, creatures, prophetic dreams, and most importantly trying to understand how heaven and hell works.
Both these epic poems also touch on the core concepts of the imagination and the unknown, which you may start to see are two recurring core elements you’ll find in many works of fiction.
4. Books (Literature)
After epic poems, we see a of conveying stories onto books shift to books.
Gulliver’s Travel
Gulliver’s travel shares themes of traveling to exotic lands, corruption, and exploration.
Frankenstein
Frankenstein touches on themes such as creation, ambition, and the first ever sci-fi horror.
What makes Frankenstein so great is the idea of creation and becoming God like.
Frankenstein and the idea of creation
Natural life, such as real life, has laws that cannot be bent; but fantasy and horror allow people to invent a world with its own laws which is the nearest humans can come to creation.
In a sense, it’s the closest humans can achieve to becoming God-like.
And as a matter of fact, games are similar in that regard as well since in games you are creating a world with your own laws and rules that differ from that of the real world.
In that sense, creating games is the closest thing to becoming God-like as well.
I believe the creator of the Sims games mentions this in an older interview that escapes my mind right now.
One thing to note is that the mix of fantasy and horror are inspired by religious doctrine or at least address the topic of religion.
4. Short Stories
Soon after books and novels, fantasy starts to become more popular through the short story medium of storytelling.
What makes short stories so great is how well they can be used in themes of horror.
Travelling Companion
The “Travelling Companion” written by Hans Christian Anderson, touches on the themes of death, rebirth, evil vs good, and redemption.
Tell-Tale Heart by
Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe, touches on the themes of guilt, madness, and death.
Edgar Allen Poe
Even though, technically speaking, Frankenstein is considered the first gothic horror, Edgar Allen Poe is the one that mainstreamed the concepts of gothic themes into horror, and more specifically main streamed horror stories.
You’ll see that gothic themes play well into horror, one such example of that is Resident Evil Village.
On top of that Edgar Allen Poe argued and believed that short stories are the best way to convey horror, and more specifically fear, onto readers.
5. Technology advancement and war
Some important technologies that happened were the
Keep in mind that fantasy, horror, and science fiction would be inspired and innovated by these two technologies.
The big three wars of the twentieth century are:
The Cold War lead humanity to participate in the famous Space Race that had America start in 1958 with the creation of NASA and end in 1969 with the United States landing on the moon.
What makes history and technology fascinating, is that before they happened, they were only dreamed and talked about in fiction, mainly science fiction.
However, technology and history are real, not fiction.
When they happen in the real world, it inspires stories in science fiction to tackle the next big thing.
6. Movies
From literature, the genre of fantasy then makes it’s way to the big screen.
Fantasy and movies go hand in hand.
For the sake of the sequential order I have planned for this article, we will take a look at two movies from the 1960’s.
Both these movies play a big part on the evolution on games we know and love today.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The night of the living dead touches on a few themes such as fear, teamwork, eternal life, and death.
The most important aspect is how it handles the zombie genre.
It was the first zombie movie to introduce multiple zombies.
Before this movie, the concepts of zombies were not new; however it was generally one zombie taking chasing one or multiple people throughout the movie.
Example would include Mummy movies. Other examples would be a singular zombie born out of supernatural origins or fantastical and logically based origins such as the case of [Frankenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein.
Night of the Living Dead was the first to introduce multiple zombies in movies and the first to introduce the rules of zombies that we know and love today.
For example, shooting a zombie in the head and that the zombies were created by some scientifical phenomenon that could affect multiple corpses, instead of some supernatural aspect.
Basically, this movie would birth the creation of the modern zombie genre.
Lastly, this movie had a diverse cast for its time, and I would even consider it diverse for our time. Especially with the co-stars, Duane Jones and Judith O’dea.
This movie would also later inspire games such as the resident evil franchise.
Space Odyssey (1968)
Space Odyssey is a unique movie in regards to focusing more on the creative aspects of cinimetagrophy rather than traditional storytelling.
Despite that, it still touches on the core elements of fiction; such as touching on the themes of technology, exploration, evolution, artificial intelligence, and death.
7. Comic Books
Comic books started in 1933, the lead up during the second world war for America, the start of World War 2 politics for Germany.
Regardless, comics gave us the bronze age of comics which can teach us a lot about how masks don’t just protect the identity of the hero that wears them, it also projects the reader onto the hero; making for a great immersive experience for readers of comics.
More specifically, you can see a trend start to go back to more classical fantasy in comics during the 1970’s with DC comics weird war tales, and Conan the Barbarian.
8. Role Playing Games
This leads us to our very first fantasy board game we know and love today which is Dungeons and dragons (1974).
Now role-playing games are nothing new, they started in the 70’s but personally, the Dungeons and Dragon games may very well be the one that mainstreamed fantasy Role-Playing Games, and basically inspired many genres of RPGs in video games as well.
Some themes touched upon dungeons and dragons is the fantasy world, exploration, magic, the hero’s journey, creatures such as dragons, and of course death.
Lastly, I want to touch on the fact that dungeons and dragons, is a great game to practice game design, as it forces dungeon masters to understand about their players, in order to create a world, that engages its players.
In a sense, D&D is perhaps a tool that helped shaped, future aspiring game designers, as shaping and crafting player experiences, is exactly the thing a good dungeon master can do.
9. Video Games
After technologies progressed enough were games could now be mediums that could tell a story, we started seeing fantasy storytelling in video games.
What personally makes games unique is that the concept of death is not taken seriously in regard to storytelling.
Main characters don’t die
Literature and movies of the modern day seldom kill off the main character.
However, this was not the case for literature of olden days.
In literature, before the existence of movies and video games, if the main character died, they were permanently dead.
The exception to this rule is if their death was a driving force for their rebirth either by a supernatural or scientifical element.
For example, in the famous classical children tale “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” from the book Fables for FIve Year Olds, the main character gets eaten by a wolf towards the end; therefore the little boys journey has ended.
Stories that killed off the main character was a driving force to teach children, and even adults, important life lessons.
However, in most cases, and especially in video games, this is counterproductive since killing off the main character would essentially finish the main characters' story, which in turn permanently ends any progression of the game.
This would lead to either frustration or players quitting the game.
To remedy this, games will allow players to play from a checkpoint if they were to ever “die” in the game.
This allows players to continue the story in one cohesive journey, as the main character in the game has overcome their trials and tribulations without fail.
The rule of never killing off the main character in games, although common, is not an absolute rule.
Take the game Final Frontier for iOS. You play as a captain in charge of a space ship.
If your “main character” dies or is killed off, you then go ahead and play as another character from the ship who then assumes the role of captain.
This goes on until you either reach your goal, or you have run out of people; thus having no one to commandeer your ship, which means you lose.
Jak & Daxter (2001)
The themes of Jak & Daxter may look familiar to you as these are nothing new at this point in the history of fiction.
We have themes of exploration, fantasy, magic, technology, friendship, and of course life and death.
Bioshock (2007)
The BioShock game follows in the footsteps of the past by following the themes of exploration, technology, survival, and of course life and death.
Now what makes this game interesting, is that it is the first game that was able to execute the idea of branching stories, which we will touch upon later in this series.
It’s one of many games I recommend investigating and learn from if you are interested in branching story themes.
Another notable game on branching story themes would be Mass Effect, which executes it in a different manor towards the end.
Quick Summary
In conclusion, the three types of fiction, which are fantasy, science fiction, and horror will have elements of imagination and the unknown weaved into their stories.
There are of course many types of fiction subgenres, but I believe that understanding the history of fantasy along with the basics of fantasy, science fiction, and horror will help you on your game designing journey.
Homework
Let’s look at your homework for this series.
It is to simply read, or listen to, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It’s a short read, perhaps five hours if English is your second language, or 2 hours if you choose to listen to someone with translation.
Tips on reading the Epic of Gilgamesh
The epic poem was released in 1700 BC, so it’s old.
It’s regarded as the oldest recorded fictional story in history.
To give some perspective that book was written about three or four thousand years ago.
It’s lived through countless evolutions in technology, culture, religion, politics, and economics.
Keep that in mind.
Lastly, back in those days, I believe a woman “courting” a man was the culture of the time when woman were viewed as civilized naturally civilized and the only ones in society capable of civilizing, uncivilized men.
Once you’ve finished reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, ask yourself these questions, while keeping in mind of context.
What are three things you liked about it?
What are three things you disliked about it?
From there, list some movies you’ve watched that contain the things you liked and/or disliked.
After that check to see if you have any Disney movies on your list?
We will get back to that in a different episode.