I think publishers looked at Fortnite, Overwatch, Call of Duty, PubG, GTA on a superficial level, and concluded that their customers don’t care about comprehensive immersion. Gamers (presumably) like “serious” yet shallow, not quite tongue-in-cheek and not requiring much attention span.
I’m not sure if that’s the bathos you describe, but it seems close.
Hence publishers tried to reconcile that “Fortnite style” (an expansive, flashy veneer of lore, art, and cheese without anything beyond that) with traditional RPGs, and ended up “neither here nor there.”
I agree with you, and go a step further that gamers and movie goers and more have nuance and expectations with media.
As you said, Fortnite, Overwatch, CoD, I don’t expect much immersion, I’m expecting a quick romp where the story is only there to set up the gameplay. So quips and jabs are not only welcome, but they can be nice to have because I explicitly do not want to get invested in those stories. Same with Marvel movies, I think the Bathos works well there. They can break the fourth wall a bit and play with it, we have come to expect it and outside of the main thread between movies, we aren’t terribly invested.
Then you compare that to very serious movies and games and that changes, and I agree I think that’s the nuance Hollywood forgot. Hollywood and studios seem to think that since Marvel movies were fun to have quips that we would want that everywhere, and we’ve lost a lot of “serious” tones in movies/media. DA4 should have been a serious game with how much was set up before it.
I like what you set up there. GTA was a goofy game which is a satirical mirror on our society which we fully welcome tongue in cheek humor like that. Cyberpunk is a game which is still a massive mirror on society - but humor like that would cheapen and worsen the experience. If they added Bathos-style humor to Cyberpunk it would cheapen and ruin the tension the game builds, and it would show that they were afraid of letting that tension land.
I buy this.
I think publishers looked at Fortnite, Overwatch, Call of Duty, PubG, GTA on a superficial level, and concluded that their customers don’t care about comprehensive immersion. Gamers (presumably) like “serious” yet shallow, not quite tongue-in-cheek and not requiring much attention span.
I’m not sure if that’s the bathos you describe, but it seems close.
Hence publishers tried to reconcile that “Fortnite style” (an expansive, flashy veneer of lore, art, and cheese without anything beyond that) with traditional RPGs, and ended up “neither here nor there.”
I agree with you, and go a step further that gamers and movie goers and more have nuance and expectations with media.
As you said, Fortnite, Overwatch, CoD, I don’t expect much immersion, I’m expecting a quick romp where the story is only there to set up the gameplay. So quips and jabs are not only welcome, but they can be nice to have because I explicitly do not want to get invested in those stories. Same with Marvel movies, I think the Bathos works well there. They can break the fourth wall a bit and play with it, we have come to expect it and outside of the main thread between movies, we aren’t terribly invested.
Then you compare that to very serious movies and games and that changes, and I agree I think that’s the nuance Hollywood forgot. Hollywood and studios seem to think that since Marvel movies were fun to have quips that we would want that everywhere, and we’ve lost a lot of “serious” tones in movies/media. DA4 should have been a serious game with how much was set up before it.
I like what you set up there. GTA was a goofy game which is a satirical mirror on our society which we fully welcome tongue in cheek humor like that. Cyberpunk is a game which is still a massive mirror on society - but humor like that would cheapen and worsen the experience. If they added Bathos-style humor to Cyberpunk it would cheapen and ruin the tension the game builds, and it would show that they were afraid of letting that tension land.