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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9407332" data-attributes="member: 18">The Outer Worlds doesn't really even come close to meeting the standards for grimdark.It's just a bog-standard corporate dystopia. There are actual good guys and bad guys, it's not amoral, it's not doomed, and whilst you can't fix everything, there is hope! You're absolutely not doomed. I don't think it's even possible to pick a "doomed" ending except by having a low-INT character try and make the jump by themselves! Spoilers but you can destroy the Board. That cannot be "grimdark". I feel like maybe you didn't finish TOW? We can't just call every dystopia grimdark or it completely obliterates the meaning of the term!Pillars of Eternity, likewise, isn't even close to grimdark. It's barely even possible to argue it's "dark fantasy". It's just fantasy that's got a vague interest in political realism, but actually does stuff like offers apologia for some political bad behaviour, defending it as actually a path to a better future, at least in the eyes of the people involved, and maybe in the eyes of the player too. It's not a resounding downer unless you pick the worst ending (which is your choice), nor amoral - rather both Pillars games are tales of conflicting but genuine moralities, rather than just a bunch of terrible disaster factions like 40K or truly horrible people like Joe Abercrombie books. It's not even dystopian! Many of the nations/empires are even pretty well-run! Arguably better than our world at the same level of societal development. If Pillars is "grimdark" or a "dystopia", so has the real world always been and is today, which again renders both terms meaningless.Tyranny is closest, because it's about a severe dystopia where evil already won - but the entire plot of Tyranny is that, despite the Dark Lord having conquered the world, there is still hope, and you, as the Fatebinder, can potentially cause a huge upset for the Dark Lord (The Archon I think he's called), and make the world a distinctly better place, albeit not a perfect one. Had the series continued I think it would have become more clear that it wasn't just grimdark. But it doesn't imply your victory is only temporary or fleeting, the implication is you really have changed things, permanently.Like, I get that you'd like to see more straightforward fantasy, but calling all those settings grimdark just makes the term entirely meaningless. What Obsidian like, generally, is socio-political realism (or what they see as such), which, when mental adults are involved, always cuts both ways - it's never just negative. When edgelords who are mentally teens try and do that, then you get grimdark. Fallout: NV isn't grimdark either - I think it's particularly easy to see what Obsidian are doing there, because it's closer to the real world.Which brings us to DOS2, which is genuinely grimdark. Everyone is compromised. Everyone is amoral (including the party). Everyone behaves like trash. Everything about the world is horrible. Only one of the five endings is even arguably looking towards a better future, and even that is completely questionable due to the history of the setting. I'd say it's more grimdark than Warhammer Fantasy, even (more on-par with 40K, except in 40K there are at least some non-awful individuals, just no non-awful factions).TOW is more similar to the original DOS, which was a bit edgelord-y but not grimdark, though TOW's humour is a lot funnier than the weird "Dutch guy trying to translate an bad sexist or scatological joke into English" vibes that most DOS humour had (I am aware Larian are Belgian!)</blockquote>

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