What basically prompted this was me playing Final Fantasy XVI for the first time, and the setup for this world is so freaking played out, it’s almost satirical.
“There’s these big crystals that people mine for smaller crystals and people use the smaller crystals to cast magic that have different elemental properties.”
That exact fantasy world has been done a million times over.
But where Final Fantasy XVI excels at is taking that super basic foundation and then asking ‘Okay, now what does that *mean?*’ and then answering that question over and over and over again.
It asks:
• Who controls the crystals?
• What happens when they run out?
• How does this shape borders and wars?
• How do religions interpret them?
• How do rulers justify their power through them?
• What does daily life look like for people who depend on them?
• What happens when access to magic is unequal?
And suddenly, you have a world that feels very lived in.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Kitchen Sink fantasy worlds can also be fun just as a litmus test of how much you can get away with. I personally love Mortal Kombat’s world specifically because nothing is off the table. That is a world where genuinely anything can happen and you just kinda shrug and go ‘Naturally’.
The trick is that you still have to have an internal narrative reverence for *why* these elements are in your fantasy world to begin with.
Cyber ninja assassins and immortal magical princesses are treated with the same Doyalist reverence as a Hollywood actor with magical shadow powers.
I mean, sure. But I feel you're arguing against a strawman you set up for yourself? I can't think of any examples of published fantasy books that just throw a bunch of random stuff together without an explanation?
You mention Mortal Kombat but ... that's a tournament fighting video game that just came up with characters based on the "rule of cool". None of that was created with any sort of storytelling in mind. All the lore was created after the fact.
There are a bunch for sure, they're just not well rated or read much. I can't think of popular ones that really do that, either.
The biggest example I can think of is Harry Potter; there was all this stuff in the first book that's just there because it made a funny pun or whatever, and then doesn't make a lot of sense when the books try to get deeper and people need to really inhabit the world.
Fair, they are popular, but I would say a target audience of like 8-12 years old puts them kind of outside of the scope of the discussion.
Why so? Lots of authors writing for kids do manage to write books that make sense!
yes but doesn't the loose but rule-of-fun worldbuilding specifically a big part of the appeal of Harry potter for kids? The worldbuilding could make more sense but I think it would be a worse "childrens" book. People compare them to Dahl books, which also have nonsensical worldbuilding if you were ever going to look at it like that, but appeal to kids because of that.
The issue with Harry Potter is the later books. Books 1-3 I agree, but then they try to get deep and serious, magic rape, genocide, racism, etc. and when set against the flimsy world est it falls apart. I think Harry Potter is a wonderful world for kids, and within books 1-3 it fills that perfectly, but then it tries to escape its scope and that’s where the issues arise
yeah I agree. I just think as a rule childrens books (books 1-3) shouldn't be held under Tolkien standards of wordbuilding, different demographics have very different goals.
Sure, but we’re talking about Harry Potter as a series. This means taking into account the fact that it’s not merely books 1-3, and therefore we can’t excuse the series as a whole. We can further clarify that there are parts of Harry Potter that are excusable, but it’s still valuable to discuss that
The biggest "kitchen sink" stuff is in the big comics universes, sort of as a natural consequence of having many writers working in the same space. Some people like it but it's always strained credulity for me; "oh so someone got superpowers from a radioactive experiment AND space aliens are invading AND magic is real and there's a sorcerer who fights demons AND the government is creating supersoldiers with science, all unrelated to each other, but also the world is basically what we recognize."
Yea, nobody likes inconsistent worldbuilding. But I do sometimes really enjoy "maximalist" world-building. I feel the Bas-Lag books by China Mieville are a good example of this. That world is very much everything and the kitchen sink, filled to the brim with everything from golems to cactus people to vampires to dangerous deep sea creatures to magicians to runaway trains to warring cities to pirates to steampunk people-machine hybrids.
I'd argue Malazan to a certain extent . Although it's uneven. Some of Malazan comes across as having a lot of depth. But big sections of the series feels paper thin. The way warrens work changes every five minutes and after a while you get the sense that the magic system also fundamentally runs on the rule of cool. Just to be clear; I don't expect that every little detail of a magic system/cosmology needs to be worked out. But if you are going to explain things I'd prefer it if the explanations remained somewhat consistent.
I'm two books from the endings, but so far, it's because warrens/holds/magic aren't explained well enough to be used in so many load bearing moments. Multiple deus ex machina moments that haven't been explained. Multiple miracles that weren't established as possible beforehand and not explained afterwards.
which DEM you are talking about? I can only think of one in book 1 (although it gets explained later on, so, it's not, really) and book 6 (which has only speculations). Please put a spoiler tag.
The warrens aren't quite realized, though I adore soft magic. Some people move through them rather quickly, others get lost, some don't travel at all. If there was teleportation or quick travel readily available (a la Trygalle), regardless of danger, there would be a ton of mages exploiting it for profiteering.
Plotwise, what DEM specifically came to mind for me is (book 2 spoilers): Trygalle's journey to deliver the munitions through the warrens to Quick Ben, just in time, read like: "quick we need to create a warren jumping doordash to save this plot line"
Edit to note I adore Malazan, and critique with love
Don't know how far you've read, but Only High Mages (who are extremely rare) in Trygalle are capable of quick ''warren hopping''. Besides them being very dangerous, warrens are also poisoned by tCG (chaos is bleeding over) therefore very few complete the journey unscathed (especially in book 6 and 8). As for there being more of them, well, the guild is expanding, they only recently opened office in Darujhistan (in book 2).
I've read every one, including ICE!
Dangers and difficulties acknowledged. Not understating that portion of it. I still think it would be a larger production than its very plot-useful bits in the books. Economics often finds its way, especially with a supply-chain saving bit of magic like that over centuries where the alternative is sea travel (with massive ice floes).
As for the Deus Ex, it crops up again in TTH mostly just to transport Mappo and our tiger boy to Lether quickly. It's smooth enough not to be damning, and a fun ride as a reader, but it's definitely a matter of plot convenience.
Well, as I said, it's a fairly new business. I don't think it's DEM in TtH, since Trygelle is an already established thing by then and doesn't come out of nowhere.
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That's because Malazan is a tabletop campaign that used the rule "if nobody remembers, it didn't happen"
I agree that the world of Malazan is... well, not easy to make sense of. The series is always presented as very intelligent, but I am not convinced that the worldbuilding stands up to scrutiny. I strongly suspect that it only seems coherent because so much is left unexplained.
I have complained before about the alleged 300.000 years of back story. I do not think the Malazan universe actually has 300.000 years of back story. I think Erikson and Esslemont just padded the numbers with some extra zeroes to make them look cool.
It doesn't have 300k years of backstory. It has some thousand or so years of fleshed out backstory that's spread out over hundreds of thousands of years. It feels like there's a gulf of eons between the causes and effects, but that's intended. They are disconnected. The Imass and Forkrul are supposed to be unimaginably ancient relics.
I'm not a fan of the gap, but it was intentionally done and not an example of surface level veneer.
For me the problem with the "gap" is that it feels like we should have more stuff from the intervening times, but we don't. We hear about these unimaginably ancient races and stuff because they're relevant to the plot, but almost nothing about stuff that SHOULD be way more recent and accessible and totally swamp the old stuff.
Should there though? 2 of the 4 founding races were extinct or as good as, and the Imass essentially commited mass sudoku to better exterminate the last race. What was left was essentially a scattering of hunter gatherers that slowly, eventually, evolved into humans. You would expect it to take tens, even hundreds, of thousands of years. Beyond that, the world was left basically empty with a few solitary Jaghut here and there, very angry dust blowing around trying to kill them, and the occasional emo elves popping up to mope around. The world very nearly did end for sentient life.
Like I said, I personally don't like it. It kind of leans on what a lot of authors use to make things seem meaningful or grand and uses astronomically large numbers to highlight how horrible or great something is, and to me it always falls flat. Like the saying goes, ten is a tragedy but a million is just a statistic, and 300k feels less like a long time and more like a long number. But the fact that of the 300 000 years, very nearly 200 000 of them were pretty quiet and that's the feeling you're supposed to get about them. The last 100 000 years I do buy as kind of a stretch since there supposedly was some pretty advanced civilization for a while.
Yeah it's mostly the last 100k. Kallor's original empire, for example, had agriculture, cities, and good metal-working, putting them well past our Bronze age (so ~3,000 years ago). So humans have had that stuff for like ... ten times the length of human civilization in the real world.
And in the real world, literally hundreds of different civilizations and nations have occupied places like the Middle East in those 3,000 years; any given spot in the Malazan world ought to have a history of thousands and thousands of peoples and empires, but we keep seeing the same ones.
300k years back (which is consistent with modern approximation of the existence of neanderthals) was performed first Ritual of Tellann among Imass (elder Malazan race resembling neanderthals, with denisovan variants). So naturally, humans, descendants of said Imass, didn’t exist back then and gradually, over thousands of years evolved from remaining, living Imass. As for technological progression, it should be noted, that the ability to solve problems through magic/sorcery (eg. travel through warrens; telepathic communication etc.) has likely stifled the need for humans to greatly innovate.
And even then, we can count the number of centuries of our continuous progress on one hand. Sure, that's a long time, but how quickly did technology progress over the ~100,000 years before that? Plus, as with our history, multiple civilizations have risen and fallen in that time, therefore - stasis or very slow progression.
It would be easier for me to swallow if there was complete technological stasis. But there IS innovation. The Moranth munitions are a huge deal. Technology is presented in a way which I find highly inconsistent and unconvincing.
Note the 'very slow' part. Before forging an alliance with Malazan Empire, these were developed and exclusively available to isolationist Moranth, in quite primitive form (yet to being used as propulsion). Only after Malazans got their hands on munitions, engineers began refining/modifying them, which now makes them a huge deal.
Look at our history how, for example, gunpowder was refined over time.
As for origins of the alchemy itself, details are quite vague, involving contact with Tiste Edur (which is a whole other can of D'rek worms).
Edit: here is an essay discussing technological progression in fantasy, including Malazan
The loss of advanced technologies is a plot point with one of the ancient races.
Yeah you could easily knock a zero off all the ages of everything in Malazan and it would still make perfect sense.
Better sense IMO.
Wonder why you got downvoted, especially since people below you agreeing with you were not. You’re totally right btw
Malazan fans are patriots.
Amusingly, there is a Light Novel series with the first three books adapted called Trapped in an Otome Game, where the OP is reincarnated in a thing I just said, and part of the premise is that the world is exactly that kind of thing. It's a world where there's no solid ground just islands floating in the sky, there's mechs and airships, and nobility runs like medieval Europe for unexplained reasons except women are the ones with all the social clout. Because it's a game made for the wish fulfillment of lonely women.
So it's canon that the worldbuilding explains nothing and the bad writing is glossed over.
The bottom of the barrel, so anything that can be put next to Lightlark series.
For anything else, usually some YA/NA genres (pure fantasy, dystopian, etc.) and to certain extend urban fantasy have issues of semi-attaching some concepts.
Anime-manga related medias have some hiccups of not getting how things worked in the past. Fire Emblem Three Houses is weird when it comes to the topic of the Church. It feels semi-integrated.
Other than that kids-family media tend to be like that with The Dragon Prince being an obvious one, but those can be partially explained by the target audience and suspension of disbelief.
OP did indeed create a Straw Man.
But they're also not wrong. They basically said (in too many words) that good execution of a story matters more than a good concept/idea.
I tend to agree. My favorite stories are the ones with compelling and interesting characters and emotional stakes, not the ones with the most "unique worldbuilding" or whatever.
Yes, of course he is right. They said that a well written story is better than a poorly written one. There's nothing to argue against. But they're framing it in a way as if there was an arguments against it. And as an example they put a narrative driven game up against a game that has no narrative to speak of. Of course the narrative game is going to have a better story than the one that at best has a loose framing device for a story.
I like good execution of good concepts.
Better example than fantasy books is in games. Overwatch 2 comes to mind as a sci film world but actually there's magic now and no we won't elaborate.
That's the same issue as Mortal Kombat. The story is totally irrelevant to the game and just there as window dressing. The characters are just made based on what the developers think will provide cool gameplay.
May I direct your attention to the first two novels in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. They were written as parodies of the prevalent fantasy tropes of the time. The later books move away from parody and become more satirical in nature but still keeping it's parody roots in mind.
I can't really say that the Discworld is not successful, can you?
Oh, for sure. I’m not holding Mortal Kombat up as some groundbreaking feat of storytelling cause… well, let’s face it, it’s just not.
I’m merely pointing out that it’s an engaging world because everything in it is treated with the same internal narrative reverence of ‘Here’s why this matters right now’.
I don’t need every element in a fantasy world to have consistent internal logic (or even continuity for that matter), I just need it to have consistent internal respect.
Do you read fantasy novels or just play fantasy video games?
I get my fantasy where I can. Though, all cards on the table, my go-to source of entertainment is primarily video games, so I do kinda default to them for examples.
No shame. I am a big gamer myself. But fantasy worldbuilding in videogames is 99% nonsense that just justifies gameplay and set pieces.
If you were impressed by FFXVI, there are so many books you could read that would blow it utterly out of the water. Shadows of the Apt is a great series, accessible, fun, extremely well built, easy to read. The first book, Empire of Black and Gold, is a banger.
I've put like eighty hours into Clair Obscur this past month, so I love my video games too. I just think that, from your post here, you seem unaware of a whole world that you would love to explore.
The rhythm and phrasing you use smells like chatGPT
Nah, I’m just autistic.
chokes on a laugh
I’ve commented the same thing before. XD
I assume you’ve played the big fantasy lore games like Witcher 3? God of War? I’m loving Ragnarok right now.
While I agree with you in concept, picking FF16 as your example is wild.
Everything in that game is so surface-level. It has some interesting concepts, but fails to actually delve into any of them, preferring to just jump into the next cool set-piece.
It's a visual feast, there's no doubt. But the actual core of the story and characters is lacking... well, everything.
That game peaks at the prologue. Everything else is so dull and lifeless. The game tries so damn hard to be like Game of Thrones, but it just feels boring and monotonous. The characters are a nothingburger, the world is generic, the game lacks a party, the dialogue is basically variations of Clive making a sad remark and Jill saying “let’s just keep going.” But Benedikta is using sex to manipulate Hugo and people are conspiring and whispering cryptically in a room, so House of the Dragon variety of maturity achieved, I guess.
Say what you want about the mess that was Final Fantasy XV, but at least the game had one of the most charismatic parties I’ve seen. XVI only has graphics in its favor. I doubt it would be received so well if it had been released in the end of the console generation, with players more jaded toward graphics.
I think the main problem is that it can't decide wether it wants to be Game of Thrones or a typical Final Fantasy story, so we get Game of Thrones early in the prologue, and Final Fantasy pretty much as soon as the "real" game starts, but the story still wants to be Game of Thrones, which turns out to be a pretty harsh tonal clash.
I was okay with the game, but the grimdarkness of the setting and then you're riding about on a chocobo was, as you say, pure tonal whiplash.
Graphics and MUSIC! Sokens soundtrack was by far the best thing about this mess
As a long time FFXIV player, I must say that Soken and colleagues are absolutely incredible at what they do.
OST also peaked in the prologue, to be honest. Not that the rest is bad, of course.
I don't know I think Find the Flame is probably the peak
The game was cool boss fights with mind numbingly boring everything in between
And for a game with so much driving, the driving was booooorrrriinnnngggg.
I was enjoying that game up until the time skip at which point I kinda lost interest, but I remember rolling my eyes a little bit at the ham-handed way it was handled when they have the conversation with Cid about the nature of the crystals.
Clive: The power source we all rely on is destroying nature? No way! Surely people wouldn’t ignore the truth.
Cid: Maybe the truth… *winks at the camera and whips on a pair of sunglasses* … was inconvenient
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it was ham-fisted because he literally referenced Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" just in case the player didn't figure out the obvious metaphor on their own
16 was such a let down for me. I wouldn't have minded my issues with the plotting and worldbuilding if there weren't so many damn cut scenes. The more story I have to noninteractively watch, the worse it is for the story to have a lot of problems.
FF16 was very bad post-prologue
I also prefer things that are good to things that are bad.
While FF16 as an example is funny, but basically, you have described how logical and consistent worldbuilding has to be done.
Of course it can still fail, if your storytelling doesn't adhere to the same rules and logic. There are many examples, of "here is the world and how it works, and now here is a protagonist, who is so super special, that they break all the rules"
I think the only real rule is 'something that is well-written' is better than 'something that is not'.
I think trying to break it down into 'x is always better than y' is tricky, because there are always exceptions. Authors can always find a way to do a shit job of x or a great job of y. Especially true in fantasy, where imagination plays such a huge part: coming up with new and interesting ways of expressing y is pretty core to the genre.
Honestly this entire post just feels like a slightly dressed up version of the same tired old debate around "soft" vs "hard" magic systems.
I agree with you in principle but FFXVI's setting has so many logical holes in it that it doesn't even occur to me as an example of coherent worldbuilding. I spent my 20? hours with it (dropped it at the Hugo fight) constantly muttering "this doesn't hold up to scrutiny" and "this is surface level" and "this is self-contradictory".
What things did you find that didn’t hold up to scrutiny or were contradictory? I don’t deny it’s surface level, but I’m playing the game right now and honest to god the setting is the only reason I’m even finishing it.
I will say that I played the game in Japanese, as in, JP text JP voice JP everything, and that may not be the exact same experience as the EN one because Koji Fox is known to creatively spruce things up or alter lines in the text when he thinks the OG isn't good enough. For what it's worth, the JP script to XVI is incredibly dry.
Didn't hold up to scrutiny: Clive has lived among and as a Bearer for 13 years, are you seriously telling me that not a single person has even ever gossiped to him about what happens when a Bearer dies? Even if he only associates with his group, that beggars belief. I know the story wants to talk about the self-induced helplessness that is caused by systemic despair, but this system of oppression never seems to think about what to do if some of the people it oppresses just....stands up? What happens then? You oppress the people who are literally your WMDs, what happens if one of them isn't like Jill and decides to go fuck it to your entire capital? The system relies solely on the idea that the slaves won't do anything because they've been beaten into submission and the weight of the system has inertia, but it beggars belief that such systemic oppressors would remain basic ass faux medieval lords instead of....inventing something elaborate as a fail-safe against such opposition. We have private citizens who are able to cow everyone into obeisance because of his power (Hugo), why do no other places have any measures about this? Heck, did the royal family in that dragon country never think about what happens if the Dominant is like "actually fuck it I'm going to take that throne and who's going to stop me"? What are politics actually like when your royal family turns into a WMD every couple of generations? Actually, does anyone actually do politics aside from some grave and stoic men gather round a table and move pieces around? For that matter, if everything in life is so reliant on Bearers, what are laws governing the usage and procurement of Bearers? How is constant supply and management secured? Actual slavery through most of human history had pretty elaborate laws governing them. How was Cid/Clive able to convince anyone that his crystal theory made sense when it was like, trust me bro I have a hunch?
Contradictory: Also, Clive had a Bearer tattoo on his face that mob NPCs frequently comment on from several meters away, but that one lady who used to be married to his dad's retainer (or something like that) was sitting like a foot from him and didn't even mention one word about it? And people there even offered him Bearer slaves? Also, why the fuck was Jill surprised that Dominants are treated badly in that early game country too? Jill of all people?
Do you have any examples of Fantasy that does this besides Mortal Kombat? A game never meant to have a story at all.
There are plenty, but they don't become popular, which shouldn't be a surprising correlation.
But usually, the magical/fantasy part seems to exist separately, in a vacuum. There's conveniently both magic in abundance everywhere, and static medieval society otherwise, to fill the gaps, and they largely don't intermingle, while they should be intertwined.
Not that most people mind, though
I mean, coming from a world of technology that would seem like magic to people ... 70 years ago? that basically nobody using it understands either makes this kinda workable for me. Sure, someone made structures so small we start to have quantum problems, but that doesn't bother the people using them to read on public transport. The whole "You have the whole knowledge of humankind in your pocket, what do you use it for? Mostly look at cute animal videos" thing.
You should try FFX, not only is it a unique world but it thoroughly sells itself along the lines that you're impressed by 16 to an even greater degree.
This is what I like about the world of the five Gods series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. She explores the implications of the religious and Magic system presented, in particular how the Servants of these gods both work together and have tension at different times.
I want to finish those, but I could only find two of them on Libby. :/
I really enjoyed the first two. Also, Bujold is about the only author I read where I have to look up multiple words per book. Peculation and cortège are two words I learned from her.
Her Vorkosigan saga is sci-fi, but I highly recommend it for enjoyers of the genre.
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Clockwork Boys is by T. Kingfisher.
The first book of the World Of The Five Gods series is The Curse Of Chalion. And the dialogue is definitely not basic. In fact, some people have commented that it is a bit on the formal side; given that it is set up in a kingdom with Nobles and vassals, this totally fits.
I'm happy enough with complicated worlds as long as it's well developed and well explained - Avatar: the last airbender comes to mind. Obviously you've got the pretty basic magic system with the elements which is explored thoroughly but then there are more complicated elements too such as a reincarnation cycle, the bridge between the real world and the spirit world, chakras etc. These other elements aren't necessarily tightly woven. We barely get any explanation for how Aang gets a magic ability from a lion-turtle at the end but I'm still glad they're there because it would be pretty dull if we had just gotten a super tightly woven "elemental magic in Asia" story
I liked the story for ff16 a lot but the gameplay was so boring and repetitive to me. I hope they don’t continue this style for ff17
Growing up is realizing it's never about the idea but the execution. I hate when authors try too hard to be original and new while completely overlooking everything else.
I discovered this awhile back. Like I could go to great lengths to create an all original race... let's make them really tall, with pointy ears, and the love the forest and nature, and they don't like to fight but they are good at, and they love bows and arrows, and they have a deeply spiritual relationship with animals.
Now let's make them blue, and call them Na'vi.
Now I gotta explain to everyone WTF a Na'vi is.
I could have just left that "originality' part out, and made them elves.
Not dissing on Avatar, just saying that sometimes if an archetype exists already you don't need to reinvent it just for the sake of originality, it's perfectly fine to use existing tropes and archetypes in your fantasy.
Avatar used nothing but tropes. Changing a label doesn't subvert the trope.
I’m fine with worlds being kinda complicated and messy as long as you can tell someone actually thought about it. Star Wars is a good example. At its core it’s just space wizards with the Force, light side vs dark side, pretty simple. But then you’ve got all this extra stuff piled on - chosen ones, Force ghosts, prophecy, midi-chlorians, some weird spiritual balance thing, cloning, whatever. A lot of it doesn’t fully line up or get explained properly, it’s just there.
Steven Brust does a bit of this in his Dragaera books which are quite a lot of fun and highly recommended.
I just want to visit your point about mortal Kombat. I've been struggling to find a way to build my TTRPG setting in a way where I can throw everything at the wall and it just "works" the way mortal kombat does.
It's such a great example of what I want. I'm just so bored of medieval fantasy fantasy for the sake of fantasy. At least in my TTRPGs.
Your point is more about stories and literature, which yeah, totally.
I have nothing else to add, I completely agree with you, OP.
I would much rather have The Book of The New Sun or Viriconium or Gormenghast or Zothique or The Hyborian Age where the themes, character and atmosphere are consistent and whether the economic implications of the magical crystals or whatever stand up to scrutiny is of no consequence.
Yeah, no. I'm all for imaginative world building. Having another iteration of medieval-like fantasy world is just creative laziness.
Interesing, because FFXVI is a dredge of a story and worldbuilding.
Totally agree, I absolutely love to see the basics done well. Would much rather read a book like that than something unique but done terribly.
Meanwhile FF14 has one of the best stories in all media.
Final Fantasy 16 is such a magnificent game
Whoef. Hit and miss.