Void the Void

"We transmit on all frequencies
Talk show panic gossip queens
Racing into ruin
Racing on to our demise"

 

Aesthetic Perfection - Into the Void

 

 

Before complaining about Darkest Dungeon 2, let me sidetrack to say the validity of any fad is inverse to the extent to which it is, in fact... a fad. An idiotically and endlessly regurgitated meme. A refuge for the unimaginative and simpleminded. An idiot-friendly set piece. Vapid filler. Dross.

 

Anything can be dragged down to that level if enough of the braindead majority pile onto the bandwagon.

So first off, everyone give Lovecraft a rest. He's getting as played-out as Tolkien elves by last decade. Likewise, as everyone willfully misinterpreted elves as mere spindly prettyboys while ignoring the poignancy of cursed pride, doomed creation or waning nobility, "lovecraftian" has been debased to "tentacled fish monsters" increasingly ignoring the persistent theme of human insufficiency, immeasurably vast antiquity or creeping decadence which elevated his stories past the usual creep show. When The Secret World did it, the reserves had not yet been tapped dry. This ain't then. Come now, horror's not my preferred genre, but there must be other sources of inspiration you can channel. (Just don't fall back on red horny devils or googly-eyed oni.) (Or vampires.) (Or ffs, anything but zombies!)

On a related note, stop spouting "the void" for a bogeyman catch-all. Even as a teenager back in '97 I had no trouble calling bullshit on Event Horizon's standard trappings of a burning hell being called a "dimension of pure chaos" ... which would in fact mean a whole lotta nothing at all. Certainly not a force obsessed with attacking humans. Yes, yes, the certainty of nonexistence is the core under-riding anxiety of any sapient, but you're hardly plumbing those philosophical depths by constantly spouting "the void" as highfalutin' smokescreen for generic goblins. I'm sure you all want a slice of Games Workshop's pie, but a setting designed to peddle fifty-dollar toy soldiers to fanatical collectors is just too obviously a make-work pile of warped pretextium crystals with no depth worth tapping. There's nothing there to copy. The setting really is... a void. You won't steal away Warhammer's fans unless you can slap the Warhammer logo onto your product. Even Blizzard didn't manage it.

Also, as appealing as "the void" sounds to any writer desperate to leave all options open for future sequels / expansions cramming anything and everything trendy into that kitchen sink, you do know you're not the only ones who can spot that cop-out from coherence and a proper worldbuilding framework, right? If it's everything, it's nothing. I'm not sitting here in front of my screen awed at infinite possibilities when I hear your voice actors intone "kay-oss" or "the aether" or "Tha-Voyd" * with all the gravitas of fifth graders reciting a book report on a book they didn't read. I'm thinking "yeah, mmkay, so there's maybe a 5% chance whatever rando' shit these rando' scheisters pull out of their asses next might not bore me to tears." The suspense is not killing me.

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* Or worst of all by this point "multiverse"