bbcda7 No.16120729
I'm talking about those games where sure your character might have a personal goal, they may be a silent vector for gameplay with no reason to progress beyond you wanting to see whats over the next hill, but they all share one core idea: The World is fucked.
This rarely means traditional post apocalyptic imagery for the most part but more stuff thats winding down and run out of steam. Its not the end of the world but you can see it from here.
The world of Dark Souls is literally cooling off as entropy and darkness takes hold. In the world of Nier mankind went extinct long ago and human clones live simple medieval lives thinking the hulking ruins of once great industrial marvels are 'the temples of the ancients' and dont know how much is lost and that eventually the process making the replicants will fail as well. In Hollow Knight you are simply told there is a once great insectoid kingdom below the surface and pointed to an open well that leads on a massive journey through a subterranian marvel thats fallen to complete ruin.
But unlike stuff like Journey or Submerged where everything is lost and its the bare survival as the height of human comfort these 'bleakcore' games often still have settlements, people who run small shops and trade goods for currency. There is still a form of life, but the world around it is so tired and running on fumes that you get the feeling its not going to stay this way for much longer. Its not the start of the slow motion apocalypse yet, buy you get the feeling that the smarter people left have begun to realise how close the end of everything is.
I don't know why this vibe/aesthetic appeals to me so much. Maybe it comes from the rpg exploratory idea of stumbling on a ruin and wondering 'what lead to this?' as you eye all the environmental storytelling or something. But do you understand this thematic fetish? Do you feel deeply the feel i am feeling?
Post last edited at
b5ed1f No.16120741
>Do you feel deeply the feel i am feeling?
Right now in real life.
a45c6b No.16120743
ReCore has an interesting twist on this concept. When you start the game, it's basically the complete opposite. You're here to help terraform a planet, the shining beacon of hope for the future of humanity. There's just a robot uprising to take care of, but otherwise, once you're succeed, it's all jolly good for mankind.
Except the audiologs tell a radically different story.
Humanity isn't terraforming this planet for expansion - Earth has been rendered inhabitable by an unexplained weather phenomenon, a mere fragment of the total population has been hastily relocated to a spaceship and needs that new terraformed planet yesterday
Oh and the robot uprising durably fucked the entire system so the terraforming is pretty much a no go, you're basically fighting the rebellion out of sheer principle
b0e826 No.16120744
If done right Bleakcore can work but half the time it's put in the hands of these retards who try too hard.
42f0b8 No.16120749
>>16120729
Shadow of the Colossus kind of has an atmosphere like this, what with being very alone in abandoned ruins searching and fighting colossi. Also if you haven't watched it Girl's Last Tour fucking nails this aesthetic.
9fa2cb No.16120757
>>16120729
I used to love this semi-grimdark aesthetic when I was a teenager, now as an adult I simply find it eye-rolling and boring, especially since it's so often being espoused by retarded writers who think they are making something profound as opposed to just silly.
45eeb7 No.16120793
>>16120729
>keep making new words because the very words Like Dark Souls are synonymous with shit now
YA BASTA
0a036c No.16120798
09dd4c No.16120809
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16120743
That said, I really loved the starting sections of PSO and even Xenoblade X- you've arrived on a whole new world where the possibilities are limitless.
Again, the complete opposite of what OP is saying but, it feels like these games are so few and far between that it 's worth noting
bbcda7 No.16120810
>>16120749
I love Girls Last Tour but Shadow kind of only works if you havent played Ico which came first but is set after. If you look at the binding ruins that hold the colossi in check things like the rings for the flying desert boss in particular are all parts of the ruins that make up the castle that centuries later will imprison Yorda. So while the world has this unnatural stillness theres still going to be a society centuries later when an evil queen has her shades take the leftover, and now useless, binding stones to build her castle so that 'end of the world' idea seems a bit diluted. Same thing happened with automata to a degree.
bbcda7 No.16120826
>>16120809
Star Ocean: the last hope opens with a great version of this. The world is a nuclear ashball after WW3. The survivors put aside their differences for one unified last gasp attempt to survive. They put years into developing a warp drive and create 5 scout ships 'to send off like gulls into the great star ocean' and its this big strangely patriotic, hopeful scenario.
Then they crashland on an alien world where all their guns are useless and they have to resort to construction cutting tools to use as beam swords and the like.
The game is mediocre but boy that was a nice anti bleak set up.
e43b47 No.16120836
>>16120757
You seem to be growing backwards, Mr Burton.
a7951b No.16121189
>>16120810
>centuries
Isn't the MC the baby from Shadow? It's at most 10 or 12 years.
bbcda7 No.16121194
>>16121189
No just the first victim of a curse that happens because of those events, afterwards all horned children are sent to the castle as bearers of said curse.
952617 No.16121265
>>16120729
>Bleakcore
It's called Dystopian you fucking double nigger. Read a fucking book
8d4ef3 No.16121293
The world is a nightmare and you want out.
8d4ef3 No.16121298
>Post last edited at 3 hours ago
8a2bc6 No.16121388
>>16121265
You read a fucking book, that's not at all what Distopian means. Just because the world is shit doesn't make it a distopia. There needs to be some kind of authority actively making everyone's lives shit.
7d6352 No.16121401
>>16121293
It's set in the real world?
256116 No.16121817
>>16121265
>>16121388
Dystopian is Greek for literally "bad place", however it's usually applied to describe the society or culture of that place and how that is the reason for it's current state, hence Dystopian is considered to be about "dystopian societies" primary.
However, Bleakcore doesn't actually mean the same, although it may share aesthetics with it. Dystopian whatever is a genre about exploring why that place got as bad as it currently is. The focus is on the reason and the phylosophy behind it all, with characters and locations being the vehicles for exposition.
You're supposed to stare in awe at all the bleak things around you and understand that they are consequences of a long chain of events started by a particular event or idea and prolonged by the nature of it's inhabitants.
Bleakcore however seems to focus entirely on the struggle to make it through the day in such a place, what character's lives are and what they must do to survive. The central point isn't why the world's fucked, it just is and you better accept that and move on or you'll die sooner rather than later.
There's no moral highgrounds of phylosophical debates, there's just relatable characters and grey morals all around.
For instance, Blade Runner could be said to be Dystopian since it delves into why society degenerated into it's current state, how it treats it's fellow men and makes some metaphors about the worth of life using replicants. Every character exists to portray an ideal or a point of view while Deckard exists to bear witness to it all so the audience can see all of it and make their own mind about it.
Meanwhile, Avalon is more Bleakcore. The world outside the game is utterly fucked and playing videogames online to earn your wage is how you make it through life. The film is not about the intricate philosophies that guided the creators of Avalon nor does any of it relate to the state of the world at all. It's about the main character, how she deals with the challenges presented to her and her drive to reach the secret level so she can leave her current life behind her.
To answer OP:
Dystopian works have an incredible presence that demolishes minds when you start to understand how complexly bad things are to the point that it's not just impossible to improve them, it doesn't even begin to make sense to think you can improve them. Good works focus on this, how it's a myriad of different factors that drive the world to this situation, that you'd need to go against the laws of physics and human nature to even have a chance to improve it all. And with such background, you then ask the viewer "in this situation, where do you put yourself?" making him think about how he'd personally make sense of that chaos.
Bleakcore's appeal however is a more personal one. It's about seeing insurmountable challenges besetting you and wondering "Do I have the strength to overcome them? If I don't, what would I do to get it?" It's more about that specific character and many of the things he does would be considered wrong in the grand scheme of things, but to him specifically, it's just the best he can do for himself and those he cares about.
It's a constant feeling of dread and despair, knowing that any error can be fatal in a world where there's no right choices, only a list of bad ones that you grade based on a morality scale warped by your despair.
It's an emotional rolercoaster all the way through that appeals more to the heart than to the mind. It doesn't make you think the way Dystopian works do but it makes you feel very, very strong emotions and rarely positive ones.
On a small note and personal opinion, the best part of Bleakcore is when something genuinely good actually happens. Some character doing a simple gesture like giving you a small gift can bring tears to your eyes after spending so long dealing with an entire world of psychopaths and monsters.
b0e826 No.16121936
2f0f74 No.16121938
just call it macabre you fucking spergs.
a1e6a6 No.16122010
My issue with these games is that everyone is "bad and evil" and wants to kill you for no reason. Ooga booga I smash, ooga booga I kill. And you're a literal nobody who somehow defeats all these enemies for some retarded cliche reason. Ooga booga I must defeat the darkness, ooga booga evil is bad.
256116 No.16122037
>>16121938
Macabre is something entirely different. It's fear induced by warped things that look natural until close inspection or resemble something you'd expect to look or behave in a certain way and then they don't, all for the purpose of being unsettling.
A haunted house is macabre, but it's neither dystopian nor bleakcore on it's own.
A house that is haunted because the souls of it's inhabitants are bound to it until they pay their debts in a world where you can serve posthumous thanks to dark magic and necromancers are loan sharks who use ghosts to do their bidding, that'd be dystopian.
A hitman that lives in a house haunted by every victim he kills, reminded every night of all the murders he committed, that'd be bleakcore.
>>16122010
Hardly ever anyone is "bad and evil" in these types of games. They just really don't have much of a choice or that's how their ideals align.
And you often end up defeating them because 1) You're playing a videogame 2) Because the player, as an agent of change, can adapt and grow from every experience, while most villains will be stuck to their mentality unable and unwilling to change because they simple don't know any better.
d70342 No.16122099
>>16121817
That's a lot of words about a complete ass-pull of a term.
371c03 No.16122280
>>16120757
I could feel that way if there was no real meat behind the theme at any point and it was just lol aesthetic like an utterly comfortable 13-year-old girl trying to convince you how fucked up and goff she is.
Surprisingly, most vidya don't seem to fall into that pit, or at least aren't totally shallow. Compare it to animu. I can count how many animus I've watched on my fingers and toes and I've still seen enough two-dimensional :^) omgg so sad n bleak xD trash to be fully sick of it there. A rare case of vidya being less shit at something than other media.
29c8a9 No.16122315
>>16121817
That's a lot of words to say "'Dystopian' is used for undesirable places in theory (especially politically and economically speaking), and doesn't describe a visual style. 'Bleakcore' as used here just describes an atmosphere and visual style.".
"Bleakcore" is a stupid term, though. Most of these games are effectively post-apocalyptic. The majority of these things are just exploring the ruins of a destroyed empire. I love the style, but I don't think that "destroyed empire" needs to be categorized as a thematic and visual style, or if it does, it could use a better name than "bleakcore".
3bd271 No.16122332
>>16122280
>A rare case of vidya being less shit at something than other media.
Don't kid yourself, vidya is full of those, namely from gook and indie developers. Probably because they all suck off anime so much. Western games at least have depth and life poured into them.
8d10cc No.16123730
>>16120729
>"x-core" anything
Mcfucking kill yourself you semen-chugging faggot.
87a5d9 No.16123735
>>16120741
>tfw living near the mexico border
>tfw your town has been transformed from quaint little attraction to a feces and used needle covered violent gangwar turf
e39df3 No.16124003
Bleakcore is a seriously gay term. What OP is talking about is more like atmosphere of experiencing a civilization in it's twilight. The part of Texhnolyze when they go to the surface and see everyone has become ghost holograms living in Edward Hopper landscapes is one of the best examples.
7835cb No.16124728
Hey Op, go read Spengler's Decline Of the West. You'll feel his hand clutch your heart and crush everything. It's up the same creek as you tastes but real
08a546 No.16124740
Your feeling I can feel deeply. Sometimes get a feeling so complicated though, you know?
b29470 No.16124747
""""""""""""bleakcore""""""""""""""
you make up gay terms.
569087 No.16124792
>>16120729
>>16121817
>Bleakcore
Just fucking say "bleak." That already means exactly what you're trying to convey. You don't need a new word to convey "bleak central themes and aesthetic" because you can just say "bleak," it already exists.
>But anon you don't understand, bleakcore describes so much more that isn't carried across by just 'bleak' alone.
That's what "bleak" means all on its own already, it is an adjective that encapsulates everything you need to say. "Bleak" has existed as a word for over 700 fucking years and it's always conveyed meaning just fine. You don't need to slap a gay little suffix onto everything just because you don't understand the meaning of a word. I'm so tired of people doing this, there are thousands upon thousands of words to use and everybody has to throw those aside to come up with their own one. I don't know if it's because they don't really understand the true meanings of the words we use, or if they've just never picked up a fucking dictionary in their life so they don't know enough words. "Bleak." That's all you need. It's like if I started calling Halo a "Sci-Fi-like" — because it's not just science fiction, it's also LIKE science fiction! Fucking hell. You've done it. You've hit my autistic Achilles Heel.
c2a2dd No.16124799
>>16124792
I like you, anon.
40b28b No.16124851
>>16124792
>>16124799
Fuck you cozycore gamers shitting up my bleakcore threads. I come here to get my bleak on and it's nothing but trashcans. This very thread is bleakcore.
f345fa No.16124852
>>16124792
Seems that you've given into ragecore. Be more weary of that, anon, because too much focus into ragecore can be bad for your overall health-core.
055f06 No.16124869
>>16124792
This and the careless use of "aesthetic". I wish people would just use words they understand like "feel" since that's usually what they mean anyway.
d2bedb No.16124910
>>16120729
>bleakcore
I never thought I'd be digging this fucking image out of the vault, but here we fucking go.
bbcda7 No.16125069
>>16124910
>Tom Waits
>Fedoracore
now hold on lad, i dont bloody think sharia allows it!
97a840 No.16126205
>>16120729
>bleak as shit
>crumbling ruins everywhere
>world is dying
>small settlements where there are other people and basic commerce
>player character is just trying to eke out a living
>ctrl-f "stalker"
>0 results
>mfw
4ce46d No.16126209
>>16124910
The fuck’s wrong with the wall nigger?
d2bedb No.16126223
>>16126209
>>16125069
Nothing's wrong with most of the music there, was more demonstrating how /v/ faggots with zero vocabulary attempt to fit established genres of music under their own cringy, made-up definition that sounds like it was thought up by a fifteen year old.
6aa833 No.16126246
>>16126205
Only within the zone things are bleak.
However the looming threat of zone expansion means the world will eventually lead to this.
352901 No.16126253
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16126223
At least you aren't shitting on /v/'s national anthem.
d8a4a1 No.16126262
>>16121189
The ICO protag is a descendant of the SoTC protag.
4ce46d No.16126267
>>16126262
BUT THAT’S JUST A THEORY
4a301a No.16126270
>>16126209
it's not being built :⁾
d8a4a1 No.16126278
Atom RPG (the Russian Fallout clone) is a pretty good example of this. While in some regards the world is improving in the post-nuclear apocalypse, things like cities, trade, and civilizations reemerging, if you look closer things are probably fucked. Animal life is mutating and dying out, clean water sources are increasingly hard to find, and a number of strange and dangerous phenomena are starting to show up. Maybe things could get better, or maybe this is humanity's final hurrah.
352901 No.16126292
>>16126278
The best version of that i like is specifically the 1st and 5th or 6th books in the Dark Tower series. The rest is a multiverse trip but the titular Gunslinger from the first book comes from 'mid world' a world where shit diverged at king arthur and his descendants are gunslingers as the new version of knights but the world is 'going thin' and sometimes the sun moves faster, sometimes slower, normal animals are rare as "the genestock lost its thread" and while most of it is old west dotted with things like stone rings and cairnes from europe theres stuff like a ancient rusted out monorail station in the mountains infested with "slow mutants" wearing the rags of outfits saying things like "conductor" or "service staff" and life still goes on, but you get the feeling its all people acting like videogame npcs doing a programmed routine in some mmo server thats running till corruption causes shutdown with no maintenance.
09dd4c No.16127842
>>16124910
I am upset that two albums I like are in this terrible image.
93681b No.16128600
>>16120729
A good turn based strategy would be Endless Legend. The game world slowly gets consumed by harsher and harsher winters.
It's a colorful game at the start but once you start getting to the late game things become bleak. If you don't prepare properly the winters will hammer your food production and your population will begin to starve to death. Unless you are the Broken lords, who are enchanted suits of armor, so they don't have to worry about conventional food.
651bcd No.16128742
>>16120729
this is the based A E S T H E T I C, humanity will go out in a lethargic whimper
1af455 No.16128747
>>16128600
Wow, that's a lot of blue. It's nice to see some orange to spice things up, though.
8a2bc6 No.16128761
>>16121817
>Dystopian is Greek for literally "bad place"
The origin of the word "Dystopian" isn't greek, it's a deliberate corruption of the word "Utopian". It could be more easily broken into "dysfunctional utopia". It's about utopia gone wrong, the quest to create the perfect society instead creating hell on earth.
I don't think it has any connotation of being impossible to fix either. That's what grimdark means (even if the word origin there is a riff on 40k). They can easily go hand in hand, as with 40k itself, but that's not necessarily true. Dystopias are by definition big, spanning an entire society, so actually fixing them is an enormous task especially for a single character and unlikely to actually happen, but it's not by definition impossible.
c9876c No.16128763
I prefer porncore myself.
93681b No.16128768
>>16128747
I swear it's like every french game uses blue and orange.
Ubisoft is french and they use a lot of blue and orange.
The Artists who work on Endless legend use a lot of blue and orange and are French.
It's like there's some kind of unofficial decree in France that says "let them eat blue and orange"
It's fucking weird once you notice it.
8a2bc6 No.16128773
>>16128768
Better than brown and grey
b20154 No.16128782
>>16124728
Reading The Camp of the Saints felt like a slowly approaching tidal wave made of filth and hate, and it's a mirror to reality, though in the book it happened as one great event rather than a slower trickling death of civilizations as what is happening in real life.
352901 No.16128793
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16128773
>falling for the visual jew
got all your summer blockbusters on bluray yet turogoy?
0da6c7 No.16128803
>>16128793
>tfw no green and pink movies
8dd2cf No.16128883
I know what you're talking about op, and I like that atmosphere as well.
A really good example is The Void - color is the single most precious thing which animates all life, and speaks to you in enticing voices. At the same time it is fading, the world has grown dark & decrepit, color is wasted with every use and these leftovers turn inanimate matter into "monsters". And it's even better that the gameplay/resource management reinforces this
42c3c7 No.16128912
I thought the "-core" meme had finally died. Why do people keep doing this?
352901 No.16129294
>>16129262
Its activision, tutorials, glowing trails and handholding confirmed. Why do you think theres no buzz around it?
abf5f6 No.16129320
>>16120729
It's no different than a post-apocalyptic fetish, many people are pining for the complete disintegration of the society that they perceive as sick or restrictive, though their specific reasons wildly vary. Exploring such landscapes is nostalgia for an imagined past projected on a future where you are still alive. Same boring nihilism of the past few centuries, probably means you aren't a very perceptive person.
faa516 No.16129326
>>16128912
>not desperately shilling Corecore to fit in with degenerates over the internet
1046cc No.16129328
my favrite astetic is deathcore cuz its so br00tal
aeac11 No.16129347
>>16129328
I'm glad that fad died pretty sure they all turned into SJWs
aeac11 No.16129407
>>16129358
They were called posers for a reason
87f120 No.16129448
>>16129358
>>16129416
>soccermoms and moral puritans are now posting on /v/
How did you even found your way here of all places? Besides, that's quite the amusing bullshit you're spewing without any evidence to back it up.
Posers and faggots that liked "dark music" but not actually metal have always been around and metalheads never gave a fuck because they aren't worth the trouble.
Well, some faggots didn't learned from that and decided to chimp out when it was their hobby, videogames, that was at stake and all I gotta say… You never had a MetalGate because there never was need for one.
42f0b8 No.16129467
>>16129461
What do you listen at?
aeac11 No.16129471
>>16129448
>You never had a MetalGate because there never was need for one
But there was or am I missing an obvious joke here
352901 No.16129473
>>16129448
>You never had a metalgate
How to tell someone has no idea what they are talking about and what they are talking is coming out of their ass in one post.
87f120 No.16129563
>>16129461
At list I listen to something and have no problem saying so. Much better than the limp-wristed faggots that never say what they like for fear of being called posers or having shit taste.
If you wanted to know why you fags kept losing the cultural war to deathmetal and other assorted crap, it's because those bands at least have the guts to fight for their right to exist while you'll capitulate every single time to avoid having an argument.
>>16129471
>>16129473
Do you seriously want to compare the scale between both? There was indeed a "metalgate", upon which everyone with a mohawk, spiked leather jacket and more skulls decorating his house than a butcher's shop just collectively laughed at everyone complaining about sexism in that genre and proceeded to headbang for eternity.
When the faggots that keep complaining about inclusivity saw that nobody was paying them any attention, they fucked off somewhere else, as it always happens with trolls.
Really makes you think what the future would have been like if nobody cared about all the Literally Who's and gave them attention.
abf5f6 No.16129575
>>16129563
>When the faggots that keep complaining about inclusivity saw that nobody was paying them any attention, they fucked off somewhere else, as it always happens with trolls.
>Really makes you think what the future would have been like if nobody cared about all the Literally Who's and gave them attention.
Yeah, they'd just shut down all the governments, universities, and corporations across the world promoting that crap for the past century. Fucking trolls everywhere man.
8ffffc No.16130016
>>16128768
Orange/blue is basically practice mode for visual designers.
4b966f No.16130029
>>16130016
When did this faggoty meme even start precisely and how many decades more will they milk it?
055f06 No.16130032
What constitutes the 8ch-core.
42f0b8 No.16130035
>>16130032
Declaring all videogames shit without having played them
4b966f No.16130039
>>16130032
Vociferously announcing how hard you didn't take the bait while the hook ith thtill pierthing your tongue
352901 No.16130043
>>16130032
Hispterism, contrarianism, a hive mind, self censorship, thin skinned and easily offended.
Guaranteed Replies.exe
e8fd17 No.16130048
352901 No.16130050
>>16130048
The movie poster meme started in '07. Go look at every american action movie poster.
7e31ed No.16130051
>>16129262
Is Dark Souls the bleakcore of video games?
352901 No.16130053
>>16130051
I miss when freaks on the street were boss fights.
c1f6e8 No.16130727
>>16130509
Luciano, shut the fuck up.
https://archive.fo/elu5v
6ee61d No.16130814
Invidious embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16120729
>bleakcore
why not breakcore instead?
09dd4c No.16131857
>>16130053
Some of them even came with their own boss music.
2b2fd0 No.16147536
>>16128912
>>16128937
Isn't the -core suffix pretty old, quite a bit older than the modern internet?
d8a4a1 No.16147547
>>16126278
>>16126292
Also (big time spoiler for Atom RPG) there's a giant meteor on the way to Earth that will impact in 30-150 years that will destroy it and nobody can do shit about it unless some organization rises quickly from the wasteland and overcomes the many issues and nukes the meteor or something
fffa17 No.16152121
>>16147660
It will be available on all platforms, so I doubt this anon >>16129294 is hating on it for that reason.
7da7f7 No.16152160
>>16120729
Only manchildren stick with the bleak & edgy aesthetics after 16. That's how they imagine the harsh world, as sheltered kids who refuse to leave the nest.
40b28b No.16152187
>>16152160
You'll never understand bleakcore, NPC.
debbda No.16152206
>>16130078
>every metal fag is as sjw
>here let me show you guys my patrician tastes
>by posting a heavy metal band
I bet you think led zeppelin isn't metal