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Anyone who likes to wander off the beaten track may tend to smile at classic fantasy: medieval-style worlds full of orcs and dragons, that’s yesterday’s genre snow, everything you’ve seen a thousand times. But fantasy enjoys unbroken popularity – not only, but also in games. Warcraft, The Witcher, Skyrim, Gothic, Dragon Age – fantasy games and settings have a firm place in the hearts of the GameStar community and of course in our editorial hearts too.
The reason why the fantasy genre enchants us – as JRR Tolkien himself once wrote in an essay – is what fantasy admirer Micha talks to two guests about in the podcast:
- Markus Heitz is a writer and best known for his world bestseller »The Dwarfs«, which is also available as a recommendable video game. He also began his c areer with fantasy novels, namely with the Ulldart series, and he also writes horror and science fiction.
- Fabiano Uslenghi may actually be puristic in the Middle Ages à la Kingdom Come or Pentiment, but at the same time reads and plays everything that goes in the direction of fantasy – as long as there isn’t too much magic.
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So Markus and Fabiano immediately discover something in common: both love and run pen & paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and The Dark Eye, which means that a fascination for fantasy was instilled in them in a way.
Actually, the fascination of fantasy lies in all of us because it goes back to the roots of mankind. Because almost all fantasy settings and creatures are based on myths that are thousands of years old – from animal hybrids like dragons to old gods and heroes. JRR Tolkien, for example, drew a good deal of inspiration from the Nordic Edda, in which, for example, the dwarf Durin appeared, whom the Middle-earth author “borrowed” for his own stories.
Speaking of which: no one has shaped our current image of classic fantasy as much as Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings, whose film adaptation fueled the sales success of »The Dwarves« like Sauron’s Forge did on Mount Doom. At the same time, fantasy writers don’t want to simply copy Tolkien – so we discuss with Markus how to give a fantasy setting its own identity and stories.
This ultimately leads us to the diversity of fantasy. In addition to the friendly, magical High Fantasy, the gloomy Dark Fantasy is known to breed. Both can even be combined by changing the perspective: Away from the good, towards the perspective of the bad – as for example in Tyranny or Markus’ book series »The Chronicles of the Albae«, which is written from the point of view of the brutal enemies of the dwarves.
Off the beaten track, you can also wander within fantasy.
You can find much more magic and monsters in our theme week on the fascination of fantasy:
more on the subject
More than dragons: discover the fascination of fantasy in our theme week
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