Are there any apocalyptic fantasy games?

Thule Esperada

Blue Mage
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Yeah, so as the title asks: Are there any apocalyptic fantasy games? When Dark Souls 3 was still in development, the developers said they were making it more apocalyptic in feel compared to the previous instalments. Sounds like my cup of tea I thought, but when the game came out I was a little dissapointed. Not in terms of gameplay, but the lack of the promised apocalyptic atmosphere. Pre-release screens showed things a sun that was bleeding a black ooze, but outside of the last few hours the game didn't feel any more apocalyptic than it's predecessors. The world felt abandoned but not dying. The sun still shines almost through the whole game nad vegetation seems to be blooming, which is a far cry from the "world burned to ash" that was marketed.

So are there any fantasy games with a distinctly apocalyptic scenario. I guess it kinda requires a specific aestethic to feel truly apocalyptic, since in a lot of fantasy games the world is in danger of being destroyed but it doesn't look the part you know?
 
The only ones I can think of are not really "fantasy" much, Fallout series, most zombie games, like The Last of Us... Other than that... I really don't know
 
FFVI is the only game I can think of where the world gets destroyed. Although, I don't know if that feel exists throughout the game.

The second half (or perhaps more accurately the last third) of the game is certainly apocalyptic. The earth's soil becomes dusty and infertile. The oceans become poisoned and the water mostly undrinkable. The sky is a permanently gloomy purple. Landmasses have fallen into the abyss, and oceanic crusts have risen above sea-level. Millions of people have died. Survivors are few, and suicide is contemplated (and attempted). A laughing mad-man has installed himself as a god in a towering monument to his own divinity, threatening to destroy any settlement who attracts his attention with an extremely destructive light beam.

FFVI is certainly an apocalyptic fantasy game... For the first half or 2/3 of the game the planet is healthy, but seeing the world how it is supposed to be helps us to understand how much changed and how bleak the world became when the World of Ruin age began... It's an incredibly depressing change, and perhaps FF's darkest moment.

I can't think of many other apocalyptic fantasy games... I guess Shadow of Mordor comes close, because it is set in Mordor. It's not truly apocalyptic, but Mordor as a continent/region is a ruined land inhabited by fallen beings.

It depends on your definition of fantasy though. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a game set on a post-apocalyptic version of our world. It's loosely based on the Chinese story Journey to the West (sometimes known as The Tale of the Monkey King, or Monkey, or various other names). You play as Monkey and have to fight robots as you climb and roam about the overgrown jungles of San Francisco (I think?) and other locations. The landscapes are lush and beautiful though, so it might not have the darkness that FFVI's apocalypse has and what you may be looking for. The same probably goes for the new game coming out soon called Horizon Zero Dawn. From what I can see, it shares similar aesthetics with Enslaved.



EDIT:
I guess many of my answers above refer to post-apocalyptic games.

For impending doom and the threat of apocalypse, I think FFVII perhaps did that well... But the problem with the mere threat of an apocalypse in games (and fiction generally) is that the situations are usually resolved before the apocalypse. As gamers, we tend to expect the crisis to be averted as well, so we can sometimes trivialise what should be global disasters because in the narrative the heroes usually win. This problem can kill the mood, and only when impending doom is well-written can it convince us to take it seriously.
 
It's an old ps2 game and can be found on the PSN store of the ps3. Also it's an SMT game not from the persona series but the actual SMT core group so it might fit what you're looking for as some of them do follow that style, the game is SMT Nocturne.
 
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