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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
By Cameron Sorden | March 27, 2008
I have to admit that up until a few weeks ago, I had almost no knowledge of Age of Conan. I was aware that there was a game coming out with that name, but I’m a busy guy and I’ve never been particularly interested in the character of Conan– he was just some trite fantasy barbarian that I associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a crappy Saturday-morning cartoon series, and some book by Robert Jordan that I always saw near the Wheel of Time series at the library but never felt like reading. I’ve pretty much ignored all the coverage of the game for that reason– it was just another upcoming MMOG set in a world I didn’t particularly care about, and I have a lot of them to keep tabs on.
Then, last week, I was at Barnes and Noble looking for a new book to read when I saw The Conquering Sword of Conan. I figured I may as well give it a try and bought it on a whim. When I started reading it, I was enthralled. I was immediately sucked into Howard’s grim, gritty world of Hyboria. Conan is an absurdly cool character to read about it, and so much of the world has obviously inspired later works. This was pulp fiction at its finest. It’s difficult to miss the blatantly racist and sexist themes, but all I could think was, “Damn, Howard can write a good story!”
Suddenly, I saw the appeal of a game set in Howard’s Hyboria. Not just a run of the mill MMORPG, but a gritty, dark, adult portrayal of the world which Howard envisioned and wrote about, in which Conan the Cimmerian wandered. Where pirates sail the high seas, savage jungle tribes have bloody territorial battles in the wilderness, dark sorcerers conjure up terrible demons with often horrifying results, and the world is a crazy, dirty, violent, intrinsically unfair place. For the most part, I’ve stayed out of all of the discussions over the past few months where people have talked about the actual “maturity” of a game in which blood and nudity (predominantly female) plays such a major role, but having read the stories, I get it now. It’s not just about the blood and the nudity, but it wouldn’t really be Hyboria without them, either. Howard’s work is pure pulp– violent, short, exciting, and fascinating. It’s totally unrealistic, it’s not at all politically correct, and it’s really fun to read. I imagine that’s exactly what they hope to capture by staying true to the Conan vision.
Now, I should again point out that I know very little about the upcoming game. Not nearly as much as Bildo, for example. But I’ll be damned if I’m not really excited for it all of a sudden. Massively stepped in the other day to give me a short list of cool things about it, which only fueled my excitement, and I’ve heard mostly good things about it from all the people I’ve talked to who have spent some time playing it. Could this be my next big game? The sleeper game that snuck up and knocked me in the back of the head?
If the game world is even half as cool as the world described in Howard’s pulp fiction, it’s a definite possibility.
Topics: Random |
March 27th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Hell yes it is the next big game.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Believe it, Cam. This one’s going to take a lot of people by surprise.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I’m in a similar position right now. Warhammer is delayed and I’ve had my fill of the current selection. AoC will either surprise me and be amazing or it will fall by the wayside. I truly hope it surprises.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
AoC is definitely going to be the next MMORPG to watch. Its bringing a lot of new features to the table as well as bringing back PvP. To bad it also got delayed back to May 20th, otherwise I’d be playing it right now.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:49 am
I am somewhat afraid that Age of Conan will offer us a sanitized version of Hyboria, because the sexism and racism you mentioned aren’t acceptable any more, not even in a fantasy world. If they manage to stay true to the original, having a gritty low-fantasy world would be a nice change from the cartoony high-fantasy of WoW / WAR.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I don’t know… in the books, a lot of the sexism and racism comes from the way that Howard writes and Conan acts, rather than anything specific to the world.
While nudity and violence are evident throughout the stories (being common in many parts of the world), the sexism comes in more through the way that Conan talks to and looks at women.
As for the racism and racial tension, a lot of it could probably be swept under the rug with minimal lore impact by just ignoring the racial prejudice obvious in Howard’s characters. For all the racist things they say, the racism doesn’t actually come into play very often. Conan is an equal-opportunity killer.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I am not in the official beta but I have sources and they’re not too happy with what they’re seeing so far. Mileage may vary.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but remember you’re likely only hearing the good stuff or marketing hype.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I just spent a little time reading up on it some more… the more I read, the more excited I get. This game looks really cool.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
There’s good reason to be excited. The game obviously has another month and a half to go, but from what I’ve seen in the demos - it’s going to be a bad ass kick in the pants.