Slavic and Eastern European Mythology/Folklore in games

MrCinos · Feb 21, 2018

Despite living and growing up in Russia I never had interest in Slavic mythology and always gravitated to learn more about Greek and Roman mythology, then Norse and Egyptian and at this point I'm far more aware of Japanese mythology and legends than those of "my" people. I know a few most famous creatures and few gods on a very surface level and that's it. There's very little exposure to that even in my own country.

The Witcher trilogy really helped me to appreciate some aspects of it even if it leaves out actual deities and incorprorates not only Slavic myths into the game. I thought The Witcher success would motivate some other developers to explore the somewhat unique and rarely used Slavic/EE mythology into the games, but I'm having a hard time thinking of other titles using it, though I'm sure I'm missing some indies.

I know SMT had quite a few Slavic gods and creatures: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Slavic_Mythology

But very few "survived" up to this day and not many continue to appear in the games. Also, looking at SMT wikia made me realize I want an extensive codex on every demon or persona in their games.

But the main question here is would you like to see more of that mythology and culture in new games or do you find it boring? If someone has good existing/upcoming examples built on EE mythology I'd like to hear what are those titles too.

Falconbox · Feb 21, 2018

I'm up for any mythology in games. I find that stuff fascinating.

KonradLaw · Feb 21, 2018

Yeah, I'm a Pole and I love slavic mythology. In 90s there have been few games that used it's folklore as focus, but unfortunatelly most have never recieved english version. Nowadays, thanks to success of Witcher, the slavic culture and mythology seems to be gaining popularity, so we're seeing it in more titles. Thea: The Awakening was a good game of it's type, altough it still mixes it with more standard Tolkien-like lore.
Surprisingly, some of the best representations of slavic myths can be found in casual hidden object adventure games, especially Eventide series (don't let their casual stykle fool you, there far more hardcore adventure titles than anything Telltale or Quantic Dreams makes these days)

If you can live with roughness and lack of polish then good titles to recommend would be Fairy Tale About Father Frost, Ivan and Nastya (adventure game) and the RPG series Konung.

Mister X · Feb 21, 2018

Love the EE mythology, the more the better.

chrisypoo · Feb 21, 2018

I'm American and I'm incredibly interested in Slavic mythology, and it quickly became my favored mythology to see in games. It's kind of terrifying and I love that.

tyfon · Feb 21, 2018

MrCinos said:
Despite living and growing up in Russia I never had interest in Slavic mythology and always gravitated to learn more about Greek and Roman mythology, then Norse and Egyptian and at this point I'm far more aware of Japanese mythology and legends than those of "my" people. I know a few most famous creatures and few gods on a very surface level and that's it. There's very little exposure to that even in my own country.

The Witcher trilogy really helped me to appreciate some aspects of it even if it leaves out actual deities and incorprorates not only Slavic myths into the game. I thought The Witcher success would motivate some other developers to explore the somewhat unique and rarely used Slavic/EE mythology into the games, but I'm having a hard time thinking of other titles using it, though I'm sure I'm missing some indies.

I know SMT had quite a few Slavic gods and creatures: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Slavic_Mythology

But very few "survived" up to this day and not many continue to appear in the games. Also, looking at SMT wikia made me realize I want an extensive codex on every demon or persona in their games.

But the main question here is would you like to see more of that mythology and culture in new games or do you find it boring? If someone has good existing/upcoming examples built on EE mythology I'd like to hear what are those titles too.

I really like mythology and culture in games no matter where it comes from :)
There is a lot of crossover between Norse and Slavic mythology like the story about the man and the horse that would kill him. We of the Norse had the fortune of having quite a bit written down by Snorre in Heimskringla.
I'm not sure if there is quite enough surviving to build a codex but it would be very cool to have more games based on what exists.

vider · Feb 21, 2018

MrCinos said:
But the main question here is would you like to see more of that mythology and culture in new games or do you find it boring?

I am Slovenian myself and kind of embarrassed to say that I'm not nearly as familiar with slavic mythology as I probably should be. But I'd love to see games (or any other medium for that matter) use more slavic mythology, as there is a lot of fascinating lore and myths to explore there. But I'm guessing we'll probably never see a big budget game do that, as there are many more "mainstream" mythologies with a far wider commercial appeal out there.

MarioW · Feb 21, 2018

We leveraged a lot of different mythologies, including Slavic/Eastern European legends, for our mobile puzzle RPG, Shadow Wars http://pikpok.com/games/shadowwars/ The general premise is a modern day setting where various factions summon monsters into the world from a parallel plane to fight against each other to progress their faction goals.

From memory, some specific Slavic/Eastern European monsters/legends we have used include the below (art is from the game). We also have tapped into Nordic, Celtic, Greek, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, and North and South American mythologies among others.

Vod (Vodyanoy), a water spirit

Josef of Prague, a flesh golem

Krampus, a Christmas related demon

Baba Yaga, a supernatural hag

Various vampires

UnderNewOwnership · Feb 21, 2018

There's a small Romanian company making a third-person cartoon-style action-RPG based on Eastern folklore:

https://breadcrumbsinteractive.com/

BeeDog · Feb 21, 2018

Hey, I'm just happy enough when seeing anything Slavic in games. Was ultra-surprised to see the enemy names in Resident Evil 6 being in Serbian. So in other words, I fully agree with everyone here.

Hypron · Feb 21, 2018

Yeah I'm up for anything, learning about other cultures is fascinating. I loved games from central/eastern Europe like The Witcher games, STALKER, or Metro. I especially loved all the folk music in TW3, it gives the game a very unique feel.

Like I said I'm interested in everything, but one thing in particular I'd like to see more of are games based on Germanic folklore (edit: specifically from around Germany, since I guess English folklore would also qualify as Germanic) since that's what my heritage is and sadly I'm not really in touch with that heritage :/ One of my great grand fathers was from Czechoslovakia, so I'm 1/8th Slav too I guess, but I have essentially 0 connection with that culture.

HeadlessIvan · Jan 14, 2020

You should check out upcoming Black Book which is based Russian folklore unlike anything before https://store.steampowered.com/app/1138660/Black_Book/

Slavic and Eastern European Mythology/Folklore in games

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