A game for 4 year olds

[Cleretic]

I've learned over time that it really does take a certain level of maturity to appreciate a story that angles for childlike whimsy, lightness and friendliness, instead of demanding a dark, gritty 'realism'. ...in fact, I just remembered that's literally the driving point of the HW Dark Knight questline.

In fact, I think it's kinda funny that someone tried to bring up Dark Souls as the antithesis, because Soulsborne has also been willing to be really silly. If those games were 100% dour and serious, they wouldn't be fun, they'd just be a miserable slog; it's why they deploy a bunch of silly slapstick traps, why they introduce light-hearted jokey characters like Catarinan knights and Trusty Patches, or super weird creature designs like the basilisks or great serpents. There needs to be a light somewhere in the darkness, or else it doesn't feel like there's any value traversing it.

And this game has always been willing to go for whimsy to lighten things up. The main story's done it constantly! Before the loporrits, it was the pixies and the Trolley Boys; before the pixies and the Trolley Boys, it was Grynewaht; before Grynewaht, it was the moogles... uhm, twice, once in HW and once in 2.x; before the moogles, it was the sylphs and the Company of Heroes. Not only are the Omicron tribe quests completely in keeping with the tone of previous non-combat tribe questlines, but they're also completely in keeping with the more light-hearted breaks of the MSQ.

Also, this tribe questline is all just going full-pelt Douglas Adams, which is both wonderful in itself because Douglas Adams is great, and also 100% in-keeping with the MSQ's back end, which pulled a lot from classic sci-fi. (my personal favorite element being the crafted gear being AR-Caean; the English translation actually obfuscated that one by adding the 'AR-'.)