I have seen so many instances in games of tar-like corruption covering parts of a landscape. It looks black combined with purple, red, or toxic green, sometimes with spiky protrusions and occasionally mushroom-like growths. It hurts the protagonist upon touch. Sometimes it has some way of being cleared or cleansed (only after having gone through some ordeal) or sometimes it just has to be avoided. Sometimes it can affect people or creatures too, but not always. Sometimes it's just on the landscape.
My issue is that there doesn't seem to be any trope here that captures this. The trope called The Corruption is about infection of people only, if the article text is to be believed. It explicitly says at the end: "For when the evil force corrupts a location instead of a character, see Evil Tainted the Place." However, the "Evil tainted the place" trope is clearly about something else - an evil presence that is felt more than directly seen. Whereas what I'm talking about is tar-like physical corruption being spread out over surfaces, including in places that would otherwise be green, lush and sunny.
When looking at the example games listed on the The Corruption page, it seems like it does include corruption of places too. In all the following games, corruption covering surfaces in the landscape is at least as prominent, if not more, than corruption of creatures or people:
- The Malice in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- The Decay in Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Ahriman's essence in Prince of Persia 2008
- Rust in Haven
And in some games there's no corruption of creatures or people at all, only of places:
- The gunk in The Gunk
- The dark red mist (so not tar-like in this one instance) in Okami
These examples are far from exhaustive. I've come across are SO many games with tar-like physical corruption.
I feel like either the text of the article should acknowledge corruption of places and describe the typical ways this is portrayed - or a new article should be created that is about corruption of places that is separate from the quite different "Evil tainted the place" trope. Right now a trope I see in game after game after game just doesn't seem to have any home here.
I have seen so many instances in games of tar-like corruption covering parts of a landscape. It looks black combined with purple, red, or toxic green, sometimes with spiky protrusions and occasionally mushroom-like growths. It hurts the protagonist upon touch. Sometimes it has some way of being cleared or cleansed (only after having gone through some ordeal) or sometimes it just has to be avoided. Sometimes it can affect people or creatures too, but not always. Sometimes it's just on the landscape.
My issue is that there doesn't seem to be any trope here that captures this. The trope called The Corruption is about infection of people only, if the article text is to be believed. It explicitly says at the end: "For when the evil force corrupts a location instead of a character, see Evil Tainted the Place." However, the "Evil tainted the place" trope is clearly about something else - an evil presence that is felt more than directly seen. Whereas what I'm talking about is tar-like physical corruption being spread out over surfaces, including in places that would otherwise be green, lush and sunny.
When looking at the example games listed on the The Corruption page, it seems like it does include corruption of places too. In all the following games, corruption covering surfaces in the landscape is at least as prominent, if not more, than corruption of creatures or people:
- The Malice in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- The Decay in Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Ahriman's essence in Prince of Persia 2008
- Rust in Haven
And in some games there's no corruption of creatures or people at all, only of places:
- The gunk in The Gunk
- The dark red mist (so not tar-like in this one instance) in Okami
These examples are far from exhaustive. I've come across are SO many games with tar-like physical corruption.
I feel like either the text of the article should acknowledge corruption of places and describe the typical ways this is portrayed - or a new article should be created that is about corruption of places that is separate from the quite different "Evil tainted the place" trope. Right now a trope I see in game after game after game just doesn't seem to have any home here.
Edited by runevision