Middle Ages vs Fantasy?

[Mata Nui]

Well, I do not seem to like the Fantasy era but I don't think they will pop out the old Castle sets next year. I think I didn't even bought Castle sets this year. Hmmm...... I wonder why....

[Piranha]

I hope in the future LEGO decides to make Castle sets like in the old days.

Castles, Black Falcons against the King, Forestmen

No more fantasy crap stuff.

I am more of a historic person. I would like to see regular Castle life.

Much like they did in Pirates. The medieval Market set was brilliant.

Just like in Pirate forum I would vote for Historic accuracy over fantasy with castle

Edited October 7, 2009 by Macoco

[ziljin]

I have to wonder if going back to human factions would make things easier all around. It's almost as easy as just switching the color theme and changing the architectural motif a bit. Do it a few times, and suddenly, it's not two factions, but four or five now. It wouldn't upset me if that's the new direction, though I would be a little sad if I don't get to see some of these mythical elves that I've been waiting on for some time now.

While, maybe not so much in terms of the architecture, but you could easily do the same with the fantasy. There is no reason why all dwarfs, and humans must coexist. And trolls/skeletons coexist. There can easily be factions of skeletons, trolls, dwarfs, and humans.

Some random examples I came up with.

Pirates as bandits/mercenaries/less "civilized" faction.

There is the evil wizard but you could easily make your own skeleton king as the leader of a splinter undead faction.

Probably too expensive, but you could buy a bunch of golden knights/drawbridge defenses and make a splinter crownie faction.

Leg swaps between trolls and dwarves can result in goblins, and some dwarf inspired viking faction.

Using generic torsos or any other type of torsos, you can make a different dwarf faction (or at the very least increase variety of dwarves)

Using generic torsos or any other torsos, you can make all sorts of human factions (well this applies to any theme, not just fantasy era_=).

Edited October 8, 2009 by lego40k

[Karzon989]

I think they should do a real midd evil thing and let castle go on!

[DaleDVM]

I actually like the new fantasy figures so I have no complaints.

You can all wish as you may. I am pretty certain Fantasy is here to stay. Almost every lego theme now has non-human bad guys.

I was told these statistics by a designer at TLG: Children prefer an obvious bad guy faction vs humans. The other option being human vs human action. The result was about 80% for non-human to 10% human vs human with about 10% of kids with no preference.

There is no way they are going back to the old days. Fantasy bad guys simply sells better. As long as they keep coming out with new human factions every few years I will take whatever baddies they come up with. If they make quality castles at the same time I will be happy.

This is where I disagree with the O.P. I think the new castles are every bit as good as the classic castles.

[cdljal]

I know what you mean by Lego sets being more specialised now, as a kid I had the first police station then later got a hospital and costal rescue base, with these and a very early basic set. I had a few small castle sets (Battle Dragon, Smugglers Hayride, Black Monarchs Ghost, and the Castle figure pack with 3 knights and 3 forest). and a couple of small space sets with these peices I built every thing from airplanes to ships to castles, houses, spaceships, whatever I felt like that day. recently I picked up a couple of the new castle sets, (the skelliton prison carrage and the tower attack. Now it could be my older brain has lost some of its creativity and imagination but I struggle to build anything other then the main model out of them. It could also be that I was to used to basic bricks and now have a hard time building around BURPS I beleive their called. The new Knights are very cool though.

[vexorian]

But, well, the thing that actually led to me getting Lego for my birthday (from my wife) is that we're about to have our first kid in two months. And ofcourse in 7 years he/she needs to become a huge lego-fan. But somehow I'd prefer my kid to grow up with the kind of lego I had as a child: somewhat realistic, and suitable for being shaped by your own wild imagination, rather than coming already-infused with some standard average imagination that's harder to subvert. And there's also the educational aspect. I don't want to have to explain what orcs are in order to play with lego, I'd much rather use lego to teach a bit of real history, but orcs get in the way there. I'd rather not have her/him play with lego orcs until after reading Lord of the Rings. And I certainly don't want my child thinking that dragons and ghosts are as real as knights and castles.

Children are not really that naive you know? At least these last generations are not. Anyway, I did notice the fantasy in the medieval LEGO and well, I think we've had skeletons a good long ago. But I am fairy sure that 15 years ago, we already had a lot of dragons in the sets. I remember back then my brother got a dark knight castle that came with wizard and a Dragon and that in that year the castle sets were focused on dragons...

At least town/city has remained realistic.

I also think that creator is doing a good job at makign the sets very flexible a-la old school. Well, I just don't see how the troll battleship couldn't become a bad guys' battle ship by just removing the trolls and putting bad knights on it?

Edit: I also find it hard to believe the old castle was really that historical. Unless we had sets like "escape the plague", " Well, if we were to have a truly realistic medieval lego line we will begin seeing set names like 'escape from the plague', or 'guillotine" or "War for Jerusalem II" :/

Edited January 8, 2010 by vexorian