Tolkien
Arguably the most overused setting for anything ever, be it books, movies or games, the traditional high fantasy world, with dwarves and elves and an omnipotent Dark Lord, with rustic rural settlements isolated from the rest of the world, and grand ancient cities that hold the last fort, and are decaying and crumbling internally, with colorful characters, and romance, intrigue, political motives, betrayals and assassinations… it’s kind of easy to see why Tolkien’s blueprint for a fantasy setting is so overused- it basically has every single element that would resonate with all of us. Unfortunately, we can only go through
the same story in the same f**king garb so many times. It’s the reason no fantasy book has ever been as successful as Lord of the Rings- people want something new, not just a retread of the same story with different characters. In games too, the setting is wildly overused, whether it is in a blatant rip off like (the albeit still excellent) Dragon Age: Origins, The Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft, or in the slightly less obvious but still subtly following the Tolkien blueprint games like Final Fantasy IV, Dragon Quest V, Fable II and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
