A nice idea for a thread- personally I love mythologies for games and otherwise and can quite happily kill a few hours or more just reading about them without even bothering with the media they were constructed to support. I am however going to have a very hard time distinguishing between art design, mythology and gameplay that uses them not to mention the question of "what is a mythology?"- voices in ones head/delusions (see something like the void or eternal sonata or even psychonauts) right through to world/universe spanning things complete with magic/technology equivalents or even games that bridge the two or maybe just near enough to reality but with a few differences.
To my mind Final Fantasy just seems to be a mish mash of existing philosophies and mythologies (
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/part-xii...l-fantasy/27455 says it pretty well) although I probably should make a passing nod in the direction of Joseph Campbell's work at this point.
It seems then I have many areas to pick from although they diverge just as quickly
"ancient history"- your Greek (and associated civilisations), Roman (and associated civilisations), Chinese (pretty much self contained) and so forth right through to medieval times and whatever was going on in Japan at the same time.
Stepping aside from this you have fantasy with all the many subgenres it boasts.
I do not see so much in the way of modern mythologies aside from "world war 3" and maybe whatever goes on in broken sword and point and click/adventure worlds but they largely seem self contained when it comes to games. I am not sure where steampunk and ?punk fits.
Sci fi- broadly I guess this is near future or perhaps even a "what if" the last up to 100 years played out differently to "far future" (stuff like Dune which I will get onto in a moment although that seems rather similar to some of the completely alternative universe fantasy)
Alternate reality- usually "aspects of mythology were real and it is the modern day or at least since about 1850" or something "odd" (starting at Little Big Adventure and moving through to some of the stuff in
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...d-is-Not-Enough ) and I will stretch that to include things like bayonetta (although arguably Bayonetta is truer to much of Christian mythology than just about anything else for several hundred years now which I find endlessly amusing) and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (not out yet in English). I might include something from some of the newer Nordic developers but I think I then cross from mythology to aesthetic qualities.
I am not entirely sure where Zombies fit in either and I should mention Turok as well.
I then have to ask where do other works fit into this- many games are based around comics, books, film universes, existing mythologies new and old
Equally despite my curiosity I was still raised among western mythologies so others sit in different places in my mind where I imagine someone raised among those others might view western mythology in a similar fashion .
I think in the end, at least as far as the last few years have gone (if going back to the C64/amiga era then things change) I am going to look to Russia and eastern Europe for this, the games might not be the best but purely on mythology very little comes close.
Metro2033- based on a book I know but for backstory and general story it stands above just about everything I have played in recent times.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - it was based on a book but it shares very little with it and the film (is the TV show out yet?)
Precursors- not a great game (so unpolished it is not funny) but it hits very close to what I want from a game.
The Void- I finished it a while back but it will stick with me for a very long time to come.
Head further into this and it gets every crazier.
Honourable mention to Resonance of Fate. It is not that original a theme (several classic sci fi works do similar) but it worked for me.
A qualifier for the likes of Bethesda and Bioware along with many other western RPGs- good stuff but nothing that stands out as far as mythology goes- the competition is too stiff.
Either way- long may this sort of thing continue.
