My friend is in a reading group that has picked up "The Gargoyles of Notre Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity" by Michael Camille. After reading it, he began thinking about gargoyles and the role they play in videogames:
It's a pretty cool book. And in the final chapter Camille discusses gargoyles in recent culture and he talks briefly about a lot of stuff like comic books, cartoons, movies, and kitschy bric-à-brac, but not video games. And I started wondering about that, because games have so much potential because of the increased level of simulation and interaction. Like what are the associations with gargoyles and how are they situated in various games? What do they do and why? What do they look like and why? It's pretty cool that gargoyles mean different things in different games.
So we started thinking of examples, and here's a few we found:
-Heroes of Might and Magic II, III
-Lords of Magic
-Quest for Glory I
-King's Quest VII
-Gargoyles (Genesis)
-Gargoyle's Quest
-Gargoyle's Quest II
-Demon's Crest
-Batman: Arkham Asylum
-Rampage World Tour
-Shining Force
-Killer Instinct 2/Gold
I think it would be totally rad to post on a message board and get some more examples. Maybe just limited to games where gargoyles are somehow functional (not just backdrop)-- ?
So how about it? Any other games where gargoyles play a significant role? And feel free to talk about the games mentioned and the gargoyles within them.
Posts
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Edit: Guild Wars
So, the effect of aggroing a gargoyle in EQ was very much like watching a statue start to move and come for you.
In one of the later expansions, they changed the gargoyle model, which retroactively affected every zone with gargoyles in and rather spoiled the effect, but it was awfully neat until they did that.
Throughout the cutscenes you see the always omnipresent gargoyles. Later on you find out the BBEG can turn them to life, and has been spying on various events through their eyes.
Er...you can buy gargoyles in The Sims 2? Does that count?
And he's listing the game in his post.
I can't really think of any examples that haven't been mentioned already. I guess gargoyles aren't that common in video games.
I came into this thread to post the exact same thing.
Oh I hate those dudes. All spearin' my mans and making creepy noises.
Also, Master of Magic has them as a unit you can summon. I can't quite remember the spell school they were associated with, though. I think it's Chaos.
Was totally going to say this, and they are definitely chaos and had tons of armor. What a great game.
Likely the only true animate Gargoyle in videogames.
If anyone has some additional examples or insight, feel free to share it. Thanks once again.
I found a boxed copy once, some dude that if you look at him, you'd say "Eh, he doesn't know about games" so I went in for the kill. He sells tons of used SNES games, all for less than $5.
Guy wanted $50 for it.