Why? Not because of the newfangled magicks being used in the new novels, nor because of the strange weapons being used in the empires of the world. It's because the protagonists wouldn't know who the bad guys are.
If you look closely at newer books and novels, you realise that good guys try do bad things and bad guys aren't all that terrible. Books have progressed just like movies - gone are the days of black and white characters...everything is now in shades of grey. It's difficult to tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy in stories today, and perhaps this is reflective of real life - no one's really a good guy or a bad guy in real life. Everyone has a reason for doing something, be his good or bad. Good people sometimes do bad things, and bad people sometimes do good things.
Perhaps one of the starkest examples of this is the greater number of books that promote a reversal of roles in so-called "Evil" character-archetypes. Stephanie Meyers' series, Twilight, dubbed as the new Harry Potter (and probably just as bad) has a vampire as the main character, and hence the good guy. Chrno Crusade has a demon as one of the major protagonists, Van Helsing has a werewolf, Record of a Fallen Vampire has...well, a vampire as the protagonist.
On the other hand, Neverwhere (by Neil Gaiman) has an angel as the primary antagonist, House is one heck of an asshole, and Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant rapes the first girl he sees. Not such saintly actions from the so-called good guys.
To be honest, one of my favourite portrayals of a bad-turned-good character would be Tomoya from CLANNAD. I shan't focus too much on the details, the essential thing is this: Tomoya is the your stereotypical embodiment of a delinquent: fails in his studies, skips school whenever he feels like it, and has a temperament suited to fighting and brawling.
I'd rather not focus on his road to salvation (that's a story for another time), but rather on what made him this way. Tomoya grew up to become the person because of something that can happen to every family - his mother died in a car accident, and his father became a broken man because of the incident. So Tomoya, in his effort to get out of his broken family, becomes a delinquent in the eyes of others.
This story is something that can happen to pretty much anyone. No delinquents want to become delinquents - who would rather sell drugs on the street and engage in gangfights when they could be living a normal life and earning money to help their loved ones? I must say that it's because of Tomoya and his story that I've been more open to the people around me. And even in my workplace (hurrhurr) I've realised that people that I'd be tempted to call delinquents really do care for each other (in a delinquenty sort of way).
If you think about it, it's quite an interesting paradigm shift in the way good and bad people are portrayed in books, games and stories. Perhaps it is one of those symptoms of the great shift in the style of writing from twenty years ago. Rather than the fantastical, good & evil kind of battles, we have more of the realistic portrayals of the human psyche, more shades of grey - you never know who to root against, but you know who to root for.
The thing is...is this shift from the fantastic to the realistic a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I think it's a good thing because there are no strictly evil people anymore - everyone who does something bad does so for a good reason. It also means that there aren't very many strictly good people any longer, which is something that I'm not really a fan of, but I must agree makes quite a lot of sense.
In any case, I should be getting back to my work and not randomly musing any longer. Bleh.
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