Do You Prefer Fantasy Or Sci-FI, and Why?

I burned out on Fallout 4 MUCH faster than nearly any other Bethesda RPG I've ever played. Although I think the lack of variety in game play had a lot to do with it, I think I also just wanted to be in a (medieval/tolkien-or-Conan-esque) fantasy world instead of a sci-fi world. I love and own a ton more sci-fi movies than fantasy movies, but a lot more sci-fi movies have been made. I never read sci-fi novels, sticking strictly to fantasy in my novel-reading.

Maybe its the fact that I just ran my first two sessions of D&D with my boys and had an amazing time. Or maybe it's because I rediscovered, once again, how much I enjoy the Neverwinter Nights games. But I just re-purchased Two Worlds 1&2 (which I played, enjoyed and sold once upon a time) because I'm hungering once again for an open-world fantasy experience that Bethesda is too busy to have ready for me yet.

All this added together has me realizing that I just plain like fantasy settings over sci-fi settings. But I'm not sure why.

Part of me likes exploration in a natural environment. Real-world nature is unkind to me, but I'd love to explore it if it weren't so uncomfortable.
Maybe it's because fantasy stories tend to be more about passions and sci-fi is often more about ideas, and I like to feel something more than I like to think about something when enjoying fiction? Although I'm not sure that assumption is true.

Anyway, I wondered if maybe I could sort through this better if I heard from you guys about your thoughts on the two types of settings and why you prefer one over the other or even why you enjoy both equally! What do you think?

Settings... would you include space-fantasy with scifi? I've read "scifi" that is very, very softcore... as in "the ship had engines" not "quantum-fission drive, with gravitic enabling".
It might make a difference. A setting like Fallout is so close to "now' that everything kind of has to make sense. It can be more difficult to suspend disbelief... whereas a game like Skyrim has magic, which is an alien concept: allowing it to be unbelievable, but understandable at the same time.
Speaking of which... having made armor, and worn armor, and tried to damage armor, and so forth, I can get really twitchy when a fantasy author says something idiotic about armor. It can seriously ruin a whole made up world for me. Knowing next to nothing about future sciences, a scifi author can say something idiotic, and it will slide right off my back because I'm ignorant.
And then, of course, is the matter of exposition. Depending on how hardcore a scifi story is, it can be like reading a manual. -I don't want to read a manual.

So, having gone over some stuff in my mind... I guess I can say. ... . ... well, hmmm, I absolutely LOVE entering a good scifi world, and HATE entering a bad scifi world. I rather like a good fantasy world, and rather dislike a bad fantasy world. The best scifi is going to be better (to me) than the best fantasy, and likewise, the worst scifi is going to be worse than the worst fantasy. It is almost like the target for scifi is narrower, and thus more impressive when it is hit, but it is also easy to miss... and badly.

The books that have impacted my thoughts the most have been good scifi.
Scifi. I prefer scifi.

mikel.withers wrote:Settings... would you include space-fantasy with scifi? I've read "scifi" that is very, very softcore... as in "the ship had engines" not "quantum-fission drive, with gravitic enabling".

Yeah, I knew going in my terms were vague. I tried the word "setting" to imply a world dominated by the fantasy or sci-fi concept. So I guess "super spy" wouldn't be sci-fi in this discussion because only his gadgets are sci-fi and Highlander wouldn't be fantasy because only the immortals are fantastical. So I guess I mean sci-fi worlds (of which futuristic space movies fit perfectly) and fantasy worlds as we typically think of them.

I love both but I think I like it best when the two are combined.

That's probably why I love Brandon Sanderson so much, because he brings a very sci-fi sensibility to his fantasy.

My greatest sci-fi love has always been movies and TV, but I do read sci-fi as well.

I've always preferred fantasy to sci-fi, not really sure why.