Favorite game lore

[Voidwalkin]

What game series do you think has the best lore?

I like Mass Effect lore. They skewed a little too far towards Star Trek regarding human/xeno relations, but still decent. Little more towards 40k woulda been better.

Fallout has decent lore. Particularly NV. Sided with House and crushed both the expanding NCR empire and Caesar's fascists. They did well with state construction. Caesar as a Kurtz like figure, exploiting technologically unsophisticated tribes makes more sense than The Institute's interventionist policies. Caesar was a great villain.

Halo and AC are too ancient aliens for my taste. Elder Scrolls is very heroic, which is ok but plain.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Morrowind, I suppose. But I'm not a very good person to ask since the only game I've played with lore is Morrowind.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Path of Exile has over a decade of lore connecting its ongoing and unfolding storyline about Wraeclast. there are even achievements for reading all of the in game material.

History of Wraeclast | PoE Wiki

www.poewiki.net

 

[Ajidica]

Morrowind has great lore, as @Gori the Grey said.
The absolute insanity of it only gets revealed to you slowly, and it holds together pretty well.

Fallout lore is fun, particularly Fallout 1. Fallout 3 lore is also fun but totally not consistent with established lore - or even the game's own timeline. I found New Vegas to be a bit of a mess, but I also prefer my Fallout games feeling apocalyptic. "America vs Roman Jocks from Hell hanging out with Frank Sinatra" never really worked for me.

One game that has awesome lore but is totally overlooked is Sword of the Stars. A super neat space strategy game with a very disappointing sequel.

 

[Strong Reaction]

I am gonna stick with Bioware and say Dragon Age up until DAII. Origins was High Fantasy storytelling at its best. Maybe I am being hyperbolic but I loved that game.

 

[Akka]

Depends.
I love Mass Effect background lore due to how grounded and pseudo-realistic it feels. It's full of the kind of details that makes you feels like it's "real".
Dragon Age : Origins lore also shows the same quality, especially with demons/the Veil/magic, covering all the corners to make it believable and consistent.
Both, though, have better lore in codex than in game, with the lore tending to give way to the gameplay/moment-to-moment story, and both have the strength of their lore getting progressively weaker entry after entry (with ME especially going from "somewhat hard SF" to downright "space magic").

But as "most striking" or "the one which had the deepest impact", I'd say the Dark Souls serie (and especially the first).
It's all nebulous, indirect and implied, so it's a lot about delivery, a few strong basic concepts and ambience (and how the game itself convey the feeling through level design and partial informations), but it manages to really worms its way in the psyche.

Funny thing, they are both basically completely opposite way : the formers build a believable, strong world through attention to details, which improves immersion through lowering suspension of belief. The latter build an ethereal myth through information deprivation and indirect storytelling, which improves immersion through bringing you into something that you don't fully grasp.

 

[Ordnael]

Deus EX...just finished another tour of the original game, but both Adam Jensen's games are also fine, specially Human revolution, that was quite something! The lore of Deus Ex ticks a lot of my cravings: Cyberpunk, transhumanism, dystopian reality, future of AI as a means of governance or government...
Fore a medieval fantasy lore I would go with Witcher!

 

[Kyriakos]

Dead Space (which I've never played) is nice. I like the idea of the markers and what is behind them.

But my favorite game-story is (very naturally, I suppose) from the time I was a kid, playing Another World:

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Elder Scrolls is very heroic, which is ok but plain.

I do enjoy it because it is not necessary to know much backstory to get the gist of what is happening. In fact many NPCs basically come out and say "you don't have to believe any of these legends, you just have to get out there and see things for yourself".
Most of my experience has been with Skyrim.

Deus EX...just finished another tour of the original game, but both Adam Jensen's games are also fine, specially Human revolution, that was quite something! The lore of Deus Ex ticks a lot of my cravings: Cyberpunk, transhumanism, dystopian reality, future of AI as a means of governance or government...
Fore a medieval fantasy lore I would go with Witcher!

Human Revolution is certainly more personal; I just don't like how they butcher one of the smaller plot points of the Deus Ex 1 to make it: mechanical- and nano-augmentations were supposed to be an elitist/classist argument. In HR, augs were basically a stand-in for race/ethnicity, and so every other character was given them. Alas we probably won't be getting a third prequel game to somehow tie these loose ends...
...
I would add maybe Ace Combat, only because the creators were able to make a world similar in appearance to ours but shares none of the politics and where all the great powers are basically balanced out, having many overly-sized super-weapons to do it. And it's only a small group of pilots who are really able to win any wars. Makes you feel like a real hero when you win.
Some of the most white-knuckle gaming experiences I had were playing AC5 and 6; I guess that's got to count for something.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I don't know if I have a favorite game lore. However, the Fall from Heaven II mod for CIV IV has a lot of great lore.

 

[Farm Boy]

I like the Souls series. The entire level design of Dark Souls I served the lore in ways it absolutely didn't need to.

 

[Spidernova]

Dominions. Its based on historical and mythological nations, but all sorts of crazy stuff happens between the different ages. For example, in the early age, the Egyptian themed lizardmen taught death magic to Ermor, who then tried to resurrect their Jesus figure and broke reality so hard it resulted in an undead apocalypse in the middle age.

 

[dusters]

There was a game called Matrix Online. It was released early in 2000s and didn't get as popular as expected.

It has some lore, which is just Matrix franchise lore which I have started to iceberg into in anticipation to Matrix 5 which will come out this decade or simply soon(tm)

 

[Voidwalkin]

40k has the most developed lore, if it's included. I dunno how good it is.

Their bulky armored space marine seems like a macho high-tech imagining circa 1980. Hard not to think something similar could be developed today. It's from the same era as Alien and the Xenomorph. No miniaturization. I still kinda like it though.

More interesting is that 40k has a competitive rather than cooperative galaxy. I think that's a legitimate outcome.

Mass Effect was pretty good. Updated sci-fi style. A hegemonic intelligence that exterminates life periodically is also a plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Decent armor, decent weapons, though very cooperative. I think they did the Elusive Man a bit raw.

Fantasy game lore is usually pretty light. It's well developed, but it's all based around heros. In contemporary understanding, the hero nearly always has heroic morality, too, unquestionably good(I kinda blame dungeons and dragons for this). I prefer heros in the Greek or Norse style: very good at fighting, but personal morality and goals range the whole spectrum.

 

[Gori the Grey]

but it's all based around heros

Sounds like you're forgetting the Lusty Argonian Maid. Or maybe you have a different definition of heroism than I do.

 

[Gorbles]

Mass Effect was pretty good. Updated sci-fi style. A hegemonic intelligence that exterminates life periodically is also a plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Decent armor, decent weapons, though very cooperative. I think they did the Elusive Man a bit raw.

Mass Effect's backstory involves two major wars, maybe three, plus the sterilisation of an entire race (to "avoid" another war). The whole problem of races not fully cooperating was a plot point all the way to the third game (and aspects of it played out in Andromeda as well).

I don't really have an opinion to the thread at large. I enjoyed Mass Effect a lot, but there are whole game series I've never played (the Witcher, for example). It's hard to work out "best". Heck, I even like Borderlands for its lore even though it's a video game first and a story second (or third, maybe).

Compelling is all it has to be to me. Beyond that I end up arguing online about it, and I try and keep video games from crossing over into that habit these days.

 

[Farm Boy]

40k has the most developed lore, if it's included. I dunno how good it is.

The best part is that every part is turned to 11.

I can handle the fantasy universe, but 40k is just too grimderp for me. The I need at least goblin doomdiver level glee, and the only glee in the imperium 40k is psykers edging themselves.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Sounds like you're forgetting the Lusty Argonian Maid. Or maybe you have a different definition of heroism than I do.

I have over 2000 hours in Skyrim. Never read the complete series.

Mass Effect's backstory involves two major wars, maybe three, plus the sterilisation of an entire race (to "avoid" another war). The whole problem of races not fully cooperating was a plot point all the way to the third game (and aspects of it played out in Andromeda as well).

Yet, the Krogan were still alive. In ME, even when societies get genocide-y there's still a level of cooperation.

Even the reapers do not actually go full genocide, arguably, in that they actually collect and store DNA or presumably other comparable molecular structures from harvested species.

 

[Voidwalkin]

The I need at least goblin doomdiver level glee, and the only glee in the imperium 40k is psykers edging themselves

I think I'd like it more if I didn't hate the Imperium of Man. I tend to favor very decentralized political entities, believing a variety of approaches works to success faster than hegemony. The Imperium is the polar opposite.

It also doesn't help that I've played as the barbarians and destroyed Rome in every single strategy game in which Rome is featured. I probably have 3000 hours in RTW from when I was a kid. Mostly as Germania, or Britannia. Suebi or Arverni in EB. Call something the Imperium and I start getting twitchy.

 

[Voidwalkin]

I don't know if I have a favorite game lore. However, the Fall from Heaven II mod for CIV IV has a lot of great lore.

Veteran Doviello player. Charadon rush specialist.

Oddly, they hit anti-civilization sympathies I didn't at the time even know I had.