Favorite game lore

Angst said:
pillars' gods are cool to me because they encapsulate forces that aren't necessarily good, but they are true. they're all double-movements similar to the real world pantheonic trope of pairing god of agriculture with the realm of death (ie, consumption requires something to perish). pillars extrapolates such functions onto most gods (rymrgand is pretty one-note, and is the sole exception)
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I disagree here, Rymrgand is the god of Entropy and enduring, but also provides peace and closure/ending.
 
Qactus said:
Dishonored was very impressive in terms of how much effort was put in to create a compelling world, characters and storyline. Never played the sequel though
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I agree. That city would have seemed like a lively place if it wasn't for the plague. It sits at the heart of its empire, but if you read deeper, you realize that much of the world isn't even mapped yet, so who knows what else is out there...

Though I can't help but think it suffered the same problem (?) as Deus Ex 1 for me. These are big cities we're visiting: where is everyone?
"Oh, there's a curfew."
"Oh, there's some plague and no one goes out."
Okay.
I guess it's easier to program that way, but thematically, it's a little cheap to me. It would have been nice if we had small item shops here and there...and my character didn't feel like he has to dig through garbage...
 
Angst said:
worldbuilding is what carries it, was the point. my note on gameplay is kind of misphrased here. so. the gameplay is snappy, yes, but there's not much substance to most of the plot choices you make. the point is that worldbuilding is more than plot. there's a reason fallout's aesthetics is compelling with its art decor bizarro nuke world and a reason why bethesda mostly reruns the older designs of the original game. the brotherhood of steel keeps showing up for a reason, even if they go pure paladins in bethesda's vision of the setting; the art direction and the way that faction ticked made it a really cool thing. the plots and the vast majority of quests suck in 3 and 4 though, yes
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Point taken.

NV is still remembered fondly for its plot, which synergized well with the worldbuilding.

I think the mistake Bethesda made with both 3 and 4 is to use a story that depends on personal relationships rather than the relationship between man and the apocalypse. Father/son and familial loyalty clouds a players relationship to the social forces at work and obfuscates neutral player analysis of the social institutions the player is meant to pick from.

Sean being your kid entirely clouds the player from making judgement on the merits or lack thereof of the Institute, and tugs heartstrings against siding with what is pretty clearly a comically stupid and evil thing.

NV did it better in asking players to choose what they value: fascism and security, freedom and in some cases an inability to respond to stimuli via bureaucratic inertia, anarchy, autocratic technologism.
 
I prefer emergent head canon over lore. I struggle to pinpoint any games lore I care at all about. Like it was fun reading the original StarCraft 1 timeline in the manual but coming across a tome of the blood wars in Diablo was trash. Modern games’ unending lore is even worse. Elden Ring was cooler before I knew its lore.
 
Hygro said:
I prefer emergent head canon over lore. I struggle to pinpoint any games lore I care at all about. Like it was fun reading the original StarCraft 1 timeline in the manual but coming across a tome of the blood wars in Diablo was trash. Modern games’ unending lore is even worse. Elden Ring was cooler before I knew its lore.
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My time spent making my own lore dramatically exceeds time spent with existing lore. I do it in pretty much every sandbox game. Existing lore is really just the setting used to launch my own.

It isn't irrelevant, though. The existing lore impacts my ability to launch my own headcanon, often because it conflicts with directions I wanna go. Fallout 4 did. Skyrim too. Ideally, the world has rich lore that enables creation of stories, but does not force you down a path. Games like this are few and far between, and I expect it's a minority opinion amongst gamers.
 
Is the problem that you looked up somebody else's take on the Elden Ring lore? I've been resisting the urge almost entirely. Told and retold myself different stories as I've noticed different details. Gotten nothing but simpler and crazier as it's gone along.
 
Farm Boy said:
Is the problem that you looked up somebody else's take on the Elden Ring lore? I've been resisting the urge almost entirely. Told and retold myself different stories as I've noticed different details. Gotten nothing but simpler and crazier as it's gone along.
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The Reddit crowd is loud and they are nicely accurate about repeating authorial intent and actual game text. So they’re not wrong… it’s just stupider than what The Game Itself rather than the dialogue within is telling you it is. And while I say stupider, it’s not stupid, just relative. I think you are doing it right.
 
Haven't picked it back up since the expansion dropped. Need to build back up controller coordination for playthrough 4. <shudders> the wolves. So mean.
 
Farm Boy said:
Haven't picked it back up since the expansion dropped. Need to build back up controller coordination for playthrough 4. <shudders> the wolves. So mean.
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I can’t justify playing it slowly week by week and I definitely can’t on a binge. So I might never get to it :(
 
Might seamless coop it, but that feels sort of dirty.
 
I don’t even play online to read the messages and see the clues. Although I think that’s not “correct” gameplay.
 
Ah! That's why you didn't get "dog" jokes.

If you can resist spoilering it, the in-game notes, just being able to see where they're written, makes it massively easier to not miss some stuff. Plus, the phrasing of the world messages is eccentric enough to be fun on its own, once you get it. But yeah, it's half-spoilery. Maybe 3/4ths.
 
Fippy said:
I don't include BG3 in the Baldurs Gate series.
That game carries it's name only for marketing purposes..and it's Divinity Original Sin 3 in disguise.
Which wouldn't be bad (i loved DOS2)..but i hate my favorite franchise being used cos how will we ever get a real new Baldurs Gate now.
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That sums up so much my feeling about BG3.
It's a game I should have loved (I'm a fan of both the BG serie and the DOS serie), but it was such a huge case of misplaced franchise I actually ended up not liking it, and not even finishing it.
 
Hollow Knight, the way you start by jumping down a well and whacking little bugs but then gradually discover an entire decaying universe, and how you learn the backstory/lore via tantalising bits from item descriptions, labels, character dialogues (or monologues, considering your character doesn't speak) and from penetrating their subconsciousness. The melancholy mood of that game was impeccable

then again, like Gori the Grey with Morrowind, Hollow Knight is the only lore-heavy game I've played
 
Grim Dawn

:lol:
 
I am sure it is overruled for other reasons too, but it's not even isometric :(
In isometric games the camera doesn't move - only zooms in/out. Another way of saying that the gfx (including animations) are pre-rendered.
 
I get the technical use of the word, but it's still the exact same game genre of it spins and zooms in.
 
World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout are the ones that I’m interested in their lore.

With WoW, I’m largely in with the elven lore of the Night Elves and their High Elven cousins (later called Blood Elves after the Scourge invasion led by Arthus the Lich King).
 
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