Favorite game lore

[warpus]

The two games I sort of connected with the most in terms of the lore were probably Monkey Island 2 and Space Quest III. I looked at Roger Wilco and Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood and almost right away accepted them as real people I could relate to and go on an adventure with. The places they lived were goofy yet dangerous, with silly settings that couldn't possibly be real but that somehow made it easy to imagine yourself in. So many games out there try so hard to present some superhero character living in some plastic place, but somehow in these goofy games the human condition just came out occasionally in a special way.. like these were real places, somehow. It was probably the writing I suppose, maybe the art direction too.

Now that I think about it, I found Star Control 2 incredibly engaging. When I played that game it sucked me in and allowed me to easily pretend that I was exploring a vast galaxy, with many things going on.

I could somehow never get into Skyrim but played many hours of Morrowind. That felt like a super real place to me, even though there were obvious 3d glitches and other immersion breaking NPC nonsense going on.

I'm sure there's many examples of games with hundreds of times more lore written, with much more complex setups and character and storylines, but sometimes it's easier to find magic in something a bit simpler

 

[Zardnaar]

Fallout, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect

 

[Fippy]

The Longest Journey doesn't get enuf credit imo..
i'd recommend the original to everyone, despite the many classics released by Sierra & LucasArts i give TLJ my best story ever award
A HQ Mod has been released some time ago..not a magic fix for '99 graphics, but well improved.

 

[Kyriakos]

One 90s adventure game (well, if you can call it an adventure) which had lore and atmosphere but managed to become (deservedly so) a meme, was Dreamweb.
The repetitiveness went beyond the pale there.

 

[Plains-Cow]

There are some references to it, mostly implied. It's my own personal opinion on how their future plays out, but I can tell whomever wrote them was at least moderately familiar with how hunter-gatherer societies tend to be dominated or exterminated by states.

Since they're not farmers, have extremely informal hierarchies, no writing, they're not going to generate a surplus of food sufficient to resist territorial encroachment on their land, long-term. Their culture will be forcibly assimilated, at the least. True of the Doviello and pretty much every HG tribe on Earth IRL.

At the start of a FFH campaign, immediately after the thaw, the Doviello's enemies are at the lowest point of their population growth curve, which makes it the only real time they could plausibly interrupt the process that leads to their doom. You can kinda see this in Mahala's entry, in which Charadon argues:

“Hah! All you want to do is weaken us and then hand us over to our enemies, to be put in pens like sheep and cows! Better to die as warriors than live as thralls!”

in retort to a claim his wars are provocative and counter productive.

He is likely correct, though. He's a moralist, though often not recognized as such, disdainful of softness, something which is enforced by a state upon its people whether they like it or not(can't be killing the labor force, psycho). The states will force what he considers thralldom on he and his people for the sake of prosperity and security.

He resists this with a great deal of violence. It's not in line with contemporary ethics, but it does have a logic from his perspective: the only option with any chance of success is just to wipe everybody else out and destroy states, returning to the stateless societies of the Age of Ice.

Ironically, I think you've thought of the socio-political angle way more than Charadon ever did (or could have, given he's only ever grown up in an illiterate tribe of Ice Age cavemen). He always seemed to me as the living personification of the philosophy of every edgy leather-trench-coat teen who buys swords at the mall. Just if that persona was given form at the thawing of a new age and leadership over a tribe.

When it comes to thralls, wouldn't being a Doviello yesman who agrees with everything the chief says be akin to being a simpler thrall akin to how Charadon sees acquiescence of the individual to the state? It isn't like he stamps out dissent in any different way, just on a smaller, more amateurish scale. He also doesn't take "no" for an answer in anything.

Hence, I've always seen his "I will be the wilds personified" mentality as a giant front for feeling helpless to nature's circumstances at a young age. After all, a wolf doesn't have to try to be a wolf. Charadon's overly-aggressive persona is simply an attempt at trying to be a wolf. Perhaps even worse, he's not even effectively trying to be a wolf, but a parody of a wolf.

 

[Voidwalkin]

When it comes to thralls, wouldn't being a Doviello yesman who agrees with everything the chief says be akin to being a simpler thrall akin to how Charadon sees acquiescence of the individual to the state? It isn't like he stamps out dissent in any different way, just on a smaller, more amateurish scale. He also doesn't take "no" for an answer in anything.

This same critique can, and was, made of Dutch van der Linde in RDR2. Both were great characters. Freedom in spirit, fascist in function.

Ironically, I think you've thought of the socio-political angle way more than Charadon ever did (or could have, given he's only ever grown up in an illiterate tribe of Ice Age cavemen)

This I do disagree with, though. He's seen enough of civilized living to know his culture is facing different challenges from different entities. His first life did not contain many states, being a desolate ice age and all, his second did, and I'm sure the main themes were sensed, as is evidenced by continued advocacy of extreme violence against their rivals despite questionable hopes of success.

 

[Plains-Cow]

This I do disagree with, though. He's seen enough of civilized living to know his culture is facing different challenges from different entities. His first life did not contain many states, being a desolate ice age and all, his second did, and I'm sure the main themes were sensed, as is evidenced by continued advocacy of extreme violence against their rivals despite questionable hopes of success.

How could he have experienced, let alone debated the faults and merits of civilized living when he's already the head of an insular tribal people by the end of the Age of Ice? It isn't like there are people trying to have longform debate with Charadon, and even if they somehow did, it seems like he'd entertain words for all of thirty seconds before the axes come out and he proves his point by hacking the civilization evangelist to pieces.

That's kind of what always made Charadon so "evil" to me insofar as his alignment assignment. Everything he does is an emotional outburst of disproportionate aggression rooted in a deep-seated (very human) fear, and what he cannot overcome with that, he immediately fetishizes (interactions with Mahala are a good example of this, too). It's a desperate, tragic evil born out of desperate willingness to throw away everything that makes him "human" in an attempt to cover up or hide from his innermost fears buried in his childhood mind.

 

[Voidwalkin]

How could he have experienced, let alone debated the faults and merits of civilized living when he's already the head of an insular tribal people by the end of the Age of Ice?

I don't think it's direct experience in living that way, it's experience with his culture's more recent interaction with states, vs his experience dealing(fighting) other uncivilized stateless entities in what was a wasteland.

You really only need the experience in a leadership role to know you're dealing with a different entity, and this is pointed out to him several times, but he continues the course.

That's kind of what always made Charadon so "evil" to me insofar as his alignment assignment. Everything he does is an emotional outburst of disproportionate aggression rooted in a deep-seated (very human) fear, and what he cannot overcome with that, he immediately fetishizes (interactions with Mahala are a good example of this, too). It's a desperate, tragic evil born out of desperate willingness to throw away everything that makes him "human" in an attempt to cover up or hide from his innermost fears buried in his childhood mind.

I mean, it's worth noting that he routinely debated Mahala and she self-exiled.

The rest of this interpretation isn't necessarily wrong, but it's not really exactly in line, either. IIRC the text implies his witness to the wolf massacre was a recognition that that is what life is, the strong eat the weak. It could simply just be that, and some people do genuinely believe that, though we usually reserve unflattering adjectives for them, they do exist.

Evil is kinda granted but it's noteworthy that we're here talking about him and not another FFH leader, which does speak to the strength of the character.