Jake

Idle Thumbs 205: LPBs and HPBs

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"Lore" is what happens when writers take all the notes and world building they did to help write their story, and then actually make it the story. Tolkien is notorious for having written a massive backstory for Middle-Earth, but it exists with the purpose of building a meaningful setting for the real story to take place in. When the story gets way too eager to tell you its history, that's when it becomes "Lore".

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I was watching a recent match between eHome & IG and one of the casters brought up that Axe and Disruptor belong to the same race or clan according to the DOTA 2 lore which blew my mind mostly because I always forget that there is theoretically some lore to DOTA 2.

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I liked Mass Effect's approach to lore/background details, with a really extensive encyclopedia type database that unlocked as you found things in the world. I always enjoyed reading the entries as they were interesting and provided a lot of context to details in the game, but didn't need to be read for what was going on. Caveat: I have never got further than ~15 hours in to Mass Effect, despite trying several times, so whilst I really like that game I've never even got close to finishing it. I keep meaning to do so, but the idea of tackling such a large game really puts me off as I know I don't have the attention span for it.

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I liked Mass Effect's approach to lore/background details, with a really extensive encyclopedia type database that unlocked as you found things in the world. I always enjoyed reading the entries as they were interesting and provided a lot of context to details in the game, but didn't need to be read for what was going on. Caveat: I have never got further than ~15 hours in to Mass Effect, despite trying several times, so whilst I really like that game I've never even got close to finishing it. I keep meaning to do so, but the idea of tackling such a large game really puts me off as I know I don't have the attention span for it.

 

Mass Effect actually does have a really good backstory, and the codex has alot of cool stuff in it. They go into detail about how space battles work with FTL weapons, they explain how space travel works (ships at FTL turn around and face backwards halfway through the journey so they can slow down in time to stop at their destination). I especially liked how Zen Buddhism became popular with Turians. So much science fiction gets into what we learn by meeting other species, its fun to think about what they'd learn from us.

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I was watching a recent match between eHome & IG and one of the casters brought up that Axe and Disruptor belong to the same race or clan according to the DOTA 2 lore which blew my mind mostly because I always forget that there is theoretically some lore to DOTA 2.

 

Dota 2 having lore is pretty much the funniest thing to me because everyone knows you just jacked the characters from someone else's game. You're not fooling anyone by writing some garbage fantasy backstory to explain how Luna Moonfang the Moonrider is totally an original creation with an original backstory. (Not that I find warcraft lore particularly interesting. I'm 100% guilty of never reading WoW quest text.)

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I suppose I should say I'm not against lore in certain games, like how they brought up Elder Scrolls lore. I consider the random codec calls to be lore in every Metal Gear, since most if not all in some MGS games are superfluous and are only there to enrich the story. That and funny easter eggs and jokes. However I suppose those are dialogue exchanges rather than a block of texture.

 

I remember Longest Journey had this painfully boring part in the library of Arcadia where this guy just read a bunch of books about a bunch of backstory that didn't matter to the world, at least not to the extent of which was shown.

 

And you've gotta have spice for sure, I agree Mike.

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Inevitably video game lore conversations always have to go back to Blizzard because they are clearly so in love with their own lore despite it all being so generic.

 

But yeah, DOTA 2 having lore is definitely the ultimate version of someone at a company kind of shrugging and saying, "well, I guess we should have lore because that's what you do?"

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I like lore when it adds additional flavor to a game but ultimately isn't required.  I'm the kind of person who will engage in that if it's presented in a way that's understandable.  I dislike lore that's a prerequisite to understanding what the fuck is going on.

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I'm a guy who usually favours playing out the game's mechanics rather than paying attention to the story or lore. (e.g. my favourite games are Tetris, StarCraft and a lot of Nintendo games). I do enjoy some lore when they are given to you in bite-size pieces, like Bioware games' codexes or Metroid Prime's scans. I played TERA online for a while, however, and I could not tell you anything about the story or why anybody is doing anything, besides for EXP and quest rewards. Also it just so happens that TERA online has pretty good mechanics for its gameplay.

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I'd like to think I'm no slouch on vocabulary, but I'm p consistently having to look up words heard in episodes or reader mail.  Even if I can tell from context what it may mean, I'm not sure a lot of time.  This week's word - pastiche.  

 

Bespoke.

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Man every game I can think of that I think of as being lore-heavy are games that I really enjoyed.  Assassin's Creed's lore is as fun to me as the murders, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy 12 (especially the way codex pages are unlocked after you kill x number of creatures), having to scan stuff in Metroid Prime, picking up audio logs in System Shock 2, etc.

 

I mean unless lore is being distinguished as something that I'm failing to understand?  Is it only lore when it's boring and worldbuilding when it's fun?  I've never played dota so I have no point of reference there.

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I think if games handled lore like Failbetter handles Sunless Sea/Fallen London lore, where it's largely there to ensure the writers are being consistent but the players see almost none of it, we'd all be better off. Then again, that's sort of cheating because Failbetter has significantly better writers than almost anyone else. (I'm reminded of all the Sunless Sea interviews where games interviewers ask them how much they were influenced by Lovecraft, and then they say 'a bit' and start talking about Coleridge, Borges and Calvino.)

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Inevitably video game lore conversations always have to go back to Blizzard because they are clearly so in love with their own lore despite it all being so generic.

 

But yeah, DOTA 2 having lore is definitely the ultimate version of someone at a company kind of shrugging and saying, "well, I guess we should have lore because that's what you do?"

Yeah, but sometimes it give us awesome stuff like the absurd Magnus backstory. "Magnoceri"

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I think it's fairly obvious that Dota 2 has lore because valve has fun making low for Dota 2. And then other people have fun reading the ridiculous lore! Some of it is ridiculously over serious, and some off it is just plain old ridiculous. It's great!

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The thing about lore is the both the overall text itself and how is show and integrated in the game.

On the text the problem often lays in the "more is better" that sometimes does not prove true. See how Darksouls with so little lore can still be meaningful and cool and how even now Bloodborne resurrect the whole "there is a secret here we haven´t find" kind of discussion with the whole debate about the so called "beast mode", while other games can have dozens of books worth of text but none of it is really good. Another pitfall is, specially in fantasy (and certain types of sci-fi) is the "make everything pseudo-realistic" that cause writers to often don´t allow their own histories to be really fantastic or fantasy, instead you got a list of peoples and dates with some pseudo political stuff where everyone is jerk (because that often how the whole shades of gray turn) by least you can simple have convoluted history (somewhat happens to FF13, a game which I like, and while to can see it´s long corridors, I don´t think if it was more open would made it better better, because have more side quests only make even hard to keep track of the whole plot) or weak (I did felt a bit of this with Gothic 2)..

Execution part is very important too, even the old narration done by booming voice can be a great way to show something and make the player enter on the immersion state, one example is faction intros done by the guys behind Endless Space and Endless Legend. Age of Wonders does wonderfully play with classic fantasy tropes, but does it so well that in thr end begin more good that other games that try too hard to be different (and often fell flat, like most of the alien races in Master of Orion 3), at least for now (before the new edition) Warhammer Fantasy too was all about classic tropes, but how they did pretty much hold the whole thing (at least for a while).

Sean complained about the excessive wall of text which lore is often dropped ingame (the info dump problem), What happen, I think,  is information begin thrown in the same "channel" where crucial info (thing you need to know to go on) and supporting info (extra things that aren´t crucial, but help the world to feel more alive and put more light in the crucial info)along with not important stuff get to jammed in a single space. Some games solved this by splitting the info in different channels, in Elder Scrolls the whole "support info" is on books, while on Mass Effect it one the codex and so on, while Souls series, use position and description on gear to tell it´s story, but the crucial info is delivered direct via dialog/text. That way, this game can support different playstyles, if you wish to just go on you can do it, but if you wish to know more, them feel free to pick some books/entries.

By least you have the tying part, because even the best lore can go to waste if not tied well. In Endless Legend you have the Broken Lords, which once where knights that seeing the imminent danger, changed their bodies and became creatures locked inside their armors that feed on "dust", in game they only need "dust" which is the only way they heal themselves or even grown in numbers. The Horatio on Endless Space, are a civilization, all made of the clone of the same person, which believe himself to be the most beautiful thing in the universe. Ingame they have ability to clone heroes and are all about culture and growth. Meanwhile in Master of Orion, you have begins which live inside of gas giants, sound cool? not so much they play exactly as everyone else, only have some small modifiers which you won´t notice and some restrictions on habitable planets, also they had some living stone-crystal begins, which again play exactly like everyone else, which often cause more questions that anything (how I can board a ship made by begin which live inside a gas giant? or why they even have or need a ship? how and why crystal begins can form troops and use power armor? if the insect race is all about hivemind, why do I get events about corruption?)

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Did someone say lore?

Still one of my favourite games, but I've never really understood that choice.

 

The Neverhood is actually an interesting Lore example. You have to collect all the disks to receive an item after watching the video they contain. and then there is the library wall. (I tried reading it all once, not recommended.)

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That big literal wall of text in the Neverhood is a parody of the Bible, especially the creation story parts. It plays into the themes of free will and the nature of good and evil covered elsewhere in the game. It does have some interesting stories in there, the best of which is the adventures of Willie Trombone and Bill the robot, which appear later. But some of it just fills in some backstory about Hoborg and clay, and some of it is completely irrelevant. The sheer length of it is just a gag. A very annoying gag.

 

Yeah I read most of it, back when I had way too much time on my hands as a kid. I loved that game.

 

(By the way, the same people that made the Neverhood kickstarted a new game called Armikrog which is in development now, with similar gameplay and visual style. Too bad Doug TenNapel is some kind of homophobic jerk.)

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Did someone say lore?

Still one of my favourite games, but I've never really understood that choice.

Ooh, I totally meant to post that!

 

Haha I've read it twice actually and it's pretty inconsequential compared to the animated sequences you unlock!

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This article has nothing to do with lore, but the headline made me laugh.  I saw it right after I finished the podcast and the timing couldn't have been better.

 

Killer Instinct S2 Dev: "No One at Iron Galaxy Cares About Lore, We Just Want to Make Cool Characters"

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I just started watching Steven Universe on a recommendation from a friend. I liked Adventure Time when it was about goofy people having adventures, and for me the moment it got boring was when it tried to have a big mysterious backstory where all the characters were secretly lesbians. I guess Steven Universe just jumps directly to that point because every other episode has some subtle reference to a big convoluted back story and I just find it kind of tedious because other than that it's a fun show. Or maybe I'm just a crotchety old man yelling about cartoons that aren't made for me, but it seems like loads of people my age really like this stuff and I can't understand it.

 

I guess what I'm really saying is stop trying to make me care about Lore, his TNG episodes were the worst.

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I have an interesting relationship with Warcraft lore. I've never played WoW beyond level 10 and played through Warcraft 3 once; my main interaction with the Warcraft universe is through Hearthstone and lately HotS, yet I spent a significant portion of time last winter break reading through a good chunk of the lore on the WoW wikia. Conversely despite my strange fascination with the lore of the Warcraft universe I can't stand Warhammer's lore, despite the nearly identical themes of generic fantasy races fighting and also there's corruption and muscle guys and massive pauldrons. Maybe Hearthstone has given me just enough sympathy for the characters that I am willing to put up with it all?

 

I find that in general I appreciate the presence of lore in a game without actively engaging with it. Knowing that it's there does make the world feel more complete even if I don't personally know most of it.

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I think there's a big difference in tone between Warcraft and Warhammer; in Warhammer, everyone's terrible, and it's a fight between the bad and the worse. In Warcraft, there's a lot more well-intentioned factions, but their intentions lead them catastrophically astray.

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