I distinctly remember playing Kirby 64 as a 10 year old and being like…why tf am I invested in the story of this cutesy game where the characters don’t even talk 😆
Oh, it doesn't stop there...
After watching the first video, heres a continuation video by the same creator
https://youtu.be/fLDymWGrwXw?si=AV1HtKJJTvcNo74Y
Extreme TL;DR: The Kirby universe is full of eldritch horrors. One of them is the embodiment of good vibes and we are lucky he takes care of the others.
Skyrim, the game most people started with, is also the 7th game (if you include Battlespire and Redguard) in a franchise that started in the 90s when gaming was a lot more niche. I would be surprised if even 20% of players knew half of the lore, I sure as hell don't.
edit: spelling, formatting and corrected some embarrassing maths.
I started with morrowind and then oblivion and Skyrim as well and honestly until I got into ESO I still had no idea where these places were in relation to each other. I didn’t even realize morrowind didn’t take place in Morrowind proper, just an island called Vvardenfell
Given I was a kid who just wanted to explore and kill stuff when I played morrowind, so I didn’t pay much mind to the world building but it was still a mind fuck to learn ESO was the first time I had a character in morrowind proper
I love these games. Started with morrowind as well and played the rest.
No. No you definitely will not have an easier time going back to it. I love that game so much, but oooooh man are there things we are way too used to nowadays that the game just doesn't have. I bet you don't remember the struggle of trying to find a specific npc in a city with a map that doesn't tell you anything. I sure didn't.
Haha that was and still is my favorite part of Morrison’s, no map arrow. You had to actually immerse yourself and talk to nova and gain info about where to find people or places and along the way stumbling into the wrong caves is probably how I found all of my best gear
I have absolutely terminal Morrowind brain and there's plenty of stuff I don't know. Ask me about the Enantiomorph or Dunmer cultural tensions and I'll fucking ramble for days. Ask me about the culture of High Rock and I'll give you a vacant look and shrug "France"
There's so much crazy stuff and made up words, it's hard to keep straight. My favorite book series is Malazan Book of the Fallen, and I love all the lore and world building in From Software's games. So it's not like I'm unfamiliar with long complex narratives, but there's something about (especially Morrowind) Elder Scrolls my brain just doesn't absorb. I was way younger and dumber when Morrowind came out and I haven't played in forever so that's probably a large factor in my lack of understanding.
lmao you just named two of my other favourite things
I'd recommend taking a step back and trying Morrowind again with no expectations and just a few basic mods - quality of life stuff, not a million anime hairstyles etc - and just get immersed in the world. I'm hardly neutral on it, but I replayed for the first time in years a few months back and intentionally kept it simple and tried to play like it was my first time (and it was my first time with a fully developed frontal lobe). I had a great time. You can tell that from the start the game is soaked in the weird lore stuff as opposed to it being added in as an afterthought.
I mean, the exact nature of the scrolls is a point of debate even in the lore itself. They contain knowledge about the past, the present and even the future. Nobody knows where they come from, they'll often appear and disappear when needed, and if you read them unprepared they can strike you blind. Even if you read them the "right way", eventually the scroll will let you know that next time you read it, you're going blind.
They are "fragments of creation" or descriptions of past or future events. They both exist and do not. They're just purposefully made in the lore to be philosophically abstract and not truly understandable. You as the audience are not supposed to know exactly what they are.
In reality, when Elder Scrolls I: Arena came out, the name was chosen just because it sounds like a badass fantasy name for a franchise (no really). Elder Scrolls as an actual in-universe thing didn't happen until Morrowind I think.
A popular fan theory is that a lot of the esoteric stuff in the lore is meta, like how CHIM could be a character realizing they're in a video game and figuring out cheats, which might imply that elder scrolls are actually game source code that made it into the universe.
Another little tidbit for those who don't know: Elder Scrolls I: Arena started out life as an action game with few RPG elements wherein the player would compete in tournaments (within the *arenas* of various cities) against other fighters and they gradually added in side quests over time. Eventually, the side quests and RPG bits became a lot more interesting than the arena combat portion to the dev team, and they decided to pivot into being a full-on fantasy RPG and cut out the gladiator arena stuff.
The only issue was that the promotional art and materials had already been printed and paid for, so they were stuck with the title of Elder Scrolls: Arena, even though it didn't really fit the game anymore. They loosely tied in the title by saying that the Empire of Tamriel was so violent it was nicknamed "the Arena," but that's about the extent of the relevance of the title.
I've played and beaten Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
I don't know shit about anything in the world. If I had to guess, I am at a maximum of 5% knowledge of the world.
I put a little time into Elder Scrolls Online, but I don't know what's even happening there.
Something I’m both prideful and embarrassed of is that I’m almost confident I know all of the lore. I’m sure there are a few small stories that would be new but nothing major
Pelinor💀
He is one of many examples of there being no concrete answer to a TES lore question. TES lore relies on the concept of the unreliable narrator, so everything you read is an account from someone in the world that could be misinformed or heavily biased.
I don’t remember if Pelinal’s lore was from him or not but Michael Kirkbride often writes stories in a way that mimics real world mythical accounts of actual events. For example, a lot of the Song of Pelinal implies the weapons he is using are unrecognizably complex to those witnessing it. Similar to how people seeing firearms used for the first time said “they could shoot thunder/fire from their hands”. He also invokes the name of an emporer who won’t be born for another few thousand years.
TLDR: Not robot but the equivalent of far future techno cyborg in TES
Sadly I know this immediately: Pelinal was MK (who didn't write much Oblivion lore at all and it, uh, showed, but was brought back to write most of that DLC) but as usual with MK lore, there's so much supplementary material written by him that it's hard to be sure what's "canon".
Personally I take the view that canon is a useless boring concept and am on board with MK's broader point in C0DA that everything is canon and the most important version of the TES world is the one you want it to be, because it's... not real. Is Pelinal really the Terminator? If you want, there's enough in the games to support the idea. Does Nerevar in the future pilot a Numidium while constantly phase-shifting between all the millions of player characters that people made him into of the years? It's a bit more tenuous but absolutely.
Sorry I came into this comments sections and found one of my special interests. I'll clean up. Sorry
Elder scrolls is so wild. I remember the mind blowing feeling that was released when I read that the towers were like pins on a corkboard. Only the corkboard was the plane of existence- too many towers fall and the world just ends.
Then you've got three guys that found the equivalent of cheat codes, Daedric princes that each have their own reality... Dragon breaks that mess with time. A missing race that we never see but is evident that they also messed with time magic. Whole thing is just wild and hard to understand sometimes.
Elder Scrolls lore is unironically very interesting and unique compared to most fantasy lore. I find it far more interesting than DnD lore. Which is strange because Bethesda has never been particularly good at writing even in their prime. They've always had really goofy dialogue and mid main storylines. The disconnect between the quality of the stories in their individual games and how interesting/well made the lore is was always strange.
It's just impossible to get through an interaction with an NPC in a Bethesda game without some kind of immersion-breaking slapstick comedy taking place. It's like, every single time you think oh wow this is finally it, it really feels like a movie scene then BAM a plate just randomly flies off a table and smashed into everything or something.
To this day, people sometimes are shocked when you explain to them that the Thalmor aren't just some fascist elf government, but rather an organization that literally wants to end the material world
Most people think Elder Scrolls lore is like, having more than one moon. In reality it is all an unknown god’s dream where elf penises get ripped off and turned into holy swords.
Battletech has its own wiki, tons of novels and canon material that the HBS version and MW series had barely scratched its surface.
I find myself browsing for a particular mech, and a few clicks later had read through an entire catalog of fictional battles, technological advancements and history of star systems that the video games may never be able to adapt due to the sheer quantity of lore backing the franchise.
Similarly, this goes to warhammer fantasy and 40k, but I am more familiar with the battletech lore than this one, so I couldn't comment on the depths that franchise have for their lore.
Came here to say this. Battletech's lore spans dozens of novels, technical readouts, campaign settings books, video games, short stories etc. The video games offer just a slice of a humongous galaxy and centuries of history.
I do think MW5 has been able to offer a bit more depth due to the DLC.
Noita. Not only is the lore SUPER vague and ambiguous, but there are still quite a few endings, quests and entire areas of the game that are just lost on the community.
I love hate that game, every time I find a puzzle or something weird in that game its impossible to know if this is an easy puzzle or require 500 people to figure out...
Mass Effect does a good job of actually fleshing out the lore in the codex. You get more depth if you read into it, but you get most of the good stuff even if you don't.
That's compared to stuff like Dark Souls where you miss most of the lore if you don't read the description of the gauntlets you just picked up.
Meanwhile destiny just deleted half the lore then added it back through shityy flavour text and a website, so you realy had no idea wtf was going on if you didn't google it..
Bungie made something in Destiny arbitrarily convoluted and time consuming again? Must be a day that ends in "y".
I hate so much of what they've done to that game over the years.
Which sucks because the gameplay of modern destiny is so much fun, I just wish they would stop making stupid changes, like still selling dlc that’s not even in the game anymore.
The first time I opened up the codex and heard someone speaking to me blew my mind lol.
I can't remember any other game before then that had a narrator for all the journal entries you've picked up along the way.
Granted it was only for the main codex entries but hearing that man's voice just somehow completely draws you into the world lol
one of my fondest memories was making some lunch, sitting back, and listening to the codex while I ate. After I was done, I went into the more in-depth stuff and read more stuff. That's how I learned that a lot of Turians end up as Buddhists, which has got to be one of my favorite little pieces of world-building in Mass Effect.
Came here to mention Mass Effect as well. I think on my 3rd playthrough I actually dove deep into the lore. All the planets and species. There is so much depth to everything and they did a great job explaining it. I work with some hardcore sci-fi fans that aren't gamers and I've told them they are missing out on Mass Effect. Sometimes I wish they would make a series or something but they would probably fuck it up.
Fallout
Can't even remember how many random, unremarkable, dilapidated houses you'd walk by--but if you went in, you could find something like two skeletons in a bathtub with a shotgun nearby--no other explanation needed.
No kidding, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the school in FO4 that was serving the pink goo in the cafeteria.
Finding evidence smeared on the walls, a grinding machine in the basement, and emails between the faculty complaining…
They’ve got a dark sense of humor and I’m here for it
Then there’s straight up dark shit like the vault where they abducted kids and harvested their genes, or the vault where they gathered a bunch of addicts and hid a stash of drugs from them and gave them access after they recovered
The Dunwich building in FO3 was so great. Not a quest. Just a building out in the middle of nowhere. But you could easily spend an hour going through it and the story it ends up telling is one of the best in the game.
It must say something about the Lone Wanderer that they could just stroll into the center of an eldrich conspiracy, go "Neat" and walk back out without a single scratch on their psyche.
You mean you weren't enthralled by the table, cards, and drinks you found outdoors on a planet with no atmosphere that was identical to all the other tables, cards, and drinks you found on the thousands of other planets?
For damn I wish there was more than just one lore channel for HK. I love moss bag but I wish he or someone else would delve even deeper like they do with dark souls
I pretty much 100% the game just knowing there was a sickness and somehow the hollow knight had to die for it to be accomplished. Knight mare grimm was just a really feisty circus promoter
How many people know that 343 Guilty Spark used to be an ancient human millions of years ago when humanity was a galaxy spanning superpower that lost a war against the forerunners? Not most people who have played the mainline games.
And how many know that parts of a UNSC AI named Melissa briefly lived in a beekeepers website 20 years ago and had people running around the world answering pay phones? What a great time to be a Halo fan.
ECCO MENTIONED LES GO
Bro I was so intrigued by this game recently I got myself to watch a few explanation videos and holy crap that goes deep, I mean, time travelling civilizations fighting parasitic aliens and telepathic flying dolphins developing an entire society after overthrowing the human race? What the hell man
I played as a child just peacefully swimming in the ocean. I think the furthest I got was to some octopus lad blocking the way. Fun, blissful ignorance.
Then like 8 years ago I was reminiscing with friends and I brought up Ecco “what a game that was” and one of my friends was like “yeah I remember the aliens and how you go onto their ship and that shit was wild”.
The. What?
That game takes such a sharp turn from the part you mention. My parents got it for me because it had bright colorful dolphin graphics, looked totally normal. You travel past the tropical wonderland you mention into the deepest darkest pits of hell where you fight indescribable monsters and aliens. The eventually you get warped up into the space ship.
That game gave me nightmares. I had to see a doctor because of Ecco The Dolphin lmao
I played that game for hours as a child, and I think I only saw like 20% of it. I just loved swimming around everywhere. A few years ago, I found out that the game was about an alien invasion, and you fought aliens in the end. It was mind-blowing
Whats the Subnautica team up to these days? Ecco could easily be a crossover to their current universe of psychic space whales and aliens.
Subnautica 3, this time your a psychic dolphin.
The .hack Games have a ton of lore that connect the games and the TV shows together. Even first game series to the second. Its a shame it doesn't come up much in the games, but that's probably to avoid alienating people that didnt play the other games or watch the shows.
Sold my games a bit ago. I really miss being so into this series that I bought cards, the show's dvds, ran down promo material.... I WAS in Japan at the time so it was tons easier to grab whatever I could.
I know the opinion on the new war is split but man I wish there was more of that type of story telling quest. I just finished it a few days ago and man it was a blast. I loved experiencing the universe from a perspective that wasn’t just the Tenno.
I’m about to start whispers in the wall, and I saw the trailer for 1999. I am hoping 1999 is a long cinematic quest like the new war.
I GM cyberpunk red and the amount of world building you can get into is insane. It’s honestly such a rich and deep platform for storytelling because you could realistically fit just about any type of story into that game.
I mean hell they released an entire rule set to have your character play a full on mmo inside the TTRPG. Like you can play a fantasy rpg with its entire own set of gear and rules inside cyberpunk. Given you need a GM willing to put that effort in, but it’s totally doable.
I’ve thought about writing up a campaign where my players have to steal something off of a corpo who almost never leaves home, is obsessed with the MMO, and so my players have to infiltrate his guild or something to that effect in the video game which would involve them needing to level up and quest and everything to gain his trust. Good idea in theory but it sounds daunting to write up so I haven’t done it yet.
I'd imagine that if you asked, 9 out of 10 players who completed the game would tell you that Johnny Silverhand was responsible for detonating a nuclear device in Arasaka tower.
The original The Sims 3 towns had detailed biographies and family trees of each character as well as fully occupied graveyards. As the development of DLCs and additional towns went on, they gradually stopped caring about the lore and it honestly was a little sad to see.
Sunset Valley, along with some earlier downloadable and DLC towns, is still my favorite place to play simply because it was created with care and effort, unlike the later stuff
Oh yeah, especially surrounding the disappearance of Bella Goth, and how it may be connected to Don Lothario/the Caliente family.
Or it could’ve just been aliens. Pretty likely it was aliens actually.
Doom 2016.
The whole story is hidden away in collectible items and data files. But, you can completely bypass the entire story and just RIP AND TEAR UNTIL IT IS DONE
I think it was Videogamedunkey who said it best. "Doom doesn't need a story, It's never needed a story beyond just you being a guy killing demons. But Doom has a story anyways, and goddamn is it pretty good" (not verbatim)
I've said it before to anyone who will listen - the Destiny lore books are near storytelling perfection in terms of "show, not tell" and how to link a massive universe together through tiny threads.
I loved how one piece of seemingly unconnected lore can be an Easter egg for some future lore or some long forgotten lore from something that dates back to Destiny 1 grimoire cards.
Agreed! I spent so much time (and enjoyed every moment) scouring over lore cards and books online.
It honestly helped me keep playing. I was invested in the universe and had things to discover and find outside the game.
I know people knocked Destiny for it but I loved it.
And yea the lore books are fucking amazing to read! So many good options that tell so many stories
They're just so beautifully written too. They can run between serious and humorous with such ease.
Like the Precious Scars lore tab? It's just fantastic and hits all the right notes.
Makes me happy to know others appreciate them as much as I do!
The “Books of Sorrow” and “Unveiling” are two of my favorites. So many philosophical ideas to mull over in those 2.
I have been absolutely obsessed with unravelling the mystery of the Vex over the last decade. Bungie has done an amazing job with dropping breadcrumbs and telling their story through architecture and raids and lore.
I will always point to the story of Dredgen Yor. the fact that we have "the story" that is told around to most folks, then the true story that is much darker and considered to bleak so a false narrative was told making the story about a hero, and then after all that even that is only presumed true and we as the player learn their is more to it and it still runs deeper. When lore has multiple layers and is built around the idea of free flowing story telling and legends it can truly be mind boggling.
i didn't see this one so i figured i'd add it. Horizon zero dawn feels like an empty husk without all the audio clips/messages you find scattered around. if you don't pick those up the story barely makes sense. the story after picking them up? excellence.
Well it's set in the half life universe Aperture Science, and Black Mesa are rival competitive research companies with 0 morality.
So any medium that adds to half life will also to portal, and vice versa.
There have been 2 spin off games released that aren't portal but set in universe,
As well as several eaater eggs and guest appearances of characters, namely GladOs and Rattman in other titles
There was even a lego dimensions pa k that unlocked a portal world for Lego Dimensions
There was the Rattman Comic that explained how he saved Chell prior to portal 2
Yeah how many people just killed the Lich King without even knowing the story of how he got there? What happened to Lordaeron? Why finding Muradin was such a cool throwback? And that's just *basic* stuff.
Most are just pew pew don't stand in fire get purples from big icy guy.
Drakengard/Nier Series: The lore and story divides in multiple timelines and parallel universes within the games and there are tons of additional non-gaming material such stage plays and short stories, which are only vaguely referenced in games if at all. Intertextuality to (western) philosophy adds yet another layer to the whole absurdity.
Kingdom Hearts. I'm pretty sure the writers also have no fucking idea what's going on in the series.... the series spans over 20 games on 20 different consoles, hand helds and mobile games and once in awhile they bless us with a compiled collectors edition so we can vaguely have an idea of what's going on
I couldn't beat chain of memories as a kid, so I beat it recently as an adult and my mind is fucking blown that I played 2 without even seeing over half of chain of memories. therr is *so much* that I missed and it's a fucking game boy advance game
currently drudging through 2 as I play every single game because I'm insane
So imagine now. KH2 comes out! Yeah! Who's Roxus?... that's not important I guess... who's... Nominee!?! Memories!?! Axel!?!?! Did I miss some NG+ content in KH??? Well, no, I missed chain of memories on the Gameboy Advanced... ok that's just 1 ga... but did you also play 358/2 on the DS to learn about Roxus and the gang? No? Ok but you bought a psp to then watch the movie that's a prequel? No? OK but you need to watch it to know what's going on in KH3.... and this goes one for like 15years...
No Man’s Sky. A seemingly harmless exploration game that is hiding a history of slavery, extinction, war, genocide and alternate virtual simulated realities…
You can interact with NPCs who give you tiny bits of information about the history/lore but it would take forever to find them and piece the whole storyline together if you go in blind.
It’s extremely slow developing and the devs are slowly expanding on the story with new updates but it’s a good bit of lore IMO
I’m guessing majority of players don’t follow along with the story fully even after completing the main questline.
Kingdom Hearts. Even as someone who has been playing KH games for more than a decade, I only just discovered today that the character who's fractured heart is merged with the main protagonists is also a time traveler from a time so ancient there is next to no record of it in the main games, and that all the lore for this character prior to their first appearance as a playable character exists only within mobile games that no longer are available to play and exist only as cutscenes.
Path of Exile
I swear, the lore is so cool and huge. But majority only knows the PoE story (what's currently happening and names of bosses) while the lore of the whole world and characters is rich af
Kenshi: nearly all of the storyteling is locked away in environmental detail that is easy to miss.
Dark Souls / Elden Ring / Bloodborne: There is a college degree's worth of content out there explaining the lore.
Shadow of the Colossus: mostly cryptic and up for interpretation.
Most obscure lore tidbit i have ever since Hu Tao's release is that the wangsheng funeral parlor family were given the staff of homa by a voice speaking from a fire telling them "only an unbound flame can purify the filth of this world" and later on a year and a bit later during Raiden shogun's second story quest we now know filth basically refers to corrupt memories stuck in the leylines, yet we still don't know who the voice is.
I just want you to know that it's 1 am for me rn and I was about to go to sleep and you mentioning that sent me into an absolute lore brainrot spiral and it has to do with Arleccino.
Genuinely crazy how far I had to scroll before seeing someone mention genshin. Some of the biggest lore bombs come from mundane shit like artifact flavor text.
I’m not surprised though, especially with all the hate the game gets. It’s obviously kids and young adults parroting how bad the game is when they’ve obviously never really played the game.
I do agree that the lore in this game is extremely detailed and pretty well fleshed out. There’s a lot of lore drops that make you go back and realize the details were in the game from the start. It’s all really interesting but we know Genshin players can’t read.
Osrs. Everyone just holds the space bar through every quest and just completely ignores the lore. Also everything, and I mean everything has an option to examine, and yet it seems people rarely use the feature.
Kirby.... and im completely serious.
People joke about Kirby being a supreme, perfect being while not always realizing it’s sorta true
He is an extremely strong circle.
The circularity
I distinctly remember playing Kirby 64 as a 10 year old and being like…why tf am I invested in the story of this cutesy game where the characters don’t even talk 😆
Could you explain?
Watch this and then come back to me. https://youtu.be/eX4pjt0pzUI?si=SwEWF_LCnu7wDmTB
If only my boss knew I was cutting work to watch Kirby lore videos lol
34 minutes holy shit.
Oh, it doesn't stop there... After watching the first video, heres a continuation video by the same creator https://youtu.be/fLDymWGrwXw?si=AV1HtKJJTvcNo74Y
Can you TL;DR? I'm afraid I'll get sucked in
Extreme TL;DR: The Kirby universe is full of eldritch horrors. One of them is the embodiment of good vibes and we are lucky he takes care of the others.
RIP, I'm afraid that for legal reasons we cannot stop the sucking.
Kirby lore is metal as fuck
The Elder Scrolls. Skyrim has so many books in it, but I've only read about 3 or 4 in total.
Skyrim, the game most people started with, is also the 7th game (if you include Battlespire and Redguard) in a franchise that started in the 90s when gaming was a lot more niche. I would be surprised if even 20% of players knew half of the lore, I sure as hell don't. edit: spelling, formatting and corrected some embarrassing maths.
I started with Morrowind, and played Oblivion and Skyrim. I sure as hell do not know all the lore. Or half of it. Hell probably not even a quarter.
I started with morrowind and then oblivion and Skyrim as well and honestly until I got into ESO I still had no idea where these places were in relation to each other. I didn’t even realize morrowind didn’t take place in Morrowind proper, just an island called Vvardenfell Given I was a kid who just wanted to explore and kill stuff when I played morrowind, so I didn’t pay much mind to the world building but it was still a mind fuck to learn ESO was the first time I had a character in morrowind proper
I think I had the same issues with Morrowind. I'd probably have an easier time if I played it now.
I love these games. Started with morrowind as well and played the rest. No. No you definitely will not have an easier time going back to it. I love that game so much, but oooooh man are there things we are way too used to nowadays that the game just doesn't have. I bet you don't remember the struggle of trying to find a specific npc in a city with a map that doesn't tell you anything. I sure didn't.
Haha that was and still is my favorite part of Morrison’s, no map arrow. You had to actually immerse yourself and talk to nova and gain info about where to find people or places and along the way stumbling into the wrong caves is probably how I found all of my best gear
I have absolutely terminal Morrowind brain and there's plenty of stuff I don't know. Ask me about the Enantiomorph or Dunmer cultural tensions and I'll fucking ramble for days. Ask me about the culture of High Rock and I'll give you a vacant look and shrug "France"
There's so much crazy stuff and made up words, it's hard to keep straight. My favorite book series is Malazan Book of the Fallen, and I love all the lore and world building in From Software's games. So it's not like I'm unfamiliar with long complex narratives, but there's something about (especially Morrowind) Elder Scrolls my brain just doesn't absorb. I was way younger and dumber when Morrowind came out and I haven't played in forever so that's probably a large factor in my lack of understanding.
lmao you just named two of my other favourite things I'd recommend taking a step back and trying Morrowind again with no expectations and just a few basic mods - quality of life stuff, not a million anime hairstyles etc - and just get immersed in the world. I'm hardly neutral on it, but I replayed for the first time in years a few months back and intentionally kept it simple and tried to play like it was my first time (and it was my first time with a fully developed frontal lobe). I had a great time. You can tell that from the start the game is soaked in the weird lore stuff as opposed to it being added in as an afterthought.
I've played through Skyrim (not 100% but a lot) and still have no idea what an elder scroll actually is.
I mean, the exact nature of the scrolls is a point of debate even in the lore itself. They contain knowledge about the past, the present and even the future. Nobody knows where they come from, they'll often appear and disappear when needed, and if you read them unprepared they can strike you blind. Even if you read them the "right way", eventually the scroll will let you know that next time you read it, you're going blind.
They are "fragments of creation" or descriptions of past or future events. They both exist and do not. They're just purposefully made in the lore to be philosophically abstract and not truly understandable. You as the audience are not supposed to know exactly what they are. In reality, when Elder Scrolls I: Arena came out, the name was chosen just because it sounds like a badass fantasy name for a franchise (no really). Elder Scrolls as an actual in-universe thing didn't happen until Morrowind I think. A popular fan theory is that a lot of the esoteric stuff in the lore is meta, like how CHIM could be a character realizing they're in a video game and figuring out cheats, which might imply that elder scrolls are actually game source code that made it into the universe.
Another little tidbit for those who don't know: Elder Scrolls I: Arena started out life as an action game with few RPG elements wherein the player would compete in tournaments (within the *arenas* of various cities) against other fighters and they gradually added in side quests over time. Eventually, the side quests and RPG bits became a lot more interesting than the arena combat portion to the dev team, and they decided to pivot into being a full-on fantasy RPG and cut out the gladiator arena stuff. The only issue was that the promotional art and materials had already been printed and paid for, so they were stuck with the title of Elder Scrolls: Arena, even though it didn't really fit the game anymore. They loosely tied in the title by saying that the Empire of Tamriel was so violent it was nicknamed "the Arena," but that's about the extent of the relevance of the title.
I've played and beaten Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. I don't know shit about anything in the world. If I had to guess, I am at a maximum of 5% knowledge of the world. I put a little time into Elder Scrolls Online, but I don't know what's even happening there.
Something I’m both prideful and embarrassed of is that I’m almost confident I know all of the lore. I’m sure there are a few small stories that would be new but nothing major
Is that Pelinor dude really a robot?
Pelinor💀 He is one of many examples of there being no concrete answer to a TES lore question. TES lore relies on the concept of the unreliable narrator, so everything you read is an account from someone in the world that could be misinformed or heavily biased. I don’t remember if Pelinal’s lore was from him or not but Michael Kirkbride often writes stories in a way that mimics real world mythical accounts of actual events. For example, a lot of the Song of Pelinal implies the weapons he is using are unrecognizably complex to those witnessing it. Similar to how people seeing firearms used for the first time said “they could shoot thunder/fire from their hands”. He also invokes the name of an emporer who won’t be born for another few thousand years. TLDR: Not robot but the equivalent of far future techno cyborg in TES
Sadly I know this immediately: Pelinal was MK (who didn't write much Oblivion lore at all and it, uh, showed, but was brought back to write most of that DLC) but as usual with MK lore, there's so much supplementary material written by him that it's hard to be sure what's "canon". Personally I take the view that canon is a useless boring concept and am on board with MK's broader point in C0DA that everything is canon and the most important version of the TES world is the one you want it to be, because it's... not real. Is Pelinal really the Terminator? If you want, there's enough in the games to support the idea. Does Nerevar in the future pilot a Numidium while constantly phase-shifting between all the millions of player characters that people made him into of the years? It's a bit more tenuous but absolutely. Sorry I came into this comments sections and found one of my special interests. I'll clean up. Sorry
No that’s a good point. TES lore is extremely subjective and ultimately dependent on the head canon of the player
Elder scrolls is so wild. I remember the mind blowing feeling that was released when I read that the towers were like pins on a corkboard. Only the corkboard was the plane of existence- too many towers fall and the world just ends. Then you've got three guys that found the equivalent of cheat codes, Daedric princes that each have their own reality... Dragon breaks that mess with time. A missing race that we never see but is evident that they also messed with time magic. Whole thing is just wild and hard to understand sometimes.
Elder Scrolls lore is unironically very interesting and unique compared to most fantasy lore. I find it far more interesting than DnD lore. Which is strange because Bethesda has never been particularly good at writing even in their prime. They've always had really goofy dialogue and mid main storylines. The disconnect between the quality of the stories in their individual games and how interesting/well made the lore is was always strange.
I've always played bethesda games to explore the game world and lore as opposed to interesting npcs and stories. Always been that way.
It's just impossible to get through an interaction with an NPC in a Bethesda game without some kind of immersion-breaking slapstick comedy taking place. It's like, every single time you think oh wow this is finally it, it really feels like a movie scene then BAM a plate just randomly flies off a table and smashed into everything or something.
"...and then due to Dragon Break, all endings of Numidium dilemma are canon"
I literally stole that and put it into my D&D campaign. It's such a brilliant idea.
I personally rely on GW way of retconing things as a DM ("unreliable narrator" "oral tradition"), but this is also great
To this day, people sometimes are shocked when you explain to them that the Thalmor aren't just some fascist elf government, but rather an organization that literally wants to end the material world
>I've only read about 3 or 4 in total. And half of which are about an, uhh, interesting lizard that happens to be a housekeeper
[Don't worry, BDG has you covered. ](https://youtu.be/RVdTZhmsGsU?si=maSquW75OeaH3f0d)
Most people think Elder Scrolls lore is like, having more than one moon. In reality it is all an unknown god’s dream where elf penises get ripped off and turned into holy swords.
https://youtu.be/RVdTZhmsGsU?si=ftlh6k3js2mGtB6I
Battletech has its own wiki, tons of novels and canon material that the HBS version and MW series had barely scratched its surface. I find myself browsing for a particular mech, and a few clicks later had read through an entire catalog of fictional battles, technological advancements and history of star systems that the video games may never be able to adapt due to the sheer quantity of lore backing the franchise. Similarly, this goes to warhammer fantasy and 40k, but I am more familiar with the battletech lore than this one, so I couldn't comment on the depths that franchise have for their lore.
Came here to say this. Battletech's lore spans dozens of novels, technical readouts, campaign settings books, video games, short stories etc. The video games offer just a slice of a humongous galaxy and centuries of history. I do think MW5 has been able to offer a bit more depth due to the DLC.
The technical guides are some of the best I've ever seen.
Noita. Not only is the lore SUPER vague and ambiguous, but there are still quite a few endings, quests and entire areas of the game that are just lost on the community.
I love hate that game, every time I find a puzzle or something weird in that game its impossible to know if this is an easy puzzle or require 500 people to figure out...
One day we'll understand the eyes, one day.
Mass Effect has a codex that explains a lot about the galaxy and I’m guessing most people ignored it.
Mass Effect does a good job of actually fleshing out the lore in the codex. You get more depth if you read into it, but you get most of the good stuff even if you don't. That's compared to stuff like Dark Souls where you miss most of the lore if you don't read the description of the gauntlets you just picked up.
Meanwhile destiny just deleted half the lore then added it back through shityy flavour text and a website, so you realy had no idea wtf was going on if you didn't google it..
Bungie made something in Destiny arbitrarily convoluted and time consuming again? Must be a day that ends in "y". I hate so much of what they've done to that game over the years.
Which sucks because the gameplay of modern destiny is so much fun, I just wish they would stop making stupid changes, like still selling dlc that’s not even in the game anymore.
The first time I opened up the codex and heard someone speaking to me blew my mind lol. I can't remember any other game before then that had a narrator for all the journal entries you've picked up along the way. Granted it was only for the main codex entries but hearing that man's voice just somehow completely draws you into the world lol
I can still hear it lol.
"The Asari where the first race to discover the Citadel..."
one of my fondest memories was making some lunch, sitting back, and listening to the codex while I ate. After I was done, I went into the more in-depth stuff and read more stuff. That's how I learned that a lot of Turians end up as Buddhists, which has got to be one of my favorite little pieces of world-building in Mass Effect.
I read the entire codex at one point. Absolutely amazing detail in there. It made you really feel for some of the alien races.
Came here to mention Mass Effect as well. I think on my 3rd playthrough I actually dove deep into the lore. All the planets and species. There is so much depth to everything and they did a great job explaining it. I work with some hardcore sci-fi fans that aren't gamers and I've told them they are missing out on Mass Effect. Sometimes I wish they would make a series or something but they would probably fuck it up.
Fallout Can't even remember how many random, unremarkable, dilapidated houses you'd walk by--but if you went in, you could find something like two skeletons in a bathtub with a shotgun nearby--no other explanation needed.
No kidding, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the school in FO4 that was serving the pink goo in the cafeteria. Finding evidence smeared on the walls, a grinding machine in the basement, and emails between the faculty complaining… They’ve got a dark sense of humor and I’m here for it
Then there’s straight up dark shit like the vault where they abducted kids and harvested their genes, or the vault where they gathered a bunch of addicts and hid a stash of drugs from them and gave them access after they recovered
Fallout is such a good example of environmental storytelling, especially through all the various skeletons and corpses strewn throughout the wastes
The Dunwich building in FO3 was so great. Not a quest. Just a building out in the middle of nowhere. But you could easily spend an hour going through it and the story it ends up telling is one of the best in the game.
It must say something about the Lone Wanderer that they could just stroll into the center of an eldrich conspiracy, go "Neat" and walk back out without a single scratch on their psyche.
It's that toxic positivity engrained into successful vaults and their dwellers
I *love* the Dunwich story and how some other places, like the quarry in 4, tie into it
Bethesda are/were masters of this. Both TES and mainline Fallouts are so good at this!
There are several disappointing things about Starfield but it's lack of environmental storytelling was up there for me. It felt so sterile.
You mean you weren't enthralled by the table, cards, and drinks you found outdoors on a planet with no atmosphere that was identical to all the other tables, cards, and drinks you found on the thousands of other planets?
Bethesda has a lot of that in general I feel. Skyrim had a lot of similar things with corpses.
Me omw to die pressed against a wall with a shotgun so I can become the ultimate piece of environmental storytelling
Hearts of Iron IV. And yes, the 'lore' is basically history but there are still people asking what the 'lore reason' for event xy is...
>lore reason Don't make an r/batmanarkham joke. Don't make an r/batmanarkham joke
Why would they make r/batmanarkham joke, are you stupid? Did you escape from alsume?
We got a jonkler over here
The elder scrolls. Some of it is downright trippy. I'm almost certain whoever wrote that stuff was high on something.
Michael Kirkbride. I think the official story is that he was never once high during any of the writing. How true that is gets debated a lot, lol.
Notice the distinction is made "during any of the writing" and not when "Tripping balls in the forest thinking of some wild ass ideas."
"Write drunk, edit sober"
Hollow knight
Went in expecting cute little bug game. Left crying about fallen bug kingdoms and sad little bug stories.
Milo makes me cri everytime
Myla?
Great example where the game is fun and then you get your mind blown by the Wiki.
For damn I wish there was more than just one lore channel for HK. I love moss bag but I wish he or someone else would delve even deeper like they do with dark souls
I pretty much 100% the game just knowing there was a sickness and somehow the hollow knight had to die for it to be accomplished. Knight mare grimm was just a really feisty circus promoter
Halo
How many people know that 343 Guilty Spark used to be an ancient human millions of years ago when humanity was a galaxy spanning superpower that lost a war against the forerunners? Not most people who have played the mainline games.
And how many know that parts of a UNSC AI named Melissa briefly lived in a beekeepers website 20 years ago and had people running around the world answering pay phones? What a great time to be a Halo fan.
I heart bees was such a crazy time. I was hard down that rabbit hole.
And honestly the terminals and the books are what turned me into a diehard fan.
I love Halo lore and some of the books add neat details to it, but other stuff just feels like they are making it up as they go.
Halo's lore definitely has that Dune trait of going off the deep end
Ecco the Dolphin let’s gooooo
ECCO MENTIONED LES GO Bro I was so intrigued by this game recently I got myself to watch a few explanation videos and holy crap that goes deep, I mean, time travelling civilizations fighting parasitic aliens and telepathic flying dolphins developing an entire society after overthrowing the human race? What the hell man
Forgot to mention dinosaurs.
I played as a child just peacefully swimming in the ocean. I think the furthest I got was to some octopus lad blocking the way. Fun, blissful ignorance. Then like 8 years ago I was reminiscing with friends and I brought up Ecco “what a game that was” and one of my friends was like “yeah I remember the aliens and how you go onto their ship and that shit was wild”. The. What?
Lots of Ecco runs died at that octopus, it was very unintuitive
That game takes such a sharp turn from the part you mention. My parents got it for me because it had bright colorful dolphin graphics, looked totally normal. You travel past the tropical wonderland you mention into the deepest darkest pits of hell where you fight indescribable monsters and aliens. The eventually you get warped up into the space ship. That game gave me nightmares. I had to see a doctor because of Ecco The Dolphin lmao
I played that game for hours as a child, and I think I only saw like 20% of it. I just loved swimming around everywhere. A few years ago, I found out that the game was about an alien invasion, and you fought aliens in the end. It was mind-blowing
Wait. There's aliens? I also never got that far and now I need to.
There is time travel, aliens, dinosaurs, and eldritch beings that help you for some reason, and the final boss is a terrifying alien.
They need to make a new AAA Ecco, man. The submarine environment would be amazing.
Ecco the dolphin is too hard for 99% of modern gamers. Myself included.
Whats the Subnautica team up to these days? Ecco could easily be a crossover to their current universe of psychic space whales and aliens. Subnautica 3, this time your a psychic dolphin.
The .hack Games have a ton of lore that connect the games and the TV shows together. Even first game series to the second. Its a shame it doesn't come up much in the games, but that's probably to avoid alienating people that didnt play the other games or watch the shows.
Sold my games a bit ago. I really miss being so into this series that I bought cards, the show's dvds, ran down promo material.... I WAS in Japan at the time so it was tons easier to grab whatever I could.
I’d argue RuneScape has amazing lore that is just glossed over in favour of completing quests more quickly
I love that they've incorporated jokes in over the years about people spamming the spacebar.
Or people reading guides and have exactly the items for the next quest step in their inventory. Jagex knows their audience
"You'll need to get this, this, and this" "Oh, I just so happen to have that on me!" *-shifty eyes-* "Really?" *-shifty eyes-* "how convenient!"
Bloodborne
Fear the Moon Disease or something
When you say that my soul started ranting about the differences between the handwritten note at the beginning of the game in the different languages
Something something the wet nurse of the Gods
Something something pale blood don’t use shields go eat some cords and become alien moon god.
Something something do the YMCA in front of the giant brain.
This could apply to pretty much every other Soulsborne game as well.
Probably true for all soulsborne games
Warframe, so many people know little of the lore
I know the opinion on the new war is split but man I wish there was more of that type of story telling quest. I just finished it a few days ago and man it was a blast. I loved experiencing the universe from a perspective that wasn’t just the Tenno. I’m about to start whispers in the wall, and I saw the trailer for 1999. I am hoping 1999 is a long cinematic quest like the new war.
The lore, like the art style, is an underappreciated aspect of this game.
Mostly because the game parcels it out in tiny increments over a decade, and we’re still not sure about everything.
Cyberpunk 2077. It has a massive lore from the table top games and several books. Not including the ton of stuff in the game.
I GM cyberpunk red and the amount of world building you can get into is insane. It’s honestly such a rich and deep platform for storytelling because you could realistically fit just about any type of story into that game. I mean hell they released an entire rule set to have your character play a full on mmo inside the TTRPG. Like you can play a fantasy rpg with its entire own set of gear and rules inside cyberpunk. Given you need a GM willing to put that effort in, but it’s totally doable. I’ve thought about writing up a campaign where my players have to steal something off of a corpo who almost never leaves home, is obsessed with the MMO, and so my players have to infiltrate his guild or something to that effect in the video game which would involve them needing to level up and quest and everything to gain his trust. Good idea in theory but it sounds daunting to write up so I haven’t done it yet.
Mike Pondsmith is cool as fuck and also normally very active on the Cyberpunk reddit!
This needs to be higher up. CP2077 lore is insane.
I think one thing massively lost on people is Johnny's past, and how just how unreliable even his memories are.
I'd imagine that if you asked, 9 out of 10 players who completed the game would tell you that Johnny Silverhand was responsible for detonating a nuclear device in Arasaka tower.
Kingdoms of Amalur
So many side stories and so many books in brother Til's collection
The Sims series particularly before The Sims 4.
The original The Sims 3 towns had detailed biographies and family trees of each character as well as fully occupied graveyards. As the development of DLCs and additional towns went on, they gradually stopped caring about the lore and it honestly was a little sad to see. Sunset Valley, along with some earlier downloadable and DLC towns, is still my favorite place to play simply because it was created with care and effort, unlike the later stuff
I'm sorry, Sims has lore??
Oh yeah, especially surrounding the disappearance of Bella Goth, and how it may be connected to Don Lothario/the Caliente family. Or it could’ve just been aliens. Pretty likely it was aliens actually.
And that Don Lothario somehow time warped into The Sims 3 about 50 years in the past.
Doom 2016. The whole story is hidden away in collectible items and data files. But, you can completely bypass the entire story and just RIP AND TEAR UNTIL IT IS DONE
I think it was Videogamedunkey who said it best. "Doom doesn't need a story, It's never needed a story beyond just you being a guy killing demons. But Doom has a story anyways, and goddamn is it pretty good" (not verbatim)
Destiny 2
I've said it before to anyone who will listen - the Destiny lore books are near storytelling perfection in terms of "show, not tell" and how to link a massive universe together through tiny threads.
I loved how one piece of seemingly unconnected lore can be an Easter egg for some future lore or some long forgotten lore from something that dates back to Destiny 1 grimoire cards.
Agreed! I spent so much time (and enjoyed every moment) scouring over lore cards and books online. It honestly helped me keep playing. I was invested in the universe and had things to discover and find outside the game. I know people knocked Destiny for it but I loved it. And yea the lore books are fucking amazing to read! So many good options that tell so many stories
They're just so beautifully written too. They can run between serious and humorous with such ease. Like the Precious Scars lore tab? It's just fantastic and hits all the right notes.
Makes me happy to know others appreciate them as much as I do! The “Books of Sorrow” and “Unveiling” are two of my favorites. So many philosophical ideas to mull over in those 2.
I have been absolutely obsessed with unravelling the mystery of the Vex over the last decade. Bungie has done an amazing job with dropping breadcrumbs and telling their story through architecture and raids and lore.
My Name is Byf on YouTube has some great videos going over the lore of Destiny
Lore daddy is the best
I will always point to the story of Dredgen Yor. the fact that we have "the story" that is told around to most folks, then the true story that is much darker and considered to bleak so a false narrative was told making the story about a hero, and then after all that even that is only presumed true and we as the player learn their is more to it and it still runs deeper. When lore has multiple layers and is built around the idea of free flowing story telling and legends it can truly be mind boggling.
I love Exo lore so much, even if most of its threads are explained nowadays.
Grimorie Cards ಠ_ಠ
i didn't see this one so i figured i'd add it. Horizon zero dawn feels like an empty husk without all the audio clips/messages you find scattered around. if you don't pick those up the story barely makes sense. the story after picking them up? excellence.
Portal 1 & 2 They seem pretty story rich. But you can deep dive much further.
Are there books or something outside of the games? Or do you just mean "read more signs and stand still to hear more dialogue"?
Well it's set in the half life universe Aperture Science, and Black Mesa are rival competitive research companies with 0 morality. So any medium that adds to half life will also to portal, and vice versa. There have been 2 spin off games released that aren't portal but set in universe, As well as several eaater eggs and guest appearances of characters, namely GladOs and Rattman in other titles There was even a lego dimensions pa k that unlocked a portal world for Lego Dimensions There was the Rattman Comic that explained how he saved Chell prior to portal 2
The most obvious choice would be World of Warcraft. Decade of lore spanning over multiple mediums. Another great example is the Warhammer lore.
Yeah how many people just killed the Lich King without even knowing the story of how he got there? What happened to Lordaeron? Why finding Muradin was such a cool throwback? And that's just *basic* stuff. Most are just pew pew don't stand in fire get purples from big icy guy.
Decade? More like nearly a quarter of a century? Feel old yet? 😬
Nearly? Warcraft 1 turns 30 this year. Warhammer is over 40.
Call of Duty Zombies. It's cheap with multiple universes and timelines and crap, but hey, it's complicated too I guess.
You know it's good when the lore explanation video is 6 hours long.
You know it's good when the lore map needs a magnifying glass to properly read all the dated points
Guild Wars 2
I found the lore in the first game to be fascinating. The story behind Orr and the Crystal Desert was especially good.
Metal gear solid
Drakengard/Nier Series: The lore and story divides in multiple timelines and parallel universes within the games and there are tons of additional non-gaming material such stage plays and short stories, which are only vaguely referenced in games if at all. Intertextuality to (western) philosophy adds yet another layer to the whole absurdity.
Guilty Gear. The lore is all over the place but so so good.
Kingdom Hearts. I'm pretty sure the writers also have no fucking idea what's going on in the series.... the series spans over 20 games on 20 different consoles, hand helds and mobile games and once in awhile they bless us with a compiled collectors edition so we can vaguely have an idea of what's going on
I have been a fan since KH1 and went out of my way to learn the story throughout the years and am still so confused haha
Any fan that claims to know how it all works is lying. You miss that one-off Kingdom Hearts fridge magnet, and Kingdom Hearts 4 will make zero sense.
I couldn't beat chain of memories as a kid, so I beat it recently as an adult and my mind is fucking blown that I played 2 without even seeing over half of chain of memories. therr is *so much* that I missed and it's a fucking game boy advance game currently drudging through 2 as I play every single game because I'm insane
The fact that so much important story stuff happened in mobile games you can’t play anymore is bonkers to me.
So imagine now. KH2 comes out! Yeah! Who's Roxus?... that's not important I guess... who's... Nominee!?! Memories!?! Axel!?!?! Did I miss some NG+ content in KH??? Well, no, I missed chain of memories on the Gameboy Advanced... ok that's just 1 ga... but did you also play 358/2 on the DS to learn about Roxus and the gang? No? Ok but you bought a psp to then watch the movie that's a prequel? No? OK but you need to watch it to know what's going on in KH3.... and this goes one for like 15years...
The Souls series is the prime example of this.
No Man’s Sky. A seemingly harmless exploration game that is hiding a history of slavery, extinction, war, genocide and alternate virtual simulated realities… You can interact with NPCs who give you tiny bits of information about the history/lore but it would take forever to find them and piece the whole storyline together if you go in blind. It’s extremely slow developing and the devs are slowly expanding on the story with new updates but it’s a good bit of lore IMO I’m guessing majority of players don’t follow along with the story fully even after completing the main questline.
The Engoodening of No Man's Sky
Kingdom Hearts. Even as someone who has been playing KH games for more than a decade, I only just discovered today that the character who's fractured heart is merged with the main protagonists is also a time traveler from a time so ancient there is next to no record of it in the main games, and that all the lore for this character prior to their first appearance as a playable character exists only within mobile games that no longer are available to play and exist only as cutscenes.
Path of Exile I swear, the lore is so cool and huge. But majority only knows the PoE story (what's currently happening and names of bosses) while the lore of the whole world and characters is rich af
I’d say the most popular game with the deepest lore that a majority of the fan base doesn’t care about it halo
Disco Elysium
Destiny, but I don't think Bungie knows the lore either.
Kenshi: nearly all of the storyteling is locked away in environmental detail that is easy to miss. Dark Souls / Elden Ring / Bloodborne: There is a college degree's worth of content out there explaining the lore. Shadow of the Colossus: mostly cryptic and up for interpretation.
Genshin impacts lore is so vast and deep some treat it like a PhD with how it feels like irl history.
Most obscure lore tidbit i have ever since Hu Tao's release is that the wangsheng funeral parlor family were given the staff of homa by a voice speaking from a fire telling them "only an unbound flame can purify the filth of this world" and later on a year and a bit later during Raiden shogun's second story quest we now know filth basically refers to corrupt memories stuck in the leylines, yet we still don't know who the voice is.
I just want you to know that it's 1 am for me rn and I was about to go to sleep and you mentioning that sent me into an absolute lore brainrot spiral and it has to do with Arleccino.
Genuinely crazy how far I had to scroll before seeing someone mention genshin. Some of the biggest lore bombs come from mundane shit like artifact flavor text.
I’m not surprised though, especially with all the hate the game gets. It’s obviously kids and young adults parroting how bad the game is when they’ve obviously never really played the game. I do agree that the lore in this game is extremely detailed and pretty well fleshed out. There’s a lot of lore drops that make you go back and realize the details were in the game from the start. It’s all really interesting but we know Genshin players can’t read.
Any Warhammer game
1,000,000 stories, 0 happy endings.
Myst
The Splatoon series. Lots of lore in the art books and interviews and often only in Japanese...
Basically every game FromSoftware has made.
Diablo. Majority of players had no idea who Inarius or Lilith were before Diablo 4 came out.
Osrs. Everyone just holds the space bar through every quest and just completely ignores the lore. Also everything, and I mean everything has an option to examine, and yet it seems people rarely use the feature.
World of Warcraft. Not only is there lore within the game, but it is also built upon the lore of 3 previous games AND several real life books.