Discussion Let’s talk lore

[Irene]

Lore can mean many things. It’s a great way to enhance and expand the story in a game that is in many ways unique to the medium. Lore is cool. Lore is neat. But lore is sometimes also an abundance of sleep-inducing audio logs.

What are some games with great lore? That you like personally, find intriguing or just fun to dig into? Are there any games with lore that are too weird or convoluted for their own good? Do you think lore is a good - or maybe even superior - way to tell a story in a game, or do you prefer more standardized storytelling?

 

[BGBW]

Deepest lore.

 

[Enpsty]

Deepest lore.

That's the plot of The Prestige

 

[xghost777]

I know there's some games where I've poured over every lore entry in a menu and was super into it, but I think my favorite game series when I think lore has to be the Trails games. With over 10+ directly connected games you pick up all kinds of lore as you explore Zemuria, but most excitingly it's largely done in the world itself. Stuff like reading newspapers or buying full books with multiple chapters is exciting especially in the latter case where characters in the world will directly refer to them and their contents, sometimes even as part of the main plot! It's also by talking to every townsperson you come across and learning about them, their town, and culture, that really builds the world up and is what makes the larger, more dramatic events like war or terrorist attacks etc. matter because you know how it affects the people in them. There's really nothing else like Trails ongoing in games outside of MMOs I imagine.

 

[meatbag]

This is honestly such a broad topic, but summarily lore is a function of worldbuilding and tons of video games have built solid to excellent worlds.

This part of the OP is the most interesting one for me:

Do you think lore is a good - or maybe even superior - way to tell a story in a game, or do you prefer more standardized storytelling?

My answer is a boring "it depends", because it really does depend on the game in question. In my case, I tend to remember lore if said lore is significant to the gameplay in some way.

For example, I played through Dark Souls 3, and I cannot begin to tell you what its story was outside of the most basic plotline laid out. I didn't bother reading all the item descriptions and piecing them together, because who cares who made this sword, what matters is that it cuts nice.

Then there was Outer Wilds, which hardly ever explains anything, but I did search out those audio logs and forgotten artifacts because I was hooked to unraveling the mysteries of its universe.

 

[Aurc]

I'm honestly a massive lorehead, to the point where broken lore is unacceptable to me. The lore is to be honored and respected. It must remain cohesive and consistent. One of the biggest examples of broken lore I can immediately recall comes from the Yakuza series, and it's the fault of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2:

Spoiler

Yakuza 4 establishes that Majima had taken Saejima's patriarch to Purgatory for safety, shortly after the Ueno Seiwa Hit of 1985. However, the backstory given to Majima in Yakuza 0 renders this impossible, considering he was locked up and tortured by Shimano for the year immediately following the hit. Furthermore, Kiwami 2's Majima Saga retcons it so that Majima doesn't meet the Florist (or learn of Purgatory's existence at all) until early 2006.

The Yakuza Wiki actually makes mention of this:

Sasai was stated to be found by Majima and brought to Purgatory several months after the failed hit, still 25 years before Yakuza 4. There is an inconsistency here, as Majima could not have done this due to the fact that he was locked up and tortured for a year after the hit, then made to work for Tsukasa Sagawa in Sotenbori until the events of Yakuza 0 near the end of 1988.

It's disappointing to see good lore treated with such wanton disregard, but Yakuza 0 is infinitely better than 4 could ever hope to be, so I begrudgingly forgive this egregious broken lore.

...But you wanna know what I can never forgive?

MercurySteam depicting Samus waking up from surgery with the wrong knee raised. It's supposed to be her left one!

Is this lore? It is to me!

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

As a lore hater I feel that most lore is like sugar in baking. Generally enjoy it and I obviously wouldn't remove it but most recipes ask for way too much and you can often use half or just a third and still be more than fine. Sugar-heads will tell you that it's necessary to add that much sugar for the baking chemistry or whatever but they are liars.

 

[Aurc]

Kneeposting aside, I'll obviously give Metroid an actual shout, 'cuz I gotta: since its inception in 1986, it's had one of the longest running linear narratives across the whole of video games. No reboots, no convoluted timeline mumbo jumbo. I like that! Easy and straightforward. Each game is also canon (even if one of them maybe shouldn't be). The Prime games handle worldbuilding through environmental scans, which make it so that you're learning lore through the eyes of Samus.

There's the obvious Chozo prophecy and the Space Pirate logs, but also mysterious blokes we may see in a game someday...

Monks of Grondheim

The monks of Grondheim are interested in the red magma crystal formations in Tallon IV's Magmoor Caverns. They may be affiliated with the Space Pirates, as the Pirates planned to process the crystals for the monks after their Phazon operations have ceased. The monks are mentioned in a Pirate...

metroid.fandom.com

Or the whimsy of glider riding...

Glider riding

The "sport" of glider riding is a sport that involves exploiting the magnetic properties of a Glider to Grapple Beam onto it as long as possible, similar to bull riding. Samus Aran, who has had an enormous amount of physical training, appears to be able to Grapple Gliders indefinitely, lest she...

metroid.fandom.com

And even the lone female Chozo mentioned in the series so far.

Chozo Searcher

The Chozo Searcher was one of the Chozo researchers who inhabited SkyTown, Elysia, a Chozo research facility placed in the skies of the gas giant planet Elysia. While the Searcher's name is unknown, it is known that she is female. Thus, she is so far the only identified Chozo to be confirmed as...

metroid.fandom.com

Lore can also be when you bring back a multiplayer skin from a fairly mid DS Metroid game to serve as a major antagonist in the hotly anticipated fourth main installment. Can't wait!

 

[xghost777]

...But you wanna know what I can never forgive?

MercurySteam depicting Samus waking up from surgery with the wrong knee raised. It's supposed to be her left one!

Is this lore? It is to me!

When I saw the alert for you Yeah!ing my post in this thread, I immediately thought of Metroid which is an excellent pick for great lore

Going to propose a lore theory for you here, what if on waking up, Samus was moving her legs between pictures to sort of stretch them out while opening and closing her hand a bit. She’s still looking at her hand then as perhaps it didn’t have proper feeling in it while waking up, so she moved one leg up first and thus now properly stretched out, she adjusts her sitting position to raise the other one. This would explain the different hand poses as well between shots. Let’s keep Fusion as part 1 of this short action being depicted and Dread’s as part 2. Will a future game depict a third part of this sequence? Who can say!

 

[bbymetroid]

As a lore hater I feel that most lore is like sugar in baking. Generally enjoy it and I obviously wouldn't remove it but most recipes ask for way too much and you can often use half or just a third and still be more than fine. Sugar-heads will tell you that it's necessary to add that much sugar for the baking chemistry or whatever but they are liars.

This is a good analogy.

I like lore and love worldbuilding, but it's often unbalanced.

Struggling with Elden Ring because of this: no one acts like a person that speaks a full understandable sentence or lives in a house, so I keep losing interest in piecing together the cryptic lore. It feels like characters (and everything, really) are being intentionally obtuse to fit the lore-focused storytelling, so it ends up feeling artificial.

Then there's barely any cutscenes, no context for most things, no towns, very little character animation and interaction with the world aside from battling. You start feeling the budget and how they allocated most of the effort into combat and assets, and the lore-focus feels a bit more like an sensible production choice than a 100% creative one. My mind keeps drifting to the fact that these are just 3d models and lines of text and the game loses some of the mystique of the very amazing world.

I do love it in a obscure-ps2-game type of way, but not in a 100h+ game. Way too much sugar for a cake that needs more structure.

 

[Aurc]

As a lore hater I feel that most lore is like sugar in baking. Generally enjoy it and I obviously wouldn't remove it but most recipes ask for way too much and you can often use half or just a third and still be more than fine. Sugar-heads will tell you that it's necessary to add that much sugar for the baking chemistry or whatever but they are liars.

Lore hate is a bannable offense.

When I saw the alert for you Yeah!ing my post in this thread, I immediately thought of Metroid which is an excellent pick for great lore

Going to propose a lore theory for you here, what if on waking up, Samus was moving her legs between pictures to sort of stretch them out while opening and closing her hand a bit. She’s still looking at her hand then as perhaps it didn’t have proper feeling in it while waking up, so she moved one leg up first and thus now properly stretched out, she adjusts her sitting position to raise the other one. This would explain the different hand poses as well between shots. Let’s keep Fusion as part 1 of this short action being depicted and Dread’s as part 2. Will a future game depict a third part of this sequence? Who can say!

Wow... all this time, it was so simple, yet I never even stopped to consider it. The wrong knee being raised has tormented my lorebrain for over two years now, but the perfect explanation was only an insightful Ghost post away. Thank you, my friend! Perhaps now I can finally begin the healing process.

...But wait. The background is clearly different too, as if she's in a totally different location! Oh no... let's just wait and see how Metroid 6 chooses to depict this iconic scene. Who knows, maybe it'll be a frame of her clenching her fist this time! With a space toilet behind her! The lore potential is limitless.

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

Lore hate is a bannable offense.

 

[Metroid]

Lore gives me life.
When the story is disappointing? Lore is there to pick up the slack.
When the story is great? Lore is there to enhance it.
When the gameplay connects to the lore? It's like poetry.
When the gameplay doesn't? Sometimes that adds to the lore too.
Ignoring it causes no harm, but
It gives you something to dive in to.
It gives you something to love.
Without lore, I'd be less of a person.
Because lore gives me life.

 

[Enpsty]

Caring about lore? Good thing
Obsessing over lore? Not good thing

The Zelda lore maniacs is a good example of bad lore community. Nintendo doesn't care that much about lore in Zelda games, why do you?

 

[Stilt Village]

I don't think I'm a fan of lore? I learned more about Hollow Knight's plot from reading two paragraphs of a wiki article the other day than I did from playing 30+ hours of Hollow Knight...

I adore the party chat in Dragon Quest games, but that's 100% supplemental material used to flesh out the characters, none of it is important to the plot. I think a scavenger hunt is a really annoying way to tell a story.

 

[Suswave]

Hollow Knight Hollow Knight Hollow Kniiiiight

the more you uncover what’s going on, having it all click together, and. c’mon.

the whole No Mind To Think sequence.

it’s fucking INCREDIBLE. I love it!!

Even details like the failed Deepnest tramway station all add up to paint the same picture.

 

[Suswave]

I don't think I'm a fan of lore? I learned more about Hollow Knight's plot from reading two paragraphs of a wiki article the other day than I did from playing 30+ hours of Hollow Knight...

obviously you just needed to play ten more

idk all my save files are at like 80+ hours so I can’t relate

did you hit No Mind To Think or did you just skip like… all the plot…

 

[Suswave]

there are a ton of games I could mention here but I want to give a special little shout out to Creature In the Well

the worldbuilding is great

it’s slower and more relaxed with the lore, the stakes seem fewer, but it’s… how do I put this… inviting?

like it starts with a few pretty good all-around mysteries

the sandstorm, the titular creature immediately knowing what you are, and everything in town…

a certain frog…

it’s like… weirdly comforting finding out how everyone (the few characters that exist) knows each other, how it all ties together.

like canadian small town effect but after a soft apocalypse that there’s still hope for

 

[Pierceyonder]

I definitely appreciate it, good world building tends to elevate stories for me in particular. I spent so many hours listening to podcasts and Youtube series about the Souls games (more particularly DS1 and 2) back when they each released, and I actually appreciate when things are left untold, ambiguous, or open to interpretation. The Fallout series is another one that is so, so easy to lose yourself Wiki diving over; there are inconsistencies, but both series play into it by treating them as folklore or legends that have been misunderstood and passed down over time. It all makes it feel very alive and vibrant, full of mythology.

That being said, I feel strongly that "good lore" can be a variety of different things. Dark Souls' lore arguably got worse when the series answered too many questions; contrasting this, I think the overarching lore of The Legend of Zelda is pretty wishy-washy and it makes it difficult to care about that aspect of the series. It is thematically consistent, and I can see how it makes it fun to speculate with others, but it is simply such an afterthought to the degree that not enough is consistent or interesting enough for me to look at the series under that wider lens.

I think it has to be the kind of thing that is part of the series identity from the start, and continually established over years. Fallout is a story-heavy game, so it needs its ducks in a row. I wouldn't want Mario lore, for example. I think that series benefits from having multitudes of adaptations with little consistency, even when it comes to the story-oriented ones like the RPGs.

 

[Stilt Village]

obviously you just needed to play ten more

idk all my save files are at like 80+ hours so I can’t relate

did you hit No Mind To Think or did you just skip like… all the plot…

I got that there was a kingdom, it was destroyed by a disease, and I needed to kill some people so I could open the egg and replace the Hollow Knight in sealing away this disease because I was a similar being to the Hollow Knight and the Hollow Knight wasn't doing a very good job of that at the moment. I recall that they do make sure you have some objective (was it by around the time the map opens up after reaching City of Tears? That would make sense...), so the gist of that was pretty hard to miss. But I don't think they really felt obligated to hand out context for all these things the same way, so I consistently felt like I was out of the loop on my own activities. I don't think I ever found out what was up with all the dream stuff and how exactly that relates to everything else, for one thing. I want to say it was essential to opening the egg in that you needed it for the 3(?) main bosses in some fashion, but apart from that it all felt very disconnected and mysterious and largely apart from everything else I was doing.

Near the end I went to this very important-feeling place at the edge of the map and I fought Hornet and got... something of some significance, which I thought was clearly important at the time. I didn't really know what was going on there. But in hindsight I'm not sure if it actually did anything for me, because I still got a (the?) bad ending. I thought I had finally been everywhere and there couldn't possibly be any significant content left to the game at the point I decided to finish it, but Hollow Knight is nothing if not endlessly long, so I'm not sure if I missed yet another area somehow, or if it was as simple as I just didn't know to Dream Nail the final boss, which is apparently how you fight the real final boss.

Or maybe I was supposed to finish the Path of Pain or something, I dunno.

 

[Suswave]

I got that there was a kingdom, it was destroyed by a disease, and I needed to kill some people so I could open the egg and replace the Hollow Knight in sealing away this disease because I was a similar being to the Hollow Knight and the Hollow Knight wasn't doing a very good job of that at the moment. I recall that they do make sure you have some objective (was it by around the time the map opens up after reaching City of Tears? That would make sense...), so the gist of that was pretty hard to miss. But I don't think they really felt obligated to hand out context for all these things the same way, so I consistently felt like I was out of the loop on my own activities. I don't think I ever found out what was up with all the dream stuff and how exactly that relates to everything else, for one thing. I want to say it was essential to opening the egg in that you needed it for the 3(?) main bosses in some fashion, but apart from that it all felt very disconnected and mysterious and largely apart from everything else I was doing.

Near the end I went to this very important-feeling place at the edge of the map and I fought Hornet and got... something of some significance, which I thought was clearly important at the time. I didn't really know what was going on there. But in hindsight I'm not sure if it actually did anything for me, because I still got a (the?) bad ending. I thought I had finally been everywhere and there couldn't possibly be any significant content left to the game at the point I decided to finish it, but Hollow Knight is nothing if not endlessly long, so I'm not sure if I missed yet another area somehow, or if it was as simple as I just didn't know to Dream Nail the final boss, which is apparently how you fight the real final boss.

Or maybe I was supposed to finish the Path of Pain or something, I dunno.

oh. uh.

you… you missed a spot lmao

 

[Suswave]

the King’s Brand opens a place you didn’t have access to before that gives you a whoooooole lot of context

and that’s just the beginning

 

[Suswave]

the Dream Nail is key for letting you enter the minds of the Dreamers, but its most crucial use isn’t until it’s Awakened and can enter fortified minds

it may ultimately not appeal to you, but you’ve played, in a sense, half of the weight of the game. probably a ton of the map! but half of the weight

 

[Mekanos]

Lore, you say?

 

[Stilt Village]

the Dream Nail is key for letting you enter the minds of the Dreamers, but its most crucial use isn’t until it’s Awakened and can enter fortified minds

it may ultimately not appeal to you, but you’ve played, in a sense, half of the weight of the game. probably a ton of the map! but half of the weight

Oh, I definitely did at least enter the White Palace. Not really sure if I finished it though, I don't think I ever got Kingsoul. Maybe I missed the White Lady? Void Heart definitely seems like the big thing I was missing though, I can conclusively say I never got that and that was the major piece of the puzzle I still had left unsolved.

I mean. I don't know if it would have helped with understanding the story, but like. Properly finishing the game. Seems kind of important for that.

 

[Suswave]

@Stilt Village — you can certainly leave it where it is. the game is massive.

but if you want the biggest punch, the “aha moments” — I recommend these (lightly obscured) steps:

• find the place the King’s Brand opened

• Awaken your Dream Nail by training with the Seer

• find out where Dryya went

• take on a small charm repair sidequest…

• use your Awakened Dream Nail

• visit a birthplace

• turn out the lights

all of this may have less impact if you’ve already read about it, but you’re absolutely right that the “bad ending” is unsatisfying — intentionally so, to invite you to seek answers and understand why you’re doing this

but the game itself has answers, and a lot of them, delivered masterfully

 

[Suswave]

Oh, I definitely did at least enter the White Palace. Not really sure if I finished it though, I don't think I ever got Kingsoul. Maybe I missed the White Lady? Void Heart definitely seems like the big thing I was missing though, I can conclusively say I never got that and that was the major piece of the puzzle I still had left unsolved.

I mean. I don't know if it would have helped with understanding the story, but like. Properly finishing the game. Seems kind of important for that.

ahhhh okay, so you know a fair bit

I wasn’t even talking about the White Palace at first, more the Abyss and Shadow Dash

Kingsoul is important, both halves. You do NOT have to do the Path of Pain, that’s just a little bonus to clarify the uh. “idea instilled”

you’ll know if you get the part of Kingsoul in the White Palace. it has something of an unmistakable source.

Kingsoul leads to Void Heart, and the complete description has hints on what to do

getting Void Heart in the game clarifies a ton of the story

and so does the uh. end fight

frankly part of why I love it so much is because if you don’t know why you’re fighting, you can never break the cycle

in other games I’m less pressed about “True Endings.” Hollow Knight made me seek it out because the game knew why it was happening but I still didn’t.

figuring it out was absolutely my biggest holy shit process in the entire medium, I think

like the game really gave me the impression that all the things happening in parallel that I didn’t entirely understand were part of something big, something tangible, that the game knew but I as a player didn’t

but instead of feeling like they were just withholding the information to be vague, it felt like they knew and the answers were at my fingertips

I mean. you enter this world as an amnesiac bug with a detachable ghost. the obscurity is an invitation.

what really solidified it for me was beating the Hollow Knight the first time. Like… paying attention to those animations… they’re trying to tell you something important. It does NOT feel good winning against a foe who is forcing you away to stab themself more.

And then just being a replacement? after everything you’ve seen?! no way. that doesn’t feel right.

That was really my “oh. ohhhhhhh shit there’s way more to what’s going on here and I can find out what makes this all make sense” moment

but at the same time, I’m glad I did that first, because the tragedy of everything hit even harder as the layers of hubris peeled away.

 

[Suswave]

sorry for uh not shutting up about Hollow Knight lmao

I just love it a lot

and I think one of the biggest punches is that the “first ending” reframes it a lot

like either you take the success that feels bad, like some kind of… hollow… knight…

or you get an idea instilled

that there’s more to it

and it almost becomes like a detective game a little bit, without changing its format or immense strengths

 

[ermitron2]

Yeah lore should complement the story, not be the story. I really love Hollow Knight, replaying it from 0 everytime a new patch / update dropped and I still don't know what the hell is about it besides the same general ideat that @Stilt Village has mentioned

Same with dark souls 3, I have like 100+ hours on that game and I just know I have to go up because reasons.

Finishing both games always leaves me like this:

Because afaik I'm the one killing pretty much everything and anyone

 

[TrashMarket]

it's neat when games use lore and environmental touches to tell their stories. cinematic cutscenes and such can be nice, but I tend to gravitate towards games that take advantage of the medium wrt to narrative

 

[Bulborb]

I know they never referenced this really but I kinda always assumed every mainline Mario game is like a retelling of the universe of Mario like what Final Fantasy does each new entry. idk y thats always been what I think I dont think peach is kidnapped each time again and again I think its just like a retelling.

I know theres no thought behind the story in mario really but idk thats what I guess.

 

[StretchNStripes]

Maybe it isn't "lore" in the same way, but I would still say that the Piklopedia in Pikmin creating fake taxonomy for its creatures and outlining their behaviors and how they fit into the ecosystem and how to cook them is always a joy to read.

Also, it has been talked about to death, but I will also say I am not immune to Kirby lore. But I will also say, that tends to feel more like them having fun referencing other things from the series, rather than trying to build a fleshed out universe imo.

 

[meatbag]

Maybe it isn't "lore" in the same way, but I would still say that the Piklopedia in Pikmin creating fake taxonomy for its creatures and outlining their behaviors and how they fit into the ecosystem and how to cook them is always a joy to read.

I'd absolutely count that as lore, inasmuch as it is worldbuilding. In fact more games should put a spotlight on their flora and fauna!

 

[SammyJ9]

I am a huge fan of lore and lore-as-storytelling - I’m a Fromsoft junky after all. Elden Ring does this fantastically well, as does Bloodborne and DS1 (DS3 is a bit more mixed IMO). Hollow Knight absolutely also.

When done well, good lore makes it seem like there’s 1000 deeper layers to everything going on in the world - even when there’s not and they’re just crafting it to give that impression. It’s a stage magician drawing your eyes to the magic while the other hand pulls off the trick. When done well, the illusion is pulled off so well that every little thing feels like it has deep connections and heavy implications or a really somber backstory and everything is full of meaning. And that’s not to say that all lore is only shallow illusions - sometimes it really is that deep! But good lore makes it seem that everything is deep and thought out even when only some things are - it’s the old iceberg writing theory for worldbuilding.

And I love that. If you can make a YouTube essay about the deep implications of why a sword with certain flavor text is found in a very specific spot in the game and it turns into a tragic tale of loss and pathos, then I am all in.

That said, when done poorly instead of being endlessly tantalizing lore can just be a boring slog. Plenty of games have overlong audio logs or in-game books about world building details that you just don’t care about - and I think often it comes down to over-explaining things. Good lore usually gives you just enough to piece it all together but doesn’t go all out and start dumping info - it has to keep the mystery and leave some elements unresolved or at least only partially explained. That’s part of what makes it feel like everything is a wonderful puzzle for you to unravel - if it’s fully explained and cut and dry then it loses the magic.

 

[SammyJ9]

To follow that up, I think this is why I like the story of BOTW so much more then TOTK - BOTW’s story is told in a very lore-centric way. The story is everything that happened in the past: What happened 100 years ago, why is the world the way it is, how did Link and Zelda join up with the Champions, how and why did they fail, how did Zelda awaken her powers (or dis she ever?), how did Link end up at the Shrine of Resurrection, and so on. It’s a bit more on the nose since you can gather all of that from the memory cutscenes, but it still hits a lot of the same notes for me, especially since it’s all out of order and feels like you’re piecing it together. The world feels like it has so much more mystery and backstory to discover (which is certainly helped by it being the first time we explored that world, too.)

 

[Mendinso]

All I can think of is "Name Every Kirby Lore" video with this thread...

 

[romanithegreat]

the lore in eldin ring seems weird imo i have no idea what the story is about despite playing 70+ hours in the game

 

[Dizzle]

Yeah I like lore. Magolor Epilogue: The Interdimensional Traveler.

 

[unit 9s]

The Xenoblade Chronicles series has my favorite lore of probably any video game. Each game has its own lore, but then there's the overarching lore that established all 3 worlds in the first place. I'm a big sucker for long video essays about game lore.

 

[Suswave]

look I hate a story that is fed to me. I hate interrupting cutscenes. I love the world revealing itself to me through exploration and talking to people. I think it’s one of the greatest strengths of video games.

someday, when y’all play Grögol Bonanza, I’ll be really excited to see the “yeah I ‘finished’ the game but I don’t know why [redacted] did [redacted] or why when I open my save I’m at a funeral or what Grögols even really are. that opening cutscene never really got a payoff, what was that even about?” takes

sitting here with a shit-eating grin rubbing my hands together like “oh boy oh boy wait til you find out there’s more”

 

[TreIII]

In a lot of ways, my way of thinking mirrors @Aurc. Great lore, and proper utilization of it, is an excellent way to pique my interest, feed my imagination and get me that much more involved in the game/series/etc.

It's probably why game series like Mega Man enchanted me earlier on, as a kid. The very "episodic" nature of the series made it so that lore and other informed plot beats could be developed over multiple entries, and was something that kept you waiting to see what would happen "next time". And I think that same aspect can be still seen in other Capcom works going on to this day, such as Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry and Monster Hunter.

Now, most of Capcom's games may not be that much better when it comes to the actual storytelling aspect than most of Nintendo's offerings are, on a good day. But if nothing else, I would definitely say the former does a much better job with returning that "investment" into their worlds than Nintendo usually does.

 

[Silky]

I think Gears of War has some of the best world building and lore to ever grace a third person shooter but it is often ignored by fans because the narrative is always front-facing on the protagonist and their brotherhood, and not the hyper-authoritarian dictatorship that caused these events to happen in the first place.

 

[Stilt Village]

frankly part of why I love it so much is because if you don’t know why you’re fighting, you can never break the cycle

in other games I’m less pressed about “True Endings.” Hollow Knight made me seek it out because the game knew why it was happening but I still didn’t.

figuring it out was absolutely my biggest holy shit process in the entire medium, I think

like the game really gave me the impression that all the things happening in parallel that I didn’t entirely understand were part of something big, something tangible, that the game knew but I as a player didn’t

but instead of feeling like they were just withholding the information to be vague, it felt like they knew and the answers were at my fingertips

Mind, a lot of what I'm unsure about and speaking vaguely on is because I played this years ago, I'm not in the midst of it or anything!

That said, the quoted bit actually sounds very cool. If I ever played it again I would definitely go for the true ending. The idea that there is actually a payoff for the confusion is motivating.

 

[bbymetroid]

To follow that up, I think this is why I like the story of BOTW so much more then TOTK - BOTW’s story is told in a very lore-centric way. The story is everything that happened in the past: What happened 100 years ago, why is the world the way it is, how did Link and Zelda join up with the Champions, how and why did they fail, how did Zelda awaken her powers (or dis she ever?), how did Link end up at the Shrine of Resurrection, and so on. It’s a bit more on the nose since you can gather all of that from the memory cutscenes, but it still hits a lot of the same notes for me, especially since it’s all out of order and feels like you’re piecing it together. The world feels like it has so much more mystery and backstory to discover (which is certainly helped by it being the first time we explored that world, too.)

That's for me a great example of good lore.

You get a proper premise, can find answers to your questions and new misteries by exploring and moving forward with the story, the worldbuilding is clear and consistent, and the world is full of details to flesh it out. It also has the perfect amount of vague misteries like the Zonai to add an extra layer. It's impressive how organic it feels.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

Lore is great. Reboots and Retcons/Rewrites are the worst. The coward's path.

A constant singular continuity is what I thrive for every franchise that I follow. Even if you have to fill the blanks with a bit of headcanon, it's fine.

I am detached to certain franchises lore like Kingdom Hearts, but often I do get immensely more immersed if I can overnalize tiny details about the series. Even discussing the contradictions is often fun!

 

[Leica]

Love this shit in Souls.

The games are never held back by exposition or plot so they're much more easily replayable but if I'm in the mood for it I can open the item description of a shield I found 3 areas ago, type in "Zanzibart the Third" on Youtube and I'll have 7 hours of lore videos explaining who that is and why it matters to watch on my commute.

 

[Almadel]

I love lore! That's one of the big reasons the Xeno series (Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblade) are my favorite games.

Especially when an "unconnected" series spanning nearly 30 years and different companies share so many connections.

Most videos out there don't really cover the more obscure details that show up in all the games. There's so many recurring details that people aren't obsessive enough as me to notice, so that's what I try to make videos about.

I can't wait for the next Xeno game to "rehash" everything again.

 

[VegiHam]

I grew up with bad eyesight, so I'm hopeless at environmental storytelling. My brain just isn't wired right to look at skeletons and dropped swords in a play space and understand what the backstory is supposed to to be, I basically need dialogue and text.

I love stuff like the Mass Effect Codex where it's just in universe wiki articles. But a lot of better, more artistic stuff I just can't access.

 

[Concernt]

Once again a chance to point out how good Breath of the Wild's lore is! That game's story is like 60% lore and it's GOOD lore! The little things in the world, the hints of civilisations past. It's an immersive story, in a very real sense. Don't tell me "Nintendo doesn't care", they obviously care! They give it attention, it's a matter of prestige and rightfully so!

Such wonder then that Tears of the Kingdom breaks all this lore like a great big elephant sitting on a fine sculpture. It's impressive in a sense now PRECISELY it ruined the lore. Breath of the Wild's lore is worse for Tears of the Kingdom existing, and that's just sad.

However, I don't think Zelda lore is the most interesting to me at the moment. Splatoon has very comprehensive lore, but it's also not my interest. Mario's lore? Now that is genuinely interesting to me. It doesn't TRY to tell a story often, it wears its lore and lack of it on its sleeve. Does this make for worse lore? Not at all; the lore that's left is the best of it. The world of Mario is rich and interconnected in subtle ways; every Mario game exists in the same world in a way other series don't, but simultaneously that world is ever changing. While the reasons for these changes are rarely if ever explained, and that's fine, the stuff consistent from game to game really does stick! Like, an example, Mario Kart "exists" in the world of Mario, those are all real places in their world and the sponsors are real sponsors. It's not just a random ice area, Rosalina has a liveable little idyll with a parking spot for her comet encircled by a racetrack! That's CUTE! I won't be told the "lore implications of Rosalina's Ice World 3DS" are irrelevant, I don't think they are. I think Mario's lore is FUN! New Donk City is an architectural fever dream, skyscrapers built on skyscrapers. It's nutty! But isn't it fun to think about?

 

[Mango]

I think the Zelda lore is really interesting, and for the majority of the series has been handled pretty well. There's been some hiccups here and there, but most of the games are able to stand on their own while also enhancing games around them when you start to understand how they connect. Unfortunately this site has proven to be actively hostile to even talking about Zelda lore, less someone rush to say something objectively false like

"There's no timeline" or "the lore is all made up and doesn't fit, and the games are each meant to just be different legends retelling the same story."

You know, the usual nonsense, which imo makes me feel like Zelda lore is both one of the most fascinating but misunderstood lores in video games. It's why TotK is such a massive disappointment because it actively disagrees with pre-established lore of not only the past series but even its own predecessor, BOTW, yet you can't criticize TotK for that because "Nintendo has never cared about the lore" which is again flagrantly false, TotK doesn't care about the lore, something like Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, A Link Between Worlds, and so on clearly do. It is what is the, I guess.

Anyways, I think other series have some good lore, I like the Dragon Quest lore for example, especially how Dragon Quest Builders 2 takes place during the events of Dragon Quest 3. Sonic Lore can be fun, when it's consistent, but that series is more fast and loose like Mario, and Metroid and Xenoblade have some amazing lore.