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Pretentious lore

Repressed Homosexual
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Mar 29, 2010
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Ottawa, Can.
I was watching a let's play of Tyranny, and the little series of choices that they have you do in the beginning, and the gameplay that unfolded after and my eyes kept rolling. I remember the last Dragon Age was extremely pretentious in a similar way too and I uninstalled it after only 2 or 3 hours of play.

I don't know if I am the only one, but I am completely losing patience for game stories the more I grow old, especially if the game is trying to dump a lot of lore on me, especially made up races, made up kingdoms, fancy magic being omnipresent, or made up creatures and heroes "fighting for noble ideals" or whatever that means. I am losing all patience for villains having Shakespearean dialogue with me. I don't know who the hell started this trend (is it Josh Sawyer?), but I don't think there is a single human being except the game designers themselves who enjoy this.

I have never seen this kind of pretentiousness in any PnP campaign. The original DnD campaigns for instance were very simple and had a Dark Ages atmosphere, and not tons of pretentious made up races with Shakespearean villains.

It seems to be only the youngest generation of game designers who think this is how things should be done. But who are they kidding? You're never going to find the Brothers Karamazov or Les Miserables in a fantasy game, so why continue?

Give me simplicity any day.

In my opinion, the only time where a convoluted game setting works, is in a sandbox game where there is a sense of foreboding mystery, and where I must gather clues myself here and there, to interpret gradually what is going on, and figure out who is trying to do what. This is why for instance Age of Decadence, and the Fallout Resurrection mod, worked extremely well, eveen though they both had elaborate lore. They used it very sparsely and didn't run it in your face at any point, and if they had a Shakespearean villain or NPC he told you a few lines and then left you alone.
 
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FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
It is true, though. The noble villain thing is really played out already.

It's one of those things where you have to be an actually good writer to pull it off, and there are not many in the game industry. Instead you have a ton who think that anything "morally gray" or whatever the fuck is that buzzword is automatically good because omfg you have to make difficult decisions... about shit you really couldn't care less.

Case in point: Turdland 2.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
Pillars of Eternity: The Lore Dump.

There's so much lore being dumped into you before you even reach the first town it's not even funny. Devs need to understand no one talks remotely like that in real life.

It would be akin to Doc Mitchell saying "You were shot in the head, because this is ruthless post-apocalyptic America and danger is at every corner. Here's a Vault suit, it belonged to people who lived in Vaults after nuclear bombs destroyed the world in 2077. Oh, and have this gun to protect you from mutated creatures due to the radiation that we have those bombs to blame for. Welcome to Goodsprings, the town named after its good springs."
 
Repressed Homosexual
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Ottawa, Can.
This is why in spite of its simple but endearing characters and setting, to me Baldur's Gate 2 had a better story than Planescape Torment. I'm sorry but I just don't give a damn about "finding myself in a videogame" by having "deep conversations" with NPCs over a landscape looking like a Dali painting with imaginary races who do stupid things.
 

Sigourn

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Pillars of Eternity: The Lore Dump.

There's so much lore being dumped into you before you even reach the first town it's not even funny. Devs need to understand no one talks remotely like that in real life.

I should also add that while I understand that "you just got to explain those things in a game with a completely foreign setting", it's not fun being talked about tons of names you can't even pronounce or know what the fuck do they mean. This is the case with Pillars of Eternity, if you go into the game fresh, you won't understand what the hell is happening in the intro, other than "we stopped and now some dudes are murdering everyone", but you don't even know exactly why or who those guys are or why do they do what they do.

Ironically, despite being a lore-heavy game series, The Elder Scrolls has the less lore dump, because it makes it all optional. You just need to read the in-game books, and if you don't want to read them, you will understand the game just fine.
 

pippin

Guest
Over-explaining things is not as terrible as using just every dnd staple but with a different name imo. Kobolds are kobolds ffs.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
You have to know enough to get you going, that's it. Wikipedia style lore expositions just... don't.... work.... Maybe have a learned NPC, a scholar in a library or a teacher in a university, who you can talk to about history, geography, even scatology if you are so inclined. Only really bizarre and out there settings could require lengthy expositions and explanations, like PST. Did PoE somehow magically get better that you know there are ice elves somewhere out there? No, it just made you want to be there instead of playing this boring ass, utterly trite "adventure". Writers have to know what to reveal and how to reveal it, then make it relevant, not simply encyclopedia-thump you into a catatonic trance.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
It's not just a scale of down-to-earth to pretentiousness, it's about whether the pretentious shit sticks out like a sore thumb relative to the rest of the game, the rest of the writing, how it's presented to the player, etc. I actually really liked what aspects of good old pseudo-medieval politicking was there in DAO, and it would have been a lot easier to go along with its seriousness if it wasn't for the fact that I'm constantly standing next to companions that fell in buckets of pig blood 5 seconds ago and being interrupted in my travels in their whiny quests for sexual identity and B-movie porn scene filming. (It would also have helped if the main plot wasn't... what was it again?)

A lot of it also comes down to your in-built genre expectations and thresholds, so you might roll your eyes at Duke->Duc in POE when my inner history nerd thought it was cool. And having grown on a diet of history and fantasy I'm going to gag at 3-CX3UF Heretic Class Dual Plasma Generator even though you might very reasonably argue that "The Staff of Arcane Exhortation" is a lot more retarded.

Most things MCA wrote were pretty damn pretentious, but I was usually happy to go along with Kreia because (1) given all the straight-throw too-serious treatments of ZE FORCE, Kreia's angsty Deconstruction 101 has the luxury of being fresh; (2) it made perfect sense within the game/plot for Kreia to play the talkative insufferable role that she does; (3) the writing was at least better than the usual shit in video games.

I doubt simplifying things in itself is going to make any of this better, but one thing I would certainly like to see is building stories - main stories, companion stories, little sidequest stories - around the more everyday and mundane consequences rather than having everything involve giant soul sucking demon villains and heroic white robed light summoning martyrs. In that regard I really liked the premise of a lot of POE companions; it was great to have a companion designed from the start not to join you because their soul is bound to you, or because they will discover their homosexuality while traveling with you, maybe it's just someone who misses home after a long journey or confronts the ephemerality of knowledge. And I liked the fact that they were mixed in with more typically dramatic and larger-than-life characters, namely Durance. (Whether they were subsequently written and delivered well is another matter; e.g. Hiravias isn't boring because his concept is too mundane, I think they just botched his actual lines / tone.)
 
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IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
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You're getting older, your attention span is getting shorter.

That's all that is to it, really.

No. So utterly the opposite of reality. Heck, when I was younger I thought the Druid in Kuldahar in IWD1 prattled on for waaaay too long ;) Now I'm older I can cope, but two or three walls of text from an NPC not providing anything other than 'flavour text' and I still start to hate the game ;)
 

mixer

Learned
Joined
Jul 6, 2015
Messages
97
As far as current AAA titles go this is my favorite thing about Dark Souls, the way story and lore are presented in game is refreshing.

I rarely care about lore and in end, even for lorefags it is more fun trying to build coherent universe from clues than reading huge infodumps.
 

Ranarama

Learned
Joined
Dec 7, 2016
Messages
604
I take impatience as a sign that what I'm currently doing is not why I'm playing the game. It happens even when it would be otherwise interesting dialogue. If *right now* what I want is to hurry up an get into combat, or I've been pulled into a side quest inadvertently then I've go no patience for it. Get me back to what I was doing.

This actually happens for me a lot in civ and strategy games that focus you on the next unit after making a move, or show a notification but don't let you handle it straight away. No you dumb fucking game, I don't want to move this asshole, I was focused on that barbarian invasion or whatever.

As for Shakespearean villains and monologues being bad, I cite Jon Irenicus as a counter-example. What was best there was it was all broken up. It was especially quick at the start - I've been experimenting on you and oh what's that. Then you get to break out. If your game has a single really long monologue right before the end - perhaps you should have established your villain better? At the very least it could be a dialogue.

As far as current AAA titles go this is my favorite thing about Dark Souls, the way story and lore are presented in game is refreshing.

That game has a story and lore? People keep saying that, but I've not seen any.
 

Lostpleb

Learned
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Jun 15, 2016
Messages
380
The thing about having lore in a game is that it won't always be the kind of lore that might catch the interest of everyone and anyone. PoE was difficult to enjoy precisely because the story was shoved in my face at every turn, when all I really wanted was to play it like a sequel to Icewind Dale.

I'm into post-apocalyptic settings and "doomed journey" tales, so anytime a game's story draws a little too close to generic fantasy with generic characters I am going to zone out.

So all in all I think that it's good when the game has a well constructed story to offer, as long as most of the exposition is optional - which ironically is an approach that gets canned as a waste of development resources nowadays.
 

laclongquan

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This is why in spite of its simple but endearing characters and setting, to me Baldur's Gate 2 had a better story than Planescape Torment. I'm sorry but I just don't give a damn about "finding myself in a videogame" by having "deep conversations" with NPCs over a landscape looking like a Dali painting with imaginary races who do stupid things.
Fuck immersion! I never think I was Nameless One in a weird universe. Or a Bhalspawn in a Faerun world either.
The writings in PST is just easy to draw readers in, is all. BG2's draw is mage duels and quests.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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made up races, made up kingdoms, fancy magic being omnipresent, or made up creatures and heroes "fighting for noble ideals"... I don't know who the hell started this trend (is it Josh Sawyer?)

lol, it's definitely somebody whose name starts with a J.

Whooops, there's you being smug and pretentious again...

You could get the same level of know-it-all combined with more genuine lols if you just said:

You mean like... J R R Tolkein?

And no-one has to play the bullshit superiority "I know but you don't hahahah" smug pretentious twat game. But then, because you love being so pretentious, it's obvious why you'll not be contributing to your thoughts on the topic, but rather looking for those little loopholes to feel smug and get all pretentious about, heh?
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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And yes, I knew you'd react with a butthurt rating... but, unfortunately, I can't rate your butthurt rating as butthurt... so I'll do it the old fashioned way:

:butthurt:
 

mixer

Learned
Joined
Jul 6, 2015
Messages
97
Now that you mention Tolkien, last time i cared about lore was probably when i was reading Silmarillion and crying over Kurt Cobain's death.

Life has gotten much faster since and fantasy world builders should adapt. And if they manage to hook someone im sure there is a place on internet where they can share their autism passion with likeminded people.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
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Russia
What's pretentiousness exactly and how you judge it?

Tigranes even took MCA writing as example, well, fuck, let all stories forever be about killing and loot? That's worse and is the low end of RPG writing, shit from diablo clones.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
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I'm sure any game with Kreia in it would have been an even better game if it had also had quality killing and loot instead of crap killing and loot?
 

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