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Pretentious lore

Shadenuat

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Dec 9, 2011
Messages
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Russia
I'm not sure you're following.
 

bminorkey

Guest
1. hate tyranny/js/everything popular for being pretentious

2. "aod somehow makes it work"

dude you are pandering. aod writing was pretentious as hell and had way more lore dumps per mile than even the most disgusting PoE wall of text. it didn't complement the sandbox stuff. i liked the sandbox stuff. but you could've had the exact same plot (cthulu mythos/politics/bronze age alchemy) without half the gratuitous and frankly pointless info dumps that made it into the game. at some point i stopped trying to keep track of the character names because there were so many unmemorable ones who just serve to lecture you
 

Black Angel

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Wonderland
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.
If you start paying attention, it's all over the place. From what was told in the intro, the dialogue with the NPCs, items description, where corpses lies, they just weren't served on a silver platter to you.
 

MediantSamuel

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
1. hate tyranny/js/everything popular for being pretentious

2. "aod somehow makes it work"

dude you are pandering. aod writing was pretentious as hell and had way more lore dumps per mile than even the most disgusting PoE wall of text. it didn't complement the sandbox stuff. i liked the sandbox stuff. but you could've had the exact same plot (cthulu mythos/politics/bronze age alchemy) without half the gratuitous and frankly pointless info dumps that made it into the game. at some point i stopped trying to keep track of the character names because there were so many unmemorable ones who just serve to lecture you

I don't strictly agree with this.

My memory isn't fantastic so if I flub one of my points, please correct me.

I feel the lore dumps are generally relevant and usually interesting, less "dumps" and more worthwhile descriptions. As AoD has only a limited number of locations that the player visits, giving said player info on them isn't really all that egregious. The player starts in Teron, so the game tells you briefly about Teron and gives you the lay of the land. I don't remember this being overly long or dull and imo it serves as a good introduction. The player later moves on to Maadoran, one of the three main cities. An overview of the city is definitely not unwarranted in this case.

Later on in Teron you meet Dellar, an interesting character who plays a large role for this particular town and the game tells you a bit about him to give the player the impression of both the character itself and how a person like him came to be in his position. I concede that the game does tell you things at times about certain characters that your character would have no way of knowing but eh, I think the characters themselves are interesting enough that it isn't an issue. The player character could have also heard rumours regarding the more (in)famous individuals (The three lords, Hamza, Paullus, etc.)

As for characters that serve to lecture you, I'm not sure which characters you specifically mean by this.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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Messages
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Location
Ottawa, Can.
I also guess much of what it comes down to is an increasing unwillingness to deal with implausible elements and suspend my disbelief. I'm not 12 anymore. I don't dream about becoming a Super Saiyan. I have a wife and kids and pay taxes. I'm not against supernatural elements or monsters or other outlandish things, but it better make some logical sense and the whole game is better not be about extravagant shit that I don't care about. Or if it is, don't pretend that you're making anything grand or meaningful of that you're trying to reinvent the wheel, much like anything Chris Avelone ever made, because it doesn't fly anymore.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
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Messages
5,703
Location
California
I have no idea whether any of my game writing is consistent with this thought, even my current writing on Fallen Gods, but I'm increasingly wondering whether the problems might be something like this:

(1) A large quantity of info-dumping is information that the player doesn't need in any respect. He doesn't need it from a gameplay standpoint because it has no gameplay relevance whether the Fasfacanga were once called the Aganbta in the age of Magfala, but he also doesn't need it from a story standpoint because it's totally obvious that whether they're called Fasfacanga or Aganbta, they're just elves, and we already know everything there is to know about elves other than marginalia here and there. Thus, the information is valuable only in and of itself -- if the writing is sufficiently lyrical and brilliant to justify the writer jumping in between the player and the game and saying, "Let's take a moment to talk about the age of Magfala!" or if the mystery that is being uncovered is sufficiently fascinating that the player is independently motivated to seek it out.

(2) Even where some explanation is necessary, there is almost always too much of it. If you have a Fasfacanga who introduces himself as a member of the Sylalala caste, you probably can get away with just saying, "We protect the forests with spell and blade" and not giving a huge exegesis on how Sylalala culture works. Of course, as I noted before, almost all of this is unnecessary if you don't play hide the salami with your fantasy tropes by renaming your elven bladesingers Fasfacangan Sylalalans. But even when you don't use the established nomenclature, the structure of how a concept is introduced is usually sufficient to convey the meaning. "In these mines, Durin awoke a balrog, to his doom" basically tells you everything you need to know about Balrogs without offering any explanation of why this particular one was in the mine, how it was woken up, what it looks like, etc.

(3) Players have become very conditioned to expect an, "Ask more about X" option, even though they don't even necessarily want to know more about X, and the achievement-unlocked mentality compels them to take the option if it's there. Writers feel a need to satisfy that compulsion. It's a bitter circle. But I am almost certain that no meaning would be lost if every "Tell me about X" topic were removed because of point #2. The player would learn the same information through the implications of all the other dialogue on the topic.

But in my opinion none of this has anything to do with pretentiousness. One can describe orc culture ad naseam without any pretense, and it's still going to be boring.
 

Walden

Savant
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Mar 23, 2016
Messages
289
The only writing in rpgs I can't stand as far is Obsidian one. At least in other rpgs, even if flat, it's not passed off as a relevant and witty feature.
But there is one thing I wished from videogames stories: a little of interactivity to build my own story through gameplay following a canovaccio. Instead the highest peak of non-linearity is choosing a route between A-B-C.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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Messages
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Location
Ottawa, Can.
The only writing in rpgs I can't stand as far is Obsidian one. At least in other rpgs, even if flat, it's not passed off as a relevant and witty feature.
But there is one thing I wished from videogames stories: a little of interactivity to build my own story through gameplay following a canovaccio. Instead the highest peak of non-linearity is choosing a route between A-B-C.

Precisely, they need to just get over themselves already. No one cares. I don't remember any of this pretentious garbage in Troika games for instance.

Arcanum is another example of a game that had an elaborate mythology, and yet you only found bits and pieces of it here and there. There were a few Elves for instance and other NPCs who complained about the rise of technology, but they didn't start going on a passionate tirade for paragraph upon paragraph about it, and they didn't talk to you theatrically. Everything about it made a lot of sense and was very well constructed.
 
Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

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Joined
Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
the thing is

as you grow older you only have the patience for the stuff you grew up with, hence the codex being obsessed with older games

actually spending the time to get familiar with a new game is a p big investment once your an adult which many ppl cant afford
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

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Messages
7,407
the thing is

as you grow older you only have the patience for the stuff you grew up with, hence the codex being obsessed with older games

actually spending the time to get familiar with a new game is a p big investment once your an adult which many ppl cant afford

Do you just pull this stuff out your ass?

[I bet the answer is deep within the codex lore thread]
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
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Messages
7,407
I have no idea whether any of my game writing is consistent with this thought, even my current writing on Fallen Gods, but I'm increasingly wondering whether the problems might be something like this:

(1) A large quantity of info-dumping is information that the player doesn't need in any respect. He doesn't need it from a gameplay standpoint because it has no gameplay relevance whether the Fasfacanga were once called the Aganbta in the age of Magfala, but he also doesn't need it from a story standpoint because it's totally obvious that whether they're called Fasfacanga or Aganbta, they're just elves, and we already know everything there is to know about elves other than marginalia here and there. Thus, the information is valuable only in and of itself -- if the writing is sufficiently lyrical and brilliant to justify the writer jumping in between the player and the game and saying, "Let's take a moment to talk about the age of Magfala!" or if the mystery that is being uncovered is sufficiently fascinating that the player is independently motivated to seek it out.

(2) Even where some explanation is necessary, there is almost always too much of it. If you have a Fasfacanga who introduces himself as a member of the Sylalala caste, you probably can get away with just saying, "We protect the forests with spell and blade" and not giving a huge exegesis on how Sylalala culture works. Of course, as I noted before, almost all of this is unnecessary if you don't play hide the salami with your fantasy tropes by renaming your elven bladesingers Fasfacangan Sylalalans. But even when you don't use the established nomenclature, the structure of how a concept is introduced is usually sufficient to convey the meaning. "In these mines, Durin awoke a balrog, to his doom" basically tells you everything you need to know about Balrogs without offering any explanation of why this particular one was in the mine, how it was woken up, what it looks like, etc.

(3) Players have become very conditioned to expect an, "Ask more about X" option, even though they don't even necessarily want to know more about X, and the achievement-unlocked mentality compels them to take the option if it's there. Writers feel a need to satisfy that compulsion. It's a bitter circle. But I am almost certain that no meaning would be lost if every "Tell me about X" topic were removed because of point #2. The player would learn the same information through the implications of all the other dialogue on the topic.

But in my opinion none of this has anything to do with pretentiousness. One can describe orc culture ad naseam without any pretense, and it's still going to be boring.

I agreed with every word you said, but then the end line was most disagreeable, leaving me unable to rate the post. What games often did and many still do, is have those big lore dumps about orc culture in a book somewhere, or split over many npcs discussed not as lore dumps but combined with quests - such as "please go rescue my husband's ring, he lost it while fishing for hydras after getting drunk and losing a finger wrestling competition" - from that one sentence you know that orcs get married, fish for hydras, get drunk, finger wrestle, so much information, so few words and it's relevant as it's quest-related. Just imagine how much you can find out about orc culture from such as process and 10 quests. Enough for it to feel 'real' that's for sure. Also, that's not pretentious writing, that's very down to earth writing. In order to make it pretentious you would rewrite that thusly (thusly, hehe, see what I did there):

"please go rescue my husband's ring, he lost it while fishing for hydras after getting drunk and losing a finger wrestling competition"

Becomes:

"The ancient and withered orc maiden stands before you, a tear in one eye, a rolling pin in one hand, a faint whiff of rotting fish clouded around her. You gag slightly as you endeavour to discover what seems to have upset her in such a way.

"Oh woe is me! Oh damnation to my worthless sot of a husband!"
"What seems to be the matter crinkled green wench?"
"Tis a tale so sad and blue."
"Prey tell and mayhaps I can help?"
"My stupid great oaf of a husband has gone and lost his wedding ring...
[insert 2-4 screen clicks about why wedding ring is important to their culture and why it needs to be found all in extended flowery language]
"Fishing you say?"
"Yay, he went fishing for hydras yesterday."
"Why did he do that and what's hydra?"
[insert 2-4 screen clicks about why fishing and hydras is/are important to their culture all in extended flowery language]

And, I'm actually getting bored just writing this padding, but you can see the formula well enough, now just imagine this whole process repeated for "getting drunk?" and "Finger Wrestling?" and you're getting the point, 22 words have suddenly become an infinite bottomless well of narrative and, not only that, but encouraged the author to imagine themselves as Byron or Keats, trying to ake us empathise for the plight of an old orc woman like it was some greek tragedy, when, in reality, yes, it's just a silly side quest for some possible exp and loot etc.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
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Messages
7,407
no really

think about it, why are older ppl so averse to trying new things

They're not. Older people are more likely to subvert the norms precisely because they're sick and tired of repetition and burnt out from the norms. Or, perhaps, people keep the same personalities all their life and age has nothing to do with their ability to cope with change? In terms of age when change starts to get annoying, that's like 70+, and I seriously doubt the 70+ are deciding factors in the great computer game debates, but please correct me if I'm wrong on that point.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
I have no idea whether any of my game writing is consistent with this thought, even my current writing on Fallen Gods, but I'm increasingly wondering whether the problems might be something like this:

(1) A large quantity of info-dumping is information that the player doesn't need in any respect. He doesn't need it from a gameplay standpoint because it has no gameplay relevance whether the Fasfacanga were once called the Aganbta in the age of Magfala, but he also doesn't need it from a story standpoint because it's totally obvious that whether they're called Fasfacanga or Aganbta, they're just elves, and we already know everything there is to know about elves other than marginalia here and there. Thus, the information is valuable only in and of itself -- if the writing is sufficiently lyrical and brilliant to justify the writer jumping in between the player and the game and saying, "Let's take a moment to talk about the age of Magfala!" or if the mystery that is being uncovered is sufficiently fascinating that the player is independently motivated to seek it out.

This isn't something specific to games, genre conventions and the knowledge thereof have been a consistent feature in all mediums. When you are reading an ode, you don't need a lengthy explanation of what an ode is within that ode, unless you start being fancy about it and rename your ode to something random like "trompana" and start explaining that it's an ode... This comes down to unnecessary padding and writers being in love with all the "lore" they've come up with, seemingly unaware that they've come up with elves, but are calling them Fasfacanga. At one point you also have to trust your audience, we can't forever be at the "what's an ode?" question and every time an ode is written it has to be filled with info about itself. This isn't something arcane and unbelievable though, when you go to a concert people don't stand on the stage explaining what a song/symphony/concerto/passion or whatever is.

You are also right that lore for its own sake is also a problem, it just don't matter that dwarves in far off lands ride whales and hunt giant octopi. It still smells of padding, as if writers don't know how to develop a narrative (and they probably don't), so they throw all these disconnected ideas and thinking that they are. There are simply more important things to worry about when structuring a narrative than fluff lore, but fluff lore is the easiest thing to write.


but encouraged the author to imagine themselves as Byron or Keats

If only they had read Byron or Keats... Here's one of Byron's more popular (and I'd say cliche) poems -
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

I.

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.



II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.



III.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

That's the whole poem... funny how it isn't a bottomless well of words.
 
Last edited:

NeoKino

RPGCodex Ninja
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Somewhere
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Lore dump dialogue systems like Elder Scrolls Morrowind and basically any Bioware or Obsidian game are so unnecessary it hurts. If your NPC is not a historian, Scholar, or has a direct connection to the lore being discuss (Like a Soldier giving a casual analysis of a war he participate, note that doesn't mean that the soldier explain every nook and cranny of what happen with the war and explain the factions in detail) , then your NPC has no reason to dump a textbook worth of knowledge and heck if the conversation is so inconsequential there might not even be a reason to let them talk.

I don't give a shit about joe shmoe generic fantasy race and how his race is so superior in culture to anyone else unless its presented in a way that enriches the world its based on. IE if the NPC is a dwarven supremacist and theres a bunch of gnomes comming into his town have him say a rant depending if the character trust you enough.

P.S stop calling generic fantasy races special snowflake names if the character is an elf and the race clearly uses generic Tolkien fantasy tropes then the character is a fucking elf whether the character is an "aelf" , protoss, or some dumb shit.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,824
Humanity has risen! play Sword Coast legends, straight up adventuring, no lore dumps, likable onedimensional characters.
Its a shallow game, but good for a 5-10 hour romp before it gets old.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Joined
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Messages
7,407
If only they had read Byron or Keats... Here's one of Byron's more popular (and I'd say cliche) poems -
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

I.

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.



II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.



III.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

That's the whole poem... funny how it isn't a bottomless well of words.

The reference to Byron and Keats wasn't a reference to length, it was a reference to flowery language and a desire to turn every little thing into some major greek tragedy. You know, loike how what you just posted is full to the brim of flowery language and turning the idea of "I fancy this bird, see" into an epic communication - which is fine for a short poem and is great for getting girl's dresses off, but in a computer game...? sure, go get that female romantic audience, but don't be all surprised when your core starts rushing for the exits.
 

Naveen

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
1,115
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I think many designers have literary aspirations or perhaps their starting idea for a game is not the game per se (the rule system, gameplay, and all that) but the setting, plot, history, or some kind of philosophical idea (like "Evil won" in Tyranny.)
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,326
Location
Flowery Land
This is in General RPG discussion, but can I mention Assassin's Creeds God awful lore?

Capitalism is an ancient conspiracy, Carl Marx is a superman and Henry Ford is a super villain, and 9/11 literally was an inside job to give Templars an excuse to kill brown Assassins (no, I'm dead fucking serious).
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
The reference to Byron and Keats wasn't a reference to length, it was a reference to flowery language and a desire to turn every little thing into some major greek tragedy. You know, loike how what you just posted is full to the brim of flowery language and turning the idea of "I fancy this bird, see" into an epic communication - which is fine for a short poem and is great for getting girl's dresses off, but in a computer game...? sure, go get that female romantic audience, but don't be all surprised when your core starts rushing for the exits.

Yeah, I know, I was just remarking on the fact they've probably never read Byron or Keats, otherwise they would know that that flowery language works only in poems or in very short bursts :p
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Sawyer is gay? Tolkien isn't.
 

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