Pretentious lore

[SausageInYourFace]

'that doesn't trick players into thinking "well if I don't pick this my character won't know what an aelf is and that's a bad thing".'

Does anyone think that?

I do, on occasion, click dialogue options that my character would logically pick, even when I personally would not. I guess you could call that roleplaying. Or autism.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Optional content?

Spoiler

Fuck you

Spoiler

So, Koishi Komeiji has won the latest popularity poll, and I've seen a diverse range of reactions (though, fortunately, none as extreme as I expected from this kind of thing - more evidence that this fandom is awesome). I wanted to talk a bit about that - the reasons that make her so appealing, why she has such a following, and my own thoughts on the character (no better lens for me to look through than my own eyes, right?).

Before I get started, a couple of fair warnings: First, this is my first time posting on /r/touhou (or any Touhou-related board, to be honest), so I might not know a few particularities involving the community. I have, however, been lurking for quite some time, and obviously gone through the sub's rules. Second, this post is somewhat self-serving, for reasons that will come apparent further ahead. If you'd rather not read me ranting over some personal stuff, please downvote and feel free to leave. I really don't want to take anyone's time. Oh, and there won't be a tl;dr. I don't think it would fit this kind of thing. Either you go through the whole thing, or you don't. Sorry.

Sooo, let's go. What makes Koishi so appealing? Well, there are a few aspects of her character (and her different portrayal in the fandom) that I think may be seen as attractive. First, there's her "wacky", literally carefree side, often (but not exclusively) used to comedic effect. She can be the protagonist, deuteragonist, an extra or even the antagonist to a myriad of stories and still maintain this lighthearted (heh) aura, and I can easily see that resonate with a lot of people, including myself.

Then, we have her "tragic" side. Koishi is a girl that, out of fear of being hated, closed her own mind, losing the prospect of being loved or even remembered by those around her. What is sadder is that, apparently, she doesn't even care about it, probably because, well, she can't care. This is what has drawn me initially to the character, and the side I find most interesting. But more on that later.

There's also the "creepy" Koishi, which I haven't delved too far into. You know, the Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure side. Which, incidentally, I haven't seen (because I've heard...things), so feel free to try and convince me to change that. Either way, I have no doubt it's considerably boosted her popularity.

Finally, there's the fact that, in contrast with many (if not most) of the Touhou Project girls, Koishi has a character arc (currently incomplete). Her background isn't defined by constants, but by evolution - she chose to close her mind, instead of being like that from the start. So, even after the end of SA, we're left wondering if she'll ever open her third eye again. And then we have the events of HM and her interactions with Byakuren. Interestingly enough, though, is that the most obvious solution to her character's personal conflict directly clashes with her defining trait: If she ever reopens her eye, she stops being "Koishi". I'm really curious to see where ZUN plans to take her.

So, why specifically title this post "Koishi and I"? This is where it gets kinda hard for me. If you've read thus far, I'd ask you to bear with me and go through the rest until the end.

Well, I think the most cliché way to put it is that I see a lot of myself in Koishi. I'm an awfully shy person, probably because I've gone through my entire life feeling unwanted and unwelcome in every social circle I've been in. I was bullied throughout my whole school life. My family has tried to mold me into their particular vision of "ideal" progeny since I was young. There's not a single person that I could say that I care for, or that cares for me - perhaps I could say that my parents have some level of affection towards me, but that's out of a sense of obligation, because there was never any sort of acceptance for who I am or want to be (I've recently confronted them both with that, and they outright admitted it).

Initially, I tried to conform to all of that. I decided I was "intelligent" because I "sucked" at sports and social interaction, so I read books and developed some sort of intelectual arrogance, which actually has always been a superiority complex. Even nowadays, after a few minutes of conversation with me, people assume I'm "smart". I wear it. I know lots of stuff, I'm sarcastic, snarky, cynical. That was my idea of "cool", what I resorted to so I could fit in. And I hate it all. I've come to realize that what I once took pride in actually is a shitty mask that I still wear because I don't really know how to talk to people. I want to be a gentle, kind, loving person, but, subconsciously, I'm afraid of being spurned for that, as I was in the past. So, I guess I'm some sort of broken person, conflicted between who I want to be and my fear of rejection. And it ends up affecting all aspects of my life. Besides going to my college classes, I rarely leave my house. The only time I've ever had the courage to ask a girl out, I did it so awkwardly that her initial reaction was a "WTF" followed by laughter, and there's no way I can blame her for that.

But let's get back to Koishi. I'll be honest: I'm fairly new to Touhou. I got into it by deciding I should listen to new music and jumping from video to video on YouTube until I was completely lost in the land of songs that had names I couldn't read. I was enjoying so much of it that I decided to make a small, private playlist so I could have somewhere to store all of those cool tunes I wouldn't be able to search for later. A couple of days in that fresh craziness, a particular melody caught my attention just enough to warrant a small search. I had to find out more about the girl whose theme that was. I bet you can guess which of the 2hus it was. This is the specific arrange.

So I read this Koishi Komeiji girl's entry in the Touhou Wiki, and was initially intrigued and touched. "She's such a tragic character", I thought. And, evidently from all I've said so far, I could relate to her. Her character is defined by her desire to be accepted to the point of making sacrifices that, in the end, might not be worthwhile.

I've started realizing all of that personal stuff during the last year. The whole process has been kind of freeing, kind of frightening. I've been going through waves of depression over the last six months or so as part of that, I guess. The last couple of them have been particularly hard. So "discovering" Touhou and, more specifically, Koishi has been a boon. Even if I'm not exactly fighting to get out of this rut, I know that things will eventually get better, and in the meanwhile I can take comfort in the things I love and the knowledge that I'm not the first to go through what I'm going, that there are people or youkai out there with experiences similar to mine.

So, here I am, with my heart laid bare (hah). This is why Koishi is particularly important to me. I don't think I have any real conclusion to this post. It's been a weird ride to write it, and there are tons of stuff I've left out. This has been kinda hard to write up and I had to gather a lot of willpower to do it, so I'd like to ask you all not to share this anywhere else (I don't really know why anyone would, but, hey, this is the internet). More importantly, though, is that I should say I thank you if you've read this far. I really do.

Edit: Oh, shit. Someone has given me gold. I...I don't even know what to say. I mean, obviously I'm thankful, I just can't express it properly with words. A virtual hug isn't enough, either, but, here, anonymous redditor, have it anyway: *Hug* - My inner Reimu is ecstatic.

Edit #2: Double gold?!? This is totally surreal. I forgot to mention it earlier, but it's the first time I've been given gold. I'm not one to post all that frequently, so I'm really moved. Thank you so much. Have a hug, too: *Hug*

Final (?) edit: I wrote a comment (instead of making this post even larger) on planning to talk a bit more about Koishi and myself, but I ultimately decided against it - it's explained in more detail in the comment). Click here or scroll down (you should find it near the bottom of the page) to read it.

Thank you for everything, guys. I won't forget what you've done here. <3

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[ZagorTeNej]

If you took the narrative and setting away from PS:T, the only good thing left would probably be audiovisual, but by the same token, if you took the combat away from TOEE, there wouldn't be much there, either.

I wouldn't say audiovisuals of PST are merely good given that those aspects of the game severely outclass the vast majority of the competition. Art direction/visual design, music, voice acting, background sounds etc. do a tremendous job in bringing the characters and the setting to life, the way very few games ever managed to do.

Furthermore, one thing that PST doesn't get enough credit for IMO is how it connects the narrative and gameplay. There's a story reason for why Nameless One grows so much in power so quickly and can change classes on the fly with few hours of training, there's a prevalent theme to all potential party members and why they follow Nameless One and expose themselves to great risks, you can unlock new abilities and change their stats through dialogue and quests, you can get new magic tattoos based on your previous experiences, decisions or proficiency level reached in your class, "boss fights" can be greatly influenced through dialogue etc.

Quite a different experience to most games where there's barely any effort made in that regard and every inconsistency is lazily excused by it being a game and adherence to genre conventions.

I don't think there's anything wrong with an RPG emphasizing lore and setting, it's just assuming the risk that if its lore and setting are tedious, it should get severely dinged on that account, whereas the absurdity of Eye of the Beholder's lore and setting is pretty innocuous since it's so minimal.

This, it's about execution and how crucial of a gameplay element it is. I mean how many people here would swear on full voice acting being a limiting factor/waste of resources (something with which I also agree in principle) but think of Bloodlines for example and how much it enhanced the game and made its characters even more memorable.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Another factor I thought of and haven't seen mentioned so far are MMORPGs. In these games since they are very limited and mechanical and there is much less of a plot per se, the only way you learn about the world is through these dumps that you get when NPCs are talking to you (that 95% of people almost completely skip). I think it ended up spreading to single player CRPGs but it doesn't work the same way and simply feels unnatural and stilted.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Deus Ex HR and MD popamole edition
If you remove text dump with anything related to "augs" you get as much text as Doom 2. People talk about it in work, on coffee/cigs break, in brothels, pubs... that's not how you make game world ffs. Even in more "gamey" game worlds NPCs can talk about something else...

Both games are prime example of video game products made by social inepts who know outside world from social media so they don't know that sometimes average person had enough of this shit and want to talk about something else but what else corporate drones know beside this?

Game is set in Czech Republic, you can meet with watchmaker (they make best watches Swiss after all), heck - main character (Adam Jensen) have a related hobby. You meet watchmaker and start chatting, guess what's the topic?
Augs.
Like I had not enough of this shit from the rest of the game...

 

[Average Manatee]

'that doesn't trick players into thinking "well if I don't pick this my character won't know what an aelf is and that's a bad thing".'

Does anyone think that?

In Fallout 1 you pretty much need to do just that for super mutants until you find the few people with enough knowledge to piece together the fact that they are infertile.

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's really irritating when you have people who are obviously bad writers trying to reinvent the fantasy wheel. Except not really as the best result they can come up with is the same old shit with a different name. There's so much wrong right now with writing in RPGs and the fact that gameplay is getting sidelined in favor of stories and characters only serves to magnify the issue. The current trend of having 5~ different "superstar" (lol) writers handling different aspects of the plot, areas and characters isn't doing any favors either as it means that the quality and, most importantly, the consistency goes through the fucking window. And this comes back full circle to the original problem where they are spending too much time and effort on the writing so that they have to have lots of writers to carry the work load. Imagine how crappy an amazing setting like Geneforge would be if it didn't have Vogel's consistent vision and was mired with a bunch of other egos who are trying to 1up the other guys with their own vision.

 

[MRY]

Incidentally, I'm listening to the Two Towers now, and, man, Tolkien just massively fumbled on this topic. I'm at the Treebeard part, and when he first mentions Entwives, and asks whether Pippin and Merry ever saw them in the Shire, and then says he can't really describe them -- the whole thing is haunting and perfect. Then fifteen minutes later, Treebeard gives the entire backstory about the Entwives, including a song and dance number, and describes them in detail. :/

 

[Shadenuat]

Incidentally, I'm listening to the Two Towers now, and, man, Tolkien just massively fumbled on this topic. I'm at the Treebeard part, and when he first mentions Entwives, and asks whether Pippin and Merry ever saw them in the Shire, and then says he can't really describe them -- the whole thing is haunting and perfect. Then fifteen minutes later, Treebeard gives the entire backstory about the Entwives, including a song and dance number, and describes them in detail. :/

I think you kinda missed on professor's writing as a whole being like that, like, almost all the time. I am kinda waiting for someone in this thread to begin arguing what a gay sawyer retard Tolkien was for creating fake cheap languages, writing all the numenor kings etc.
because lore is gay.

 

[Lacrymas]

Incidentally, I'm listening to the Two Towers now, and, man, Tolkien just massively fumbled on this topic. I'm at the Treebeard part, and when he first mentions Entwives, and asks whether Pippin and Merry ever saw them in the Shire, and then says he can't really describe them -- the whole thing is haunting and perfect. Then fifteen minutes later, Treebeard gives the entire backstory about the Entwives, including a song and dance number, and describes them in detail. :/

He can be excused, because he was creating a different world for the first time in history (!) and was continuing the Romantic ideas of inner consistency. I've talked a lot about Tolkien, so I'm not going to go on about it now, but suffice it to say he's not a bad writer, regardless of his description-heavy style.

 

[MRY]

I know that there's a lot of exposition of lore in LOTR but this particular spot has been the only one to jar me thus far.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

There's nothing new under the sun, only good writers and bad writers, whether in CRPGs, persian poetry, russian novels or assyrian myths. Good writers hook your interest, bad writers bore you to tears, whatever the constraints of the form they use.

 

[vonAchdorf]

In LoTR people (kids) learned that the could skip content (poems) and still understand the story, later this evolved to skipping almost all dialogue in CRPGs :D
As an adult you could revisit the books and appreciate the poems, something which is a rarity in games.

 

[JarlFrank]

Games like Dragon Age boast with their detailed lore but in the end it's totally banal and boring. Not only is the writing mediocre, none of what is written in the lore isn't actually affecting the game in any way. Meh.

 

[MRY]

In LoTR people (kids) learned that the could skip content (poems) and still understand the story, later this evolved to skipping almost all dialogue in CRPGs :D
As an adult you could revisit the books and appreciate the poems, something which is a rarity in games.

This is one of the interesting things about doing LOTR as an audiobook (as I am now). I'm pretty sure I skipped and skimmed huge swaths of content before. The texture is really different with the songs. It helps that the reader (Inglis) does a great job singing the songs.

 

[Average Manatee]

Incidentally, I'm listening to the Two Towers now, and, man, Tolkien just massively fumbled on this topic. I'm at the Treebeard part, and when he first mentions Entwives, and asks whether Pippin and Merry ever saw them in the Shire, and then says he can't really describe them -- the whole thing is haunting and perfect. Then fifteen minutes later, Treebeard gives the entire backstory about the Entwives, including a song and dance number, and describes them in detail. :/

To be fair, historically a lot of information was passed down from songs and poems. It was important to transmit the historical record from one generation to the next as-is, so offering your own commentary on things would be tainting it so to speak. Also Treebeard, like an old man, has to wait and think for a bit to recall details.

 

[Red Rogue]

I decided to finally try Pillars of Eternity, and holy hell I'm feeling the same way.
These characters just keep spouting endless exposition at me, and it's not immersing me like I know the writers thought it would.
It makes me feel like I'm doing a fucking homework assignment and actively breaks immersion instead.

"WELL LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS GOD. THIS IS GOD 1 OF 87"
"HEARD YOU WANNA BUILD A CHARACTER. WELL HERE'S SOME RACES, HERE'S ALL THE REGIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RACES! AND HOW OTHER RACES FEEL ABOUT THOSE RACES"
"YOU WANNA HEAR ABOUT THE COLONIAL HISTORY OF WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW? HOLD ON, LET ME GET MY THESAURUS OUT BEFORE I GO INTO IT."

I'd greatly prefer if they presented the world in a way that I'm interacting with it. Exposing the player should be subtle enough to where it doesn't feel like a chore, but brazen enough so that the game is still interesting.

 

[Jaesun]

I keep thinking this thread title is Pretentious Love and I am like what in the fuck?

Carry on...

 

[Lacrymas]

It's literally like studying for a history/culturology/ethnic anthropology exam, but not being interested in these topics and pointless because there is no exam.

 

[Shadenuat]

Incidentally, I'm listening to the Two Towers now, and, man, Tolkien just massively fumbled on this topic. I'm at the Treebeard part, and when he first mentions Entwives, and asks whether Pippin and Merry ever saw them in the Shire, and then says he can't really describe them -- the whole thing is haunting and perfect. Then fifteen minutes later, Treebeard gives the entire backstory about the Entwives, including a song and dance number, and describes them in detail. :/

To be fair, historically a lot of information was passed down from songs and poems. It was important to transmit the historical record from one generation to the next as-is, so offering your own commentary on things would be tainting it so to speak. Also Treebeard, like an old man, has to wait and think for a bit to recall details.

Songs and poems is first thing Tolkien did right and what most fantasy games with lore don't - folklore should be king at passing lore, because at that period of history fantasy tries to emulate, books just weren't that many. Most of them belonged into monasteries and maybe private collections. Where do all these peasants keep their hidden printing presses to copy History of the North part IX? There should be like one bible and an alphabet book per village and that's it. And maybe a book of recipes passed from generation to generation in a house of local witch/midwife.

Of course it all depends on the setting, but lore should really be expressed through events and NPCs more than anything else. Visual medium too (mural paintings for example).

 

[Lacrymas]

Songs and poems is first thing Tolkien did right and what most fantasy games with lore don't - folklore should be king at passing lore, because at that period of history fantasy tries to emulate, books just weren't that many. Most of them belonged into monasteries and maybe private collections. Where do all these peasants keep their hidden printing presses to copy History of the North part IX? There should be like one bible and an alphabet book per village and that's it. And maybe a book of recipes passed from generation to generation in a house of local witch/midwife.

Yeap, and that's why it's retarded every villager in every tiny hamlet to dispense LEARNED (scholarly) and RECORDED knowledge (like history or theology), at most they can recite their local legends or songs. Knowledge is not lore, writers seem to forget that quite often.

 

[bminorkey]

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.)

nothing wrong with that

 

[Tramboi]

We all see where this is going, but how many of us press 4? It seems to me that most lore dumps are completely skippable. You don't have to choose the stupid "Tell me more about ..." dialogue options. That's why they're called "options". Bad writing is bad, no argument there - but if you choose to read it all anyway, that's your fault.

Except one of these options might toggle a gameplay flag, maybe useful, maybe even mandatory, and you don't really want to risk this and backtrack later.

 

[Lacrymas]

Except one of these options might toggle a gameplay flag, maybe useful, maybe even mandatory, and you don't really want to risk this and backtrack later.

This is what I was thinking as well, but more like in the "you don't know what will come up later or will be important" sense. Both are valid.

 

[Tigranes]

Songs and poems is first thing Tolkien did right and what most fantasy games with lore don't - folklore should be king at passing lore, because at that period of history fantasy tries to emulate, books just weren't that many. Most of them belonged into monasteries and maybe private collections. Where do all these peasants keep their hidden printing presses to copy History of the North part IX? There should be like one bible and an alphabet book per village and that's it. And maybe a book of recipes passed from generation to generation in a house of local witch/midwife.

Yeap, and that's why it's retarded every villager in every tiny hamlet to dispense LEARNED (scholarly) and RECORDED knowledge (like history or theology), at most they can recite their local legends or songs. Knowledge is not lore, writers seem to forget that quite often.

This would be so, so nice. To reach a new city and learn of the inter-faction political intrigue from children running around singing about the baby-humping witchcrafting small-dicked ways of Devious Dan the local noble, and later learning that the song was penned by Clever Carl who is on the payroll of a rival noble. Instead you have Helpful Hans jump on your dick the moment you enter the area saying "hey! welcome to Honisburg, would you like to know where the equipment shop is? By the way, it's such a pity that Devious Dan has currently declared a feud on a rival noble after someone gave him slightly smaller dish of peanuts at the last banquet! Of course, their families have been at odds ever since the Cockatrice Conspiracy of 1488, and yes, of course I can tell you exactly what happened..."