What separates generic boring lore from interesting lore?

[jdcp]

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack

"Players will forgive your game for having a story as long as you allow them to ignore it." - Vogel's 2nd Law of Video Game Storytelling

They are right, for the games they make though. Nobody expects lore to be that important when they grab their hands on Dark Souls, yet for many what made them revisit the game after turning off the console and checking youtube and forums was that and it's precisely that what let em enjoy the game even more, right? Remember this is the same game that only let's you know it's lore through the whole item info and NPC's dialogue tiddbits ********.

The thing with videogames is that they aren't like other media, they're software and they can do everything and nothing at all, and because they are sooo complex pieces of engineering they need a lot of things done right to be good, otherwise anyone with enough money could make a checklist and funnel tons of hits in one decade. You can't make a big hit like with movies here.

It'll depend on what approach the authors take on it, but in the case of lore it's the details and how much it lends itself (the quality of the game's design) to you learning of it are the most important for what I've seen. Many factors take on it too, many players just won't be interested in learning a very good lore of a game they found boring, yet other's will be eager to learn more about Minecraft's lore despite it being shallow as hell.

For Morrowing, the game's good, the world's good, it's all good. The lore and the gameplay go hand in hand and because the base was already set up from then on the next games did well, no only because they were fun but also because we had somewhere to look back to remember why we were having fun.

But I only played Arcanum last year.

Hope you enjoyed it.

The truth being that most games' stories are a wet fart and exist to move the action along. What makes memorable lore and memorable stories stand out from generic slop?

To put it clear, a good game.

[Rand]

All of it was completely sane and made sense, except to dudebros, contrarians, and *******.

Clearly, you have never read the books.
Pure mental illness, both from the writers and their characters.

[Norfleet]

There's three kinds of lore, really.

1. Generic Boilerplate: This the porn plot of video game lore. You didn't pay much attention to it, and the writers didn't expect you to pay attention to it. This is fine.

2. Pretentious Writefaggotry: Pages and pages and pages of writefaggotry, either in the game itself or in the extended materials. Little to none of it is relevant or actionable in any way. It will immediately fall out of your memory due to it being totally useless.

3. Actual worldbuilding lore: Material where knowledge of it actually sets expectations and understanding of how the world works and what is/should or isn't/shouldn't be possible in it. It sets the ground rules of the setting, like "FTL travel doesn't exist", "Artificial intelligence doesn't cope well with exposure to negative space", or "even magic cannot violate conservation of mass and energy", and it can usually accomplish this without 50 pages of pretentious writefaggotry, and these rules stick with you even if you don't really run into them in play, even after the game is done. In fact, you might already be able to name the game or story just from that one rule I listed.

[maidenhaver]

All of it was completely sane and made sense, except to dudebros, contrarians, and *******.

Clearly, you have never read the books.
Pure mental illness, both from the writers and their characters.

Its actually nothing like that, but you guys lie about Morrowind all the time.

[jdcp]

but you guys lie about Morrowind all the time.

Explain, what would someone lie about Morrowind?

It's a pretty neat game.

Besides I don't see anything that could be wrong about @Norfleet's conclusion, like with pretty much any story there's meh, good and bad. Granted, this is not necessarily why some storytelling fails, but it's a good way to see it.

What other conclusion could one come up with how lore is anyway?

[ThulsaDoomer]

Interesting lore is first and foremost predicated on historical respect, or in other words, sampling from the pool of our own history and mixing and mashing it up into something alien yet still innately familiar to our minds. Since Morrowind was mentioned, we can say that Morrowind has interesting lore because its world follows well documented historical attitudes and conflicts. We do not question the Empire's excessive taxes or resource pillering because we know this was an established fact of colonial empires. Neither do we question the tribal Ashlanders raiding religious pilgrims and trade caravans in fringe (ash) deserts or rugged terrain, as geurilla tactics has been the tactic of choice for thousands of years for any group incapable of mounting legitimate resistance. This is all believable, despite being in a world completely unbelievable.

Generic lore has no respect for history, nor does it have any interest in depicting worlds that offer believability. Everything exists for the benefit of the player, every codex explaining a historical detail is there to fill in a potential plot hole, it has no other connections and may never actually be referenced within the game. Demographics will be mixed in generic lore land, there is no attention called to the cultural or genetic homogeneity we see in the real world. An elf can simply be a human, they are interchangable economic units after all. It's incredibly easy to write a giant series of paragraphs explaining the nature of elves. It's entirely another thing to express a lot of this through simple dialogue line exchanges where you can bridge this gap and express the same exact sentiment without boring the audience. Dry lore sucks, it rarely has an actual reason to exist, and usually means the writers or developers simply don't care to make it more engaging.

I've always said this to people and I will continue saying it; You cannot write anything of depth if you hate or cannot comprehend reality and its struggles. If all we come to accept is a single narrative of human trajectory of thought and history, in most cases nowadays, liberalism, then we will see less and less interesting lore, for these writers cannot write the perspectives of peoples or faiths they believe to be beneath understanding and hold in great contempt. They say that one of the downfalls of a civilisation is predicated on the recycled nature of its stories, always looking back on the "better days" instead of pressing forward.

[TKVNC]

A good game, versus a bad game.

[MeatEatingStork]

As with everything, chemistry and flow are big. Neat background lore with no relevance whatsoever is just fanfiction. Lore that influences everything else tends to be interesting because it's relevant.

Lord of the Rings exhibits this really well with the main repeating story. Morgor blah blah blah, then Ismil blah blah blah, Superman blah blah blah. Except it's the same pattern echoing throughout the ages, so if you know the utter ruin Faenor's lust for the Silmarils brought upon his entire house, you know Boromir's genuine desire to wield Sauron's power in defense of Gondor is doomed to corruption and tragedy. It's all nerd ****, but it's very well connected nerd ****.

Dark Souls lore is likewise very relevant. Everything is ****** and you're trying to figure out why, so this helmet's flavor text is suddenly really interesting.

On the other hand, one crippling problem with preachy or generic lore is that it doesn't connect with anything. Okay, medieval humans are destroying the forests with pollution and a forest spirit is going to murder them all to stop it. What are the implications of this? There aren't any, because it's an unrelated thing fastened to the game world with a gluestick. Nothing flows into or out of it, none of the locals know or act according to how the world is supposed to work, nothing else about the world feels like it shapes or is shaped by vengeful tree demons. Apart from disdain for the specific nature or quality of the sermon, its isolated nature is grating and diminishes itself and everything it overwrites.

[DemoGraph]

What separates generic boring lore from interesting lore?

My opinion.

I think the answer is in the question - interesting lore should be of interest to the player.
It should have utility. You should fail at game without knowing the lore. (Maybe even without realizing it, like, e.g. Dark Souls 3 rekindling ending is nominally a good one.)
Bonus points if lore requires some action from the player to make useful. (DS lore is actually pretty mediocre, but is pulled up by Ikea effect.)
Bonus points for it actually being intelligent and/or emotive. (Aeris dies.)

[Norfleet]

Lord of the Rings exhibits this really well with the main repeating story. Morgor blah blah blah, then Ismil blah blah blah, Superman blah blah blah. Except it's the same pattern echoing throughout the ages, so if you know the utter ruin Faenor's lust for the Silmarils brought upon his entire house, you know Boromir's genuine desire to wield Sauron's power in defense of Gondor is doomed to corruption and tragedy. It's all nerd ****, but it's very well connected nerd ****.

Counterpoint: If Lord of the Rings were a GAME rather than a book, it would have been pretentious writefaggotry. None of it has anything to do with the task at hand in a LOTR *GAME*. Just thousands of pages of blather which does not in any way help me kill orcs. Lord of the Rings is fine because it is a book, and this is what books are for. But that is not what GAMES are. If someone had written Lord of the Rings for a game, he would have completely misunderstood what he was making and churned out a giant pile of writefaggotry. The same **** happens when you get people who think they're making a movie and not a game, and the game is buried in cutscenefaggotry. Creating a "good story" is not enough: It has to be a good story FOR A GAME. Otherwise I am not playing a game, I am playing a railroaded pile of cutscene and writefaggotry.

[jdcp]

It should have utility. You should fail at game without knowing the lore. (Maybe even without realizing it, like, e.g. Dark Souls 3 rekindling ending is nominally a good one.)

You know I kinda like this idea, make the player miss out some or most endgame content by not questioning the **** he's doing and acting on em. Force em to actually sit down and not miss a line of dialogue by necessity... yknow, make em care about the world. Must be hard to do.

It can be done soo well, and it can be done soo horribly bad too, but sounds really neat.

I sorta agree with DS lore being **** it has always seemed like uninspired boring crap to me even though I love the games, but what can I say? I made my point, it kept most of it's community if not all of the recurring players referencing back at it and hey memes don't make themselves, someone actually liked this ****.

And come on, when you joined one of those fancy clubs "covenants" you and everyone wanted to learn wtf was the story with those guys.

It's good lore, even if shallow and lackluster.

Counterpoint: If Lord of the Rings were a GAME rather than a book, it would have been pretentious writefaggotry. None of it has anything to do with the task at hand in a LOTR *GAME*. Just thousands of pages of blather which does not in any way help me kill orcs. Lord of the Rings is fine because it is a book, and this is what books are for. But that is not what GAMES are. If someone had written Lord of the Rings for a game, he would have completely misunderstood what he was making and churned out a giant pile of writefaggotry. The same **** happens when you get people who think they're making a movie and not a game, and the game is buried in cutscenefaggotry. Creating a "good story" is not enough: It has to be a good story FOR A GAME. Otherwise I am not playing a game, I am playing a railroaded pile of cutscene and writefaggotry.

I agree, that's one of the things I wanted to emphasize, games need special attention for this kind of stuff.

That said I think we are mistaking story and lore a bit over here, though you can make the point they go hand in hand and what you say does still apply.

[Rand]

Its actually nothing like that, but you guys lie about Morrowind all the time.

Okay, I'm now certain we aren't talking about the same thing, because that answer doesn't make any sense based on what I was talking about.
Clearly, I misunderstood what you were talking about.

[Rand]

Lord of the Rings exhibits this really well with the main repeating story. Morgor blah blah blah, then Ismil blah blah blah, Superman blah blah blah. Except it's the same pattern echoing throughout the ages, so if you know the utter ruin Faenor's lust for the Silmarils brought upon his entire house, you know Boromir's genuine desire to wield Sauron's power in defense of Gondor is doomed to corruption and tragedy. It's all nerd ****, but it's very well connected nerd ****.

Counterpoint: If Lord of the Rings were a GAME rather than a book, it would have been pretentious writefaggotry. None of it has anything to do with the task at hand in a LOTR *GAME*. Just thousands of pages of blather which does not in any way help me kill orcs. Lord of the Rings is fine because it is a book, and this is what books are for. But that is not what GAMES are. If someone had written Lord of the Rings for a game, he would have completely misunderstood what he was making and churned out a giant pile of writefaggotry. The same **** happens when you get people who think they're making a movie and not a game, and the game is buried in cutscenefaggotry. Creating a "good story" is not enough: It has to be a good story FOR A GAME. Otherwise I am not playing a game, I am playing a railroaded pile of cutscene and writefaggotry.

Correct.
There are lots of examples where the story is told mostly through the player's in-game encounters with the world and events.
Half Life and Half Life 2 tell a story. HL2 is expert in it with the addition of Alyx.
Thief and Thief 2 are the same. You had small scenes setting up and sometimes ending each mission, but they were short and to the point.
They said they would have preferred to do them in-game, but the tech was too difficult in the time they had.

But writefags want to pretend their game is a movie. It's like if you're reading a book and the author inserts a URL for a "Really cool video of the action in the next chapter. Go watch it and then continue reading."
You have to use the medium to tell stories the way the medium works, or what the **** are you doing.

[Rand]

Pillars is actually kind of **** worldbuilding, even aside from the shoehorned-in gay race commie aspects.
It doesn't make sense as a world.

One of a myriad of examples in the first game: why did Waidwen decide to attack Dyrwood? I've never heard any answer directly in the game, yet it is a critical historical event.
(If you go digging around, you find that it was a direct result of Thaos wanting to incarnate Woedica, which was basically an evil goddess the others were sick of and trying to prevent the harm it would cause if Thaos succeeded.)

[Tweed]

Thief and Thief 2 are the same. You had small scenes setting up and sometimes ending each mission, but they were short and to the point.

Thief is a masterclass in visual and environmental storytelling. LG didn't have to waste time dropping a bunch of exposition on the player because they knew that people back then weren't mouthbreathing ******* and they understood that there was just as much value in what you didn't tell people, which is something writers have completely forgotten.

[Rand]

Even the various From Software games, despite their demented worlds, do the right thing: they put the storytelling (mostly) in the gameplay for the player to experience.
NPCs mostly do what people do in real life: talk about things that interest and motivate them.

[aimlesshealer]

Seems the distinction boils down to this:

Lore done well is machine parts which connect to each other and other things, and they do something.

Lore done badly is a bunch of machine parts lying on the floor. Which just isn't that interesting unless you're autistic or want to build a machine yourself

[Tweed]

Seems the distinction boils down to this:

Lore done well is machine parts which connect to each other and other things, and they do something.

Lore done badly is a bunch of machine parts lying on the floor. Which just isn't that interesting unless you're autistic or want to build a machine yourself

There's one amusing thing about Morrowind's lore, it's literally pushed on the player and can literally be dropped on the floor without consequence.

[rusty_shackleford]

What separates generic boring lore from interesting lore?

Pick games with 'interesting lore' and do comparative analysis against games with 'generic boring lore'

[Norfleet]

There's one amusing thing about Morrowind's lore, it's literally pushed on the player and can literally be dropped on the floor without consequence.

Morrowind is filled with lore, but it stays out of your way unless you're actually feeling like you want to read all that, yes. In that regard, Morrowind lore is actually done rather poorly, but because it's shoved so far out of your way that you have to specifically be looking for it to encounter it, it manages not to offend and even be enjoyable because, well, you did ask. The problem is that it's so fundamentally non-substantive that it has basically no relevant impact or connection to what is happening in the game itself. Pure writefaggotry.

[rusty_shackleford]

Morrowind lore is just "dude… mushrooms…"

[Norfleet]

It should have utility. You should fail at game without knowing the lore.

Star Trek Bridge Commander actually kinda did that. If you fall into the mode where you react like the typical gamer and do gamer things, you get a big gamer battle and the bad ending. If you react like a proper Star Trek lore captain, you will get the good ending.

[DemoGraph]

Pure writefaggotry.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

[Rand]

Morrowind lore is just "dude… mushrooms…"

Which is funny, because Kirkbride was apparently a pretty big afficionado of the psychoactive ones at the time he was working on it.

[maidenhaver]

but you guys lie about Morrowind all the time.

Explain, what would someone lie about Morrowind?

It's a pretty neat game.

Besides I don't see anything that could be wrong about @Norfleet's conclusion, like with pretty much any story there's meh, good and bad. Granted, this is not necessarily why some storytelling fails, but it's a good way to see it.

What other conclusion could one come up with how lore is anyway?

I'm assuming everybody who hates Morrowind lore for weirdness is a semite. Its also the wrong game to blame, if you don't like pulp fantasy.

[Tangerine]

Lore is interesting because the thing the lore is describing is already interesting. The cool looking shield guarded by a dragon could be interesting. Militiaman Joe's wooden practice shield is not.

[Killagain665]

why did Waidwen decide to attack Dyrwood?

This is what ole google had to say about it.

► AI answer but from what I remember was pretty accurate

Waidwen’s invasion of Dyrwood during the Saint's War was officially framed as a war of liberation, but his true motivations were driven by a secret alliance with the god Eothas.

Disrupting Woedica’s Plot: The primary strategic goal was to reach and destroy Engwithan ruins in the Dyrwood, which were central to the schemes of the goddess Woedica and the villain Thaos. By destroying these ruins and machines, Eothas and Waidwen aimed to prevent Woedica from using them to harvest souls and reclaim her throne among the gods.
Exposing the Gods’ Nature: Eothas, frustrated by the other gods' secrecy and oppression, sought to reveal the truth that gods were artificially created by the Engwithans. Waidwen’s march was intended to expose this reality to the people of Eora, thereby breaking the gods' hold on mortal souls.
Political Instability: On a surface level, the conflict was triggered by religious persecution in Waidwen’s home colony of Readceras. Waidwen punished heresy and followers of other faiths, causing many to flee to the Dyrwood for sanctuary. The Dyrwoodan leadership feared that unchecked refugee flows and Waidwen’s growing power would eventually lead to their own subjugation, prompting them to strike first.
Ultimately, Eothas allowed Waidwen to be killed by the Godhammer bomb at Evon Dewr Bridge to demonstrate that the gods were not invincible, a sacrifice intended to free mortals from divine exploitation.

[Tweed]

PoE falls prey to the classic blunder of letting all the interesting **** happen long before the player ever shows up.