Loreslop Writing
(www.youtube.com)
Comments (8)
sorted by:
Completely disagree. "Lore" in videogames is far, far better than "stories" in videogames. This medium is not conducive to good storytelling. The best stories in videogames are the ones you create through pure gameplay. Anyone who says or implies that Dark Souls doesn't have a "real story" because it's not full of gay cutscenes is an idiot.
I've been gaming for 40 years. I can safely say that one of the greatest mistake this industry ever made was trying to turn videogames into movies. And this is only exacerbated by the indisputable fact that 95% of "stories" are now leftist tripe. So even on those very rare occasions when a videogame does facilitate the delivery of a narrative via gameplay, the overwhelming majority of those stories will be gay.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. I think it'd be more accurate to say that the stories it's well suited to tell aren't necessarily the same ones that get told in other forms of media.
I think this is indicative of the underlying problem. A great many people in the medium don't actually understand how to make use of the medium. Compare the experience of Silent Hill 2 against the attempt to turn Silent Hill into a movie. It's such a textbook example of not understanding what makes the game work. Now take that misguided attempt to make a movie and stamp it back onto the medium of video games and you see the horror show that is most AAA games of the past 10+ years.
That said, I still believe that there are games that manage to tell a good story without relying on emergent gameplay/organic player built narratives. I'll not sit here and ignore the existence of games like Chrono Trigger or Planescape Torment just because I had a fun time in Planetside 2 taking a road trip on a bus with my friends instead of playing the game properly.
I can tell this person did not like Dark Souls at all ha.
Honestly I wish the story was less obtuse but it isn’t as nuts as Elden Ring when it comes to making the lore needlessly obtuse.
I have been banging this drum for awhile, good to see others are getting it.
Lore works in Dark Souls because it's unobtrusive, it's there if you want it.
The problem is when games mistake revealing lore for plot. Lore is not plot and if your story consists of dumping lore chunks every 20 minutes you do not have a plot. This is a much bigger problem in modern fantasy writing though where story does matter. I have edited so many manuscripts that are basically "Here's my world building and here's where it gets revealed to the reader bit by bit over the next seven novels..."
Even in Dark Souls 1, all the lore you need is in the opening cinematic. Everything else is fair game, but you don’t exactly need to know what happened to, say the Gaping Dragon to enjoy the game and its current-day story.
I believe you about the fantasy books, their writers are probably the worst about lore instead of plot.
Lore is such a weird thing. We've had so many youtubers who explore Lore as a full time job it's hard to not look.
On the other hand, I remember in about 2002-2005 Nintendo talked about story being a big thing. They meant the feel of the exploration and level design stuff like Metroidvanias are fun because of the story being told as you play, not just the text boxes. The same with Phantasy Stars and old RPGs. The problem was they meant more than just cut scenes. Even today we have 'game designers' who basically have interactive cut scenes at best. Walking simulators and text readers abound. Many want games to be just like movies, but you press a button every now and then.
Breath of the Wild felt like perfect exploration storytelling in my mind. Same with many GTAs. It's not rh story of the creator, it's the story fo what you watched and did.
Why’d this faggot choose Demon’s Souls? It’s probably got the clearest lore in the series.
I feel validated knowing I’m not the only one who finds ridiculous “deep” lore annoying.
Where's my federally mandated AI summary?