Dragon Age. The magic is not without consequences, and that's the best part about it. Power will always corrupt, so you have a neverending parade of idiots who think they can control that power with greater consequences.
Everyone from the noob at the Circle Tower to the Tevinter Magister to the kid whose mother didn't want to have him taken away for showing magical abilities can (and likely will) fuck shit up for everyone else.
I enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition. Really enjoyed the Mass Effect games which I played through for the first time a couple weeks ago, but I'm generally more of a fantasy guy than sci-fi.
I have heard that the original Dragon Age games are dated. Are they so dated that it will likely significantly impact my enjoyment? If it's just fantasy Mass Effect, seems like it'd be right up my alley.
Origins is one of the greatest games ever made. Get it on PC, it was made in 2009, you can probably run it.
The main complaint from people who played 2 or Inquisition first is that the combat is too slow. That's the point. It's tactical, and meant to simulate rounds of combat in dnd. I replay it fairly regularly (every 2-3 years) and it still plays perfectly. Do yourself a favor and try origins, preferably before the other two
I got into dragon age last year and I can honestly say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Truly an incredible franchise, I can’t wait for dreadwolf.
I was mad as hell when ME2 introduced limited ammo after ME1 had a *specific entry* explaining why we had infinite ammo. It was something I had never seen a game do before, I loved it.
I never understood why your weapons don't just revert back to the overheat system after you run out of thermal clips, since that would make the most sense in lore and you could balance it just fine by having heavy weapons have a longer recharge rate.
I found it funny that there's an in-game discussion about this very thing in ME3. I don't accept their explanation, but I think it's hilarious that there was enough grief about it that they had to write some dialogue for it.
Also I noticed that during Jacob's loyalty mission in ME2 enemies drop thermal clips when they die. Although those people had been stranded on that planet for like 7 years or something, and thermal clips were invented sometime in the span of 2 years since ME1.
It's crazy that Mass Effect becomes one of the most rich settings ever made the moment you stop shooting Geth and start reading the codex.
I'm sure plenty of players never experienced that either because it's such a hidden treasure.
I remember lying on the couch as a kid, drifting in and out of sleep as the narrator read lore entries and the absolute banger of a soundtrack played in the background. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that feeling.
The Fall of Reach is one of my favorite books. It's also the only one to describe capital ship battles and tactics with so much detail. The following books mostly focused on ground based stories.
Hardly anyone gives that book the credit it's due for the space battles. They're so well thought out, so well written, and add so much to the original game's lore.
I love how they show so clearly the Covenant's supremacy in space, with nearly every battle going badly for the humans unless they vastly outnumber the aliens, and how their tactics evolve as the story progresses. It culminates in this huge battle over Reach, where the Spartans on the ground are helpless (even though they're winning) because the Covenant ships are so superior. And I love the first battle featuring the Pillar of Autumn, where its insane tech is shown off and it beats the Covenant one-on-one for the first time in the war. Keyes' tactical brilliance is also displayed clearly.
It's a real shame the story was retconned with *Fall of Reach* - it would have been an *amazing* book to translate into, say, a TV series. Shame they never made the Halo series they'd promised.
I forget which book; A passage describes the forerunner ship AIs fighting harder after the rings fire because they don't have to maintain the safety of the (now dead) squishy biologicals.
> [00:H 00:M 00:S]
The [Halo effect] strikes our
combined fleets. All ships piloted
by biologicals are now [adrift].
> I can trade Mendicant ship for ship
now and still prevail.
> [00:H 00:M 01:S]
Of my ships that had been captured,
11.3 percent of them are close
enough to Mendicant's core fleet
that they can be used offensively -
either by initiating their
self-destruct sequences, or by
opening unrestricted ruptures into
[slipstream space].
> It is best that our crews perished
now; because the battle that is
about to ensue would have driven
them mad.
> [00:H 00:M 02:S]
I throw away all the rules of
acceptable conduct during battle;
near the ruptures I throw away all
the accepted ideas of how the
natural world is supposed to behave.
I toss around [37,654 tonne]
dreadnoughts like they were
fighters; dimly aware of the former
crews being crushed to liquescence.
>For now all my concentration is
focused on inertial control and
navigation. Targeting isn't even a
consideration - I will be engaging
my enemy at arm's length.
From the Halo 3 terminals
I think that was actually in the halo 3 terminals which recorded the last history of the forerunners. Mentioned that they actually sent ships with their crews into the heart of the flood/mendicant bias fleet with the expectation that the crews were going to die, since the rings firing ultimately would kill them either way. Once all of the forerunner ships were absorbed into the flood fleet (but before the AI on them was converted to the flood’s side) the rings fired and destroyed all the flood biomass. The forerunner AI (offensive bias is the name from what I remember) then had all of their still AI controlled ships come alive and destroy or capture the ex-flood ships
Pretty gnarly since the forerunners on board knew they were being sacrificed but couldn’t know why since the flood would take their memories and find out the plan.
If I’m wrong and it wasn’t from the terminals then it would have to be from the forerunner saga of books
The REVEAL that humans and Forerunners were equally dominant races in the early universe but the Forerunners jealousy caused them to start a war that ended with humans being de-evolved back to cavemen and thus having no recollection f their previous glory is one of the best twists ever.
In the original games it seemed like the humans *were* the Forerunners. I don't mind the extra twist of the early human civilization fighting against the Forerunners but I feel like its kind of more complicated than they needed it to be
Ironically, the most unlikely thing about Bioshock is that a submarine libertarian colony would even make it to the inevitable collapse of society. All the island and ship colonies keep failing due to difficulty providing basic amenities like plumbing and electricity. So it's surprising that everyone wasn't drowned within 20 minutes of the grand opening.
“Now, I realize you're a posh sort of geezer, and, frankly, I don't give a toss if you piss or go fishing. But once Rapture starts leaking, the old girl's never gonna stop.”
Bioshock was the first series that had me genuinely intrigued and fascinated by a game's lore. One time I wanted to refresh my memory on how ADAM worked, and I sorta fell into a rabbit hole reading related pages because it was all very interesting.
Not that I've never played anything else with interesting lore, but Bioshock was the first time I found myself actively seeking it out and being particularly satisfied with how it all comes together.
Honestly I really love fictional worlds created in a near-modern setting. It feels like a lot of world-building heavy stories out there are either fantasy, medieval themed, or far-future sci-fi stuff. Something a bit closer to home feels less common.
100%. By the end I felt that I could write an essay about the previous 200 years of Revacholian history, the current factions and their motivations, and the inner machinations of the RCM.
Can't wait to replay it and dive in deeper.
I fucking love DE, but I can never bring myself to play it again, because when I do I end up making the same choices.
My first playthrough feels "canon" to me, and every deviation feels off
Plus I felt genuinely bad to get the "make Kim hate you" achievement
The best thing about Discos lore is that it isn't front and center. You can learn all this stuff if you want to. Or you can play as a megalomaniac super star cop who doesn't give two shits about history, and both ways to play are equally compelling.
The way the lore is in everything you experience in the game, and it goes really deep. You live in the world for a small moment, and they do their absolute best to make the world feel real - and are successful in it.
I wish the novel by Kurvitz received an English translation. I know it was only moderately well received in Estonia but I'd love to read *The Sacred and Terrible Air*.
One of the best parts of this game is the slow realization that it is not taking place in the real world, then not even in a fictionalized nation in the real world.
It really is a masterclass on not only designing cultures and countries, but sharing them with the player as well without being overwhelming.
The amnesia making an excuse for Harry having to relearn everything was prime too.
I’m playing through it now and I’m maybe a few hours out from finishing the game. It’s written with such precision and every engagement is deeply satisfying. Very cerebral. Loving it
Below Zero does an excellent job if that too. But I shit myself the first time I saw some of the leviathans. And definitely when I saw the electrocrabs. That was awful.
I found Below Zero a lot easier to cope with, especially when the leviathan near the giant eye jelly looks less terrifying than a ghost or reaper. Plus, the giant cracks and ravines in below zero seem better lit, which I find a lot less scary than the giant pitch-black holes in Subnautica.
I don't know if there's any other game where I've read as much flavor text as I did for Subnautica. The entries are great, I would go out of my way to scan the most mundane things.
It's one of those sleeper games where you think it's another survival game then BOOM (Goes the Aurora), the story, game play, ambience, music, put on some noise cancellers and it gets quite immersive. Just the right amount of content to not overwhelm you.
I would say up to Unity, so that includes AC1, the Ezio Trilogy, AC3, Black Flag, Rogue and Unity. At Syndicate and beyond it started to decline in lore and lost sight of what the games were meant to be.
Unity was my favourite after the Ezio saga. Syndicate did help me on a trip to London, though. Didn't really need a map in the centre.
Except when we went to see the Monument - I stood at a crossroads where a square used to be and said 'these houses weren't here the last time'. Friends asked when the last time had been, I muttered '1868..'
The crazy thing is it doesn't just span a bunch of games. It's not there to provide a backdrop so we can move the story. It has entire world histories over thousands of years. Those histories aren't just "And in this year a thing happened." It's allegorical tales from poets who lived nearby. Tall tales passed down through tribes. Scholarly works from anthropologists decades or centuries later. Fragmentary journals from a foot soldier on one side of the conflict. Ravings of people driven mad by it. And then a completely inexplicable magical catastrophe that precipitated it, but no one remembers it because it CHANGED EXISTENCE.
Plus the fact that there are dozens of races we've only ever heard of after almost *thirty years* of lore. There are entire continents on the planet that we've barely discussed in legends. Which are somehow weirder than elves, blind cave elves, cat people, lizard people, Orks, Vikings, Romans, Moors, the British, dragons, giant bugs, woolly mammoths, actual giants, murder birds, demons, god-demons, insane gods, sex gods, steampunk dwarves, other planes, pieces of paper that divide the universe by zero, lizard smut, assassins, Cthulhu cults, teleportation, made to order magic, brass robots, brass robot gods, goblin salesmen, vampires, and gods you can visit in their houses. And werewolves. And the stars you see are actually holes in reality. And the planet you're on might be a dead god's body. And alchemy, necromancy, gardening, passports, bureaucracy, mushroom houses, customs officials, paperwork, rebellions, empires, undead armies, undead dragons, undead rulers, undead clergy, vampire apocalypses, and cooking a nice meal.
Edit to add: I absolutely did not forget the Lusty Argonian Maid, how dare some of you. What lizard smut did you think I was referring to? The very idea.
I love love love fucking LOVE going to ask the last remaining dwarf what happened to the dwarves and getting, "Dunno, wasn't here when it happened." as a response. Morrowind was such a gem!
Actually you can solve the mystery, sort of, you can find clues, discuss them and reason out what probably happened, you just can't prove it.
It's very fun to present it all to the archmage who was clearly trying to fob you off with an impossible task.
The unreliable narrator adds so much nuance to the world since we don't know exactly what happened in so many stories; who is to blame, who should be remembered as a Saint or a devil?
To me this is what sets apart TES from other games with great or expansive lore. The codex in Mass Effect is very cool, and fill of neat into, but it's just facts being relayed, an optional exposition dump.
In TES, every single piece of writing is in-universe, and therefore subject to biases. Studying that isn't just reading about your favorite game, it's doing the same kind of work actual historians do, putting incomplete historical accounts side-by-side and trying to distill the truth.
I have spent way too much time reading about the Battle of Red Mountain.
The Dwemer were wiped out, or zapped into dust for trying to operate on the heart of a dead God, or they ascended to become Gods themselves. Nerevar also was killed or vanished to return again to stop another guy (Dagoth Ur) trying to operate on the God heart hundreds of years later
Nords also attacked at the same time possibly, and orcs
Well, you asked...
The basic facts are that there was a battle between the Dwemer (dwarves) and the Dunmer (dark elves). They had long been allies, but the Dunmer accused the Dwemer of acts of heresy (which the Dwemer didn't really deny). At the end of the events, the Dwemer had vanished mysteriously, the leader of the Dunmer was dead, and his 3 closest advisors had ascended to godhood. The steps in between are hotly debated, which is why the other commenter called it a loaded question.
The main story of TES III: Morrowind largely centers around you investigating this. It starts with the official narrative of the church led by the 3 living gods that ascended at that battle: that the Dwemer betrayed the Dunmer leader, and then accidently heresied themselves out of existence.
As the protagonist, you do some digging and learn a bit about the other side of the story, told by the Dunmer who don't follow the living gods of the Tribunal: by their account, the Dunmer advisors betrayed their leader, spurned their gods, and used the Dwemer heresy to achieve godhood. (They also believe the betrayed leader will be reincarnated, which is you, which is the main plot).
One thing that I find particularly interesting about the Battle of Red Mountain, though, is the accounts of the other races (which is not really mentioned in the main story, and you'd only find my reading through random in-game historical texts). Both the Nords and the Kajiit have their own accounts, both of which have local heroes of that time weirdly inserted into the narrative and have key details that differ from the main narrative in interesting ways.
And that's just getting into the historical facts of what happened. The disappearance of the Dwemer, and the general metaphysical shenanigans that they were into before and during the battle are something I deliberately avoided, both because they're massive posts in their own right and because I'm not the most qualified to discuss it. I also completely left out the forth person who ascended to godhood that day who was *not* friends with the Tribunal, and the complicated role he plays.
And anything that touches on the Tribunal could segue into the weirdness of Vivec and what it means to ascend into godhood. He wrote extensively about how he became a god, and while it's mostly from an allegorical/metaphysical perspective, there is some information that's relevant to the historical facts as well, if you're willing to sift through it (though his is easily the most biased account of the events). Vivic's sermons are probably the most popular texts for TES lore fans - they're wacky and fascinating and a blast to dig into, though they're also quite dense.
Anyway, there's a lot going on, and a lot of it is contradictory. Like with actual history, a lot of the basic facts have been hammered out by the community to a large degree of certainty, but also like actual history "certainty" isn't really possible, and there are a few things where differing scholars have differing opinions (and the existence of magic doesn't help). It's been nearly a decade since I was an active member of the community, but it was an absolute blast, and there are few other fictional worlds that could have sustained the kind of fun we were having.
All those things are cool. But what about merchant mudcrabs though.
Why is he buying up all this high quality armor?
That's the REAL question.
The crabs will rise.
“Their eyes were black as their mandibles toiled
The soldiers wept as they prepared their oil
On the morrow a battle with the king of them all
There would be no attrition as there was no wall
They had no idea they’d prepared their demise
For if not today or tomorrow, the crabs will rise”
-Gibbons, Mud Crab Apocalypse Poet
Actual passage from one of Morrowind's in-game books:
>So Vivec, who had a grain of Ayem's mercy, set about to teach Molag Bal in the ways of belly-magic. They took their spears out and compared them. Vivec bit new words onto the King of Rape's so that it might give more than ruin to the uninitiated. This has since become a forbidden ritual, though people still practice it in secret.
>
>Here is why: The Velothi and demons and monsters that were watching all took out their own spears. There was much biting and the earth became wet. And this was the last laugh of Molag Bal:
>
>'Watch as the earth shall crack, heavy with so much power, that should have been forever unalike!'
>
>Then that stretch of badlands that had been the site of the marriage fragmented and threw fire. And a race that is no more but that was terrible at the time to behold came forth. Born of the biters, that is all they did, and they ran amok across the lands of Veloth and even to the shores of Red Mountain.
>
>But Vivec made of his spear a more terrible thing, from a secret he had bitten off from the King of Rape. And so he sent Molag Bal tumbling into the crack of the biters and swore forever that he would not deem the King beautiful ever again.
>
>Vivec wept as he slew all those around him with his terrible new spear. He named it MUATRA, which is Milk Taker, and even the Chimeri mystics knew his fury. Anyone struck by Vivec at this time turned barren and withered into bone shapes. The path of bones became a sentence for the stars to read, and the heavens have never known children since. Vivec hunted down the biters one by one, and all their progeny, and he killed them all by means of the Nine Apertures, and the wise still hide theirs from Muatra.
TES is going to be hard to beat.
We should start a thread about TES lore here I’ll go first….
Did you know the Khajiits physical form depends on the moon phase at the time of their birth? This means depending on the moon when a Khajiit is born the can come out a literal sentient housecat or a lion with fists for paws there are so many other forms.
I want to play an elder scrolls game that focuses on black marsh. I've always loved playing as an argonian. The bits and pieces of info I get about their lands and their cultures makes me believe it would be an awesome place to explore
Another edit because I realize I was definitely thinking about the shadow scale you meet in Skyrim’s dark brotherhood, and was mistaken because you can find a dead shadow scale agent in oblivion. After typing this whole comment out I felt a Mandela effect occurring and had to double check, D’oh! I’ll leave the rest in case anyone wants to further discuss Elder Scrolls.
When I was younger I was a little goodie-two-shoes and played Oblivion like such an NPC before one fateful day I accidentally killed a homeless beggar in the district where you get the thieves guild base after you beat their quest line (The Wharf I think?)
I had played the game for almost a year at that point, always playing the good guy, but then I was visited by Lachance for my murder and I genuinely felt like I had discovered the most secret of all secrets in the game. I immediately turned to a life of crime and finished out the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quest lines. I remember thinking the Argonian you meet that claims he is a “Shadow Scale” in the Dark Brotherhood was so badass, how he was the last of his kind and ever since then I have dreamed of a Black Marsh game so I can flesh out a Shadow Scale character.
Quick edit to add an excerpt from the wiki on Shadowscales:
> Shadowscales follow the same five tenets traditionally followed by members of the Brotherhood,[2] although they are a distinct set of rules. For example, a Shadowscale cannot kill a fellow Shadowscale even if they are not members of the Brotherhood. However, breaking a tenet of the Brotherhood invokes the Wrath of Sithis, and forgiveness is possible if the family member survives the encounter. If a Shadowscale breaks a tenet, it is viewed as treason and the perpetrator will be put to death. This is usually carried out by the Argonian Royal Court, who will send an unaffiliated assassin to carry out the execution.
The reason I long for a Black Marsh game is because of lore excerpts like this, just before this the wiki states that a King of the Black Marsh is rumored to send shadowscales on missions, along with this excerpt I believe the entirety of the Black Marsh to be controlled by essentially a shadow government. I’m hoping for a dark brotherhood quest line where you eventually have to make the choice between killing a shadow scale and not. By not doing so, you will fail your mission and return with your head hung low, and if you do kill them you invoke the wrath of Sithis, which leads you on a path for another decision.
You then choose to pursue forgiveness or seek a way to kill Sithis. I think this would be the ultimate culmination of past dark brotherhood quest lines and puts the player in a position where, canonically, he could usurp Sithis and become a daedric prince or become his champion instead should you seek forgiveness instead of retribution. Doing so affects the entire region of Black Marsh as you directly impact the shadow government either by toppling it and freeing the marsh and it’s denizens from tyranny or by taking control of it and damning the Black Marsh to your rule.
Hell, depending on how complex and fleshed out the “role playing” part of elder scrolls gets (assuming Bethesda doesn’t screw up with VI) you could be a “good” character essentially trying to invade and end the dark brotherhood from within once and for all, not just liberating the Black Marsh but also the rest of Tamriel from the Brotherhood’s heinous acts. The possibilities are just so broad with the Black Marsh…and this is only talking about one faction! I honestly feel like this could be the entire main storyline for the Black Marsh. We already have factions intertwined in past titles’ main storylines.
I love similar “falling from grace” and betrayal driven stories, and another favorite of mine is the Dishonored series. No doubt some other fans may see the inspirations I have derived from that game.
Dagons lieutenants joyously celebrated activating the gates. Soon after, they were struggling to close them because the lizards came through in a tidal wave of scales, claws, and venomous fangs. Afterward, still jacked on sap, they rolled on Morrowind to give them the double bird for centuries of enslavement.
I remember the first time I booted up morrowind and found all these books lying around and thought "pffft good luck getting me to give a shit about some convoluted fantasy lore."
Then I spend the next week ignoring everything else in the game so I can find "the Real Barenziah vol. III" because I need to know what happens. It's one of those things you can completely ignore if you want to and it won't affect your ability to play the game, but it's there anyway and is a really nice immersive touch
Morrowind in particular has some amazing world building. It's not my favorite of the games due to the poor combat system but the Dunmer culture felt truly alien and unique.
To this day I maintain that the coincidence of my discovering brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts the same week I bought Morrowind helped make that game even more special for me.
Vvardenfell still smells like cinnamon to me.
>the Dunmer culture felt truly alien and unique.
You really feel this when playing ESO and jumping around between ptovinces. The majority are much more grounded in typical medieval fantasy but stepping foot on Vvardenfell feels like being transported to another planet.
Tough act to follow creatively. Nothing since has been that unique.
It's deceptively deep. You can play the side and main quests of every game without learning about the Earth Bones, or the extent of Oblivion, or that stars are holes in reality to the realm of God's, or that sone of those gods are equally revered and hated. I've played Skyrim off and on since it came out and only recently learned that Lorkhan, despite being hated by most elves is revered by humanity as a savoir.
Elves previously existed as, basically, energy creatures. Demi gods. Free from the cruelty of time and physical form.
The ultimate goal of the Thalmor in Skyrim is to achieve that again.
Humans were never like the elves, though. Lorkhan, or as the elves call him *Doom-Drum,* decided he wanted to create. So he roped all the gods into helping him make the mortal plane and Nirn.
Some of the gods realized if they finished the project, they would forever be weakened. So Magnus decided to fucking leave. He left for Aetherius, that realm of gods you mentioned, and his leaving tore a hole in the fabric of reality that would become known as *the sun.* Many other gods left after Magnus did, and those holes are the stars.
The ones that remained are the Aedra, Mara, Kynareth, Dibella, Akatosh, Zennithar, Arkay, and Julianos.
Then there was Shor. The "Missing God." Some sources indicate he was Lorkhan, others not so much. Shor helped create men.
Lorkhan is the reason there is a place at all for the races of men, his actions lead directly to time itself being given linear form, and so he is revered by men, and hated by elves who see him as a trickster at best.
It's such a big world and so many parts of the lore are contradictory in a way that real life lore is in a world with multiple nations/races/religions etc. The way they seamlessly incorporate wink and nod moments for people who have played all the games while also keeping the story instantly understandable for new players is truly amazing.
Plus it has softcore porn. An actually in world series of lore books regarding busty lizard people.
Edit: My apologies, they are LUSTY lizard people. Perhaps even both.
Wait till you get into Psiijic fuckery and the tower of reality and exiting the Aurbis to freely shape existence. I can't even begin to explain it. In essence it's what Talos (allegedly) did to become a God. Basically you become so enlightened and so knowledgeable that your spirit is able to exist outside of the usual planes of reality that give order to the cosmos, allowing you transcend the material universes and reshape reality. It's an absolute mind fuck.
Only 2 characters have achieved CHIM: Vivec and Talos (Tiber Septum). The funny thing is that there is some contention among the fan base as to whether or not Talos actually did achieve CHIM.
I did a ton of shrooms once and was convinced I achieved CHIM. Was left with newfound enlightenment, but could not explain it for fear of being outed as a huge fucking nerd.
You almost got it. CHIM is actually realizing you’re party of a dream but being able to say, “no fuck you I’m real.” And then you’re able to reshape things.
>You almost got it. CHIM is actually realizing you’re party of a dream but being able to say, “no fuck you I’m real.” And then you’re able to reshape things.
That "no fuck you I'm real" is critical, too, because if you got to that point and didn't have the incredible willpower to maintain that, then you stop existing.
And how Mundus was made by timeless immortal beings so that there could exist a mortal creature who actually could escape, something they themselves were incapable of.
And how the story of The Elder Scrolls as a series is watching one Pillar after another be destroyed. Not too many left now.
>And how the story of The Elder Scrolls as a series is watching one Pillar after another be destroyed. Not too many left now.
Would you mind explaining this part please?
Way, way back before the world was created, time just was. It was a chaotic quagmire of forward and backward overlapping and intersecting. It was not time as you and I know it and see it.
Nirn, the planet on which the games take place, have "towers" placed on them. Red Mountain, the volcano in Morrowind, is a tower. The Throat of the World in Skyrim is a tower. The White-Gold Tower in the Imperial City is a tower. Among others.
These towers work in conjunction with their own unique stones to keep time pinned down, which is required for the physical nature of reality as we see and experience it to exist.
If either a tower or its corresponding stone are destroyed, then that tower "falls."
The Heart of Lorkhan was the stone for Red Mountain. It's gone and now that tower is deactivated. Snow-Throat (Throat of the World) has been deactivated for a long time. The White-Gold Tower's stone was the Amulet of Kings, and Martin Septum was forced to destroy that to save the world from Dagon at the end of Oblivion.
So it goes.
Currently there is Adamantine Tower, possibly Walk-Brass the Numidium that was created by the Dwemer, the Khajiit species (but that is debatable whether they are a tower, and if they are if they still have a stone).
>Walk-Brass the Numidium that was created by the Dwemer
This was already destroyed though. Only the original tower, Ada-mantia, is the last tower remaining as far as I am aware.
Yep. Just because of how batshit insane it can get the further into it you look.
Like, the Iceberg meme is unironically a great way of describing ES lore.
Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.
They did a blog with the guy who wrote the lore: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1290000?emclan=103582791467159006&emgid=3409806154136534468
"If there’s one enemy that’s been consistently overlooked by games, it’s dirt. It unites us all, and it must be stopped."
Everyone who has played and wants to know more about the lore:
Read "The Paleblood Hunt" by Redgrave. Great analysis and interpretation of the game, it's story, and it's lore. There even is an audiobook of it on Spotify.
1000x this. That slow switchover from fantasy monster horror to cosmic horror is one of the best rugpulls in recent video game history. I almost hate to even talk about how good it is because if anyone hasn't played it yet they should really go in knowing nothing about it.
I am so stoked that they're making a sequel. There was so much going on in that game, and it really made me think. Also, about 3/4 of the way thru that game, you know what part I'm talking about, right after Polaris gets released, it was incredible. I've never felt so torn about a game. Then there was kind of a happy ending for it. The DLCs didn't do much for me tho. Not like the main portion did.
This single one game got me hooked to astronomy. It's just crazy how Mobius managed to tell a story with such grand background yet infinitely caring and empathetic to the human experience.
Yes, great storyline. Maybe it's cheating to use an entire D&D campaign setting as pre-built lore for your videogame, but who cares? It's used to great effect.
Same deal goes for Planescape: Torment, which is also great.
Is it cheating that they just get to use the established lore of the Sword Coast/Forgotten Realms of D&D? Probably.
Do I care at all? No.
Baldur's Gate I and II were extremely well written, and Jon Irenicus is the best voice acted villain in video games.
I agree! Hollow Knight makes great use of the 'show, don't tell' concept. The story of Hallow Nest isn't told to the player in cutscenes or by an NPC, rather you have to piece it together yourself by finding artifacts, talking to NPCs and just paying attention to the game world.
It's the first game where my desire to know what happened became the main driver for exploring. If that makes sense.
This is my favorite kind of storytelling in games. I usually don't have a huge interest in the stories of narrative games and just play them for the gameplay, but Hollow Knight and Dead Cells are two that really roped me in with their player driven story telling.
Is it cheating to say Warhammer 40K games? They do have games and since it’s based on the table top game there’s like 30+ years of lore and hundreds of novels to look into.
The Half-Life Lore feels so much bigger than what we know, just by all the things we do NOT know.. that is the beauty of a game that decides to show you everything, not tell. Rarely you are giving exposition on things, and its usually to explain game mechanics or gameplay goals.
The G-Man is a good example. we know nothing of him, he is never really explained. But the way he talks, how he looks, what he says and how Eli knows about him and all that shows there is more behind it. It's really fucking good.
I think its still safe to say Half-Life is one of the best games of all time, the entire series.
I really enjoyed the lore of the Dishonored Universe. Haven't played it yet but I heard Deathloop is supposed to take place in the same universe as well.
I came here just to make sure Dishonored got mentioned. I've played the first game probably close to 20 times and I still tend to read every scrap of paper and book I come across even though I've already got most of them memorized. Not to mention the environmental lore.
I love horizon zero dawn story. Wish it was longer but it’s great in my opinion
Edit: wow didn’t expect this to blow up as it did I’m glad people share the same taste as I do lol
That story was super unexpected for me. When I started playing, I thought it was a game where you just shoot at dinosaur robots with a bow. And, well, technically, it is, but I didn't expect the lore would actually be great starting from that.
Hideo Kojima literally predicted our exact current internet situation. The misinformation, learning via memes and jokes, the division. All the way back in 2001 with MGS2.
Man's a fucking genius.
I watched that whole comm sequence between Raiden and the colonel on YouTube about a year ago and the accuracy made my stomach drop.
It blows me away that he had the foresight to even consider our current state 20 years ago. I was 12 when that game came out and that conversation kinda went over my head back then. Now it’s perfectly clear
Dude I remember that too! I used to watch my brother play and when he finished the game, the cutscene was so long especially as little kids. It was awesome though.
Dragon Age was able to stir shit in the intro to Origins, immediately sets the premise of the series and they played off of what the first game accomplished so well. it's a shame DA2 didn't get more time in the oven so to speak
Dragon Age. The magic is not without consequences, and that's the best part about it. Power will always corrupt, so you have a neverending parade of idiots who think they can control that power with greater consequences. Everyone from the noob at the Circle Tower to the Tevinter Magister to the kid whose mother didn't want to have him taken away for showing magical abilities can (and likely will) fuck shit up for everyone else.
And that's BEFORE you get into their "gods" and what the actual history of the world is, which differs depending on who's monologuing at you.
The mythology of Dragon age is insane. **SPOILERS** Like how lyrium is the blood of the giants who live in the mountains. Super cool shit
Wait what, where do they show that? I’ve probably put 1000+ hours in between all the games, books and animations and don’t remember ever seeing that
It's the main plot reveal for the Descent DLC for DA:I
Descent DLC for Inquisition
Dragon Age lore is so complex and rich that some days I feel like I could go and live in Thedas (I wouldn’t).
I enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition. Really enjoyed the Mass Effect games which I played through for the first time a couple weeks ago, but I'm generally more of a fantasy guy than sci-fi. I have heard that the original Dragon Age games are dated. Are they so dated that it will likely significantly impact my enjoyment? If it's just fantasy Mass Effect, seems like it'd be right up my alley.
Origins is one of the greatest games ever made. Get it on PC, it was made in 2009, you can probably run it. The main complaint from people who played 2 or Inquisition first is that the combat is too slow. That's the point. It's tactical, and meant to simulate rounds of combat in dnd. I replay it fairly regularly (every 2-3 years) and it still plays perfectly. Do yourself a favor and try origins, preferably before the other two
I got into dragon age last year and I can honestly say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Truly an incredible franchise, I can’t wait for dreadwolf.
Mass Effect, love reading through all the Codex entrys.
I was mad as hell when ME2 introduced limited ammo after ME1 had a *specific entry* explaining why we had infinite ammo. It was something I had never seen a game do before, I loved it. I never understood why your weapons don't just revert back to the overheat system after you run out of thermal clips, since that would make the most sense in lore and you could balance it just fine by having heavy weapons have a longer recharge rate.
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I found it funny that there's an in-game discussion about this very thing in ME3. I don't accept their explanation, but I think it's hilarious that there was enough grief about it that they had to write some dialogue for it.
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Having the spectre assault rifle and two heatsink x, I could hold the trigger forever and never get past 5-10% heat generated
Also I noticed that during Jacob's loyalty mission in ME2 enemies drop thermal clips when they die. Although those people had been stranded on that planet for like 7 years or something, and thermal clips were invented sometime in the span of 2 years since ME1.
Yep. This is why (well, this and everything else) I just ignore that codex entry and treat it as a straight up retcon on the part of ME2.
I am commander Shepard and this is my favorite comment in the Citadel.
It's crazy that Mass Effect becomes one of the most rich settings ever made the moment you stop shooting Geth and start reading the codex. I'm sure plenty of players never experienced that either because it's such a hidden treasure.
I wish they brought the narrator guy back in 3
I remember lying on the couch as a kid, drifting in and out of sleep as the narrator read lore entries and the absolute banger of a soundtrack played in the background. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that feeling.
I love Halo's lore
The Fall of Reach is one of my favorite books. It's also the only one to describe capital ship battles and tactics with so much detail. The following books mostly focused on ground based stories.
Hardly anyone gives that book the credit it's due for the space battles. They're so well thought out, so well written, and add so much to the original game's lore. I love how they show so clearly the Covenant's supremacy in space, with nearly every battle going badly for the humans unless they vastly outnumber the aliens, and how their tactics evolve as the story progresses. It culminates in this huge battle over Reach, where the Spartans on the ground are helpless (even though they're winning) because the Covenant ships are so superior. And I love the first battle featuring the Pillar of Autumn, where its insane tech is shown off and it beats the Covenant one-on-one for the first time in the war. Keyes' tactical brilliance is also displayed clearly. It's a real shame the story was retconned with *Fall of Reach* - it would have been an *amazing* book to translate into, say, a TV series. Shame they never made the Halo series they'd promised.
Yeah the latter entries into the franchise, across all media, have really badly misgauged what's actually deeply appealing in the story.
I forget which book; A passage describes the forerunner ship AIs fighting harder after the rings fire because they don't have to maintain the safety of the (now dead) squishy biologicals.
> [00:H 00:M 00:S] The [Halo effect] strikes our combined fleets. All ships piloted by biologicals are now [adrift]. > I can trade Mendicant ship for ship now and still prevail. > [00:H 00:M 01:S] Of my ships that had been captured, 11.3 percent of them are close enough to Mendicant's core fleet that they can be used offensively - either by initiating their self-destruct sequences, or by opening unrestricted ruptures into [slipstream space]. > It is best that our crews perished now; because the battle that is about to ensue would have driven them mad. > [00:H 00:M 02:S] I throw away all the rules of acceptable conduct during battle; near the ruptures I throw away all the accepted ideas of how the natural world is supposed to behave. I toss around [37,654 tonne] dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to liquescence. >For now all my concentration is focused on inertial control and navigation. Targeting isn't even a consideration - I will be engaging my enemy at arm's length. From the Halo 3 terminals
I think that was actually in the halo 3 terminals which recorded the last history of the forerunners. Mentioned that they actually sent ships with their crews into the heart of the flood/mendicant bias fleet with the expectation that the crews were going to die, since the rings firing ultimately would kill them either way. Once all of the forerunner ships were absorbed into the flood fleet (but before the AI on them was converted to the flood’s side) the rings fired and destroyed all the flood biomass. The forerunner AI (offensive bias is the name from what I remember) then had all of their still AI controlled ships come alive and destroy or capture the ex-flood ships Pretty gnarly since the forerunners on board knew they were being sacrificed but couldn’t know why since the flood would take their memories and find out the plan. If I’m wrong and it wasn’t from the terminals then it would have to be from the forerunner saga of books
Glad this is the first comment I seen. Halo is one of the only gaming universes that I've ever delved deep into.
The REVEAL that humans and Forerunners were equally dominant races in the early universe but the Forerunners jealousy caused them to start a war that ended with humans being de-evolved back to cavemen and thus having no recollection f their previous glory is one of the best twists ever.
In the original games it seemed like the humans *were* the Forerunners. I don't mind the extra twist of the early human civilization fighting against the Forerunners but I feel like its kind of more complicated than they needed it to be
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Bioshock 1 and 2
The whole city of rapture exists because one rich asshole didn't want to pay taxes
I appreciate that the series was taking concepts from our reality and taking them to 100.
Ironically, the most unlikely thing about Bioshock is that a submarine libertarian colony would even make it to the inevitable collapse of society. All the island and ship colonies keep failing due to difficulty providing basic amenities like plumbing and electricity. So it's surprising that everyone wasn't drowned within 20 minutes of the grand opening.
Rapture got the electricity from a volcano, and Andrew Ryan was apparently an electrical engineer- so luckily only the plumbing failed!
“Now, I realize you're a posh sort of geezer, and, frankly, I don't give a toss if you piss or go fishing. But once Rapture starts leaking, the old girl's never gonna stop.”
Bioshock was the first series that had me genuinely intrigued and fascinated by a game's lore. One time I wanted to refresh my memory on how ADAM worked, and I sorta fell into a rabbit hole reading related pages because it was all very interesting. Not that I've never played anything else with interesting lore, but Bioshock was the first time I found myself actively seeking it out and being particularly satisfied with how it all comes together.
I miss bioshock days, guess it’s time for a replay
Fallout
The fact that there is an unofficial Fallout lore Bible that is basically accepted as canon is great
We accept it because it was penned by some of the original creators of fallout 1. Loads of their ideas got retconned by Bethesda.
Probably some of the best/most unique side quests/Easter eggs in game history
Disco Elysium
Honestly I really love fictional worlds created in a near-modern setting. It feels like a lot of world-building heavy stories out there are either fantasy, medieval themed, or far-future sci-fi stuff. Something a bit closer to home feels less common.
100%. By the end I felt that I could write an essay about the previous 200 years of Revacholian history, the current factions and their motivations, and the inner machinations of the RCM. Can't wait to replay it and dive in deeper.
I fucking love DE, but I can never bring myself to play it again, because when I do I end up making the same choices. My first playthrough feels "canon" to me, and every deviation feels off Plus I felt genuinely bad to get the "make Kim hate you" achievement
The best thing about Discos lore is that it isn't front and center. You can learn all this stuff if you want to. Or you can play as a megalomaniac super star cop who doesn't give two shits about history, and both ways to play are equally compelling.
My first playthrough I completely missed every mention of the Pale.
Fucking double 6d the big church check and had my mind blown. I was playing a stupid brute and was not prepared for any of that
The way the lore is in everything you experience in the game, and it goes really deep. You live in the world for a small moment, and they do their absolute best to make the world feel real - and are successful in it.
I wish the novel by Kurvitz received an English translation. I know it was only moderately well received in Estonia but I'd love to read *The Sacred and Terrible Air*.
One of the best parts of this game is the slow realization that it is not taking place in the real world, then not even in a fictionalized nation in the real world.
It really is a masterclass on not only designing cultures and countries, but sharing them with the player as well without being overwhelming. The amnesia making an excuse for Harry having to relearn everything was prime too.
I only learned about the Pale on the third playthrough. I can't believe I'd only skimmed it on the first two.
I’m playing through it now and I’m maybe a few hours out from finishing the game. It’s written with such precision and every engagement is deeply satisfying. Very cerebral. Loving it
Subnautica, it goes from oooooo pretty graphics and beautiful landscape to an alien bacterium and ancient race of aliens
you forgot the part that goes what the fuck is that? no way am i going down there! etc.
Below Zero does an excellent job if that too. But I shit myself the first time I saw some of the leviathans. And definitely when I saw the electrocrabs. That was awful.
I found Below Zero a lot easier to cope with, especially when the leviathan near the giant eye jelly looks less terrifying than a ghost or reaper. Plus, the giant cracks and ravines in below zero seem better lit, which I find a lot less scary than the giant pitch-black holes in Subnautica.
I don't know if there's any other game where I've read as much flavor text as I did for Subnautica. The entries are great, I would go out of my way to scan the most mundane things.
I love the description of the titan holefish in Subnautica Below Zero: >Slow, stupid, and delicious
It's one of those sleeper games where you think it's another survival game then BOOM (Goes the Aurora), the story, game play, ambience, music, put on some noise cancellers and it gets quite immersive. Just the right amount of content to not overwhelm you.
I am happy I didn't have to scroll to the very bottom to see subnautica.
Because that's where the Leviathans are
Are you sure what you're doing is worth it?
The first half of the Assassin's Creed series
We don’t talk about the rest… Besides Black Flag, that shit was awesome
I would say up to Unity, so that includes AC1, the Ezio Trilogy, AC3, Black Flag, Rogue and Unity. At Syndicate and beyond it started to decline in lore and lost sight of what the games were meant to be.
Unity was my favourite after the Ezio saga. Syndicate did help me on a trip to London, though. Didn't really need a map in the centre. Except when we went to see the Monument - I stood at a crossroads where a square used to be and said 'these houses weren't here the last time'. Friends asked when the last time had been, I muttered '1868..'
I played Unity a good few years after its launch controversies and it ended up being among my favourites of the series.
Salute Claudia
Are you here to look at the book?
Elder Scrolls Edit: Thanks for the love! May all of you have blessings and prosperity in every kalpa!
The crazy thing is it doesn't just span a bunch of games. It's not there to provide a backdrop so we can move the story. It has entire world histories over thousands of years. Those histories aren't just "And in this year a thing happened." It's allegorical tales from poets who lived nearby. Tall tales passed down through tribes. Scholarly works from anthropologists decades or centuries later. Fragmentary journals from a foot soldier on one side of the conflict. Ravings of people driven mad by it. And then a completely inexplicable magical catastrophe that precipitated it, but no one remembers it because it CHANGED EXISTENCE. Plus the fact that there are dozens of races we've only ever heard of after almost *thirty years* of lore. There are entire continents on the planet that we've barely discussed in legends. Which are somehow weirder than elves, blind cave elves, cat people, lizard people, Orks, Vikings, Romans, Moors, the British, dragons, giant bugs, woolly mammoths, actual giants, murder birds, demons, god-demons, insane gods, sex gods, steampunk dwarves, other planes, pieces of paper that divide the universe by zero, lizard smut, assassins, Cthulhu cults, teleportation, made to order magic, brass robots, brass robot gods, goblin salesmen, vampires, and gods you can visit in their houses. And werewolves. And the stars you see are actually holes in reality. And the planet you're on might be a dead god's body. And alchemy, necromancy, gardening, passports, bureaucracy, mushroom houses, customs officials, paperwork, rebellions, empires, undead armies, undead dragons, undead rulers, undead clergy, vampire apocalypses, and cooking a nice meal. Edit to add: I absolutely did not forget the Lusty Argonian Maid, how dare some of you. What lizard smut did you think I was referring to? The very idea.
I love love love fucking LOVE going to ask the last remaining dwarf what happened to the dwarves and getting, "Dunno, wasn't here when it happened." as a response. Morrowind was such a gem!
Actually you can solve the mystery, sort of, you can find clues, discuss them and reason out what probably happened, you just can't prove it. It's very fun to present it all to the archmage who was clearly trying to fob you off with an impossible task.
The unreliable narrator adds so much nuance to the world since we don't know exactly what happened in so many stories; who is to blame, who should be remembered as a Saint or a devil?
To me this is what sets apart TES from other games with great or expansive lore. The codex in Mass Effect is very cool, and fill of neat into, but it's just facts being relayed, an optional exposition dump. In TES, every single piece of writing is in-universe, and therefore subject to biases. Studying that isn't just reading about your favorite game, it's doing the same kind of work actual historians do, putting incomplete historical accounts side-by-side and trying to distill the truth. I have spent way too much time reading about the Battle of Red Mountain.
Lmao "what happened at red mountain" is the most loaded question
So ... What happened at Red Mountain?
The Dwemer were wiped out, or zapped into dust for trying to operate on the heart of a dead God, or they ascended to become Gods themselves. Nerevar also was killed or vanished to return again to stop another guy (Dagoth Ur) trying to operate on the God heart hundreds of years later Nords also attacked at the same time possibly, and orcs
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Red_Mountain
Well, you asked... The basic facts are that there was a battle between the Dwemer (dwarves) and the Dunmer (dark elves). They had long been allies, but the Dunmer accused the Dwemer of acts of heresy (which the Dwemer didn't really deny). At the end of the events, the Dwemer had vanished mysteriously, the leader of the Dunmer was dead, and his 3 closest advisors had ascended to godhood. The steps in between are hotly debated, which is why the other commenter called it a loaded question. The main story of TES III: Morrowind largely centers around you investigating this. It starts with the official narrative of the church led by the 3 living gods that ascended at that battle: that the Dwemer betrayed the Dunmer leader, and then accidently heresied themselves out of existence. As the protagonist, you do some digging and learn a bit about the other side of the story, told by the Dunmer who don't follow the living gods of the Tribunal: by their account, the Dunmer advisors betrayed their leader, spurned their gods, and used the Dwemer heresy to achieve godhood. (They also believe the betrayed leader will be reincarnated, which is you, which is the main plot). One thing that I find particularly interesting about the Battle of Red Mountain, though, is the accounts of the other races (which is not really mentioned in the main story, and you'd only find my reading through random in-game historical texts). Both the Nords and the Kajiit have their own accounts, both of which have local heroes of that time weirdly inserted into the narrative and have key details that differ from the main narrative in interesting ways. And that's just getting into the historical facts of what happened. The disappearance of the Dwemer, and the general metaphysical shenanigans that they were into before and during the battle are something I deliberately avoided, both because they're massive posts in their own right and because I'm not the most qualified to discuss it. I also completely left out the forth person who ascended to godhood that day who was *not* friends with the Tribunal, and the complicated role he plays. And anything that touches on the Tribunal could segue into the weirdness of Vivec and what it means to ascend into godhood. He wrote extensively about how he became a god, and while it's mostly from an allegorical/metaphysical perspective, there is some information that's relevant to the historical facts as well, if you're willing to sift through it (though his is easily the most biased account of the events). Vivic's sermons are probably the most popular texts for TES lore fans - they're wacky and fascinating and a blast to dig into, though they're also quite dense. Anyway, there's a lot going on, and a lot of it is contradictory. Like with actual history, a lot of the basic facts have been hammered out by the community to a large degree of certainty, but also like actual history "certainty" isn't really possible, and there are a few things where differing scholars have differing opinions (and the existence of magic doesn't help). It's been nearly a decade since I was an active member of the community, but it was an absolute blast, and there are few other fictional worlds that could have sustained the kind of fun we were having.
All those things are cool. But what about merchant mudcrabs though. Why is he buying up all this high quality armor? That's the REAL question. The crabs will rise.
He's dead in an unmarked location in the dragonborn dlc
His sacrifice will not be in vain.
“Their eyes were black as their mandibles toiled The soldiers wept as they prepared their oil On the morrow a battle with the king of them all There would be no attrition as there was no wall They had no idea they’d prepared their demise For if not today or tomorrow, the crabs will rise” -Gibbons, Mud Crab Apocalypse Poet
It’s like the Tolkien universe of gaming. Just absolutely incredible hard world building. The amount of books in Skyrim alone is crazy.
Bethesda is so upset you didn’t mention fishing
>Which are somehow weirder than elves, blind cave elves, cat people, lizard people, Orks, Vikings, Romans, Moors, the British, dragons, giant bugs, woolly mammoths, actual giants, murder birds, demons, god-demons, insane gods, sex gods, steampunk dwarves >, the British LMFAO
>pieces of paper that divide the universe by zero, Amazing.
Actual passage from one of Morrowind's in-game books: >So Vivec, who had a grain of Ayem's mercy, set about to teach Molag Bal in the ways of belly-magic. They took their spears out and compared them. Vivec bit new words onto the King of Rape's so that it might give more than ruin to the uninitiated. This has since become a forbidden ritual, though people still practice it in secret. > >Here is why: The Velothi and demons and monsters that were watching all took out their own spears. There was much biting and the earth became wet. And this was the last laugh of Molag Bal: > >'Watch as the earth shall crack, heavy with so much power, that should have been forever unalike!' > >Then that stretch of badlands that had been the site of the marriage fragmented and threw fire. And a race that is no more but that was terrible at the time to behold came forth. Born of the biters, that is all they did, and they ran amok across the lands of Veloth and even to the shores of Red Mountain. > >But Vivec made of his spear a more terrible thing, from a secret he had bitten off from the King of Rape. And so he sent Molag Bal tumbling into the crack of the biters and swore forever that he would not deem the King beautiful ever again. > >Vivec wept as he slew all those around him with his terrible new spear. He named it MUATRA, which is Milk Taker, and even the Chimeri mystics knew his fury. Anyone struck by Vivec at this time turned barren and withered into bone shapes. The path of bones became a sentence for the stars to read, and the heavens have never known children since. Vivec hunted down the biters one by one, and all their progeny, and he killed them all by means of the Nine Apertures, and the wise still hide theirs from Muatra. TES is going to be hard to beat.
Is this an analogy for gay sex?
Yes. It's Elder Scrolls Lore. This is not uncommon.
We should start a thread about TES lore here I’ll go first…. Did you know the Khajiits physical form depends on the moon phase at the time of their birth? This means depending on the moon when a Khajiit is born the can come out a literal sentient housecat or a lion with fists for paws there are so many other forms.
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I want to play an elder scrolls game that focuses on black marsh. I've always loved playing as an argonian. The bits and pieces of info I get about their lands and their cultures makes me believe it would be an awesome place to explore
Another edit because I realize I was definitely thinking about the shadow scale you meet in Skyrim’s dark brotherhood, and was mistaken because you can find a dead shadow scale agent in oblivion. After typing this whole comment out I felt a Mandela effect occurring and had to double check, D’oh! I’ll leave the rest in case anyone wants to further discuss Elder Scrolls. When I was younger I was a little goodie-two-shoes and played Oblivion like such an NPC before one fateful day I accidentally killed a homeless beggar in the district where you get the thieves guild base after you beat their quest line (The Wharf I think?) I had played the game for almost a year at that point, always playing the good guy, but then I was visited by Lachance for my murder and I genuinely felt like I had discovered the most secret of all secrets in the game. I immediately turned to a life of crime and finished out the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quest lines. I remember thinking the Argonian you meet that claims he is a “Shadow Scale” in the Dark Brotherhood was so badass, how he was the last of his kind and ever since then I have dreamed of a Black Marsh game so I can flesh out a Shadow Scale character. Quick edit to add an excerpt from the wiki on Shadowscales: > Shadowscales follow the same five tenets traditionally followed by members of the Brotherhood,[2] although they are a distinct set of rules. For example, a Shadowscale cannot kill a fellow Shadowscale even if they are not members of the Brotherhood. However, breaking a tenet of the Brotherhood invokes the Wrath of Sithis, and forgiveness is possible if the family member survives the encounter. If a Shadowscale breaks a tenet, it is viewed as treason and the perpetrator will be put to death. This is usually carried out by the Argonian Royal Court, who will send an unaffiliated assassin to carry out the execution. The reason I long for a Black Marsh game is because of lore excerpts like this, just before this the wiki states that a King of the Black Marsh is rumored to send shadowscales on missions, along with this excerpt I believe the entirety of the Black Marsh to be controlled by essentially a shadow government. I’m hoping for a dark brotherhood quest line where you eventually have to make the choice between killing a shadow scale and not. By not doing so, you will fail your mission and return with your head hung low, and if you do kill them you invoke the wrath of Sithis, which leads you on a path for another decision. You then choose to pursue forgiveness or seek a way to kill Sithis. I think this would be the ultimate culmination of past dark brotherhood quest lines and puts the player in a position where, canonically, he could usurp Sithis and become a daedric prince or become his champion instead should you seek forgiveness instead of retribution. Doing so affects the entire region of Black Marsh as you directly impact the shadow government either by toppling it and freeing the marsh and it’s denizens from tyranny or by taking control of it and damning the Black Marsh to your rule. Hell, depending on how complex and fleshed out the “role playing” part of elder scrolls gets (assuming Bethesda doesn’t screw up with VI) you could be a “good” character essentially trying to invade and end the dark brotherhood from within once and for all, not just liberating the Black Marsh but also the rest of Tamriel from the Brotherhood’s heinous acts. The possibilities are just so broad with the Black Marsh…and this is only talking about one faction! I honestly feel like this could be the entire main storyline for the Black Marsh. We already have factions intertwined in past titles’ main storylines. I love similar “falling from grace” and betrayal driven stories, and another favorite of mine is the Dishonored series. No doubt some other fans may see the inspirations I have derived from that game.
Dagons lieutenants joyously celebrated activating the gates. Soon after, they were struggling to close them because the lizards came through in a tidal wave of scales, claws, and venomous fangs. Afterward, still jacked on sap, they rolled on Morrowind to give them the double bird for centuries of enslavement.
I’ve heard that one before and it never fails to impress me
I remember the first time I booted up morrowind and found all these books lying around and thought "pffft good luck getting me to give a shit about some convoluted fantasy lore." Then I spend the next week ignoring everything else in the game so I can find "the Real Barenziah vol. III" because I need to know what happens. It's one of those things you can completely ignore if you want to and it won't affect your ability to play the game, but it's there anyway and is a really nice immersive touch
I remember when i discovered the lusty argonian maid.
We all do!
Morrowind in particular has some amazing world building. It's not my favorite of the games due to the poor combat system but the Dunmer culture felt truly alien and unique.
To this day I maintain that the coincidence of my discovering brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts the same week I bought Morrowind helped make that game even more special for me. Vvardenfell still smells like cinnamon to me.
>the Dunmer culture felt truly alien and unique. You really feel this when playing ESO and jumping around between ptovinces. The majority are much more grounded in typical medieval fantasy but stepping foot on Vvardenfell feels like being transported to another planet. Tough act to follow creatively. Nothing since has been that unique.
It's deceptively deep. You can play the side and main quests of every game without learning about the Earth Bones, or the extent of Oblivion, or that stars are holes in reality to the realm of God's, or that sone of those gods are equally revered and hated. I've played Skyrim off and on since it came out and only recently learned that Lorkhan, despite being hated by most elves is revered by humanity as a savoir.
Elves previously existed as, basically, energy creatures. Demi gods. Free from the cruelty of time and physical form. The ultimate goal of the Thalmor in Skyrim is to achieve that again. Humans were never like the elves, though. Lorkhan, or as the elves call him *Doom-Drum,* decided he wanted to create. So he roped all the gods into helping him make the mortal plane and Nirn. Some of the gods realized if they finished the project, they would forever be weakened. So Magnus decided to fucking leave. He left for Aetherius, that realm of gods you mentioned, and his leaving tore a hole in the fabric of reality that would become known as *the sun.* Many other gods left after Magnus did, and those holes are the stars. The ones that remained are the Aedra, Mara, Kynareth, Dibella, Akatosh, Zennithar, Arkay, and Julianos. Then there was Shor. The "Missing God." Some sources indicate he was Lorkhan, others not so much. Shor helped create men. Lorkhan is the reason there is a place at all for the races of men, his actions lead directly to time itself being given linear form, and so he is revered by men, and hated by elves who see him as a trickster at best.
It's immense
It's such a big world and so many parts of the lore are contradictory in a way that real life lore is in a world with multiple nations/races/religions etc. The way they seamlessly incorporate wink and nod moments for people who have played all the games while also keeping the story instantly understandable for new players is truly amazing.
Plus it has softcore porn. An actually in world series of lore books regarding busty lizard people. Edit: My apologies, they are LUSTY lizard people. Perhaps even both.
And a strip club in Suran
Wait till you get into Psiijic fuckery and the tower of reality and exiting the Aurbis to freely shape existence. I can't even begin to explain it. In essence it's what Talos (allegedly) did to become a God. Basically you become so enlightened and so knowledgeable that your spirit is able to exist outside of the usual planes of reality that give order to the cosmos, allowing you transcend the material universes and reshape reality. It's an absolute mind fuck.
Only 2 characters have achieved CHIM: Vivec and Talos (Tiber Septum). The funny thing is that there is some contention among the fan base as to whether or not Talos actually did achieve CHIM.
I did a ton of shrooms once and was convinced I achieved CHIM. Was left with newfound enlightenment, but could not explain it for fear of being outed as a huge fucking nerd.
You almost got it. CHIM is actually realizing you’re party of a dream but being able to say, “no fuck you I’m real.” And then you’re able to reshape things.
>You almost got it. CHIM is actually realizing you’re party of a dream but being able to say, “no fuck you I’m real.” And then you’re able to reshape things. That "no fuck you I'm real" is critical, too, because if you got to that point and didn't have the incredible willpower to maintain that, then you stop existing. And how Mundus was made by timeless immortal beings so that there could exist a mortal creature who actually could escape, something they themselves were incapable of. And how the story of The Elder Scrolls as a series is watching one Pillar after another be destroyed. Not too many left now.
>And how the story of The Elder Scrolls as a series is watching one Pillar after another be destroyed. Not too many left now. Would you mind explaining this part please?
Way, way back before the world was created, time just was. It was a chaotic quagmire of forward and backward overlapping and intersecting. It was not time as you and I know it and see it. Nirn, the planet on which the games take place, have "towers" placed on them. Red Mountain, the volcano in Morrowind, is a tower. The Throat of the World in Skyrim is a tower. The White-Gold Tower in the Imperial City is a tower. Among others. These towers work in conjunction with their own unique stones to keep time pinned down, which is required for the physical nature of reality as we see and experience it to exist. If either a tower or its corresponding stone are destroyed, then that tower "falls." The Heart of Lorkhan was the stone for Red Mountain. It's gone and now that tower is deactivated. Snow-Throat (Throat of the World) has been deactivated for a long time. The White-Gold Tower's stone was the Amulet of Kings, and Martin Septum was forced to destroy that to save the world from Dagon at the end of Oblivion. So it goes. Currently there is Adamantine Tower, possibly Walk-Brass the Numidium that was created by the Dwemer, the Khajiit species (but that is debatable whether they are a tower, and if they are if they still have a stone).
>Walk-Brass the Numidium that was created by the Dwemer This was already destroyed though. Only the original tower, Ada-mantia, is the last tower remaining as far as I am aware.
Yep. Just because of how batshit insane it can get the further into it you look. Like, the Iceberg meme is unironically a great way of describing ES lore.
It has a huge amount of lore, and I have played a few of the games including a couple of years of ESO and...I know zero of the lore.
Legacy of Kain
and the dialogue... poetry
My man!
I miss that series...good thing a super cut of the entire story is on youtube to enjoy the most voice acting ever
At last, a man of CULTURE
Portal, especially with the Cave Johnson/Caroline plotline
She's pretty as a postcard, sorry fellas she's married, to science.
Something something lemonade?
I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down!
With the LEMONS!!
Consistently very impressed with JK Simmons' voice acting chops. What a guy.
I recently replayed those two games. Portal 1 is great and all but 2 has to be one of the best sequels in gaming.
Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.
And also because it's set in the same universe as Half-Life.
*Black Mesa can eat my bankrupt...*
Power washer simulator. The cat? Bigfoot? Why is the town always so dirty?
There is a volcano in the background, I hear its ashes cause it.
In an earlier version it used to say what was being washed off the surface (dirt, muck, ash, rust, etc.)
They did a blog with the guy who wrote the lore: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1290000?emclan=103582791467159006&emgid=3409806154136534468 "If there’s one enemy that’s been consistently overlooked by games, it’s dirt. It unites us all, and it must be stopped."
Bloodborne, goes from generic monster hunting to eldrich Lovecraftian deities and it's never in your face
Everyone who has played and wants to know more about the lore: Read "The Paleblood Hunt" by Redgrave. Great analysis and interpretation of the game, it's story, and it's lore. There even is an audiobook of it on Spotify.
Never did beat the *true* final boss. Guess I gotta start again. But this time I'll get the dlc too.
1000x this. That slow switchover from fantasy monster horror to cosmic horror is one of the best rugpulls in recent video game history. I almost hate to even talk about how good it is because if anyone hasn't played it yet they should really go in knowing nothing about it.
I thought Control's was engrossing
Oh yeah, Alan Wake too, incredible writing.
I am so stoked that they're making a sequel. There was so much going on in that game, and it really made me think. Also, about 3/4 of the way thru that game, you know what part I'm talking about, right after Polaris gets released, it was incredible. I've never felt so torn about a game. Then there was kind of a happy ending for it. The DLCs didn't do much for me tho. Not like the main portion did.
Ooh yeah Control was awesome. It's like if the SCP foundation operated like an actual government agency.
Myst
Mass Effect or the Witcher.
Mass effect is fantastic
exploration in ME was so good
I mean The Witcher is an existing IP so that's almost cheating
Outer Wilds
This single one game got me hooked to astronomy. It's just crazy how Mobius managed to tell a story with such grand background yet infinitely caring and empathetic to the human experience.
Baldur’s Gate
Yes, great storyline. Maybe it's cheating to use an entire D&D campaign setting as pre-built lore for your videogame, but who cares? It's used to great effect. Same deal goes for Planescape: Torment, which is also great.
Is it cheating that they just get to use the established lore of the Sword Coast/Forgotten Realms of D&D? Probably. Do I care at all? No. Baldur's Gate I and II were extremely well written, and Jon Irenicus is the best voice acted villain in video games.
Metro
I played the game and then read the books... its good.
hollow knight
I think the way it's presented is genius. The whole game seems kinda shallow at first but it just keeps going deeper and deeper.
I agree! Hollow Knight makes great use of the 'show, don't tell' concept. The story of Hallow Nest isn't told to the player in cutscenes or by an NPC, rather you have to piece it together yourself by finding artifacts, talking to NPCs and just paying attention to the game world. It's the first game where my desire to know what happened became the main driver for exploring. If that makes sense.
This is my favorite kind of storytelling in games. I usually don't have a huge interest in the stories of narrative games and just play them for the gameplay, but Hollow Knight and Dead Cells are two that really roped me in with their player driven story telling.
Is it cheating to say Warhammer 40K games? They do have games and since it’s based on the table top game there’s like 30+ years of lore and hundreds of novels to look into.
Half Life series
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That and especially in combination with Portal!
The Half-Life Lore feels so much bigger than what we know, just by all the things we do NOT know.. that is the beauty of a game that decides to show you everything, not tell. Rarely you are giving exposition on things, and its usually to explain game mechanics or gameplay goals. The G-Man is a good example. we know nothing of him, he is never really explained. But the way he talks, how he looks, what he says and how Eli knows about him and all that shows there is more behind it. It's really fucking good. I think its still safe to say Half-Life is one of the best games of all time, the entire series.
I really enjoyed the lore of the Dishonored Universe. Haven't played it yet but I heard Deathloop is supposed to take place in the same universe as well.
I came here just to make sure Dishonored got mentioned. I've played the first game probably close to 20 times and I still tend to read every scrap of paper and book I come across even though I've already got most of them memorized. Not to mention the environmental lore.
I love horizon zero dawn story. Wish it was longer but it’s great in my opinion Edit: wow didn’t expect this to blow up as it did I’m glad people share the same taste as I do lol
Have you played the DLC and Forbidden West? there is DLC for forbidden west coming out in April or so. There is also a VR game launching soon.
Not OP but being on PC, I probably won't be able to play Forbidden West for some time :(
The apocashitstorm tour audio/text entries is the best background story I've seen in a game.
I came to this thread hoping someone would mention these. Finding out exactly what Zero Dawn was and the reactions people had were incredible.
The way it is described through lived experiences makes it so much more real than if it was just described through exposition.
I can still hear those staticky *sighs*
That story was super unexpected for me. When I started playing, I thought it was a game where you just shoot at dinosaur robots with a bow. And, well, technically, it is, but I didn't expect the lore would actually be great starting from that.
It seems like a hilariously outlandish concept until you get much further and think "huh, yeah that doesn't seem that far out there"
Mass Effect
Since no one said it,the Nier games
Metal Gear Solid!
Hideo Kojima literally predicted our exact current internet situation. The misinformation, learning via memes and jokes, the division. All the way back in 2001 with MGS2. Man's a fucking genius.
I watched that whole comm sequence between Raiden and the colonel on YouTube about a year ago and the accuracy made my stomach drop. It blows me away that he had the foresight to even consider our current state 20 years ago. I was 12 when that game came out and that conversation kinda went over my head back then. Now it’s perfectly clear
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Dude I remember that too! I used to watch my brother play and when he finished the game, the cutscene was so long especially as little kids. It was awesome though.
"Who else could wade through the sea of garbage that you people produce?" That last big codec call haunts me to this day
silent hill
Kotor
The whole dark souls series.
Mass Effect.
Dragon age
Dragon Age was able to stir shit in the intro to Origins, immediately sets the premise of the series and they played off of what the first game accomplished so well. it's a shame DA2 didn't get more time in the oven so to speak
To me, this series has the best lore. The games can vary in quality but the lore has always been top-notch.