01-02-2025, 02:30 PM
I've been watching a lot of anime lately (don't judge me!). One thing that's kind of interesting is the number of animes out there that are basically:
Guy dies and wakes up in a video game.
Guy falls asleep playing his video game and wakes up in the video game.
Here is a group of adventurers in a fantasy setting with dungeons and monsters but also they have video game stats and it's part of their normal life. Like "Oh, you have 198 agility? That's cool bro. How'd you get it so high and you're only level 15?"
The part that got me thinking is how these shows always incorporate the reality of what's happening as part of the lore of the show.
Like you need a group of heroes to endlessly fight some dungeon. Okay. Why is the dungeon there? Where do these monsters keep coming from? What's the point of it all?
Well, you see, what happened wuz... there's some God-being who spawns dungeon cores and some local monster finds it and becomes a dungeon master and starts summoning in creatures and blah blah blah and everyone wants to kill them to rank up their entirely visible stats that appear in front of them on magical parchment whenever they want to check because why wouldn't they. It doesn't necessarily make sense but it's what's actually happening.
This made me realize why I hate so many computer RPGs, especially so many MMORPGs. I mean, I put thousands of hours into them but for every hour of it there's at least one thing going on at all times that irritates the hell out of me.
The problem is video game RPG lore never matches what's actually happening.
"Adventurer! Save us! There are these wolves and they have already killed my grandmother and taken her necklace! We might all be next! Kill the wolves, retrieve her necklace and save our village!"
And there I stand looking at a field with 37 adventurers standing around waiting for a wolf to spawn. Come back two years later, the wolves are still there. Bro has gotten 159,000 necklaces returned to him. Keeps them in a barn somewhere, presumably. Stacked to the ceiling. Wolves ain't ever taking over the village. Far as I can tell the only thing they're guilty of is being bloody stupid and standing around in a field. And every time I see something like this, which is constantly, it takes me right out of the experience.
We need better lore.
Video game lore. To match the video game. I don't mean "we need deeper lore with tales of old gods and how we are the chosen one meant to save it" but more like the opposite of that. We need lore to match whatever is actually happening around us.
I want to log in for the first time and be unceremoniously handed a sword, a spellbook, a hat, and pointed towards the door because after the first 1200 "heroes" spawned in, the people (NPCs) at the starting area couldn't be bothered to give us all proper intros anymore and treated us as exactly what we were: an anonymous assembly line of cookie cutter level 1 bozos who keep tromping in out of nowhere. If there's a tutorial let it be in the form of some tireless personal imp whose only purpose in life is exactly that. Your sword, your book, your hat, your imp, off you go.
If we are fighting a war without end, don't pretend that it's a glorious fight to save our people (unless, via actual game mechanics, that's actually what it is). Just tell us the Gods are having a contest, and they are keeping score (Imp: "You can see the score on a magical floating parchment if you hit TAB"), and we will respawn when we die, may the best team win, Gods will reset the scoreboard every 3 months because they like to keep things fresh.
Now that's some lore. Now I can play the game and feel like I'm not distracted by some made up stories that are completely out of touch with what's actually going on.
I just want a lore that actually matches the gameplay.
Or vice versa.
Guy dies and wakes up in a video game.
Guy falls asleep playing his video game and wakes up in the video game.
Here is a group of adventurers in a fantasy setting with dungeons and monsters but also they have video game stats and it's part of their normal life. Like "Oh, you have 198 agility? That's cool bro. How'd you get it so high and you're only level 15?"
The part that got me thinking is how these shows always incorporate the reality of what's happening as part of the lore of the show.
Like you need a group of heroes to endlessly fight some dungeon. Okay. Why is the dungeon there? Where do these monsters keep coming from? What's the point of it all?
Well, you see, what happened wuz... there's some God-being who spawns dungeon cores and some local monster finds it and becomes a dungeon master and starts summoning in creatures and blah blah blah and everyone wants to kill them to rank up their entirely visible stats that appear in front of them on magical parchment whenever they want to check because why wouldn't they. It doesn't necessarily make sense but it's what's actually happening.
This made me realize why I hate so many computer RPGs, especially so many MMORPGs. I mean, I put thousands of hours into them but for every hour of it there's at least one thing going on at all times that irritates the hell out of me.
The problem is video game RPG lore never matches what's actually happening.
"Adventurer! Save us! There are these wolves and they have already killed my grandmother and taken her necklace! We might all be next! Kill the wolves, retrieve her necklace and save our village!"
And there I stand looking at a field with 37 adventurers standing around waiting for a wolf to spawn. Come back two years later, the wolves are still there. Bro has gotten 159,000 necklaces returned to him. Keeps them in a barn somewhere, presumably. Stacked to the ceiling. Wolves ain't ever taking over the village. Far as I can tell the only thing they're guilty of is being bloody stupid and standing around in a field. And every time I see something like this, which is constantly, it takes me right out of the experience.
We need better lore.
Video game lore. To match the video game. I don't mean "we need deeper lore with tales of old gods and how we are the chosen one meant to save it" but more like the opposite of that. We need lore to match whatever is actually happening around us.
I want to log in for the first time and be unceremoniously handed a sword, a spellbook, a hat, and pointed towards the door because after the first 1200 "heroes" spawned in, the people (NPCs) at the starting area couldn't be bothered to give us all proper intros anymore and treated us as exactly what we were: an anonymous assembly line of cookie cutter level 1 bozos who keep tromping in out of nowhere. If there's a tutorial let it be in the form of some tireless personal imp whose only purpose in life is exactly that. Your sword, your book, your hat, your imp, off you go.
If we are fighting a war without end, don't pretend that it's a glorious fight to save our people (unless, via actual game mechanics, that's actually what it is). Just tell us the Gods are having a contest, and they are keeping score (Imp: "You can see the score on a magical floating parchment if you hit TAB"), and we will respawn when we die, may the best team win, Gods will reset the scoreboard every 3 months because they like to keep things fresh.
Now that's some lore. Now I can play the game and feel like I'm not distracted by some made up stories that are completely out of touch with what's actually going on.
I just want a lore that actually matches the gameplay.
Or vice versa.