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What games have an intriguing, yet barely explained universe / lore?
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Absolutely. Such a missed opportunity. One of the best examples of a game ignoring its backstory.
Timeline
The following is a timeline of the Killzone (series). This time marks the last days of the Earth as humanity's sole home. A shortage of oil triggers a global meltdown as nations fight for control of scarce resources. Tensions run high as what starts as a limited strategic release of nuclear...
killzone.fandom.com
It's interesting that lots of people are giving examples in a negative light, I don't really view this as a bad thing....
Termina from MM for example. I don't think it needed anymore lore. Was extremely effective without even knowing what the fuck termina was.
Termina from MM for example. I don't think it needed anymore lore. Was extremely effective without even knowing what the fuck termina was.
I think the Crackdown series is both interesting and relatively unexplored. Especially when you consider some of the main narratives are essentially directly countered by audio collectibles or post-game scenes. What actually IS going on with the Agency?
end of thread.
Fumito Ueda's games like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Last Guardian don't explain their interesting lore on purpose - it's tactful.. FF XV is just too incompetent to tell its own story but when you see glimpses of it, you can tell they had something good on their hands, and they blew it.
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I always got the sense the writers didn't neither know nor care. Rather than being elusive on purpose lol
I've had my eye on this for awhile, it's always intrigued me. This post just convinced me to get it, thanks.
Dead by Daylight at the moment for me . You dont get much exposition on Entity . You just know it arrived on earth and pulls beings from different universes/realities and has them torture these survivors and that's about it .
If you read the in game books and the imperial archives online. You'd find that the Elder Scrolls series is a world that is built on cocaine fueled high fantasy. Like the way to become a god in universe is to realize you are in a video game and have enough strength of will to not immediately be wiped from existence by the laws of the in game universe forbidding its inhabitants from realizing they are in a video game levels of cocaine (this one actually serves as a cute way to make console commands cannon in game). There is also an overarching plot that is happening in the background that makes it so that the player characters across the series are actually slowly but surely destroying the tethers that keep souls tied to the physical plane in universe.
I felt this playing Divinity 2. I couldn't even find anything noteworthy about the lore on the wiki page.
What comes to my mind is Killzone. I'm not very hot on the idea of GG making a proper Killzone 4 - Horizon is probably a better use of time for everyone.
However, I really hope that GG will one day make a game that does the incredible worldbuilding of the Killzone series justice.
However, I really hope that GG will one day make a game that does the incredible worldbuilding of the Killzone series justice.
For all the games set in Ivalice, and for all the codex entries we got, specially in XII, we know jackshit about its history and how big and ancient the world is. If you read the Espers entries in XII you'll get a lovecraftian tale of horror and a big fight between gods of light and shadow in the inmemorial past plus the Occuria and whatnot. And still all that shit is wrapped in mistery.
Then you have FFT with all the St Ajora business which is great and half explained on purpose.
Matsuno is a genius.
Oh yes, pity we couldn't spend more time there. It's similar to Chrono trigger and Zeal in the sense that you had a great modern technological advanced civilization that went to shit and the current world has regressed. I love that shit.
Then you have FFT with all the St Ajora business which is great and half explained on purpose.
Matsuno is a genius.
Oh yes, pity we couldn't spend more time there. It's similar to Chrono trigger and Zeal in the sense that you had a great modern technological advanced civilization that went to shit and the current world has regressed. I love that shit.
I find a lot of the time that barely explained lore (if executed correctly) is far more interesting than games where it is comprehensively explained.
There are some exceptions of course, and the rich lore and world building of many RPG's is a core part of the appeal. But I find that sometimes the background lore loses much of its appeal when fully explained and detailed.
You can of course go the otherway and be obnoxiously obtuse and vague if your world building to try and capture that mysterious appeal.
INSIDE has already been mentioned and it's certainly be my pick, followed closely by Dishonored. I'd probably throw in Little Nightmares for some it's excellent environmental storytelling.
There are some exceptions of course, and the rich lore and world building of many RPG's is a core part of the appeal. But I find that sometimes the background lore loses much of its appeal when fully explained and detailed.
You can of course go the otherway and be obnoxiously obtuse and vague if your world building to try and capture that mysterious appeal.
INSIDE has already been mentioned and it's certainly be my pick, followed closely by Dishonored. I'd probably throw in Little Nightmares for some it's excellent environmental storytelling.
Monster Hunter.
Any locale with ruined buildings claimed by nature feels like it had some lore significance, but it's never expanded upon as far as I know.
Any locale with ruined buildings claimed by nature feels like it had some lore significance, but it's never expanded upon as far as I know.
Some of it is great. Some of it is frustrating as hell IMO. Like Ajora is sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, and there isn't even an acknowledgment of the discrepancy, let alone an explanation.
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There actually are a number of different lore books, and even some gear descriptions in-game, that all point to how there was an Ancient Civilization, from some thousands of years before the setting of the game, that indicates that humanity was once a) very technologically advanced and b) was very nearly wiped out because of their own hubris that came from disrespecting the natural order. The very reason weapons like the Gunlance, Switch Axe and Charge Blade exist in the current era of the MH games is because of the modern era of engineers and weapon-smiths being able to reverse-engineer that re-discovered tech so that your Hunter(s) can use them (even if they still don't understand entirely how it all works).
Even beyond that, the series has a number of things that still remain unexplained. Are Hunters, themselves, the descendants of some breed of dragon-hunting super soldiers from said Ancient Civilization? What kind of monstrosity left behind the skeletal rib cage you can see in the Primal Forest (MH4/U, MHG/U)? And how much of the lore, some of it pretty nightmarish, described in some item/weapon/armor descriptions is true? Are there really some brand of assassins out there that will set out to kill Hunters if they are out of line with the Guild's rules? Is some evil voice whispering in your Hunter's ears destined to drive them mad once you don Fatalis Armor?
It's the kind of thing that makes the series' lore pretty interesting to ponder about, even if it's definitely not something that's at the series' forefront, or even something worth Souls-like levels of obsession.
