Anyone Into The Story and Lore of Video Games? Also "Lore-Based" Games

Darkmakaimura

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
I'm a lore buff and I really love video games with lots of story and lore.

One good example of this would be the Trails series which is very heavily on story and lore. Playing the game and skipping cutscenes and dialogue would defeat the purpose.

Some other games have a lot of lore but don't require or people just don't seem to care about like Elder Scrolls and Halo. Both have very rich backgrounds.

Of course there's also games based off the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. The tabletop game is one of the richest in lore you can get.

Is.there anyone here that really pays attention to story and more when it comes to games? Do you have any favorites?
 
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I never really engage with lore too much while playing a game.
Oddly enough, I've done deep dives with YouTube on games I never even played like Fear and Hunger.
There's some great creators out there that do in depth retrospectives on old pc games that I love.
 
I'm a story and lore buff myself. The biggest thing I look in the games. Especially consistent stories. Love them beyond words.

Trails serie is top notch in lore and connected story-wise. My old flame Diablo franchise had a good story consistency with books until third game. With third game they mess up everything. Starcraft serie had a good total story. Mass Effect trilogy had good and consistent lore and story. Unfortunately I didn't read the books but they add the charm as well. Metal Gear Solid games are top notch story telling games and have perfect lores.

My GOAT Dragon Age: Origins had stellar story and double stellar lore. It was consistent until that abomination DEIguard. Too bad they sacrificed the one of my beloved serie in the name of political agenda. Old Bioware/Obsidian games (KOTORs, Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Nights', Alpha Protocol, Planescape: Torment) had very superb stories. Even today they are so good that they are on another level. Owlcat Pathfinder Duology has decent stories but as studio, they can be improved more.

Assassins Creed games have good and connected present day stories. Too bad they kinda didn't reach that level after Desmond's story. Nevertheless they are still consistent with each other and that is acceptable for a mainstream game.

And lastly I remember right now is Horizon Zero Dawn. I got in love with the story and lore on the first game. Second game expanded it but the first game. Maaan. Until that time I didn't had so much exhilaration from a mainstream game. Second game's also good but for me first game is on another level.

There are lots of games that I cannot remember right now. I am really a lorekeeper and love stories in the games.
 
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Fallout, Bloodborne, Skyrim have some really good fucking lore, not to complicated and interesting enough

Halo Lore before 343 Industries took over was cef's kiss. The Battle of Harvest and Fall of Reach are so good it got adapted multiple times

Some Final Fantasy games gave some really good lore (Final Fantasy XV lore is better than the actual game)

Metal Gear has some really good lore but it's extremely convonluted

Sept Terrion Of Nothing said:
My GOAT Dragon Age: Origins had stellar story and double stellar lore. It was consistent until that abomination DEIguard. Too bad they sacrificed the one of my beloved serie in the name of political agenda. Old Bioware/Obsidian games (KOTORs, Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Nights', Alpha Protocol, Planescape: Torment) had very superb stories. Even today they are so good that they are on another level. Owlcat Parhfinder Duology has good stories but they as studio, they can be improved more.
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Dragon Age Origins Lore was f-fucking-tastic, too bad 2025 BioWare fucked it up with Veilguard
 
Sept Terrion Of Nothing said:
And lastly I remember right now is Horizon Zero Dawn. I got in love with the story and lore on the first game. Second game expanded it but the first game. Maaan. Until that time I didn't had so much exhilaration from a mainstream game. Second game's also good but for me first game is on another level.
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Written John Gonzalez. Same writer for Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas. He's back at Obsidian now.
 
Draugoth said:
Fallout, Bloodborne, Skyrim have some really good fucking lore, not to complicated and interesting enough

Halo Lore before 343 Industries took over was cef's kiss. The Battle of Harvest and Fall of Reach are so good it got adapted multiple times

Some Final Fantasy games gave some really good lore (Final Fantasy XV lore is better than the actual game)

Metal Gear has some really good lore but it's extremely convonluted

Dragon Age Origins Lore was f-fucking-tastic, too bad 2025 BioWare fucked it up with Veilguard
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I agree with most of this. Although, Bioware fucked up Dragon Age long before Veilguard was a thing lol.
 
The last time I genuinely went deep into video game lore was the OG Destiny.

That was two-fold though being that it was interesting, but also it was all hidden away anyway so you kind of had to just to understand what the fuck was going on.

To be clear, I'm talking about extra reading and research outside of the game. There are plenty of modern game worlds that I love and adore, like Prey, Doom 2016-Eternal, Death Stranding, etc.

But as far as going out of my way to learn more and uncover all the little secrets, etc. Destiny was the last game that had any of that for me.
 
Yes especially for Drakengard/Nier and Xenoblade.
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StueyDuck said:
The last time I genuinely went deep into video game lore was the OG Destiny.

That was two-fold though being that it was interesting, but also it was all hidden away anyway so you kind of had to just to understand what the fuck was going on.

To be clear, I'm talking about extra reading and research outside of the game. There are plenty of modern game worlds that I love and adore, like Prey, Doom 2016-Eternal, Death Stranding, etc.

But as far as going out of my way to learn more and uncover all the little secrets, etc. Destiny was the last game that had any of that for me.
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Check out the Byf 10 hour video above lmao. Was it Destiny 1 or 2 that had all the extra lore outside of the game on Bungie.net?
 
Bloodborne saved me freakin life. Being able to dig into and figuring out the lore of it. Some cat wrote this whole essay on the game, it got me through the worst time of my PTSD when it was sitting on me after my last deployment to the Middle East in 2015.

Best part of a video game I must say. Glad and thankful there are still folks out there that love a great story and the lore that accompanies it.
 
Loomy said:
Check out the Byf 10 hour video above lmao. Was it Destiny 1 or 2 that had all the extra lore outside of the game on Bungie.net?
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It was D1 that was all on the internet, but they eventually added the lore cards to D1 a few expansions in.

But like I remember, for example, there was a line in one of the Codex's for the Vault of glass, and it actually described a hidden path you could take below the main path.

So, like that to me was really cool and engaging.
 
It's not really the game's lore, but Shin Megami Tensei "demons" are taken from many different religions, folklore, books and whatnot. You can learn a lot of interesting stuff by reading their descriptions.
 
The lore is very important for me since it makes me invest in the game a lot more if the lore is interesting. Fallout and Elder Scrolls have the best lore by far. But every game is required to have some interesting lore for me to enjoy even Resident Evil games.
 
When the story-content is good I can spend lots of time reading about everything, but when it's dry and absolutely devoid of creativity I skip it. Prey(2017) was very disappointing to me as the setting itself and main story was engrossing, but reading logs about the crew on the station was as fun as watching paint dry. It dragged down an otherwise amazing game.
 
TintoConCasera said:
It's not really the game's lore, but Shin Megami Tensei "demons" are taken from many different religions, folklore, books and whatnot. You can learn a lot of interesting stuff by reading their descriptions.
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There is entire YouTube channel dedicated for SMT demon lore.
 
Trilobit said:
When the story-content is good I can spend lots of time reading about everything, but when it's dry and absolutely devoid of creativity I skip it. Prey(2017) was very disappointing to me as the setting itself and main story was engrossing, but reading logs about the crew on the station was as fun as watching paint dry. It dragged down an otherwise amazing game.
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Don't get me started on Prey 2006.

I really wanted that sequel and it's still one of the most disappointing events in gaming I can think of.
 
Lore like the one in bloodborne. Not the one in miles morales, GoW or Horizon games. Like actual lore that was written by a competent mature adult.
 
Team lore here.

No lore no fun....

love the Wukong lore and how every time You defeat a new enemy You can read a short story about it.

Fallout lore is great saddly Bethesda dos not cares more about it..

Elden Ring lore is Also very interesting...and You get more clues than your regular Dark Souls game.

and The Witcher lore is great , maybe the more cohesive of current RPGs..every place , monster ,side story fits for the whole Game main plot.
 
StueyDuck said:
It was D1 that was all on the internet, but they eventually added the lore cards to D1 a few expansions in.

But like I remember, for example, there was a line in one of the Codex's for the Vault of glass, and it actually described a hidden path you could take below the main path.

So, like that to me was really cool and engaging.
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Yeah, when it comes to Destiny Bungie oscillates between great ideas and braindead decisions. Still love it though. Haven't played since the end of the main story.
 
Lore is why I play games. I come for the setting or box art or the story hook, And as long as the core gameplay loop doesn't actively chase me off, I'm playing the game to explore the story and side quests and lore of the setting. Fire Emblem Sacred stones has lore 3 inches deep, but its gameplay helps make up for it because it is a strategic turn-based tactical game, but unless a game is that or a simulation game like roller coaster tycoon, there better be good story in this game or I am not playing it except as a multiplayer party game.

Writing is the core driver of novelty for books, games, movies, and TV. When I seek entertainment I'm seeking novelty to turn my mind away from my current problems so while TV and games and movies have visual and other aspects to them, if the writing is too thin, the medium fails to entertain me at large.

If the writing is specifically targeted at a different target audience than me, the medium fails to entertain me.

Dragon age Veilguard and its ilk are Not For Me, they are for people who I have lots of political disagreements with to sell to each other, and that's fine. So the writing of those games keeps me away from them.

Writing also in the same way can make me not the target audience because of more innocent reasons, resident evil and Grand theft Auto have writing for target audiences that are not me because I don't want to rob or even go to a strip club virtually or in real life, nor do I want to be terrified by my entertainment, least of all terrified in a strip club 😆.

FIFA and other games might as well be invisible to me because they are just about the gameplay loop and the lore is external to the game where you have to already care about the sport and what is going on each year and so I'm not the target audience for that writing or lack thereof.
 
PS: new fire emblem games annoy me because they lean away from both the strategic turnbased gameplay and the lore of the world, focusing instead on being a crappy dating sim and unit breeding program.

Look, you can farm your units for computer statistics like you are an overgrown pokémon Gen 1 trainer! Isn't that great??

No.
 
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Good timing on the thread, lmao. I was finishing checking up on some Resident Evil Lore, I literally JUST closed the tab with this image and immediately the next thing I see is this thread.

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I have a strange fascination with the Resident Evil Lore, more specifically everything up to/including RE4. There is just soooo much Lore hidden away in some random japanese guide book, or like File #234 in some on-rail shooter that was Wii exclusive. Most of it isn't really interesting obviously, but it's there. Like, exactly, HOW MANY colonies of Lickers were there in RC? What SPECIFIC VARIANT of which Virus was it exactly? Pair this with the beauty of early 32bit graphics and this uber cheesy teenage-angst tier writing, that the japanese are so very good at, then span it over a scope of at least 2 decades and the whole globe. There's not too many franchises that were as ambitious and as successful.

Like, watch this, then read the above epilogue again and tell me you don't feel for her and want to learn more.


On a second thought, maybe don't. I don't see my position getting stronger the more you'd look into it.

And yeah obviously the Resident Evil Series is probably one of the worst examples of video game lore, especially compared to some of the great mentions in here like FromSoft, Xenoblade, Drakengard and the many others, but I guess part of the appeal is exactly in how full of holes it is, which gets your imagination going even more. I think the RE-Wiki is genuinely the one I've spent the most time reading.

This post of mine is not very well thought out, as I said, I practically wrote this mid-obsessing, so I'm not exactly in the best space to make a cohesive argument, which is tough to begin with for the Lore of Resident Evil.
 
Whenever it doesnt involve handholding or shoving expositions down my throat every five minutes.

Part of why i heavily prefer the older pokemon games. The tutorial in r/b/y is done in like fifteen minutes whereas in s/v its closer to three to four hours because of all the goddamn dialogue and cutscenes
 
I'm into plot, does that count?

Lore doesn't usually grab me, but there was something about Resident Evil 1-3. I really enjoyed it.
 
I tried with Final Fantasy 14. I have all 3 Encyclopedia Eorzeas but the lore is just kind of boring. Right now I'm reading The Improved Emporer's guide to Tamriel: Elder Scrolls lore is overwhelming but it's fun to take in every once and a while, and it seems a lot more relateable than what they tried to do with ff14.

Also Armello. I love the Novellas that came with the game-too bad the game is dead. My goal is to someday feed the novellas and the basic lore of the world into AI and have it write Armello fanfiction for me. One day.
 
RSLAEV said:
I tried with Final Fantasy 14. I have all 3 Encyclopedia Eorzeas but the lore is just kind of boring. Right now I'm reading The Improved Emporer's guide to Tamriel: Elder Scrolls lore is overwhelming but it's fun to take in every once and a while, and it seems a lot more relateable than what they tried to do with ff14.

Also Armello. I love the Novellas that came with the game-too bad the game is dead. My goal is to someday feed the novellas and the basic lore of the world into AI and have it write Armello fanfiction for me. One day.
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Elder Scrolls lore is really good. I used to go to UESP (Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages) all the time to look things up.
 
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Trails, Xenoblade

I do want to get into the Yazuka series lore, since that's also a long-standing series.
 
The Soulsborne games have really deep and interesting lore. I don't understand most of it lol, but what I do I enjoy.

Also I used to be right into Warcraft lore back in my WoW days. I bounced off it about 10 years ago though and haven't really kept up.
 
GateofD said:
Trails, Xenoblade

I do want to get into the Yazuka series lore, since that's also a long-standing series.
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Because it is kind of a niche series, people don't realize how insane Trails lore is.

You have over a dozen games but it takes place in the same world and universe and are all interconnected and I don't think anything of this scale has been done before at least in jrpgs.

The amount of background setting and lore and even characters that are so detailed and fleshed is insane.
 
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I do enjoy lore and worldbuilding, but it needs to be efficient and woven into the story/design in a natural way. Having some reject novelist spew out page after page of lore in a disjointed manner gets old real fast. IMO.

I'm known to be an jrpg enjoyer from time to time and I've heard people rave about the Trails series. And I really really tried to get into it, but after the second excursion (mountain village) I was just exhausted by all the dialog. Kind of sad, because I think it seems rewarding for people who has higher tolerance for that kind of thing.
 
I currently play xenoblade X

while the main story short, the meat is exploration and storytelling via world building. I feels like part of the new colonist in the planet, and quickly found that people there are felt alive with some degree of immersion and such. The planet is also full of mystery and itch my explorer feels. Xeno series always full with lores, but in this game, i feels like playing zelda BoTW and ToTK, roleplaying as archeolog or xenobiologist also help me to find the world building in this game is awesome. Why the cliff and mountain shaped like that, why the animal and biota looks like that, how mira's ecosystem works, how we human can adapted into this planet. So much fun for me.

There are also heavy lore games which I like, FF12, the ivalice is full of social culture and technology which tells a lot of backstory. I have developed some theories for the races living there, and discussing it with some friends, we find it interesting and fun. Why only vierra female seen? Where is the male vierra? Why there are 4 fifth dimension being there? How crystal works there? Economy and living by crystal magic and technology? If magic is source, and technology thrives as well, how their lives depend on it? Etc

Other one is breath of fire 4, multiple race with multiple asian references, triggers a lot of imagination and exploration (in backstory) as well

Other than that, i found Ghost Recon Wildland, often itch me to watch what is bolivia, how they live and especially, the food : ))

For me, this kind of games, evoke my imagination more.

And that's why i love video games.
 
Not even a little bit.

I think stories in video games usually range between "garbage" and "just fine".

The last time I was really invested in a game's lore was with Petscop, and that's not even a real game.
 
Elder Scrolls for sure. Baldur's Gate had great lore with the Bhaalspawn story IMO. I used to be into Warcraft lore, but after Shadowlands I stopped caring about it. I still love the old WoW era stuff.
 
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Sometimes, yeah. But I feel that it's often either too complex and obtuse so that it takes the whole internet to decipher stuff, or too simple and on-the-nose.
 
Depends on the game. Sometimes I really care ( trails of cold steel), other times I couldn't care less ( any assassin's creed game after ezio stopped being the protagonist).
 
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