Something went wrong. Try again later

Mento

Check out Mentonomicon dot Blogspot dot com for a ginormous inventory of all my Giant Bomb blogz.

4970 551824 219 909
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

Iglored

One of the more amusing (and entirely civil) schisms that has arisen on the Beastcast is Abby's admittance that, while she enjoys the story in games that specifically lend themselves to a strong narrative, she's just as likely to skip through cutscenes and text in those of a more action-oriented persuasion. This is opposed to Vinny, who seems like the type to absorb any and all story and lore that he can through his games, regardless of their genre. As a fellow fan of adventure games, RPGs, visual novels, "walking simulators", and other narrative-rich games, I'm very much in Vinny's camp, but then I realized there were times when even I didn't stop to smell the proses: particularly, there are games that feature so much ancillary lore that I wouldn't be at all surprised or dismayed to hear that people skipped right past them. I know I'm guilty of putting off a lot of reading material on the occasions when I'm not in a reading mood, and there are of course times when I didn't think the writing was strong enough to begin with.

The following games gave their respective writers some work to do, filling their shelves and bestiaries and codices with a novel-sized amount of supplementary worldbuilding text for the player to assimilate at their leisure. Like an open-world game that features a thousand collectibles or a Dynasty Warriors entry with a hundred protagonists each with their own stories to tell, I can't imagine anyone consuming everything these games had to offer unless they were the obsessive type or happened to really appreciate some good writing above all else. As games aspire to be "better", either through the advancement of their tech, the innovation of their design, or the inherent artistic value of their presentation and script, I think we'll continue to see more cases of games offering an embarrassment of riches that only a fraction of its audience will fully embrace in its entirety.

List items

  • In some ways the Ur example, at least representationally, Baldur's Gate comes from a long line of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adaptations for personal computers that, in addition to translating the rules and dicerolls of the venerable table-top game, also attempts to transfer its proclivity for long stretches of descriptive writing. In the table-top game, these sections of text were necessary for framing the scene in the imaginations of the players, the sort of mise en scene that a video game can more readily recreate with its graphics and sound. Even so, there's always lot of delineation for players to read through whenever they enter a new location or talk to an NPC.

    However, this list is seeking out the sort of lore that is easy to overlook if you don't know it's there, or is otherwise sequestered away somewhere optional for only the diehards to peruse. In this case, it's the many magical weapons, armor and other equipment that each tell a tale of how they came to possess their powers; whose stories have managed to persevere along with the items themselves. I always like to think that this is the magic-user's "Identify" spell working far better than intended, not only describing to the caster what these items do but their sordid histories to boot. It's some of the best "shaggy dog story" reading material in the game and, speaking personally, often worth the fights and scavenging to find them alone.

  • I've yet to play Nier: Automata - believe me, it's on the list - but what little I managed to pick up from osmosis in spite of avoiding spoilers paints a game that is highly deferential to the flawed but brilliant PS3 original, especially in how it presents its world in layers that the player slowly peels away, with subsequent "endings" shining more light on what's really going on beneath the surface. What I'm less certain about is how much it carries over Cavia's annoying tendency to force players to finish long chains of collection side-quests before they deign to show more of these endings to you.

    In Nier, and in its sorta-predecessor Drakengard, the player is required to find every weapon in the game (in Drakengard, I believe you also need to grind them to maximum level); a thankless task that nonetheless is compulsory to see the best story twists the game has to offer. However, there is at least a silver-lining to this scavenger hunt: each weapon, when leveled up to full, reveal their own stories of woe as well. However, given how unlikely anyone is to level these weapons up since Nier doesn't demand it, this lore almost assuredly goes unread by 99% of the people who have played the game.

  • It's hardly a well-guarded secret, but each Katamari game has a full inventory of everything that the player might roll up across its various levels. When you add new items to this library in the middle of a stage, you can see that their names have an iridescent tint. If you're so inclined, you can make the completion of this library your secondary goal once all the demands of the King of All Cosmos have been met and all the stars have returned to the firmament.

    However, it might take a while to realize the true value of this library: within it contains the thoughts and musings of the King on everything you've found, and his understanding of the creatures of Earth and their customs is... tenuous, at best. It sometimes feels like an extended version of that scene from The Little Mermaid where the seagull is trying to explain the purpose of human objects to Ariel and failing badly. Some of the game's best humor can be found in the descriptions for the random, mundane objects that once found their way onto the Prince's enormous sticky space ball. Maybe you read them all religiously like I do, and maybe this is the first you've heard of it (though more likely the former than the latter, I suspect).

  • Metroid Prime is a, uh, prime example of an action game that doesn't really suggest "reams and reams of reading material", but that's what Retro added to the descriptions of the many enemies, glyphs, wall art, computer terminals and other incidental items of note throughout Tallon IV. A lot of what the player picks up through scans are simple tutorial notes and hints, as well as slightly more useful switch activations and boss weakness reveals, though there's also a dense amount of lore on Tallon IV, on its ecosystem, on its flora and fauna, on the metroids, on the Space Pirates, on Samus herself as seen by the Space Pirates, and on the Chozo who left remnants of their ancient civilization everywhere.

    Previous to Prime, the most text you ever saw in a Metroid game came from an opening crawl about dumbass federation scientists and a late-game message to get the fudge out of Dodge once the load-bearing final boss had eaten enough missiles. I think a lot of Metroid fans would prefer Samus's adventures to be dialogue-free - especially when it comes to construing the context behind the sacrifice of the baby Metroid or the relentless nature of Ridley and the Space Pirates, which work well enough on their own without having it all spelled out in a scan reading.

  • I think I was halfway through Ska Studios's excellent take on a spacewhipper/Souls combo when I found that the elaborate skill tree that the player invests in has a little story, or story snippet, for each of its nodes. Many of these snippets relate to the stat boost or expertize level they pertain to, with notes on blacksmithing for armor skill upgrades or the lore behind a magician's school for boosts to the Magic stat.

    As you come to learn in the game, the island's dungeons are comprised of a mishmash of cultures and kingdoms, and these snippets of lore (along with those attached to weapons and armor) help to flesh out the lands beyond the isle the player is trapped on. (I didn't include Souls on this list, incidentally, because I feel that lore is absolutely vital for anyone seeking answers. Souls really doesn't give anything away, and there are certain YouTubers whose purpose on this Earth seems to be to piece together this lore.)

  • Lost Odyssey's occasional flights into text-based short story fiction aren't exactly hidden, but nor are they compulsory. The "A Thousand Years of Dreams" stories pop up at specific intervals, usually triggered by random townspeople or distinctive scenes, and are meant to serve as an indication that the amnesiac and centuries-old heroes are starting to remember bits and pieces of their past.

    These stories usually don't have any bearing on the plot, however, beyond helping to understand how the immortal members of the party acquired their dour personalities. Death, loss, imprisonment, torture, alienation, despair and regret; (almost) every tale is filled with tragedy of a sort, and it's some heavy reading in every sense of the word. I can definitely imagine someone sighing at the inadvertent discovery of yet another story about a dog waiting forever for his master to come home, or whatever, and simply mashing their way through it.

  • I suppose the Emperor of this particular trope is The Elder Scrolls, which stacks its bookshelves with enough tomes of fiction and non-fiction (though I suppose it's all still fiction) to fill a library. Perhaps even a library that the player themselves have constructed for the purpose of holding all these books. I'm not sure how many people have actually sat down to read the entire biography of the dunmer royal Queen Barenziah, or the journals of the pirate captain Dugal, or even the various travelogues to the towns of each game. Even the skill books, which have a vital purpose in imparting knowledge the protagonist can use, are accompanied with a lot of story text that is of less use to the player.

    Each Elder Scrolls game makes their mark through the high level of incidental content - the side-stories, through context or told directly, that provides personality to each of the otherwise identi-kit dungeons you pass by while exploring - but I don't think I've met anyone who has spent the time to accrue a full anthology of books in an Elder Scrolls game, let alone read them all. Like reading the titular scrolls themselves, I suspect it would drive you mad.

  • My favorite aspect of any new Smash Bros game, and I realize I'm probably alone here, is collecting all the in-game trophies that venerate many decades of Nintendo history, and that of the third-party guest characters they feature. Trophies are usually rewarded through accomplishments, like beating the arcade and story modes with specific characters, though there are so many that the majority of them are given away through gachapon machines and mini-games. Each trophy carries with it a brief description of the characters, items and concepts they convey, along with some interesting tidbits of their historical importance.

    It's all a little self-aggrandizing, for sure, and I suspect only Nintendo (and possibly Square Enix's Final Fantasy, which have equivalent "franchise celebration" games of sorts with the Dissidia and Theatrhythm spin-offs) could pull it off. Still, as a lifelong Nintendo fan whose resolve in not buying a Switch so close to launch weakens every day, amassing a trophy collection is always my first port of call when booting up the most recent Smash Bros. I'm just thankful I've managed to resist the allure of amiibos for this long - I can settle for the virtual equivalent for now.

  • Mass Effect's Codex is perhaps one of the more necessary databases of otherwise optional reading, because it's one of the few universes that BioWare has not only filled with information - be they alien races, planets, technology, history, or cultural mores - but one that they created from wholecloth.

    If their Knights of the Old Republic games had a similar database (and the MMO just might, for all I know), you probably wouldn't need to refer to it to understand what Tattooine's deal is, or that Ewoks live on Endor. Because everything in the first Mass Effect was brand new, if a little derivative, I often found myself triggering new codex entries poking around the Citadel and then taking the time to read up on them - if perhaps not activating the voiceover for major entries, which later games wisely removed. You could still make it through Mass Effect just fine with the baseline knowledge of the Turians, Asari, Salarians, Elcor, Volus, Quarians, etc. that the story and NPC dialogue provides, but there's more for the reading if the world happens to grab you.

  • Folk are once again buzzing about the divisive twelfth entry in the Final Fantasy flagship series with its recent Zodiac Age remaster, but it's a game I don't intend to revisit any time soon even if I belong to that fraction of the fanbase who rates it very highly. That's largely because of how the game is super grindy and farmy, as befitting its status as a single-player RPG heavily influenced by MMORPG design. In addition to cutting through swathes of enemies in various locations across the world en-route to the next story destination, you pick up bits and pieces of the history and biology of the world through hitting certain quotas of defeated foes.

    I'm not sure why I suddenly gain an insight into the civilization that once occupied a wide and treacherous desert after defeating twenty sand scorpions, but that's just how this game rolls. Still, I like the idea of knowledge itself being the reward for all these MMO-typical "kill X of this enemy" side-quests, rather than an arbitrary pile of cash or some equipment that my current loadout has already made redundant.

  • Finally, we have the game I'm playing now (as of writing, anyway). Tales has a reputation for being fairly linear, though more recent entries like Xillia and Zestiria have started experimenting with open-world design. It's still a series of interconnected regions with a strong narrative breadcrumb trail to follow, but Zestiria's far more prone than previous entries to toss in entirely optional dungeons and zones to explore for treasure and rare upgrade materials. They're usually far from the path which leads to the more story-centric portions of the game, not unlike Final Fantasy XII above.

    However, for the purposes of this list, I wanted to point to two Tales mainstays - skits, which are little exposition delivery devices as the characters talk to each other that occasionally provide some comic relief; and the bestiary, which tracks monsters the player has encountered and provides information they can use to defeat them. In Zestiria, these two elements have been combined in a sense: each monster's bestiary entry includes, along with pertinent information such on stats and weaknesses, a little conversation between two party members as they react to the creatures they've met and how best to tackle them. They're fairly short and unremarkable for the most part, but little snippets of the game's lore and humor can shine through for certain entries, especially bosses and the game's more unusual foes. They definitely serve more of a utilitarian purpose on the whole, but I've chuckled a few times at some of the reactions and jokes that the writers and localizers have slipped in there.
Load Comments