Episode 186: Deep Lore

Waypoint Radio

VICE

Leisure, Video Game Development, Television, Rewatch, Replay, Tv & Film, Video Games, Games, Movies, Video Game Culture

4.6 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2018

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Danielle, Cado, Natalie and Rob sit down to talk lore in games, when it's done well, when it's done poorly, and just why it's so hard to get right. We start with Destiny, a franchise that has radically changed just how it handles lore, and go deep into design that encourages intriguing, rather than eye-rolling detail about a game's world and characters.

Discussed: Destiny, Destiny 2, Bloodborne, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Hollow Knight, Mass Effect, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, System Shock 2, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, BioShock, Prey, Dishonored, Spider-Man, Conservative radio pundits.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Video game lore can be, well, just awful.
0:22.0	The problem is, video game creators are prone to making two erroneous assumptions about
0:26.3	what constitutes a deep narrative.
0:28.6	The first is that volume equals depth.
0:31.5	In the classic tradition of epic science fiction and fantasy literature, studios will craft
0:36.1	thousands of pages of backstory, often involving many hundreds of characters and vast intergalactic
0:42.2	wars.
0:43.2	Sometimes it seems as though, early in a narrative meeting, one writer will say to another,
0:47.4	okay, let's set this in the middle of a war that's been running for 100 years.
0:51.1	And their colleague replies, no, wait, how about a thousand years?
0:55.8	And then everyone agrees this is exponentially deeper.
0:58.8	It isn't, it's just an extra knot on the end of a conflict that, without context, pathos
1:03.5	or human tragedy is ultimately meaningless.
1:08.0	That was, those were the words of Keith Stewart in a piece titled, why is video game lore
1:12.4	so awful?
1:13.4	I'm Danielle Riendo, and this is Waypoint Radio Episode 186.
1:18.9	Joining me today are Natalie Watson.
1:21.0	Hi, hi.
1:22.3	Rob Zachney.
1:23.3	Hello, hello.
1:24.5	And special guest, Cotto.
1:26.5	Hey.
	...

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