Delivering Lore
Everyone wants their lore delivered differently. From the definition of the literatry term “exposition” comes the following:
There are many ways to present an exposition and they include monologues, dialogues, in-universe media (newspaper, letters, reports, journal etc.), a protagonist’s thoughts or a narrator’s explanation of past events. It is one of the four rhetorical modes of communication – the other three being narration, description and argumentation.
Some people like reading stories found in related media, or even found as books inside the game. The Elder Scrolls series is full of in-game books to read.
There are other means to deliver lore, such as through cut-scenes (SWTOR, FFXIV, Blade and Soul) and overheard NPC dialogue (EQ, WOW, and especially GW2), as well as from mission givers themselves (every MMORPG ever).
Then there is scenery exposition like billboards, TV and radio commercials and the like. There aren't too many games that do this, but CoH did a good job with billboards. A lot of Sci-Fi movies establish lore through witnessed media, such as the "I'd buy that for a dollar!" commercials in ROBOCOP.
One of the ways CoX delivered lore was through the exploration badges. DCUO does this too with their audio clips which I think are a phenomenal example.
Personally, I prefer incidental discovery over narrative exposition. I like the badge method of lore delivery. I like getting the story of the world around me through the dialogue of NPCs around me and the missions I get to run. I'm sure there are others out there who like their lore delivered other ways.
So far MWM is giving us lore in narrative format because, let's face it, there isn't a game to play yet.
What will MWM do to infuse lore delivery into City of Titans the game?
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
For those players that like to delve deep into the lore, it would be nice if the libraries in the game could actually be used to research the lore of the game. Perhaps including subtle hints to deeper secrets in the world for players to discover as well as the possibility to give clues (as part of the clue system).
in Guild Wars 2 you can type "/wiki" in the chat window and it dumps you back out to windows and opens the wiki URL in your default browser. I could see having a portal from the game to the wiki from inside the game where you either go to the library or something and there can access the wiki info from the game itself in some way. If and when there's a wiki for such things to point to.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Skyforge was built with the wiki being an integral part of the game and you even go on a couple missions that tell you how to search it in-game and how to upload information to it.
But in-game access to a wiki is a double-edged sword. I like easy access to information I need, and it certainly takes a burden off the developer's shoulders from having to develop an in-game help feature for FAQ. But the downside of a wiki is the spoilers. A game designer now has to design the game around the assumption that there are no surprises because players will go to the wiki to learn how to beat boss battles, where to find exploration badges and which missions to take to optimize your path to max level or to get special lootz.
So if in-game access to a wiki is available to provide lore background, I'd like it if there was a walled-off potion with a cautionary signpost saying "beyond here be spoilers."
Similar to a wiki, it would be nifty to have some sort of encyclopedia system where you can look up key organizations and NPCs and a dossier style presentation is displayed. In fact, it would be niftier if that dossier was presented by a design-your-own henchman who is in your lair/command van/wrist-mounted computer/the fairy flying around your head. Because, you know every superhero has that hacker friend who provides the important data at just the right time for plot resolution.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
The Secret War has an in-game browser, so you can surf the web while you play the game... which mostly just lets you Google the walkthroughs for some of the ridiculously complex missions.
Not that I would ever....
<.<
>.>
I like the sound of the game world libraries/public computers/etc providing a story resource. It would serve as an immersive feature with more controlled access to spoilers and the like.
The thing is that regardless of in-game access or not such information will always be available and taken into account for to some degree, it's only a matter of how easy it is to get to.
Indeed. A working assumption of any dev team should be that there will be a group of players who will discover things (let us think of them perhaps as the vanguard >.>), a group who will share things - with some overlap between vthe two - and a (normally much larger) group who will Google the shared things and follow guides.
As for the topic under discussion, I personally like my lore in all shapes and formats, and so support all suggestions above. I would like a decent degree of exposition on key world NPC characters outside main storyline-esque quests. This goes for world monsters and key villains as well, of course. Hami and Ghost Widow were really good examples of this in my opinion, as was Independence Port, the Hollows and Croatoa. Dark Astoria and the Roman area less so (forget the name). There was lore associated to the whole time thing, but it was overly concentrated. Most of the zone, as experienced in the world, was wasted space.
of Phoenix Rising
Am I
Just a quick note on lore delivery:
We are planning (and actually already writing) lore delivery in-game through missions and the like.
We are planning on some exploration type badges, and possibly other badges, though those have not been 100% settled yet (little things to add later, which may or may not make launch).
We are planning on the open-world chatter to reveal some information.
We have many plans, and hope to be able to provide a wide variety of methods of lore delivery to satiate the varied preferences of all players.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]