Devil's Advocate: Why De's Handling Of The Lore Is Brilliant.

[Feallike]

I like how Dark souls fans are raging about the comparison when we are saying LIKE!

 

A Dark souls LIKE story, a story that doesn't outright tell you what is out their and you make it up as you go. That is what people loved about Darksouls

 

Warframe sorta does the same thing so its LIKE Darksouls, not exactly or comparable but LIKE IT. >.>

 

Also remember the people we see at the lives streams are not the CEOs sooo they don't have Final say over everything, the Top of the Top might have the whole warframe story laid out and are not telling the devs to keep security.

 

Saying Warframes story is full of random S#&$ the DE threw together is a insult to the DE, its Defiently not thrown together, but its a Multiplayer game thats updating so its Lore isn't as held together as much as a game that is complete like Dark souls...

 

The DE has to make sacrifises for Gameplay, if that wasn't so then we would have 100 different bosses right now...

 

Whats worse, bosses coming back to life? Or having 100 random bosses that the DE creates just to keep the story going.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Feallike

[Wurdyburd]

It's not like Dark Souls.

 

Dark Souls would be like taking the Lord of the Rings Novel and ripping out a handful of random pages then giving the rest of the book to a reader.  There is a story there, that the creator clearly knows, but it has certain details left out to make it more ambiguous. Since the frame work is all there and organized in a way that makes it clear that there is an underlying story makes it a masterpiece.

 

To be perfectly fair; Lord of the Rings already is a brief sweep of a larger in-depth world. The story just follows the characters through a specific path through the world, lightly touching on lore, but if you really truly want to get into the lore of Middle Earth, there's TONS. It's actually a little ridiculous. You can learn who made the Balrogs, what wizards actually are, what the elves have done, the significance of Gondor and the Dunedain, the gods, and everything. Truthfully, what you see in LotR and The Hobbit is a small fraction of the world.

 

Which brings me to my main topic of world making in general.

A truly successful world doesn't reveal itself to the main characters or the players. All the players know is that while there are things happening right now, there's a ton of stuff that happened before they even got there, and that stuff will continue to happen even if they leave. The main character/player SHOULD NOT be responsible for sculpting the world. Sure there can be some action with serious consequence, like choosing whether to kindle the Forge of the First Flame at the end of Dark Souls, but they shouldn't be responsible for every single world-changing decision and choice.

 

Part of the problem lies with an inability to grasp the worth of time. It's supposed to have been hundreds, or thousands of years since the Tenno went into cryo, and in that time, we know that the Corpus and the Grineer established themselves as truly distinct societies, Earth became overgrown, and species like the kubrows and desert skates evolved. But also consider this: it's currently been about 100 years since WW1. LOTS of things have happened since then. Imagine how much could have happened in several centuries in a space-faring civilization? Wars, peace treaties, discoveries, inventions, politics. THAT's the kind of lore this game could have, even if brief, even if inconsequential.

But according to Warframe life all but stopped for the solar system. Everyone just sat on their hands slowly mutating into what it is now, and now that the Tenno are back, everybody gets to be productive again.

The "tree falls in a forest" argument does not work for space societies. It just doesn't. Just because the Tenno weren't around doesn't mean stuff didn't happen.

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

To be perfectly fair; Lord of the Rings already is a brief sweep of a larger in-depth world.

Exactly, Dark Souls is basically told like Lord of the Rings (w/no knowledge of the Hobbit or the Silmarillion) with all the Gandalf parts from before the destruction of the ring torn out. The world is shaped by things you don't know everything about in Dark Souls, but you still get hints of it letting you know it is happening, and you feel the repercussions of it.

 

WF lacks that.  There are plenty of ways they could have handled it, while still being vague, and they could have done it in ways that make not knowing more fun. 

 

If they think that knowing the past is meaningless then they could have had Ordis convey so fragment of information from the past, in a garbled form before stating he would work on decrypting it or that information from that long ago is terrible degraded and nothing can be done.

 

Another option that would work as well or better would be this.  You have Ordis look for information from that time period.  When he starts looking simply have him glitch out a bit before coming back online and conveying that the data from that time period has been tampered with.  Someone is trying to prevent you from discovering the truth.

 

That second option reveals nothing of the lore to you, but it makes the lore seem important while also setting up an interesting sub-plot point, and might even setup Lotus as a possible suspect.  It would also be interesting because it would make you reexamine what lore we already have access to in order to look for new clues.  It would also allude to that feel of an underlying story, known only to the creators, of the type that I referenced with Dark Souls.

 

WF's lore is nothing like DaS's currently, but these things I mentioned could change that.

[FREQ1989]

 

 

 

Who cares about lore when the state of the game is where it is right now. I would rather them focus more on core game play, rather than have them listen to this community bicker and complain about the lore and how is should be presented.

[Tesseract_The_Pariah]

 

 

 

Who cares about lore when the state of the game is where it is right now. I would rather them focus more on core game play, rather than have them listen to this community bicker and complain about the lore and how is should be presented.

My thoughts...  almost exactly?

Everything about the game is quite good.  Gameplay is fun as hell, Lore is hella cool, we just need some varia.... tion...

Archwing.  :D

[Aroran_Svitskna]

all out, DE is releasing the Lore one bit at a time, with each update, look at Mirage, we got a bit of info about the Sentients and the original Mirage and the great war, from Mirages POV, really though, just sit back and think, why would DE release all of the Lore at once? that would just ruin the excitement, instead, release a bit of it every update, and well see how this works out, in my opinion, i think what DE is doing is great, kinda keeping us in the dark about the lore, releasing it every update, but only hints...

[RoboDoge]

all out, DE is releasing the Lore one bit at a time, with each update, look at Mirage, we got a bit of info about the Sentients and the original Mirage and the great war, from Mirages POV, really though, just sit back and think, why would DE release all of the Lore at once? that would just ruin the excitement, instead, release a bit of it every update, and well see how this works out, in my opinion, i think what DE is doing is great, kinda keeping us in the dark about the lore, releasing it every update, but only hints...

What lore? Mirage quest is first lore since U11. And there is like 10 months in between.

 

 

 

Stop lying to yourself.

[WhiteCr0w]

Definitely agree OP. And I love how the three pages of this thread make for a perfect example of what you described.

 

Nothing is true, all is permitted.

[AlphaHorseman]

I just want more lore. I'm sorry, but I'm one of those guys that needs a backstory. Of course, I don't want everything spoiled for me, but I want a clear and set timeline of events as to why stuff happens and why we're doing what we're doing. 

 

I like knowing the history, the motives, the backstory, because, for me, it fleshes out the world we play in and it feels more natural.

 

I don't wanna be shooting up a place just because someone told me to, I want to know why I'm doing it, the actual reason why, not the vagueness that is "The Balance". 

 

We defeated the Sentients for pity's sake, if we did that with all the knowledge we had in the Old War, imagine what we could accomplish with just some of that information returned to us.

 

For me, a good example of great lore was the Halo series. The first game it got you a vague sense of what was going on, the second helped to expand your knowledge, and then the series itself continued to flesh out the world you played in. There were even books on the side, web series, and so much more that helped to expand the world even further. Though I know that this is just one game, I'd hope to get as much lore out of it as possible, and maybe in the future, if a WarFrame 2 (Dark Sector 3 pretty much) is announced, then I'd like to delve into that as well with a lot more lore thrown in there.

[d1sc1p1e]

I'm convinced that DE has some dastardly plan set up for us all, that they'll keep releasing lore sporadically until something big happens in the game caused/driven by players and then BAM!

 

the fact is the universe must have a distinct, clear history that they've already established, and the only reason for them not to release it is because it will affect the game in a way they don't want yet. now taken that this is not a static game but an MMO, the only affect it will have on the game will be ON US.

 

so what does that mean? is this a huge social experiment like Rust? will there be an introduction of a threat that turns out to be an protagonist, and they release lore that puts the Tenno as the antagonist? are they recording invasion numbers, and looking to separate us by who we've aligned with in the past, with a move toward an all out PvP war?

 

is this all going to far? I dunno. it seems too much to believe that no one involved in this game would consider basic psychology, especially since this is an MMO, and taking that into account are they playing on it like DayZ and Rust?

[ElHefe]

(edited ...)  Nothing is true, all is permitted.

 

THIS simple adage is a perfect example why having a clear background makes all the difference in the world for a good fictional story ...

 

Most of you will recognize that is a phrase repeated over and over in the Assassin's Creed series ...

Altair Ibn La-Ahad and Al Maulim ingrained this maximum into Altair

 

Probably many would have done some background reading and found that the creators of Assassin's directly borrowed the phrase from the 1938 novel "Alamut" by Vladimir Bartol which retells intrigue and treachery of 11th century Iran

 

Some would know that Bartol took the phrase from none other than Friedrich Neitzsche as his fictional polemic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (1883) to which "amor fati" - to accept/love one's fate - is actual bedrock of the work and his life's philosophy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_fati)

 

In this regard, the Tenno are true disciples of Neitzsche as there are immutable facts of their existence which cannot be changed and therefore should be embraced but does not prevent growth

 

Finally, only a handful might know that the very same phrase was randomly pieced together by William S. Burroughs (of "Naked Lunch" fame just for starters) when he literally cut T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (you remember, not with a bang but a whimper) ...

Incredibly, unedited spliced bits of other writings could produce understandable passages - a method copied by Kurt Cobain and David Bowie

 

The point of all this?

Just look and see how incredibly rich a solitary phrase can be with meaning, context and history

Imagine the possibilities of a game that has a story which has actual ideas behind it

 

NOW maybe the naysayers can see why DE must focus on the story line

 

In the end, until there is a fundamental change of the human condition - that of suffering, introspection and the struggle for meaning and fulfillment, it is very hard to write a de novo, totally original story ...

Stories are stories built upon stories - that is how the narrative tradition has existed since the dawn of man

 

What DE has to decide is do they have a story or just idle distraction

Edited September 2, 2014 by ElHefe

[Wurdyburd]

 

Everything about the game is quite good.  Gameplay is fun as hell, Lore is hella cool, we just need some varia.... tion...

Archwing.  :D

False, debatable on the nature of 'fun', is currently near-nonexistant, variation will have little to no impact on what's wrong with this game.
Can you not. Archwing's are going to be a cataclysmic flop. Try not to hype it higher, guy. 

 

I'm convinced that DE has some dastardly plan set up for us all, that they'll keep releasing lore sporadically until something big happens in the game caused/driven by players and then BAM!

I think you wildly overestimate DE's ability to make long-term, clear, decisive ideas and plans. A good percentage of this game are accidents, and not good ones either.

That said, nobody would be happier than I would be should DE manage to pull their heads out of the sand, hire some decent designers, put somebody in command of the plane who knows how to actually fly it, and get serious with this thing they've created.

 

Edit/P.S. : I detailed in an earlier post why content pseudo-driven by the players is a bad thing; in essence, everything is happening in modern time. We're MAKING lore/history, not learning anything about the potentially hundreds of thousands of years that has passed here.

Here's another point. Nothing is actually HAPPENING. Outside of assassinations, nothing the Tenno do is proactive. It's all reactionary. "Oh, somebody in the Red Veil has been captured, gotta go free them!" "The Grineer are building this ships to take over the solar system, gotta go blow them up!" "Alad V has created a monstrosity of an Infested fleet! Gotta go blow THEM up!"
Which, if the Tenno were all in stasis still, would be FANTASTIC. Lore would be being created! The kind of lore that we're asking for! "Hey kiddies, Auntie Lotus is gonna tell you about the time a freak named Alad V goofed up and made a bunch of Infested ships! Isn't that exciting?"
But instead, the Tenno null everything. All the player-driven 'lore' has been
plot -> denied
plot -> denied
plot -> denied.
The community itself is actually RESPONSIBLE for the counteraction of making sure nothing gets done in the galaxy. Plot-wise, everything is literally at a standstill.
The Tenno aren't warriors of balance. They're grim reapers who serve the heat death of the universe as their goal and master.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Wurdyburd

[vaugahn]

False, debatable on the nature of 'fun', is currently near-nonexistant, variation will have little to no impact on what's wrong with this game.

Can you not. Archwing's are going to be a cataclysmic flop. Try not to hype it higher, guy. 

 

I think you wildly overestimate DE's ability to make long-term, clear, decisive ideas and plans. A good percentage of this game are accidents, and not good ones either.

That said, nobody would be happier than I would be should DE manage to pull their heads out of the sand, hire some decent designers, put somebody in command of the plane who knows how to actually fly it, and get serious with this thing they've created.

 

Let's at least wait for the devstream before we pass judgement.

 

Also, they don't need to hire anyone and they most likely do have a plan. A studio doesn't just make 20+ games on accident with bad planning.

[Blatantfool]

 I don't like it. There isn't enough defined backbone. There are no rules for anything.

 

 It is not like Dark Souls.

 

 Dark Souls had an overabundance in symbolism and information and it was ALL consistent within world and most of it was all snugly interconnected. Players were free to interpret how all the dots connects, but all the information was more or less clear. You could easily kill an hour or two just talking about flavor text and the kind of narrative they made with it. SO MUCH INFO. Everything was a story item.

 

The vaguery of a lot of the Lore in Dark Souls is supposed to mimic what it's like being a person whose showed up really late for the party. All that stuff happened long before you, the hero, in Dark Souls. You just see the aftershocks and witness whats left.

 

 

 Warframe can't really say any of that. We have lots of flavor text that says all kinds of things that don't knit a particular narrative. There is still not enough information to identify what Lotus might be, what the Tenno are, what Stalker is (He isn't a Tenno!), where the Corpus and Grineer got their hatred of the Tenno.

 

Warframe still suffers from a lack of valuable information and inconsistencies made by holes left by lack of info.

 

 

 They've got a long way to go before they could try to pull a "It's like dark souls." card on me without an eyeroll in response..

[SgtFlex]

I love lore, and I love delving into it, but when the Dev's say nothing about it for so long, if you go about posting a thread about something you've found in Dark Sector that connects to Warframe, from what i've seen there's players who no longer take interest in it because nothing is revealed, and when there's nothing to be found anymore, the players just start losing all their attention towards it. I personally have found this myself when I posted a thread in the past, as well as myself now. I know what there is, and with no clear link towards each game, and the Dev's not revealing anything, I've just forgotten about it and don't really care for it anymore until the Dev's actually reveal/do something, and make it worthwhile looking into.

[ElHefe]

(edited ... )

That said, nobody would be happier than I would be should DE manage to pull their heads out of the sand, hire some decent designers, put somebody in command of the plane who knows how to actually fly it, and get serious with this thing they've created.

 

Edit/P.S. : I detailed in an earlier post why content pseudo-driven by the players is a bad thing; in essence, everything is happening in modern time. We're MAKING lore/history, not learning anything about the potentially hundreds of thousands of years that has passed here.

 

 

By "decent designers" do you mean writers?  If so, DE has talent but talent needs direction ... so perhaps are you more dissatisfied with project management

 

Regarding the second point, there is no "player driven" world building - there are no in game decision stems ... just scripted events

There is no option for leaving Alad V alone except for not performing the mission

So, no ... there is no "pseudo-driven content" at all except for what has appeared from these forums in the way of MINOR characters

 

Finally in your original post (#52 in this thread) you immediately discount the validity of backstory ... which is fine if you are playing PAC MAN, not an immersive RPG

 

 

[ElHefe]

 I don't like it. There isn't enough defined backbone. There are no rules for anything.

 

 It is not like Dark Souls.

 

 Dark Souls had an overabundance in symbolism and information and it was ALL consistent within world and most of it was all snugly interconnected. Players were free to interpret how all the dots connects, but all the information was more or less clear. You could easily kill an hour or two just talking about flavor text and the kind of narrative they made with it. SO MUCH INFO. Everything was a story item.

 

The vaguery of a lot of the Lore in Dark Souls is supposed to mimic what it's like being a person whose showed up really late for the party. All that stuff happened long before you, the hero, in Dark Souls. You just see the aftershocks and witness whats left.

 

 

 Warframe can't really say any of that. We have lots of flavor text that says all kinds of things that don't knit a particular narrative. There is still not enough information to identify what Lotus might be, what the Tenno are, what Stalker is (He isn't a Tenno!), where the Corpus and Grineer got their hatred of the Tenno.

 

Warframe still suffers from a lack of valuable information and inconsistencies made by holes left by lack of info.

 

 

 They've got a long way to go before they could try to pull a "It's like dark souls." card on me without an eyeroll in response..

 

Well said ... sums up what I have been trying to say 1+

[AlphaHorseman]

Maybe they're trying to put all the pieces into place, and then put in the lore to support it all. 

 

Maybe its because if they release all the lore they have now, it might conflict with something they would want to add into the game later. For instance, none of us knew about Archwing (or speculated) before the Mag Prime Codex Entry, and if they didn't have that codex entry with it when it shipped, and established the lore beforehand, they might not have been able to implement the Archwing system because it might clash with the established lore.

 

Oh, and I just noticed that all the polarities in-game have names to them, so...maybe the focus system is coming!!!

[ElHefe]

Maybe they're trying to put all the pieces into place, and then put in the lore to support it all. 

 

Maybe its because if they release all the lore they have now, it might conflict with something they would want to add into the game later. For instance, none of us knew about Archwing (or speculated) before the Mag Prime Codex Entry, and if they didn't have that codex entry with it when it shipped, and established the lore beforehand, they might not have been able to implement the Archwing system because it might clash with the established lore.

 

Oh, and I just noticed that all the polarities in-game have names to them, so...maybe the focus system is coming!!!

 

The problem is that we are grasping at straws ... desperately shifting through meager and inconsistent FACTOIDS in the vain pursuit of a plot

 

These forums have been burned down to smoldering ash with endless debate over rhetorical vs. literal meaning

Case in point:  some would assert that the excerpt you quote are nothing more than the fear-crazed imaginings of a dying soldier ...

Others argue as you do that it was the real thing and a prophesy of the Archwing

 

To date, neither side has delivered the coup d'état - nor ever will with such paltry and insubstantial information

 

As an aside, for those wings to be worn "in doors" - as they were in the Mag Codex excerpt - they better be able to fold up like a Swiss Army knife otherwise the Warframe would get stuck in the door frame :P

 

[Casval_Rouge]

What lore? 

 

In Dota, each character have their own background, telling how they came to be, etc.  But really, there are no overarching narrative.  There are just small bits of information to give characters some kind of "character".  Combine that with their look, voice and dialogues, you can tell they are unique characters.  There just aren't any story being told.  Which would be a problem, since they are essential meaningless gribble without it.  It doesn't affect anything in the game.  All because there are no narrative.  But that's ok for a game like Dota. 

 

That's the same with Warframe.  Except Warframe aren't just an arena.  We are given information about factions, npcs, and context to missions.  But there are no story.  So whatever "lore" Warframe has are reduced to being merely flavor texts.  They are just as useless as flavor texts on TCG cards.  Adds nothing to the gameplay experience.  The whole Lotus awaken Tennos to join the war...Look that doesn't mean anything.  Because right now we don't even know who Lotus is, why did she awaken the Tennos, etc.  So where does the story starts?  What's tying all these "lore" together?  What's giving them meaning?  

 

Funny OP mention Dark Souls.  The characters you meet or learn about in game are all tie into the theme well.  They are all true characters.  Each have their own impact to the world, each have their own story to tell, each have a reason to be in the game beyond mechanical reasons.  Whether to show you what each location used to be before player's arrival, or to offer pieces of information for you to tie it all together. 

 

What purpose do all those "bickering" between characters in Warframe serve?  Context, filler, flavour.  But that's not story, yet.  There's character growth from Alad V, there's barely a plot (I wouldn't call Lotus-telling-us-to-do-this plot, but whatever), there's would-be lore in the form of the codex.  But there's no theme, no climax, no resolution, there are no narrative.  That's why I call these context, rather than story. 

 

Ultimately let's be honest here.  DE don't really care about story or lore right now.  They must have writers building the world regularly, but gameplay will come first.  So if they say Archwing is a thing, then they'll write lore to support Archwing.  Kubrows?  Ok now we need lore about them.  We need to have a proper tutorial, so here's Vor's Prize to let new players know what's the premise.  Not the best way to tell story, or to build a good world, but that's not what Warframe is about.  

[Wurdyburd]

By "decent designers" do you mean writers?  If so, DE has talent but talent needs direction ... so perhaps are you more dissatisfied with project management

 

Regarding the second point, there is no "player driven" world building - there are no in game decision stems ... just scripted events

There is no option for leaving Alad V alone except for not performing the mission

So, no ... there is no "pseudo-driven content" at all except for what has appeared from these forums in the way of MINOR characters

 

Finally in your original post (#52 in this thread) you immediately discount the validity of backstory ... which is fine if you are playing PAC MAN, not an immersive RPG

By decent designers, I mean to hire a guy who's entire job is the lore. For lore to be important, it has to be treated seriously. The lore guy works on the lore of the game, putting in flavour text, making sure no new content blatantly contradicts the old content, and so on. This isn't to say that the lore will restrict the creative freedom of new content: it's just to guide it in a more consistent direction. People like consistency, and will notice if new content in Warframe breaks or adds to lore.

 

While your statement is correct that there is no 'player driven' world building, you are in essence agreeing with me. I stated that the events are pseudo-driven: meaning that DE creates these events, like the destruction of the Fomorian fleet, and offers the possibility that we could fail, when in reality, the community retaliated to such an extent that of course we were victorious in the event. There was never any danger of failure at all. Therefore, the so-called 'lore-creating event' which 'fell on the shoulders of the Tenno' offered a false choice, and was pseudo-driven lore. It described the premise that we, as a community, were responsible for something huge, when at the end of the day, event over, nothing actually happened.

 

Your statement felt off, so I went back and check. Would you kindly point out where I "immediately discount the validity of backstory"? Just because I didn't mention any kind of origin-event of the Tenno, the Lotus, etc, doesn't mean I don't believe they're unimportant. I did mention that in the hundreds of thousands of years that had passed, the Grineer and the Corpus rose to their current standings, and they could have more information about that.

[ElHefe]

@ Wurdyburd ... your last post really helped me to understand your position and would agree that our views are fairly concordant - we want a real story, one that is woven into the game - not piggybacked - and is self-consistent

 

We differ in a few details:

1. You advocate for a new hire for a storyline director while I would think that DE has a copy editor but that they should change presentation methodology (which admittedly is being optimistic but for now I choose to be gracious about it - at least to DE)

And honestly, bringing in someone completely new into DE could be very disruptive ... after all, they have been working on this story for over six years now
If new blood is needed then DE best be sure that they are properly cross-matched else the patient might expire

3. The term "pseudo-driven" while catchy is fraught with unintended connotation (unless it is a standard gaming term that I am unfamiliar with)

 

Regarding the comment made about your discounting backstory, I was referring to an earlier post:

 

(edited - redacted for clarity and section headings inserted for reference in italics)

Section 1:

Which brings me to my main topic of world making in general.

A truly successful world doesn't reveal itself to the main characters or the players. All the players know is that while there are things happening right now, there's a ton of stuff that happened before they even got there, and that stuff will continue to happen even if they leave. The main character/player SHOULD NOT be responsible for sculpting the world. Sure there can be some action with serious consequence, like choosing whether to kindle the Forge of the First Flame at the end of Dark Souls, but they shouldn't be responsible for every single world-changing decision and choice.

 

Section 2:

Part of the problem lies with an inability to grasp the worth of time. It's supposed to have been hundreds, or thousands of years since the Tenno went into cryo, and in that time, we know that the Corpus and the Grineer established themselves as truly distinct societies, Earth became overgrown, and species like the kubrows and desert skates evolved. But also consider this: it's currently been about 100 years since WW1. LOTS of things have happened since then. Imagine how much could have happened in several centuries in a space-faring civilization? Wars, peace treaties, discoveries, inventions, politics. THAT's the kind of lore this game could have, even if brief, even if inconsequential.

 

Section 3:

But according to Warframe life all but stopped for the solar system. Everyone just sat on their hands slowly mutating into what it is now, and now that the Tenno are back, everybody gets to be productive again.

The "tree falls in a forest" argument does not work for space societies. It just doesn't. Just because the Tenno weren't around doesn't mean stuff didn't happen.

 

In the first section what caught my attention was the passage "A truly successful world doesn't reveal itself" which gave the impression that a backstory is not required

However, if what was meant that backstory shouldn't be handed out all at once, then I (like most gamers) would agree

 

The next thing that puzzled me was in the next sentence in that first section where your elaboration read something like Donald Rumsfeld famous line:  "There are known knowns ... known unknowns ... (and) unknown unknowns"

Like Rumsfeld, you make a logical point but didn't make the needed point of fact

You never state whether it was important for the "known unknowns" should be known or not, again leaving the impression that backstory is not a requirement

 

In the second section (as I have broken your post down), you describe how details about the Grineer and Corpus could have been easily included into the game but at the same time you allow for it to be "inconsequential"

Personally, I would not consider that storyline material ... it's just clutter - a distraction - white noise

The story of Warframe - the real story - is the tale of the Orokin, the Sentients and The Lotus ... once again backstory

 

In the third section, quite frankly you lost me ...

The Tenno went to sleep but when they awoke they had forgotten everything - how does that make it where the Tenno lost the meaning of time?

Even Hawthorne's Rip Van Winkle figured out a lot had changed without having to be told so

Still, I sense that you have a gem of an idea there - it's just that I can't get my head around it the way you expressed/explained it

Edited September 2, 2014 by ElHefe

[Wurdyburd]

@ElHefe:
Thank you for taking the time to understand my stance and offer clarity and reasonable counterpoint.

 

I advocate that DE hire somebody to organize lore, since it appears that those already in DE's hire are too busy to create lore on a regular basis, lore is vague and inconsistent, and having a single 'loremaster' would help make future lore more cohesive with itself and past lore.

The loremaster would by no means have veto power over future content organized by the creative, artistic, and technical directors; it would merely be their job to expand what content is released into deeper, more colourful history. Hiring someone from outside DE's little creative circle could be detrimental to the world that's already been constructed, but since you could argue that we have no lore direction anyway, ANY direction could be seen as true and canon, so long as they retain the foundation pieces of the Orokin and the Lotus.

 

I didn't intend for 'pseudo-driven' to become a cross-examined term. It was merely an of-the-moment description of how events created by DE imply that should we, the community, participate, that something will occur, something that we from an outside perspective could call plot and lore. However, the only actions given to us is to STOP something from happening, in the name of 'keeping balance'; the Tenno are entirely reactionary. The other option we have is that the entire community flat-out refuse to participate, and cause the Fomorians to invade, or the Infested fleet to take over, etc, which would be hugely beneficial with creating plot. DE can't allow that though, since that would be actively encouraging the community not to play their game. With the only choice being action, with victory assured, the players are given a false choice, and everything ends up puppeteered by DE.

 

By "a truly successful world doesn't reveal itself", I didn't mean to discount the importance of backstory. I personally just get tired of seeing new games, shows, and movies where the protagonist is dropped into an unfamiliar world, and IMMEDIATELY some clown pops up to assail the audience with all the rules and history. Verbal exposition is boring. The audience should be allowed to experience the aftermath and results of a complex world and history, and be allowed to draw logical conclusions themselves. As mentioned in another post, DE_Steve once said that they keep the lore vague to allow the community to make it's own stories; while nothing wrong with that, in order to do that we need more foundation lore, we need building blocks to work with. Thinking outside the box doesn't work if there isn't a box to work within in the first place.

 

My statement that "players know that while there are things happening right now, there's a ton of stuff that happened before they even got there, and that stuff will continue to happen even if they leave" is intended to illustrate that the world should be designed to be an organism in it's own right, and that the players are actors on it's stage. The players shouldn't be gods responsible for every future action.

'Known unknowns' should be revealed eventually, or at least so in the case of Warframe, where there is so little to go on in the first place. In a game like Darksouls, you can learn the most important unknowns, but many of the lesser unknowns are never explored. This gives players the satisfaction of knowing more or less how things went down, while still being able to fantasize and hypothesize over the more trivial things.

 

I didn't mean for it to sound like the Grineer and Corpus history should be inconsequential; Grineer/Corpus history should be explored, while the little details to add life and complexity to the world, like history on wars, peace treaties, discoveries, inventions and politics, would ultimately have little bearing on the modern world, and thus be inconsequential. Since inconsequential, they could be brief.

Ex. A text packet detailing a time when the Grineer and Corpus made peace for 20 years, 400 years ago, why they did it and how, and what made them go to war again.

I can see you keep coming around to backstory; again, it was never my intent to trivialize the worth of backstory, but backstory is, I feel, the easiest lore to create, even if it is the most important. What I was focusing on here was the added details that would give the Warframe world life; the Orokin, the Sentients and the Lotus are the foundation with which the rest of the lore will grow, but keep in mind all three were absent for potentially hundreds of thousands of years. I would simply like some content to fill in the blanks a little bit.

 

Which brings me to the last section, where you were confused. I didn't mean that the Tenno had lost time's meaning, I meant that DE did. Rip Van Winkle could discern that time had passed due to his beard, and the tree he rested under having grown [which, by the way, is a perfect example of exposition through experience/conclusion, rather than vocal exposition]. Similarily, we can go to Earth and see that the forests and life there have evolved far beyond what we currently know it as. However, in all that time that passed, apparently nothing happened. The Grineer didn't launch any invasions, nobody created an apocalypse of Infested, and so on. All that happened as soon as the Tenno showed up and could combat it. Just because the Tenno weren't around to witness it, doesn't mean that the trees didn't fall, as it were. All the minor lore and history for hundreds of thousands of years of absence, and apparently generations just twiddled their thumbs and did nothing, according to the current state of Warframe's lore.

[ElHefe]

@ Wurdyburd ... good post!  Sailed through it without once loosing you

Once again, it is clear that we share a common vision about story telling ... it is only stylistic details that separate us (but both good and necessary for that difference to be)

 

You hit on a number of points that I felt constructive to respond to but forgive the clumsy formatting - can't seem to get multiquote to work with my browser ...

 

1. I like the idea of DE having a Loremaster - for which you also provided a clear job description that DE should consider using

 

2. Thank you for your proprietary definition of "pseudo-directed" ... maybe you should submit it to Urban Dictionary as it sums up your rather involved point well

 

3. Again, you have coined a useful phrase in "a truly successful world doesn't reveal itself" as a variant of "things will be revealed in the goodness of time"

 

4. Requiring the player to do some independent thinking - but not floundering as DE has us do now - is mandatory for an immersive RPG

 

5. A third person narrator can introduce the story but not explain it and during the course of gameplay provide interim information ... in Warframe this is done by The Lotus but needs to be so much more robustly

 

6. Your point that DE last lost a sense of time is both amusing and annoying ... once again, it's time for DE to get their storygame ON

 

Edited September 2, 2014 by ElHefe

[vaugahn]

4. Requiring the player to do some independent thinking - but not floundering as DE has us do now - is mandatory for an immersive RPG

 

What about in-map lore? Certain tiles that revealed things about the world, that you'd have to go find and examine.