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Lore or Narrative? Which you prefer?

How do you prefer you games "story" told?

  • Lore

    Votes: 27 42.2%
  • Narrative

    Votes: 37 57.8%

  • Total voters
    64
So with games that are narrative based you have a story that is told to you and you as the player are apart of the audience to some extent while in a lore based games you more so piece together aspects of the backstory and aren't really pushed by the game itself to complete.

The more games I play when the lore plays a bigger role than narrative I realize I enjoy them more. In a game like Hollow Knight, From games or the side quest in many of Bethesda games are often my favorite aspects is piecing together "what happened here" through environmental story telling, art direction instead of traditional story telling we see in more cinematic games like TLOU or Uncharted. Lore based games seem to work better with what games are about, interactivity and exploration vs set piece to set piece to cutscene.

That being said do you prefer you stories told in a more traditional sense or to piece it together through gameplay?
 

AJUMP23

Gold Member
I like a narrative story. But man Cyberpunk is testing that. But I enjoy the narrative aspects of a story the most.
 

Hugare

Member
Narrative, but both is the best option

Lore only is boring as fuck. Reading countless documents in Control almost put me to sleep. Hate reading itens desciptions in FROM games to know more about the world.

At least in games such as Bioshock, for example, you got audiologs with good voice acting to keep you engaged during gameplay
 

A.Romero

Member
Narrative, but both is the best option

Lore only is boring as fuck. Reading countless documents in Control almost put me to sleep. Hate reading itens desciptions in FROM games to know more about the world.

At least in games such as Bioshock, for example, you got audiologs with good voice acting to keep you engaged during gameplay
I prefer narrative but I enjoyed the documents in Control a lot. I thought they were very well written.

I don't like FROM approach either.
 
Narrative, but both is the best option

Lore only is boring as fuck. Reading countless documents in Control almost put me to sleep. Hate reading itens desciptions in FROM games to know more about the world.

At least in games such as Bioshock, for example, you got audiologs with good voice acting to keep you engaged during gameplay
I cant think of many games that do both well. In bioshock the story is still pretty much given to you on a platter including back story. It almost feels like it has to be built ground up to focus on one or the other or it just comes down to audio logs.
 

Lokaum D+

Member
90% of souls players wouldnt know a shit about what is happening in the world without youtubers like Vati that work only to tell these games lore in a understandeble way.

Just look at Sekiro, its more narrative then lore and its one of the best "SoulsBorne" out there.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
The reason I really liked Triangle Strategy because in my opinion does both very well, it has it strong narrative with proper characters but also tones lore you get note you find through out the game talks about Norzelia history, its environments and even weather conditions.

This is why Triangle Strategy is my GOTY, as much as enjoyed the lore behind Elden Ring I couldn't care less about its character or plot.
 
I used to seek out games with a lot of story, as it was pretty rare in the NES and early SNES days. I remember loving the Final Fantasy IV story and characters as a kid.

Now, I'm the opposite. Too many games spend too much time on story and not enough on gameplay. And this is coming from someone who loves turn-based JRPGs.
 
I used to seek out games with a lot of story, as it was pretty rare in the NES and early SNES days. I remember loving the Final Fantasy IV story and characters as a kid.

Now, I'm the opposite. Too many games spend too much time on story and not enough on gameplay. And this is coming from someone who loves turn-based JRPGs.
This is kind of my issue...when its story you usually go from gameplay moment to story dump instead of intertwining the two. A game like hollow knight has a story but you have to play and explore to get it all. I prefer that when a games gameplay and story are intertwined, not when its used as a bridge from story beat to story beat.
 

Hugare

Member
I cant think of many games that do both well. In bioshock the story is still pretty much given to you on a platter including back story. It almost feels like it has to be built ground up to focus on one or the other or it just comes down to audio logs.
Dont agree with the bold.

You can completely ignore all audio logs if you want to. In fact, if you want to hear all of them, its no easy task.

And if you ignore them, you lose a lot of the game's story, Fontaine's motives and his backstory and etc., but you'll still get a nice narrative imo

Same with the new Deus EX games. You lose a lot by not reading e-mails, journals and etc., but the narrative is pretty great by itself I think

Oh, and same for Mass Effect! Not reading any journal entry you'll still have a great time

I prefer narrative but I enjoyed the documents in Control a lot. I thought they were very well written.

I don't like FROM approach either.
They were well written indeed. But i'm not a fan of pausing the action to read something with small letters on my 40' tv

If there was some narration like in Alan Wake that would have been nice, but I reckon that Remedy didnt have the budget
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Narrative. I'm not an archaeologist trying to put together a picture from thousands of pieces - and maybe just to reach a completely erroneous conclusion.
Some lore is good, but a game's narrative shouldn't be completely based on lore. Lore should be there to enrich the narrative. Remember the diaries and notes in Resident Evil? That was lore done right.

A game like Metroid Prime did great things with minimalistic storytelling, environmental storytelling that far surpasses most of what Souls ever did, and bits of lore that you can ignore completely and still have some strong clues about what the hell happened.

Narrative can be in excess, of course. Your typical JRPG narrative was much more effective when games were text-only affairs. Voiced cutscenes ruined narrative for the most part. Still, most redundant cutscenes are better than what From Software calls a standard ending these days.
 
Lore can enrich narrative, but can't exist alone. Elden Ring is a good example of the disaster of neglecting narrative to focus on lore. 150 hour game that concludes with a 2 minute cutscene...
Saying a disaster for a critically acclaimed game kind of goes against the premise of your argument. it more shows it can be effective for a large amount of gamers. I think lore based games puts the journey first and foremost vs narrative games you more so receiving rewards from narrative reveals.
 
Girl Why Dont We Have Both GIF
 

Fbh

Member
Definitely Narrative, even though many of my favorite games are lore based.
Lore is fun and can enhance a good narrative but personally I'm not going to spend hours reading through item descriptions to try and piece together a story.

With that said I do think Narrative can often be a double edged sword. When it's good it's great but when it's bad and the game forced you to sit through awful cutscenes or hours of bad dialogue (looking at you....every other JRPG) it can actively make the game bad. Meanwhile Lore is less intrusive, if it's good it can help get more immersed in the world but if it's bad at least it's easy to ignore.
 
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I think the "lore only" approach in games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne works because the mystery fits with the atmosphere of that world and even with the gameplay, it wouldn't work in most other games.

Half-Life has a lot of background story and details but it delivered very subtly and the main narrative is enough to carry the game on it's own. This to me is a good balance.

Reading long document and stuff like that just comes off as a poorly designed way to expose the lore.
I remember playing Pillars of Eternity and I found it ridiculous how much text the game had trying to do lore dumps on the player (even compared to old CRPGs it is still way too much). That's not how you do it anymore.
 
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lachesis

Member
I tend to like narrative ones told via characters and their action.
Oftentimes lore involves in reading a wall of text. English being my 2nd language, I tend to fall a sleep.

But normally, many games tend to have both...
 

Mozzarella

Member
I dont think what you like is specifically "LORE".
Lore is part of the writing which is similar to worldbuilding. Writing can enrich your gaming experience.
The thing here is that YOU prefer storytelling through environment and gameplay means rather than cutscenes or wall of text.
For example Dishonored has more lore than Souls, but because its all told through walls of text you find in the world and nothing else it feels tedious to follow it and its also not very well written.

The question here is basically do you like that game deliver its story through its world, items, level design and backstories Or do you you like it delivered in a cutscene or character interaction.
I personally enjoy both but the games where i found myself caring about what is happening are Story-driven games with presentation like cutscenes and character interaction and a timeline, usually with a choice dialogue too since i prefer to alter it.
But i do prefer games that try to use the medium to tell its story, just i dont find myself caring about it that much often.

I think presentation and cutscenes are the ultimate form to deliver story content to you, its more engaging hence why movies are so popular and why lore videos for souls are popular because they do it like that.
Story told through game design is neat and it enriches the gameplay even more but i dont think it makes the player care more about what is happening, because its less engaging and doesnt give enough material that by the next event the player will most likely lose track and not care for it.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Narrative always gets better as technology gets better you’re able to figure out different ways to tell the narrative shout out to Nintendo adding voices in Breath of the Wild.
 

Zannegan

Member
Lore, because it rarely gets in the way and can be ignored if it's garbage. Most game stories are poor efforts anyway, so not having to "play" through some amateur director's personal philosophy spiced by self-insert characters and hamfisted emotional appeals is a selling point for me.

EDIT: In retrospect, that came out way meaner than it sounded in my head. Must have been grumpy. Different strokes and all that.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
But I dont think it works with every game, for example the reason games like Elden Ring is much more "lore" based because it online fictionality, mean while game like Sekiro has much more narrative and proper character development because its strictly single player game.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
It depends on the genere but especially with things like Sci-fi and Fantasy you need good lore to tell a good narrative, without good lore there is no reason to go with a non-fictional back drop for your narrative, because you instead just use the preexisting frame work reality provides.
 
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If developers had the slightest idea how to tell a good story (generally speaking), it might make a difference, but lore it is for me either way in the end. I don't mind minimal exposition, but I much prefer strong atmosphere coupled with discoverable lore/narrative as a sort of game within the game. And honestly I prefer minimal narrative overall where I have to read between the lines and come to my own conclusions...things like Ueda's work or SMT Nocturne with its limited narrative/heavy gameplay formula.

Games are interactive media for me still, despite the ever-growing definition of what games can be, and I like it best when I'm free to *play* rather than being endlessly shown events and characters doing things. I still have a controller in my hand, and the implications of that suggest what matters most imho.
 

Pejo

Member
With generally how awful modern writers are at making a compelling story most of the time, i'll take lore any day of the week. It's not even that I think the writers are bad all the time, but I'm sure their stories are diluted and simplified to gain that "mass appeal" that publishers are all about. Any time there's a character that literally explains every character motivation or reiterates the same thing that you just heard/saw/experienced, I groan. Lore lets me piece together the story which I actually find kinda fun.
 

Amiga

Member
Destiny has tons of great lore few players know anything about because it wasn't part of the narrative.
 
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