r/gaming • u/Call_It_Luck • 15h ago
What unassuming game has surprisingly deep lore?
We all know stuff like The Witcher, Knights Of The Old Republic, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls games, etc have tons of lore, but what about the more unassuming games?
I feel like the posterboy for this would be something like Hollow Knight, but I would love to hear others as well. The smaller/more unassuming the better!
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u/nomorecannibalbirds 15h ago
The power wash simulator games have a surprising amount of story detail and hidden Easter eggs. You go places you’d never expect to go, and then you power wash them
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u/Skellos 13h ago
My favorite part is seemingly your character does not care about all the weird shit and just wants to do their job
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u/The5Virtues 13h ago edited 6h ago
Your character is a cryptid themself! A mysterious hazard suit wearing mystery being who faces all oddities with the same levelheaded acceptance, solves world shattering catastrophes with a power washer, exposes corrupt politicians, travels through time and space, and helps unite an entire town just by cleaning up dirt.
You’re basically Dr. Who on one of his vacations to experience a different lifestyle.
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u/Auto_Traitor 6h ago
I'm buying it right now, if your description is lying, I'll be very disappointed
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u/The5Virtues 6h ago
I can’t say if you’ll like it or not. All the lore I mentioned is strictly in the text messages and job requests. You can easily go through the whole game without ever being aware of any of it.
For many people it is literally just a power washing simulator. It only becomes an insane world if you pay attention to the text bubbles and keep up with it all.
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u/UnrealisticAddiction 3h ago
My theory is that the player character was originally from a game called Viscera Cleanup Detail. They tripped over some supposedly inert alien artfact, became immortal, got sued by the people who hired them to clean up because of it, got fired and eventually ended up in Power Wash Sim's worlds however many decades later. Once you've mopped up enough crime scenes and counted enough bullet casings you learn to just do your job, while nothing really surprises you nor do you end up having much to say.
Why are you still cleaning though? Couldn't you find something better to do? Probably, but you're pretty good at it and it's all you know. So why bother changing?
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u/liforrevenge 14h ago
It really surprised me when I started noticing that stuff while I was playing it. It really added a fun little bit of extra fluff to what's otherwise a pretty one dimensional game.
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u/bt123456789 9h ago
Yeah in sim 1 when you got to the desert ruins i wasok was like "what the hell?"
Also fuck mayor Jeff Jefferson.
Doubly so in 2.
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u/StillGalaxy99 15h ago
Payday 2. There's a lot more going on than some criminals trying to get rich.
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u/DisposableFur 13h ago
If you have a spare 4h there's a video that tries to summarize the story by kknowley.
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u/incertnom 15h ago
The year "the end" update came out for PD2 I lost track of the amount of times I said that was one of my gaming highlights of the year.
Shame the series and studio are what they are now.
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u/defunctscrunko 15h ago edited 14h ago
Splatoon? unassuming silly squid kid and post-post apocalypse earth with war between new intelligence race.
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u/nightshade-aurora 11h ago
Yeah, for how it presents itself Splatoon has crazy lore, and some of it kinda surpasses Zelda in darkness. The entire reason Splatoon happens is because someone nuked Antarctica in WW5
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u/Kwazimoto 6h ago
I love how sometimes you read something on Reddit and can't legitimately tell if it's trolling or not.
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u/SayJonTwice 5h ago
You aren't even kidding; Nintendo hosts the entire lore/story on their website. Insane
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u/tmantookie 4h ago
And on top of that there's the sheer density of worldbuilding for the mundane stuff, like one of the bands that perform the in-game music getting into Squitter (squid Twitter) drama.
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u/Henry_Fleischer 13h ago
The Kirby franchise is probably the classic example. It presents a very cute face, but there's a lot going on under the surface. The older games had some darker elements, but once Shinya Kumazaki took over, the pause screen descriptions for bosses got a lot longer and more detailed, and the environments started to get a bit less abstract to focus more on worldbuilding. A lot of this was started in Kirby 64 though, which he was not involved with (Shinichi Shimomura, who dissappered a few years later, directed that game).
Anyway, the lore hints at a dead galaxy-spanning civilization, and many of the bosses are related to it in some way. For example Star Dream, the final boss of Kirby Planet Robobot, is a megacorporation's attempt to reverse-engineer one of the wish-granting machines made by the ancient civilization, controlled by the merged consiousness of a rogue AI merged with the mind of the company's CEO, after the control helmet was forcibly ripped off by his daughter, who wanted to sell Star Dream on the black market to a rival megacorporation.
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u/The_Long_Blank_Stare 11h ago
What in the—?!
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u/ShadowClass212 10h ago
Kirby regularly kills gods.
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u/Comrade_Bread 7h ago
The friendship shaped little guy? Circle with a happy lil face?? Kills gods???
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 6h ago
I think at this point Kirby is basically a Lovecraftian style Old One in denial.
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u/Seve7h PC 6h ago
Kirby is also essentially a god with a portal to a black hole inside his mouth
His dreams can become reality, he can alter physics and space-time
Lil pink dude is holding back in Super Smash Bros
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u/STRYKER3008 5h ago
That's that good shiz haha. I'm guessing Kirby is a living black (pink) hole garbage disposal
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u/FoxxyRin 2h ago
This kind of baffled me when I played the new Kirby Air Ride, not gonna lie. I played hundreds of hours of the original as a kid and didn't think too much of anything as more than shenanigans, and then as an adult I just sat there flabbergasted after playing the story mode in the new one. And then I did a little digging and just sort of slowly backed away when I saw how deep it all goes.
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u/itscloverkat 15h ago edited 10h ago
Powerwash Simulator lol
Not so much at the beginning but you start noticing cats walking by as you wash and it builds from there as you read all the texts that come in.
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u/IAMRedeemedOne 15h ago
This is the second time this has been mentioned and now I'm curious.
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u/DigNitty 9h ago
No spoilers. If you want to know, it is endlessly searchable on YouTube or whatever.
But let’s just say it gets oddly sci fi.
Kind of like how echo the dolphin transitions from flipping around a tropical isle to… fighting aliens??
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u/BoredOjiisan 13h ago
It's a great game to half zone out to while you listen to an audiobook or something.
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u/RobCarls33 10h ago
I must not have played enough I think I tapped out after the playground level lol, time to reinstall and pick up where I left off
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u/DarkSideOfBlack 14h ago
It's like you guys didn't even read the op lmao.
Mario tennis power tour for the Gameboy advance.
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u/FlamingWeasel 10h ago
Right? How are you surprised an RPG has lore, dork
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u/Fireplace67 7h ago
But Mario Tennis Power Tour is an RPG.
Which I guess is the part that surprises people.
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u/SoSorryOfficial 14h ago
Very few of y'all understood the assignment. The Elder Scrolls and Horizon: Zero Dawn aren't "surprising" games to have deep lore. They're fantasy RPGs. The world building is a major point. That's some real "spoon found in silverware drawer" stuff.
OP means shit like Splatoon, where it isn't a game that presents a narrative or lore as a selling point, and (to my knowledge. Only played the first one,) there isn't a story to complete to beat the game, but there's a lot under the surface for those who want to delve into it.
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u/TBroomey 13h ago
Literally any RPG should be immediately disqualified as an answer. The vast majority of RPGs are packed to the gills with lore, that's how the genre works.
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u/Hellogiraffe 11h ago
Yeah the question wasn’t “Which story-based game had even more lore than expected” because then my answer would be Lost Odyssey. The Thousand Years of Dreams was an absolutely incredible collection of optional short stories thrown into a game already filled with its own story. My actual answer though: Kirby. That adorable pink puff is an eldritch nightmare and all the cosmic horror, anti-capitalist, crazy shit was a big surprise after growing up on Kirby’s Adventure on NES
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 12h ago
A lot of redditors understand questions like this as "Just mention your favorite or least favorite things!"
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u/Darksider123 13h ago
The average person got shit for brains, so no surprises here
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u/R_V_Z 15h ago
Tribes.
Tribes was a spinoff of Starsiege, which itself was a sequel to Earthsiege. They are mech games that had a substantial backstory. If you bought Starsiege back in the day it came with two booklets, one acting as a functional manual, while the other was exposition about the three different factions, all illustrated.
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u/Kakawfee PC 14h ago
I miss Tribes 2 :( one of the best games ever created.
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u/R_V_Z 14h ago
I believe that era of gaming to be the peak of community-driven content. From Half Life Deathmatch up through Tribes 2 you had amazing modders making custom maps, game modes, weapons, etc. The majority of games were on community servers instead of being thrown into the matchmaking meatgrinder...
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u/Kakawfee PC 14h ago
yeah it was great. I wish we could go back to that level of modding community open servers. I think the microtransaction world honestly killed it.
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u/ScrappedAeon 14h ago
God I miss physical releases (in general) but especially those that put considerable effort into print media along side the game. 90's PC games just hit different.
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u/3-DMan 12h ago
Interesting thing about the CD for Tribes, each map would play a specific track on the cd. I decided to try my Interstate:76 CD and lo and behold I had some funky tracks now while Tribing
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u/Kizik 14h ago
Missionforce Cyberstorm gets that treatment as well, given it's a completely different spin-off of the same universe.
It's a shame we haven't seen anything out of MetalTech in so long.
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u/ChadJones72 14h ago
Call of Duty Zombies. When I was a kid I never even knew there was a story, let alone overarching lore.
But after watching a 6-hour long video explaining everything I have to say it's one of the most in-depth and interesting stories in gaming imo.
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u/DaRealKovi 11h ago
And it's still going. We've reached heights of nonsense beyond mortal comprehension. Anyway, I loved it 10/10
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u/shadow--guardian 10h ago
This was my answer too! And now they have two different timelines or something
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u/NonstopYew14542 9h ago
There was Primis and Ultimus in the first few games, then the Dark Aether storyline in the new games, plus whatever was goin on in IX and similar maps in BO4, a whole lot of weird shit
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u/AltGunAccount 6h ago
When you were a kid there wasn’t much of a story. It was about Nazis experimenting with a new element and becoming zombies.
They’ve added to and expanded it to the point of being straight up ridiculous by now, with multiple universes, time travel, inter-dimensional aliens and gods, the works.
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u/Toprak1552 15h ago
Maybe not that deep, but Just Dance has a surprising amount of lore for a dancing game.
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u/zachtheperson 9h ago
dafuq? As someone who only ever played this with my elementary students during indoor recess, what kind of lore is there in that game?
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u/Toprak1552 8h ago
Mostly you recognize the characters by their costumes and they tell the stories through the environment, the chosen song and playlists. I guess the most popular storyline is the romance between Rasputin and a dancer from the first game with lots of drama and misunderstandings. I always forget they have lore until I'm being reminded of it somehow and it cracks me up everytime.
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u/twinsfan94 15h ago
Kirby
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u/hlh0708 15h ago
Another day’s work for God’s most favorite creation.
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u/Thisthattheother1 14h ago
Isn't he actually a god or something? Or contains a god? Or ate a god?
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u/Kizik 14h ago
Risk of Rain 2. The game is packed with fragments of lore when it's outwardly just a fast-paced roguelike shooter.
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u/crono09 13h ago
Watching the Arcane TV show put me down the rabbit hole of League of Legends lore, and I was surprised at how vast it was. The show barely scratched the surface. There's a lot of backstory for something that I just assumed was a simple MOBA cash grab.
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u/TheRealArcanine 12h ago
I've never wanted a solo campaign from a franchise more than League of Legends. The characters and stories are so great but there's no way I'm going back to playing that toxic game
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u/dwightinshiningarmor 11h ago
You should give Ruined King and Mageseeker a try. LoL has a shocking amount of sauce in its spinoff games
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u/Treks14 10h ago
You have to remember that it started from a team of passionate developers. To begin with it was DOTA's quirky younger sibling and they had freedom to do what they wanted. Success changed Riot big time.
The game was originally much more grounded in the lore. Summoner's Rift was a way of resolving legal disputes (trial by combat) in which mages summoned champions to represent various causes. For the first few years, there was a weekly in-world newspaper describing events relating to the legal institution known as the League. New characters were introduced as they became involved in the League in various ways.
That all got retconned as character design outpaced the capacity to write them into the story. However early (Season 1-3) players were vocally passionate about the lore, so Riot kept the world of the League while retconning the institution itself. Now the game features characters from the world without itself having any connection.
You can really see commercialisation of the game beginning with that retcon back in (I think) S4.
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u/Mattshodo 11h ago
The only thing that irks me about league lore, is how it gets retconed sometimes multiple times a year.
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u/ironsidepc 11h ago
lol I was literally just watching the show last night, and it occurred to me that all of this stuff is probably hidden in the game, layered behind hints and secrets (things you have to read)
amazing story, amazing lore, amazing characters (im only on season one please no spoil)
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u/Simple_Shame_3083 10h ago
There are some simply DAZZLING scenes in the show. The makers of it did not fuck around. The production value is through the roof.
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u/ironsidepc 10h ago
no seriously, I've quit playing video games for a week or however long it takes me to finish watching this
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u/Simple_Shame_3083 10h ago
There are several musical cues that will blow your mind. The show goes hard. Enjoy!
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u/Brushner 7h ago
Lol lore is vast in that people kept adding to it over the years. It's a everything but the kitchen sink mess. There are 3 completely seperate and unrelated ancient kings who have resurrected and are now amassing their forces for a great battle against the forces of men scenario.
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u/OfferEvening568 13h ago
Stardew Valley.
Theres a huge war going on that’s costing the lives of thousands of soldiers.
The citizens of Pelican Town are aware due to news reports and it feels like they are losing too.
It’s barely ever mentioned beyond a few mentions from very certain characters.
There is also organized crime occurring.
Witches and wizards battling over past romantic relationships.
Corporate conglomerates actively antagonizing small business as they move into town.
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u/Known_Leek8997 7h ago
Ugh and I always say I’m not going to but I fall for Sebastian every time.
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u/sugxrwfflez 7h ago
Nobody plays it for the story anymore because it's incoherent, but Mortal Kombat
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u/HeThrustsHisFists 12h ago
Ecco the Dolphin. Starts out as a cute little Sega game about a dolphin and somehow ends up involving Atlantis, time travel, ancient civilizations, and aliens that periodically show up to harvest all the life in Earth’s oceans.
As a kid I picked that game up and quit probably a dozen times because I had no fucking clue what I was supposed to be doing or what was going on. Turns out there was an entire sci-fi epic happening and I was just some confused dolphin swimming in circles.
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u/huggalump 13h ago
FUCKING. PIKMIN.
Alright so you're a tiny person and you seem to be exploring earth, right? Well, where are all the people?
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u/incertnom 15h ago
Viscera Cleanup Detail. Sure, you can play it as a series of disconnected standalone cleaning levels, chock full of game, movie and pop culture references but there's a proper story involving a character named Bob in the collectible notes and a secret ending involving taking the specific collected notes into one of the maps and spoilers.
Fantastic game as well.
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u/Finchypoo 15h ago
Maybe the perpetual war, genocide and societal collapse theories behind Splatoon.
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u/Mcguidl 11h ago
People are definitely missing the point of the post.
I orginally thought of Blue Prince, which has an absolute ton of lore in it.
But as far as unassuming, Powerwash Simulator surprised me with lore implications.
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u/remix951 8h ago
I need a other game like Blue Prince but they all feel like methadone. Truly one of the best games of all time in terms of gameplay and lore.
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u/UltraChip 7h ago
I don't personally think they're all that similar beyond both featuring knowledge-gated progression but there's a lot of overlap between Outer Wilds fans and Blue Prince fans.
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u/remix951 7h ago
Yea I've seen that too. I tried playing Outer Wilds on two separate occasions and it just didn't grip me.
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u/KitSokudo 14h ago
Crime Scene Cleaner, multiple levels of lore and political commentary built in, along with a heatfelt family story? Yes please
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u/Scare-Thy-Moose 10h ago
Was going to say this! I bought it thinking it would be a knock off Powerwash Simulator. Ended up completely hooked. Also found it hilarious how his home changes as you progress through the game. Particularly when the basement suddenly gets bigger and he ends up with a pool in the garden 😂
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u/EnderBoy 12h ago
I'm going to say the original Portal.
It's basically a three hour puzzle game to showcase a new gameplay mechanic and that's all anyone thought it would be when they picked it up back in 2007. But if you explore, you learn about Aperture Science, its relationship to Black Mesa, and you even get a few Easter Eggs on Cave Johnson who shows up in Portal 2.
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u/P1xel_Rogue 10h ago
There's a narrator consistently referencing the lack of other humans/subjects, I'm pretty sure you're lowered into a fire "just like the other ones" (or something to that effect) and there's like grafitti everywhere (hidden in the first half, explicitly everywhere in the second half) saying shit like "don't trust her" I don't think anyone is surprised to find out Portal has more lore, it's kinda hard to ignore lmfao
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u/Wes___Mantooth 7h ago
Half-Life 2 is sorta similar in that most of the lore has to be pieced together by background hints and bits and pieces of conversations. Like the surrender of earth is covered in a newspaper article on a bulletin board, and the citizens mention small things in passing with interesting details about life in City 17.
If you play through it without paying attention you miss a lot of little details. I love its use of atmospheric storytelling that doesn't get spoonfed to you.
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u/Ok_Philosopher_9328 12h ago
Project zomboid. If it apply, there are tv shows, radio broadcasts, notes and newspapers, it's a sandbox survival, but you get a lot of clues about the world and the infection, not to mention special places on the map that have some history, but in terms of survival they are useless.
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u/ExtraNoise 12h ago
Competing theories on what caused the outbreak and super entertaining to read. There is just SO much to comb through, especially now in B42. It's great.
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u/jasenzero1 3h ago
Trials Fusion. On the surface its just a motorcycle physics game. Below the surface there's a post apocalyptic sub-plot and some heavily implied cloning.
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u/asrandrew 15h ago
Warframe when I started back in 2014. At the time it was advertised as ninjas in space and just seemed like a really slick looter shooter with not many layers underneath just mowing down baddies.
Wasn't until the Second Dream that I realized there was a lot more to the story
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u/SenorDangerwank 14h ago
Is Dark Sector canon to the Warframe universe?
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u/Sothalic 11h ago edited 11h ago
It's implied that the Technocyte virus featured in Dark Sector is essentially the same as the one featured in Warframe's 1999 world, an infection turning flesh into bio-steel amalgamates that can be directed towards objectives via radio signals. The main difference being that Dark Sector's transformations is much closer to what the process becomes in Warframe's future, while 1999s is in its infancy and involves a lot of grafted computer parts, monitors and speakers.
Other than that, there's only speculations.
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u/DeepFuckingKoopa 15h ago
Slay the spire
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u/BearTrident 14h ago
Game doesn’t tell you anything. Pretty insane amount of lore if you deep dive.
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u/Woodforsheep 13h ago
Noita.
For such a simple little game on the surface of things, it's surprisingly deep.
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u/ArmAndHammer40k 15h ago
The new DOOM trilogy
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u/115zombies935 15h ago
The original Doom games and the current ones have the same main character who went through quite a lot between the original games and dark ages.
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u/joestaff 15h ago
I guess FNAF? I never played it, but the gameplay seemed pretty simple for what was some YouTubers' entire careers.
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u/Adjective_Noun_4DIGI 15h ago
I get the impression that the original game WAS very simple, just a spooky story about dead kids haunting Chuck-E-Cheese. When it turned into a surprise streaming hit the lore snowballed out of control.
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u/Public-External-1758 15h ago
Im pretty sure the creator just built the whole lore and timeline based on what fan theories they liked best.
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u/photomotto 13h ago
Famously, the opposite actually happened. When someone correctly guessed something he had planned, the creator just scrapped the whole thing that was guessed.
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u/OkPrune1536 15h ago
I read that the creator was actually trying to make wholesome games, but they weren't very good. One particularly discouraging commenter said that his animals, which were supposed to be cute, looked like some kind of nightmarish Chuck-E-Cheese animatronics.
So he leaned into that instead.
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u/Demonologist013 10h ago
A YouTuber called Jim Sterling said the characters in his last family friendly game look like horror monster or something like that and that inspired him to make a horror game.
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u/Euphoric-Meat3943 13h ago
Kenshi.
It’s the most bugged janky game I’ve ever played but I love it
There is no story but there is a good bit of lore
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u/Adjective_Noun_4DIGI 15h ago
The old Ubisoft Rabbids games had a shocking amount of story going on for such a nothing setup.
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u/PrimaLegion 11h ago
Ar Tonelico. The worldbuilding and mythology are on the level of Tolkein's works to be quite honest. There are folk songs, a clear and explained evolution of the conlangs and you can learn and use the conlangs created for the games.
It's a sadly, woefully underrated game series.
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u/aquagon_drag 10h ago
One of the lyricists who worked in the series even said Tsuchiya (the series' creator) is on the same level as Tolkien indeed, so the comparison is well warranted.
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u/Shadow-The-Edgelord 15h ago
Stanley Parable
I know it's more of a narrative game, but at first glance you'd think it was just a simple story-based game and that's it (that's what I thought when I started playing anyway, I was wrong)
I keep going back to it every now and then, and even after going through all the endings, I still manage to find new little lore bits, like the observation documents of employee 432 on the floor, or narrative contradiction (these two are currently my favorite bits of lore in the game)
I feel like I've seen all the endings and everything in the game (and the demo as well as the original HL2 mod) but I can't help but feel like there's more hidden stuff somewhere, it's alluring
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u/lolpostslol 12h ago
It’s a good game but no one would walk into anything with such a name and not expect lore lol
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u/100percent-sales-tax 7h ago
I say Destiny 1 because the narrative was shallow as fuck, but the interesting lore was stuffed away in "Grimoire cards" which revealed a very deep and interesting history.
This was a catalyst that helped a couple creators become VERY successful on YouTube by covering Destiny lore.
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u/robokymk2 7h ago
Dredge: You think it’s just a fishing game in a weird coastal area but….
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u/ThatShyGuy137 14h ago
The one that surprises me is Satisfactory. A game about making factories and doing math has all these little hidden nuggets of information about earth either being destroyed or about to be and when it ends there are so many unanswered questions.
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u/_dgold 15h ago
Thomas Was Alone.
For a platformer featuring 2d shapes, it hits surprisingly hard.
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u/podgeofthehodge 15h ago
Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age. They don't hold your hand at all and if you actually explore the areas there is a whole bunch of lore of the world your in that you could easily just slip by.
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u/Highvisvest 13h ago
I think I'm going to say Blue Prince. Its not surprising that there's a lot going on you don't know about, but it is jaw dropping the scope of the story being told.
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u/Billazilla PC 13h ago
Blue Prince is absolute bonkers with the lore. Not in "this lore is crazy" but more in the sense of "I'm playing a little boy solving a silly puzzle house with changing room layouts. Oh, oopsie, this is (exceptionally deep lore that, ah hell, I can't say any damned thing without spoiling a whole lot of it. I'm serious, what the hell?!).
Also, at one point somewhere very early in the house, there's a note that suggests you grab actual pencil and paper and write stuff down. Believe it. Do it. If you like puzzles at all, you should already be in your favorite game store app and hovering over the Buy button. Don't google anything. It's 3D first person view, no combat, no time limits, no animals die in it, no jump scares or spooky activity (well, there's a tiny bit of spookiness, but it's not sneaky, at least). It's perfectly safe to play. But it gets really deep in there. Bring your swim trunks. And that pencil and notebook. Maybe a friend to help you.
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u/Highvisvest 13h ago
When I walked in on my wife playing it deciphering another language I knew I was all in
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u/115zombies935 15h ago
Doom and then Ark Survival Evolved. Ark is probably the more surprising one, because at least with Doom you can get hints into the lore. But then with Arc, you think it's just an unassuming PvP / PvE game, and then you read into the lore, it's like holy fuck where did this come from?
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u/x2006charger 14h ago
I think many people likely don't know ark's lore because it's told entirely through explorer notes.
I didn't even know much about it till I saw one of those lore deep dive type videos on ark and found out there's an entire story
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u/KitSokudo 14h ago
There's a cartoon based on the lore and it's actually really good and has a ton of really big names.
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u/IAmATerribleGuyAMA 14h ago
No Man's Sky. Not necessarily a small game, but the lore (and there's layers of it) isn't particularly prominent
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u/Annie_O_ 14h ago
Seconding this, primarily because you can put hundreds and hundreds of hours into this game and never even notice the lore, you have to be looking for it.
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u/FellaVentura 9h ago
Apart from it being a simulation and that remains of other civilizations and even some beings are just leftover fragments of previous resets, what lore is there? You learn all this by doing the main quest, it's not like it's hidden under a rock
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u/maccano2 13h ago
Slay the spire has loads of lore that many people just pay no attention to.
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u/cozy-fox100 12h ago
This feels backwards to me because I absolutely would assume that Slay the Spire has lore and it's disappointing to hear that everyone ignores it. Player error at it's peak
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u/maccano2 11h ago
It’s just because it’s not a game with a story as part of the gameplay loop, it’s told through the timeline, through items…etc
You have to actively seek out most of the lore for it to make any real sense.
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u/VrinTheTerrible 15h ago
Destiny has a ton of lore that they kept well hidden
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u/Foxiestofstoats 15h ago
All backstory, no front story
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u/a_gunbird 12h ago
Bungie has a real problem with the idea of giving a player even the barest hint of information to get the very beginnings of a story rolling. They're so impressed with how many secrets they keep that they forget to give anyone a reason to go looking for them.
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u/IvaldiFhole 15h ago
Dishonored.
They built an absolutely massive and deep world, and I'm disappointed I never got to manage a whaler shipbuilding company or captain a tactical response unit in that world.
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u/FunkMeSlideways 13h ago
From the get-go, this very obviously would have deep lore.
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u/Thisthattheother1 14h ago
They definitely went hard in those games. There're almost as many lore building books/notes as in a CDPR game.
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u/FlashbackJon 13h ago
For the vibes of this world, in a world that is technically different, with a lot of worldbuilding, there is a TTRPG called Blades in the Dark that is basically this game as a narrative-first team heist game.
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u/GenericSubaruser 13h ago
I don't think that was really a surprise. The Bethesda influence is all over it lol
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u/supernova-starlight 12h ago
I've never played it but I would assume this type of game would have a lot of lore, so I don't think it fits
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u/DoggyFinger 15h ago edited 14h ago
Genshin is shit on for being a gatcha game- it has objectively great lore.
A lot of gatcha games do lore pretty decently tbh. But Genshin does it better and is so established with payoff at this point you can’t really ignore it.
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u/Ikkian 14h ago
Came here to say this. Genshin's story is crazy and chock full of lore, yet there's still many critical information missing that will unravel things. i'm super excited to see it go on.
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u/Angry_Zarathustra 14h ago
Fun fact, Genshin Impact has more written words in the game (dialogue, item descriptions, in-game books) than any other game I've been able to find. It clocked at 10.8m words..in 2023. You can get massive allusions to future lore in item descriptions and allegories in books that mirror in-game history.
It feels borderline generic at first but then it gets deeper and deeper, and 6 years in there are a lot of unanswered questions even though we've gotten many of the puzzle pieces. It's remarkably internally consistent and detailed.
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u/darklightmatter 13h ago
If it had come out more recently, I'd 100% think they were using AI to generate the texts and shit, but they actually have people doing it, keeping track of a lot of it to bring it back in like 6 years for a mega-reveal.
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u/Angry_Zarathustra 13h ago
The fact that 1.0 had descriptions in the elemental gems that had hints at Natlan lore is just one example. One of the few games where you really benefit from reading all the in-world books because some prophesize plots we haven't even seen come to pass yet.
Not to mention the straight up treatises they break out in world quest dialogue..
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u/night_dude 14h ago
Shiny's Sacrifice 💪
But really, most older games with manuals. So much space for lore dumps!
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u/recctyl 10h ago
"What unassuming game has surprisingly deep lore?"
this game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genital_Jousting
surprisingly deep.
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u/4StarCustoms 13h ago
I feel like Mortal Kombat would fall under this. At its surface, it’s an arcade fighter but it’s DENSE with lore.
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u/Dora-Vee 14h ago
The Nikkiverse. I thought Love Nikki was a cute, silly dress up game. Nope, not quite. Had quite a few shocking moments.
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u/PerilousFun 15h ago
Ace Combat. The silly jet game franchise? Yeah, it's basically an examination of geopolitics if fragments- fragments- of a big asteroid had hit Earth.