The New Lore Is Dumb Though
Look someone had to say it: Calling the Entity the Hole in Elodie's backstory? Dumb. Memory Loss after trials? Contradicts previous lore, actual gameplay and is dumb cause it strangles any story you might want to do in future with all these characters you've got trademarked. Making Philip into the Punisher of DBD? Dumb, but luckily it's comic book dumb so it's kind of okay. We need more of the later kinda dumb and less of the middle and first kind of dumb. The middle and first kinda dumb lead to ranting and raving. Also get rid of the cult subplot it's always a mistake to include a cultist subplot. And stop trying to turn this into Cabin In The Woods your initial premise in the original journal entries on your website were fine stop copying Joss Whedon's homework.
Comments
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Where have you found this new lore?
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To expand on the cultist subplot complaint cultists are a red herring you use in lovecraftian fiction to hide the monster and supernatural aspects until the very last second. They have precisely zero point in a story where we've already seen the monster. The Hole is dumb because the Entity is already a vague and obscure name if you were going to chose a mythological name for the Entity that Elodie's could research and discover then I've got one for you: The Wild Hunt. There's your occult name. Much more believable. The memory loss is dumb because it causes gameplay and story segregation. The players will connect more with a version of the survivors that learn and grow and adapt to the trials like they do. Not ones who remain static. Though it is also dumb if you ever want to adapt Dead By Daylight to an alternative medium too. I mean you might think you can't do that with what you had initially but you'd be surprised what a great slice of life story being trapped in a repetitive purgatory could be. Memory loss is a pretty cheap storytelling tool and should only be really used if your absolutely certain you don't need your characters to be well...characters. And just because your characters don't get to do much in game proper that's not necessarily a sign you DON'T need them to be characters. The Survivors are more appealing if they work together and adapt to the Trials rather than being wiped of their potential to grow. I could go on. I don't know who is in charge of the storytelling and lore at BHVR but I know you need to get an editor or something to whack you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper to keep those audience alienating premises underwraps.
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Mostly the rift and the newer survivors and killers backgrounds.
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Note when I say "New" I mostly mean "stuff that contradicts the initial premise as described in Baker's journals." It was a perfectly good initial premise. Also the black robed cultist stuff and their vague but present seeming connection to the Entity cause if I had a dollar for everytime an unnecessary cultist subplot interfered with taking an Eldritch Monster seriously I'd be very very rich. Philip as punisher was mostly just a jokey way of saying "more backstory for killers and survivors good, too much wank about multiversal illuminati memory wiping cultist shenanigans? Bad" sorry if that was not clear. Like trust me you think the segment with the teens fighting bug monsters with laser swords is cool but that kinda lore is mostly just fat and you should trim it so your story and lore don't become diabetic. Well actually that's a bad example that encounter as a throw away experience it actually pretty neat storytelling. But it feels like a symptom of a bigger problem of overestimating how much the Entities nature truly needs to be explained and underestimating that the characters are a bigger drawing point. Eldritch Monsters lose their impact the more we know and I think the decision to include that memory loss tidbit shows confused priorities. It's fun to speculate about the Entity it's not necessarily fun to KNOW. In the same way it's more fun to know about the characters we plays as and it's more fun if we believe that we have a shared or parallel experience with those characters something the memory loss plot thread interfere's with.
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The Wild Hunt is a real mythological phenomenon it literally cannot be trademarked, it's public domain.
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Oh and as for your suggestion of fanfiction...I have such little respect for the memory loss plotpoint that even acknowledging it enough to "fix" it is anathema to me. Besides without an appealing canon foundation there is no motive for fanfiction.
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My point is that, it's an unnecessary story. At least in part, they don't need to try and explain the survivors not going insane, humans can cope with a lot, they don't need to explain the survivor duplication no one considered that canon until they tried to bring it up. Because it's not really as interesting as survivors as individuals. Their priorities are out of whack it reminds me of the Five Nights at Freddie's problem where the lore is so bloated, it's objectively worse than the initial premise from the first game. In the same way the original premise in Baker's journals is much neater and stronger foundationally than the Observer's bloated mess. Explaining everything is not always a good thing.
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I mean your explanation of their explanation feels unnecessary to me. Your making up problems that don't necessarily exist. Plenty of people were fine with the premise before the memory loss. Also all survivors are "Final Girls" meaning every single one of them has the potential to make it to the end of the horror movie. Whether you like it or not they ARE already by their very nature action survivors.
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You are only proving my point about lore bloat.
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My point is it's a dumb story and they already had a much neater simpler story that did not look like babies first postmodernism.
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Also I would not worry as game developers it's statistically unlikely they are actually having fun. That's like being a street rat in the industrial revolution and having fun.
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Why wouldn't I care? I play as these characters I imagine their struggles I pay for their cosmetics, I grind to make them stronger and more versatile. The idea that I should just let a poorly written canon story with them in it slide because fanfiction exists is ludicrous. Espeacially when ultimately the people most likely to care about or digest the lore are the people who will write said fanfiction. Meaning this convoluted canon will inevitably taint those stories too. WoW's story post-cataclysm annoys me, Dragon Age's story post Origins annoys me, Harry Potter from Order of The Phoenix onwards annoys me. Five Nights At Freddy's Lore Post The Third Game Annoys me. Why should Dead By Daylight be protected from my criticism? Because you enjoy it? I think not.
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I dislike that it feels like it prioritises the entity itself over the characters we actually play as. I'm of the belief that Stephen King was right when he said that nothing actually presented in universe about a monster is as scary as what we imagine. I also view Dead By Daylight like a Heroshooter like Overwatch so to me the most interesting aspect is the characters. I like the initial non story about a rag tag group of misfits learning to get by and support one another in what amounts to literal hell. I don't like all the convoluted John Dies At The End multiverse stuff. I'm okay with alittle bit of it like the scene with the teens fighting bugs with laser swords was entertaining but I feel like the Observer actually talking about alternate universes and the idea that everything that exists has been dreamed somewhere is on the nose. The ideas themselves are not necessarily what I have an issue with the way the graceless way in which it's laid out very much annoys me. What's not said is often more valuable than what is said and the memory loss thing feels like a symptom of a tendency to over explain.
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I wouldn't call it dumb but I never found the story in dbd interesting. Backstories of the characters, realm etc.
It is all about the gameplay to me.
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Personally while I like the gameplay I would not be that invested if I did not like the characters. I mean Friday the 13th made a game with a similar premise and you don't see me rushing off to play it. Cause nobody cared about Friday the Thirteenths survivors in the actual movie's and I'm not about to start just cause they exist in a video game adaption. The only "survivor" I stan in that series is the first girl that got killed in the original movie. Everyone else can take an ice pick to the skull and a ginger cat scare to the face. Dead By Daylight drew me in cause it's basically Overwatch but with Slashers and Final "Girls" though inexplicably lazier which should not be possible given, Blizzard has Bobby Kotick eating up it's budget and BHVR does not. Incidentally they really need to edit like the vast majority of the killer add ons and the typos/google translate Resident Evil lore tidbits, just saying.
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Oh and the snake that died in the first movie. Poor thing.
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Not really sure how you both do it. Games without characters or stories to get attached to are just kinda empty. It's not that I don't play them sometimes but there's no passion or loyalty to such things. It'd be like getting exited over chess.
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Characters are more interesting when they suffer hardships and overcome them. You can't overcome what you can't remember.
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I also think that being stuck in a endlessly repeating hell is not scary, if you don't remember it. It's tragic sure but it's not horrorifying. They essentially defanged their own premise.
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I don't mean overcome the trials the trials are not the problem well they are, but they are not. The trials are just a vehicle for the suffering. Like a slasher in a slasher flick, they are just a vessel to inflict suffering. Seeing how people respond under pressure is half the fun of horror it's not whether you win or lose it's how you play the game and memory loss just renders it all moot. As to your other point what your describing is story gameplay segregation. But story gameplay segregation is a spectrum and adding memory loss does not really seem like a necessary example of it. If anything they are trying too hard to tie the two together with the memory loss example but ironically making the gap wider. Because the survivors DON'T act like they have no memory because they are played by players who do.
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If I was in charge of canon. The survivors would remember every trial they go into vividly perhaps even more vividly than a person in the real world who experienced the same trauma. The cosmetics would be explained by foraging in the Entities realm outside of trials and the fact the outfits seem to come from survivors memories or mythological archetype would be a result of the Entities meta nature. The point where a survivor gets "voided" would be a natural result of when they lose all hope of breaking the cycle or finding a way out. I'd make it so that the Entity selects people it believes will last for a long time. Though it's criteria for telling this would be left intentionally ambitious. Overall I'd focus first on Survival Horror, then on Psychological Horror and THEN on Lovecraftian Horror. The mechanics and nature of The Entity would be the thing I'd prioritise least.
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I agree with the memory loss, it takes away every chance of story progression and it's a pretty boring concept.
I don't mind the cultists, it's cool to know the influence the entity has in the real world, i just don't want them being forced into a "main antagonist", it's implied they took part in Charlotte and Talbolt's abduction but on another archive it also says that they left strange symbols in a asylum. I don't want them being the sole reason for every character abduction.
One of the things that bothers me a lot is that some characters are fictional and some are real in other universes. We all share the fear of the unknown and having a survivor arriving in a trial and knowing everything about the enemie is pretty stupid. This also applies for survivors, someome like Laurie could spent all her time off trials wondering on how her life would have turned out to be, but if someone knew her from Halloween they would just tell her, for me it takes away a lot of the emotional depth that liscenced characters could have and I preferred when their stories were all real in the main universe.
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