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The issue around how DbD's lore is told
This is a great video to explain the differences between how DbD's story is being told now and how it could have been told (i.e. before things like the archives and before Kate's introduction into the game etc.)
DbD's story is falling into the Hard World building category, and not in a good way imo. I used to be interested in the DbD lore, particularly in Dwight's and Claudette's stories, with all of their untold details all leading to being put into the Entity's realm. Now, they've become decidedly uninteresting to me (also in part because the writing syle for the archives is not the greatest. It's a mix between "narrator" and no-narrator while keeping a loose approach to syntax, grammar, and punctuation, which does NOT go over so hotly for those in it to have the experience of absorbing an interesting story). What drove me to make this post was the inclusion of "Mother's Helpers" and "good ol' country boys" in Hillbilly's add-ons, both of which narrow down a much broader and interesting interpretation of his story.
Please look more at how you tell the stories rather than just shoving facts down our throat and driving out any imagination from the playerbase about the experiences of the character.
Comments
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I'm gonna have to agree here in that I also really enjoyed that small stories were hinted at in add on details but we rarely, if ever, get to see those. I blame Dark Souls for turning me onto that type of sparse but very intricate and intriguing story telling but damn if it doesn't make for some compelling searches for more of the narrative.
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I do agree with you partially in the sense that some of the most interesting details about characters comes from small tidbits of info.
Take Oni for example: on paper, he's a destructive, hateful Samurai that killed farmers because he felt they were misusing his hard fought title, despite their apparent innocence to the matter. Upon further inspection of his addons, an entirely new story is told. Just through Oni's addons do we learn that he could be the bastard son of Renjiro, leading him to question his own Samurai legitimacy, fueling his crusade later on. We learn he enjoys hurting others even from a young age, as shown in the bloody handkerchief (or whatever it is) addon. Finally, and most interesting to me, he's a father. Kazan had a son named Akito who became crippled, and although Akito carried on the lineage of the Yamaoka's, he never became a Samurai due to how badly his leg healed. This trauma and blow to Kazan's ego and pride in his heritage is perhaps the biggest reason why he went on his crusade to sort out the imposter samurai. None of which is mentioned in his official, paragraph style lore.
Again, just through his addons we learn so much more about the Oni and it's insane to think so much can be gleaned just through a few sentences placed properly in specific locations.
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Don't get me wrong I absolutely love Dark Souls storytelling but the problem with it is it tends to turn the community into rapid defensive people when it comes to them story ideas.
Dark Souls story is incredibly vague and up to interpretation for the most part the missing bits and pieces allows you to interpret your own logic however people usually have a set idea mostly once they've gotten from their favourite YouTubers but they will legit want to slit your throat if you try to have a dissenting opinion about.
Honestly Dead by daylight kind of initially had this Legion being one of the prime examples ( I love them but even when it came to lore they were causing problems)
The idea that Legion was a split personality killer what's something that the community jumped on with little to no actual concrete evidence yeah the initial teaser didn't give enough away for that assertion to be made.
The idea that the cleaner the Legion killed was Jeff's father as I've mentioned in another post this makes sense if you only glance over The Legion's and Jeff's lore but the second you actually sit down and think about it for more than 10 seconds you'll realise it has a crap ton of plot holes which made that not the case. ( if the devs intended for to be that way they wrote it incredibly bad)
Also don't even get me started on the utter retcon that was Legion archives it literally gave me the impression that whoever writes the lore for the archives and does the cutscenes have never actually look at the characters backstory
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Thanks for this interesting post, really opened my mind to why I ony like one specific part of the Archives: the observer's logs.
Since there are only hints towards the observer's existence in the game, it makes sense that he is the one to tell the best stories, as we are barely biased on what his personality is like. In addition to that, everything in the observer's logs is served through this one person's eyes without a narrator trying to tell more than this one person thinks or feels.
It's almost funny that he tries to understand the world together with the player, but fails to do so. That's a good thing in my opinion, because not only does it get to show you how complex the Entity's world is, but makes the observer a way more believable character.
His realizations are sometimes even a bit contradictory to eachother or at least further develop throughout his "prison time". For example, in early Arcus 557 (Tome 1) he thinks to realize that "The Entity feeds of ignorance". However, in one of the latest logs, namely Arcus 8875 (Tome 3), he claims that "they fear of death [...] feeds The Entity". So you basically never know whether to believe him or not. It leaves space for own thoughts.
As for the other parts of the archives I have to agree. I feel like they are not nearly as enjoyable to read as the logs.
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Oh yeah, don't I know it. I'm only advocating for the delivery system in this case(Bits of very specific yet clearly tiny part of a whole narrative presented in an items description) not the vagueness. Ideally-*AHEM*- they would work in tandem with The Archives to tell a flowing, consistent and complete story for each character but, alas, you have already given the prime example of how such is not the case.
Well, there is a saying that people fear what they don't understand so, going by that at least, there is some consistency however, I find generalizations in philosophy to be lazy so, I'm inclined to agree with you that he is indeed learning as he goes, much like ourselves.
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