I realized why the Lore system bothers me so much
CONTEXT (SKIPPABLE)
Someone, presumably Benedict Baker, used to comment on places, killers, and things. He talked about his feelings regarding such places as Badham Preschool. It was cool, some made-up unknown guy, all we know is he's older and goes by the name Benedict Baker, his life, seeping into the story, almost seemlessly with that of Freddy's.
But then Benedict Baker stopped existing. The game surely would give us reasons to forget him; "He lost hope and the entity took him" would be the sorry excuse. I looked forward to Benedict Baker and his comments.
In one our story and lore teller was Benedict Baker, a man of promise, he sought to remember everything he could. He wrote down all he could during a trial and attempted time and time again to escape, all so he could learn more through this tragic tale of amnesia.
In another, a story teller and book reader, a pan-dimensional [BAD WORD] with a knack for being pretentious.
It's just a shame because I think the archives and the Observer pretty much started pushing DBD away from itself, leading us to pan-dimensional story tellers and cultists. We used to have something cool, an entity living in the shadow unknown to our world, but now there's this monster loving cult that is dragging the entity from out of the shadows and into the spotlight. We had a man who wanted to learn, now we have a man that knows everything, he just has to wait for some loser's memories to come floating (almost quite literally) through the window.
ACTUALLY GOOD IMPORTANT STUFF:
Do we need the observer and his archives to be the primary reason for lore and storytelling? You know what might be better? If there was a darkened room that looks like someone hastily built an archive of their own stories and lore: Benedict Baker's Archives (A.K.A The Archives), same premise but it feels less pretentious. I don't really care about the Observer because he's pretentious.
I'd rather hear Benedict tell us what he thinks the world is, rather than the observer telling us what the old world (ours) was. Benedict talking to Nea like a person and write her lore down as a reward in the Benedict Archives would feel much better than some alcoholic in the middle of voidland tell us about Nea like she's a pet dog or imaginary person or something.
Comments
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(I wrote way too much originally, so tl;dr) I definitely agree with you. I think the style overall has changed to a point where it's overcompensating with information and doing a very poor job of immersive and engaging storytelling, and it shows most plainly in the Archives where the lore is necessarily expanded on with a lot more writing.
I want so badly to be interested in these stories! I love almost all of DBD's original characters - killers, survivors, and the outsiders like Benedict and Vigo, and they could just do so much better. The potential is definitely there.
Post edited by 3loen on9 -
Tying the lore to the rifts is annoying as well.
Just... like give us new dailies and achievements to unlock small stories for the characters as we play with them.
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I read the first few pages of lore in the first rift and then gave up because it's all hot garbage.
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Felix's story is a pretty good example of this. It's an amalgamation of nonsense and a fundamental misunderstanding of introverts and alcoholism.
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^ This. I haven't even skimmed the newest lore.
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It just got a little too samey for me.
I was excited to learn more about Trapper with the first Rift but his story ended up giving more questions than answers. It became pretty clear to me that this lore exists because of Rift passes, not because they wanted to give us a deeper look into the characters. Too many of the stories are just completely inconsequential and don't really add anything new to the character.
Oh look cowardly Dwight acted cowardly. Big woop.
If they really cared about that it would have just been released on its own.
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Soldiers of Mayhem was ok, like the others but why would we care for lore if we have to grind so much and wait for the next challenges to be released.
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