Lore in General

Gray Decisions

February 26, 2010

So I’ve mentioned previously that I’m currently working my way through a nice hefty stack of Xbox 360 games I’ve been wanting to play for… well… years. One of them was Fallout 3, which I’ve successfully milked dry thanks to the “Game of the Year Edition”. One of those addons is The Pitt. This week, [...]

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Black, White, or Gray?

October 2, 2008

One of the strongest differences in the lore between Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft are the gray areas.  Namely, WoW has them and WAR does not. Within WoW, neither the Horde nor Alliance are predominantly good nor bad.  And because of this, neither faction predominantly defines your character. I have to confess, I didn’t [...]

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Genre Denotes Graphics

August 9, 2008

Bring up AOC amongst a group of gamers and one of them will invariably bring up its “amazing, realistic graphics“.  Bring up WoW amongst a group of gamers and one of them will invariably complain about its “cartoony graphics“. So why is AOC realistic and WoW more like a cartoon?  Obligatory decision?  Personal preference of [...]

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Epic Money

June 19, 2008

Leveling up in Age of Conan, I was reminded of something I hadn’t experienced since 2004 when leveling up my first World of Warcraft character… Money, back then, was epic.  And with AoC, 1 Gold once again means something.  These days, in WoW, 1 Gold is what you give beggars to piss them off with [...]

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Game Lore 2.0

March 29, 2008

Games could learn a lot from Web 2.0. Ars Technica had an interesting story today about Grand Theft Auto 4 you can check out here. To summarize, here’s how it works. In GTA3 and the upcoming GTA4, when you’re in your car you can listen to the radio. Here’s what’s awesome though, it’s not muzak. [...]

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Chris Metzen Interview

February 28, 2008

The second episode of Blizzard’s official podcast was released and has a great interview with the head of all their lore (Vice President of Creative Development), Chris Metzen. You can check it out here: Linky McLink

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The Difference between a Storyteller and a Lore Master

February 8, 2008

While a lore master may almost always be a storyteller as well. A storyteller is not necessarily always a lore master. So what is the difference? What makes a lore master a lore master and a storyteller just a storyteller? The answer lies in what they’re creating. Where as a storyteller creates a story with [...]

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Chris Avellone Article

November 8, 2007

I recently stumbled upon an interesting article by Chris Avellone describing a day in the life of the lead lore master (Chief Creative Officer) of Obsidian Entertainment. The article can be found here.

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Lore Wall

November 3, 2007

As I discussed in a previous post, game lore and game mechanics are connected hand-in-hand, so to discuss one while entirely ignoring the other would be a fallacy. With that in mind, when discussing game lore, one can reach a point where the lore has been pushed so far that the game mechanics can no [...]

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Game Mechanics Vs. Lore

October 31, 2007

All too often I find myself debating lore with people from one of two camps. In one camp we have the lore-nut, “All other game elements must curtail to Lore!” brigade. With the other camp, it’s the game-mechanics, lorelol, “all I want to do is click on things, lore is irrelevant” group. To the lore [...]

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