(logo beeps) - [Falcon] When we think of
the story of video games, often we think about the
narrative that we experience during the course of it. But what about all of
the surrounding stuff, everything about the world, the history, and the people that you find
out while playing a game? Hi, folks, it's Falcon,
and today on Gameranx, 10 games with mind-blowing lore. Starting off with number 10
is the "Dark Souls" series. When you think of lore in video games, what's the first thing you think of? For me, it's "Dark Souls." It's weird, because unlike
most other lore-heavy games, there are very few notes
or books to read through, there's very little exposition, and what is there is very
vague, very confusing. But that's what makes
the lore of this game so compelling for so many people. It doesn't spoonfeed the players anything. You can totally ignore
the history and backstory and just kill stuff if you want. But for many players, one of
the great joys of this series comes from exploring a dense
kingdom and piecing together what exactly is supposed to be going on. The first cutscene of the very
first "Dark Souls" game does so much heavy lifting in the
lore department, it's crazy. It pretty much explains everything, from the war of the gods and the dragons to the appearance of the
Dark Soul and so much more, but it barely matters when you
first start playing the game. And it's not until
around the halfway point that you realize just how
important all that exposition was and how necessary it is
if you want to understand what's even supposed to
be happening in the game. Outside of the opening lore dump, everything else you learn about the world comes from talking to NPCs,
environmental storytelling, and the short descriptions that come with most of the
items and gear you pickup. That's it. It's all so disjointed and short that it's easy to ignore
as fluff at first, but if you really look into it, there's connections everywhere. Actually knowing this
stuff rarely matters, but it does add a lot of
depth to the experience. Knowing who our Artorias
the AbyssWalker is makes it so much more impactful when you actually encounter him. That's what makes the lore of
"Dark Souls" so engrossing. It's in-depth enough that you can see how the backstory bleeds
into the game world, but it's vague enough that the player's imagination
is allowed to run wild. I remember the first
time I got to Anor Londo and realized this place
was the City of the Gods they talked about at the beginning, and it was a mind-blowing realization. I have been fascinated by the lore of this series ever since. And at number nine is
"Mass Effect" 1 through 3. And how "Mass Effect" handles lore is about as far from
"Dark Souls" as possible. It's clear, it's well-explained, and it's easily accessible
from an in-game encyclopedia. And it's not necessarily as mind-blowing because of how mysterious it is, though there are some
pretty interesting mysteries in the backstory, but the
reason I think it's so great is it's just well-made. The world of "Mass Effect" is
a really great sci-fi universe with a lot of interesting things going on, and pretty much every species in the game has something interesting about them, whether it's their politics
or their relationships or more mundane stuff like
their life cycles and diets. Clearly, a ton of time was
put into creating this world, and all that backstory and lore does a lot to make the
story of "Mass Effect" seem like more than another
cookie cutter sci-fi shooter. Say what you want about the
actual stories of these games, but all the history and backstory they've imbued into
every race and character just adds so much to this game. And being able to access it all by opening the in-game
encyclopedia is just awesome. You can spend hours just
digging through the codex, and it is actually really
enjoyable to do so. The information is concise but
detailed, and the narrator, combined with the
relaxing background music, really only adds to the experience. This is a series where it's
fun to learn the backstory, and they do a great job
incorporating all that lore into the game as well. Stuff like the Genophage and
the Geth-Quarian conflict play a huge part in the story, and if they didn't do such a
good job setting everything up, then I doubt most players
would really be that invested. Even after the incredibly divisive ending to a "Mass Effect 3" and the disappointment of
"Mass Effect: Andromeda," people are still hyped
for "Mass Effect 4," and a big reason why is the lore and universe BioWare created. It's beloved for a reason, and hopefully, they're able
to get things back on track for the next game. At number eight is "The Legend of Zelda." For many, many years, most people thought that
the "Legend of Zelda" series was just a collection of
disconnected adventures that seemed to have recurring
elements, but nothing more. Some fans speculated about a possibility that all the games were
actually connected, but it was all just a bunch of talk until Nintendo released
the"Hyrule Historia," a book, back in 2011, which contained an actual
timeline of the "Zelda" series confirming there actually was a connection between the games. Sure, sometimes they were hundreds or even thousands of years
apart from one another, but they were connected. Before that, there were
already some sequels that everybody knew about, like "Zelda II" to being a
direct sequel to "Zelda I," or "The Adventure of Link" on the Game Boy being a sequel to "Link to the Past," but stuff like "Wind Waker"
and its Endless Ocean didn't seem like it could
possibly be in the same timeline as the other games. And that's what makes
"The Legend of Zelda" lore so mind-blowing. For whatever reason, the same event just keeps
happening over and over again in the history of Hyrule. There's a green tunic-wearing
hero named Link, a princess named Zelda, a
villain named Ganondorf, and this powerful artifact
called the Triforce. How things actually play out
can vary wildly between games, but in general, these are
the recurring elements, and they seem to happen again and again, even when they're decades
or centuries apart from one another. To make things even more confusing, there are split timelines to explain certain inconsistencies, even though there are other consistencies the timeline doesn't address. If you think about it too much, the whole thing doesn't
really make a lot of sense. Even if you accept that the
same thing keeps happening again and again, just the fact that the
original "Legend of Zelda" game on the NES is actually one of
the last games on the timeline is sorta mind-blowing, especially because the timeline implies that it only happens because
the Hero of Time actually lost during the events of "Ocarina of Time." With "Breath of the Wild"
being the canonically last game in the series now, the
timeline should probably start being a little more straightforward
from now on at least. At number seven is the "Witcher" series. Originally based on a series
of novels and short stories, it's no wonder the
"Witcher" series of games has such dense and intricate lore. In comparison to something
like "Mass Effect," where your character often deals directly with the political issues of the universe, the "Witcher" series, you have a different relationship to it. You're often just a party
to what's happening, rather than someone
directly engaging in it. Geralt considers himself
neutral to a fault, and even though you end up dealing with huge world-changing events,
what makes Geralt different is that he's usually just
trying to stay out of it. So there's all this interesting
political stuff going on in the backstory, but
you play as a simple dude who just wants to hunt monsters. All that stuff going on currently is interesting in its own right, but probably the most
mind-blowing part of the backstory is an event called the
Conjunction of the Spheres. See, there was this huge cataclysmic event that occurred in the distant past where alternate dimensions
merged into one, an event which brought all
the monsters and creatures that the Witcher actually
hunts into the world, along with magic and
other strange phenomenons. That alone is pretty wild, that the creatures you hunt in this series are basically aliens. But what's wilder than that, at least according to
the elves and dwarves, humans weren't actually
the natural inhabitants of this world at all. They only arrived during the Conjunction. They were basically barbarians that destroyed the old
civilizations of the non-human races that originally inhabited this planet. It's an almost sci-fi backstory to what is otherwise a
mostly low-fantasy setting, which is pretty unique. All in all, the Witcher "setting" is just really well-developed
and interesting, and it's got tons of great
characters and untold backstories that adds a ton of depth
to Geralt's adventures. At number six is the "Destiny" series. Now, here is a series where
there's a pretty hard disconnect between the lore and the actual games. Most people who play "Destiny 2" casually probably know next to nothing
about the story or the themes or the many interesting
secrets hidden in the lore, and that's okay. That's kind of what makes
the lore in "Destiny" so interesting. It's not essential at all
to actually play the game, and you can get by just fine without it. But for the people who really dig into it, all this lore really expands the story in an interesting way. So while stuff like the Red War campaign that's not even playable
anymore in "Destiny 2" can come off as kind of
generic and uninteresting, the actual backstory that's
going on is really well done. I think for players who are
more interested in the lore, the recent seasons leading up to the "Witch
Queen" expansion do a good job of incorporating the
outside lore of the game into the actual gameplay. Locations like the Dreaming City also added a lot to the game lore-wise, not including the fact that
the "Forsaken" expansion actually has a full-blown lore section that you can view in-game. With "Destiny," it, for a long time, felt like you were playing
two different games. That's how divorced the lore was from what was actually going on. Recently, Bungie's kind
of been finding ways to incorporate all this lore into the game in a more natural way, and that's great because the
whole story of the Darkness, the Traveler, the various alien
races, especially the Vex, it's all really fascinating. At number five is the
Remedy shared universe. Remedy, the developers of "Max
Payne" 1 and 2, "Alan Wake," and "Control," have always
very good storyteller. They were some of the
first in the business to really take story
seriously in video games while still having a strange comedic edge and willingness to break the
fourth wall from time to time. As game makers, they're
not afraid to swing big, and with "Control," they took
a really, really big swing. Thankfully, it paid off. "Control" is a very lore-heavy game, and it takes place in a world
that's half SCP Foundation, half the "X-Files," and has a little bit of "Twin
Peaks" surrealist thrown in. You spend the entire game
exploring the Oldest House, the headquarters of the
Federal Bureau of Control, and the place is just wall
to wall filled with notes and video files that help
explain the strange backstory of the building. Along the way, you eventually
start finding notes about someplace familiar if
you're an "Alan Wake" fan. They mention the town of Bright Falls and describe what happened there as another altered world event. "Alan Wake" and "Control" were actually part of the same universe. A later DLC followed up on it, and the remastered version of "Alan Wake," they even included a "Control" Easter egg that ties the two series
together even more. Just the fact that there is a
Remedy shared universe at all is pretty mind-blowing. It really adds to the mystery
and depth of both games, and it only makes us more interested in what could possibly
happen in "Alan Wake 2." At number four is the "NieR" series. Few games have lore as
absolutely nuts as "NieR." I mean, this series starts off as a continuation of a secret ending to a completely different series and begins in a post-apocalyptic
2049 in a prologue before skipping forward
over 1,000 years to 3361, where the game looks more
like a high-fantasy setting. It's insane that this series
is actually a stealth sequel to the "Drakengard" games. The first game in that series already had a crazy enough ending, where your dragon rider from a fantasy alternate
universe version of Europe arrives through a portal and ends up in the
real-world version of Tokyo before getting unceremoniously
killed by a cruise missile. That's the backstory to "NieR." This event brought magic
into the real world and nearly wiped out the human race. I'm not even gonna get
into the whole story of the first "NieR" game. It's so complicated, but there's
obviously a lot going on. But it only gets more wild with the sequel ""NieR: Automata." Why? Because "Automata" takes place
almost 10,000 years later. The year they give for
that game is 11,945. That's how far into the
future we're talking, and so much crazy stuff
has happened since then. This is a universe
where between the games, humanity goes extinct,
aliens invade earth, and aliens create an entire
machine race to serve them, and then all the aliens get exterminated by their own creations, and that's a small part of the backstory. Seriously, the timeline in
the "NieR" wiki is so wild. So much crazy stuff happened
in this game's universe, and you only play a small part of it. The "NieR" universe is bleak, bizarre, and sometimes hilariously goofy, but that's just what
makes it so engrossing. And at number three is the Kirby series. If there's one series I never
expected to find deep lore for it is this one. Yeah, we're talking about Kirby, the game series where we
control a little pink ball and suck up enemies. For whatever reason, these games have some
of the most complex lore of any Nintendo series. Also, it's something
that's so easy to miss if you're just playing
these games casually. But if you're a longtime
fan of the series, then it's hard not to notice
the certain little details that get called back in future games. I was pretty late to the
game on this one, actually, but the point where I realized there was some serious lore going on was in "Planet Robobot." At the end of that game, you face off against this
planet-sized supercomputer called Stardream, and when
you do enough damage to it, the thing suddenly has a face that looks exactly like the Galactic Nova from "Kirby Super Star." Why the developers felt the need to add this kind of lore to
the series, I have no idea, but it definitely makes
things more interesting. There's so much to find if you
really want to look into it, and it's surprisingly dark and strange. The fact that Kirby has lore at all is kind of mind-blowing, but
there's actually a lot of it, and it's so hidden, it only makes it more
interesting to try and hunt down. And at number two is "Bloodborne." And yeah, it's kind of cheating to have two FromSoftware
games on this list, but people are absolutely obsessed with the lore of "Bloodborne." Even though it's only one game, it's some of the
creepiest, most mysterious, and mind-bending stuff out there. There's something about the games themes of humanity's almost
self-destructive need for answers in an uncaring universe that makes the hunt for lore
in this game so satisfying. I mean, the game's basically
laughing in your face as you try to piece this
bizarre story together, but nobody cares. They just want to figure it out, even though there's no concrete answers. An interesting thing about "Bloodborne" is that as you explore the world, your character gains
in the called insight, which is basically a measure of how much you come to understand the true nature of the world. The lore supports that at first. Everything starts out
straightforward enough, with you hunting werewolves
and other Gothic creatures before the veil of the
worlds slowly starts apart, and you start seeing
increasingly bizarre things. The game itself gets more
abstract, and so does the lore. Everything is so vague and
mixed up with metaphors that it's hard to tell what's
even supposed to be real, and the more you think about the game, the stranger your thoughts seem to get. That's all to say that "Bloodborne"
is a really unique game, where the lore does a great job putting you in the same mindset as the characters inside the game. Talking about lore of this game makes people sound like
weirdos who inhabit the world, muttering to themselves like madmen about the eyes inside their brains. Few games have lore quite as
nightmarish but engrossing as this one, and it
really takes the mysteries of the "Dark Souls"
series to the next level, and that by itself is
pretty damn impressive. And finally, at number one is
the "Elder Scrolls" series, especially the really weird, older stuff. Like, come on. Did you really think we'd leave the "Elder
Scrolls" series off this list? No other series has lore
as deep, as complex, and as numerous as this series. It's a game series with
mind-blowing lore, for two reasons. For one thing, there is a ton of it. There are books everywhere, each one containing multiple pages and often multiple
volumes of the same story, so these things can get pretty damn long. The amount in "Skyrim" itself is nuts. There are 820 unique pieces
of literature lying around, with 307 books that are purely for lore. And that's one game. On word count alone, the "Elder Scrolls" series
dwarfs anything else out there. But it's not just the
amount or the quality, though most of it is great
and pretty well-written, but it can also be pretty
crazy when it wants to be. There are so many
mind-blowing little tidbits you can discover on your own, like the fact that the two
moons aren't actually moons, but the remains of a dead god, and the fact they look like
moons is our mortal perception can't actually fathom their true forms. That's actual lore from the series. Another crazy one. If you've played these games, you know about the
Dwemer and their robots, which can still be found in ancient ruins all over the place. But did you know that there
is even more advanced stuff in the lore, like things called Sun Birds, which are literally made from the sun and could travel into space
and gather celestial minerals? That's a real thing in this world. This is a series with a concept where you can basically become the One from "The Matrix" called CHIM. It's nuts. If you want to get really esoteric with your "Elder Scrolls"
lore, look at anything written by Michael
Kirkbride from "Morrowind," especially "The 36 Lessons of Vivec," which are just trippy as hell. The "Elder Scrolls" series has everything you could possibly want with the lore. It's deep, it's well-written,
and there's tons of it, and it can be absolutely
nuts when it wants to. That's all for today. Leave us a comment. Let
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watching this video. I'm Falcon. You can follow
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right here on Gameranx.
