The Worst Lore in Modern Gaming

lore and gaming go together hand in hand there's something about having a good story or history tied to what you're playing that can make it infinitely more interesting good lore can elevate a game to a legendary status whether it's given through detailed evidence that gets the player more immersed in the game's world or through cryptic clues that add fuel to their imagination if you already enjoy a game and find out it has good lore behind it chances are you'll enjoy it even more but bad lore can make you not want to play a game at all with hello neighbor being the best example a game that's lore and story was ter written and conveyed forever staining the reputation of a once fairly anticipated game the game playay was bad too though lore is not necessary for a game to be good there have been dozens of titles with no lore that have been amazing and no one's going to hate a game for not including it however if a game does choose to include lore in its experience it must be done right otherwise you're better off not including it at all like a supplement lore can serve to elevate its game but if it's not thought out well it can quickly pull the title down and affect people's perception of it with Shooters lore is often conveyed through campaigns and PVE game modes just because your game is mostly online doesn't mean it has to have a bad story some of the best examples of online shooters that have good lore include Halo Call of Duty TF2 and I think Destiny be before they like deleted the campaign I don't know I don't think I'm qualified to speak on that game but what I am qualified to speak on is Rainbow 6 Siege and the complete nose dive its story took many years ago some games have lore that's so good they are renowned for it Rainbow Six Siege is not one of those games if you were to ask the average Siege player what was happening in the game story right now they probably say that zombies are besieging bossing say or something most players are too distracted with the amazing gameplay to care about the game's current story and I don't blame them I love this game I play it more than I use my phone what is my rank let's just say it rhymes with Whopper T most players are too distracted with sieg's gameplay to care about its story but if they were to take a peak into the lore that the rainbow writers have created they would find out that they have been missing out on some of the most dumb and convoluted writing I have ever seen this stuff is worse than my aim to understand the start of Rainbow Six sieg's lore it's helpful to know about the overall franchise's history the first Rainbow Six title came out in 1998 based on the novel written by Tom Clancy Tom Clancy was an author known for his technically detailed and suspenseful military books and the first rainbow game was made to coincide release with its book with Rainbow's novel in the game being released during the same month so from the start serious and tactical themes were written into this franchise's DNA and for a while the game stayed that way with each sequel that came out maintaining the gritty atmosphere the original had established themes of secrecy high stakes and advanced tactics were stapled to the games and when Rainbow Six Siege was announced it seemed bent on maintaining that identity with its trailer impressing fans with what looked like to be another modern and realistic take on the FPS genre and for a while that was what we got however it didn't stay that way when I first loaded up rainbow onto my Xbox I was already hyped I had heard about the game's serious reputation I knew that the characters all wore subtle and practical uniforms the energy of the game both online and off was said to be nerve-wracking and the opening cinematic confirmed my assumptions with a grave message arelia Arnot a United States official was addressing the game's threat a group by the name of the white masks had started to release dangerous gas in public places according to Aurelia this group could show up anywhere in the world and were indiscriminate about who they targeted and rainbow an international counter scist group would now be reactivated to stop them this was the story that rainbow debuted with on launch the white masks were sieg's first antagonist they were a very realistic and terrifying threat and the Mysterious lore surrounding them fit the franchise's brand perfectly a faceless group that was using modern tactics to cause as much fear and destruction as possible with Aurelia stating that the group was both physically and psychologically dangerous they didn't have any flare or standout characteristics besides being serious about effectively carrying out their missions and this was an amazing choice because it worked perfectly with the game playay you see when Siege first launched it debuted with several PVE missions called situations while these were removed presumably to cut server costs they were once a big deal for a lot of players mostly due to how much of a thrill it was to play against the lore accurate white masks on the player side sieg's gameplay was already much more measured than other Shooters you had to plan where you would deploy and were encouraged to move at a calculated Pace combine this with any sort of enemy and you would have a game feel that is already intense but the amazing part was that the mysterious and intimidating lore surrounding Rainbow's enemies was reflected in their behavior the white masks acted just as ruthless as they had been hyped up to be using all sorts of Heartless tactics to stop you they would throw stun grenades gather up in groups to more effectively hunt you down charge you with human creepers or just stay stationary waiting for you to turn around the corner you could hear them communicating and breathing heavily the moment before they snuck up on you and of course their most evil tactic would be to use human bait as well as their other signature threats this was a great experience because the lore in gameplay were intertwined perfectly just as they always should be it was extremely scary to face the white masks and often times the only way to outsmart them was through communicating with your teammates and using clever tactics on the multiplayer side you could assume that every game you went into was practice against them that was the basic lore keeping everything tied together and immersive and you could argue that being immersed in such a high-stake scenario caused players to be more enthusiastic about engaging with the game the way it was intended what I mean by that is more strategic and communicative gameplay and less running into the site like they're the main character we see a lot of that today in Copper uh where I may or may not live because the game respected itself the community was at least encouraged to respect it too but as the story started to conclude the white masks eventually got tired of being Dunked On by rainbow and planned one final attack titled Article 5 it was the last scenario of the PVE category and the developers had made quite an impressive finale the entire map was contaminated with gas and as a player your HUD represented a hazmat suit it was a truly unique scenario this would be the last harah for Rainbow's initial PVE experience both gameplay and lore-wise as the game would quickly take a much different direction but not knowing this many players were excited to see what kind of scenarios like this would come next unfortunately we'd never get something like this campaign again it's difficult to explain what exactly happened to the lore's direction after this at first the game's writers seemed to be taking a well-earned break with the lore put on pause as developers focused on adding more operators several major updates were added to the game building on its map and gameplay pool specifically eight of which were added before the game's lore was expanded outside of just introducing new characters the ninth major update operation Chima would be the first to change things up bringing with it the fan favorite outbreak event that brought new PVE gameplay this provided additional lore to the game be it against a much less realistic threat first of all none of outbreak is considered Canon to the main game it actually takes place in an alternate timeline and none of it builds on the real world's lore second going from a serious the Batman Riddler type threat to mutated alien zombies is quite the jump nothing like this had ever been done in the rainbow franchises games or novels and it was quite the experimental decision but despite it being less traditional I can say that this was a solid addition to Siege both gameplay and lore-wise the story was handled quite well as it brought back Aurelia into the story with Ash having to call her up to once again authorize rainbow as they were not allowed to enter the scene without clearance keeping things surprisingly in line with the game's inspiration as Tom Clancy once described it the core idea of his books were operators who were highly skilled disciplined honest thoroughly professional and only lost their cool when incompetent politicians or bureaucrats got in their way and Ash having to get permission from the government to approach a new threat very much maintains Clancy and the rainbow franchise's original vision from a gameplay perspective it was also popular enough to get a spin-off game developed releasing much later in the future however no matter how you feel about the outbreak event it was only a limited time event and wasn't meant to stay around for long anyways however once it was over things dramatically and horribly changed for the worst because from here on out the lore is about to go from consistent to having a complete identity crisis it is said that around 2020 the white masks were defeated once and for all although a few of them were said to still be scattered across the world their organization in the lore was considered dissolved and with their story over this is where the lore would go into a Renaissance a bad Renaissance it was said that having neutralized the white masks Aurelia moved on to be promoted to secretary of state and with this came a huge transfer of leadership as she handed over rainbow to her colleague Harry now if there's any way I can describe Harry it's that he represented the new direction of Siege and by that I mean he was responsible for everything that went horribly wrong the first thing he did was completely turn the program progr on its head by creating a concept for a massive Sports Arena a location where the program would now mostly take place inside of this Arena The Operators were now treated like celebrities as the arena had been filled with thousands of fans this was not just an arena for training but was apparently also meant to entertain the masses which is an interesting combination for such a confidential Society to have the operators were tasked with living in and fighting against each other in the arena where they used BB guns and Sim suits to play for points on a score board with a commentator included to Hype up the fans operators this is Match Point only one Defender remaining three attackers [Applause] remaining this is rocket leag they were also interviewed and had Talking Heads like the office and the shift in tone had taken a complete 180 gust K National jary intervention go get do I look at your other camera Mark Baker Special Air Service Sheamus [Music] sanitation so why would rainbow a covert organization that uses cuttingedge technology and secret National techniques do this why would they go from focusing on a realistic threat to playing Airsoft Olympics there is not a good explanation it was bad writing done to cash in on Esports here is the reasoning for the dramatic shift according to the lore Harry had moved rainbow to this Stadium one so that rainbow could train for a wider range of real world scenarios you know by making them train in a paintball stadium and two unite them as a team by also having them live together in it and basically always work together in teams this story Direction doesn't work and his plan fails horribly on both of these goals and he dies but that's not really Harry's fault as much as it is the writers think of Harry as like a scapegoat for the direction that Ubisoft wanted to move rainbow towards he's basically like a self-insert for the writers trying to put themselves in inside the story so they can directly change what Siege is about so what are the real developers reasons for doing this according to narrative director Alex Lima the decision to phase out sieg's counter scist narrative was so that they could pursue a more comprehensive and scalable story apparently making the Games Lower revolve around Call of Duty Olympics achieves this when it comes to making the story more comprehensive I don't know about you but soldiers fighting against Real World threats is a lot easier to grasp than soldiers competing in stadiums for points with live spectator the whole thing feels impractical and like the writers don't know which world this story takes place in why are there people watching this aren't all these operations using highly confidential technology don't they have identities to protect isn't this a bit of a risk all right everybody I'm glad all of our best agents and 50,000 people could be here this is going to be a fun one I packed some extra orange slices okay okay the lore might be a little bit out there but at least it accomplished its goal of being scalable rainbow is clearly just laying down the foundation for a story story that will be built on for the rest of the game's lifespan they wouldn't just go out with such a dramatic system if it wasn't scalable like they wanted it to be as it turns out it was not scalable because just recently the writers killed off its mascot so no more wipe out everybody sorry how did this happen how did we lose the Steve Jobs of gaming well I'm happy to say it's a hilariously convoluted series of events I'm talking Marvel's Civil War levels of buildup because the guy who did this is exactly like Baron Zemo after starting their new program Harry decided to hire nigh Haven a similar organization to Rainbow except for the fact that it uses more ruthless and risky tactics nigh Haven and rainbow actually have a lot of inherent conflicting World Views they do not like each other and they do not do things the same it's basically a ripoff of Talon from OverWatch during their first tournament because rainbow does annual tournaments now Ash the leader of rainbow and Cali the leader of nigh Haven get put on the same team by Harry because he knows that they don't like each other so this should help what a great idea Harry I hope this doesn't cause a butterfly effect that ironically leads to your own end during a particularly critical round Callie decides to use ash and doab Bay as bait to secure the W she also skids a shot through Ash's face which is kind of concerning because why isn't Ash wearing a helmet if the supposed BB bullets can do this what if someone accidentally hits a head shot on her that seems like an incredible health and safety risk after that carfuffle Ash is upset because of what cie did and she's brooding about it in the bathroom when she hears Cali lecturing the other operators about how in this this line of work you can't be worried about safety and sometimes you got to bend the rules to secure the wind and Ash gets so mad that she storms into the other room and starts telling cie off she tells her that she doesn't know how they do it in nigh Haven but here at Rainbow you can't use people as bait cie tells her that it's just a game which it is and Ash punches her the room then proceeded to break out into chaos as the operator split up into two sides of the room literally picking sides and by the next cinematic night Haven decides to leave rainbow an incredibly short run it's almost like they were only here so the rainbow writers could use them to cook up conflict so as you can see the game's writers are really going heavy on the internal beef angle they're basically just stirring up drama out of nowhere even Ella and zophia who for a long time coexisted as sisters started to get more hostile towards each other with the arena being fuel for their rivalry they basically get retconed into always having hated each other and Ella leaves zophia behind to join nighthaven along with a bunch of other operators then cie lectures Ella about how she made the right choice great job Harry this Arena has really done its job of bringing everybody together you have really done some good team building a true Peacemaker this sort of Civil War narrative has actually been done in quite a few other games before OverWatch has always had a lot of this in its lore with the heroes not getting along Apex Legends had some beef and I think valerant too maybe you can tell that they also moved the operators into the stadium so that they could have a good environment for these arguments because if they were still mostly focused on actually stopping criminals there wouldn't be any time for these Petty differen es but now because they're inside a safe environment everyone can have fights without compromising any missions which makes the Olympics Direction even more ridiculous but things get much worse the introduction for aami a new operator follows these events and in her animated short we get the lore that her boss and I guess dear friend was merked in front of her eyes and she visits her friend Habana who is still on rainbow side by this point to show her that the bullets used were labeled night Haven property so rather than jump to conclusion the rainbow folks track down the mercenaries who killed a zombie's boss to see if they can figure out who ordered them but it turns out the mercenaries were bait and a helicopter starts shooting at all the Rainbow operators and they're all like oh man I'm pretty sure this is the work of nigh Haven we haven't gotten any more evidence since that bullet but if this is night Haven we're mad so it might as well be night Haven and so they decide to fully jump to conclusions by deciding to infiltrate nigh Haven's HQ but when knock does a swappy job escaping nigh Haven finds out she was poking around their base and tracks her down knock was tracked down the invisible stealth operator the one whose only ability in Siege is being invisible on cameras was caught on camera and then Tracked Down by bees and so Grim from nigh Haven pays a visit to her and threatens her and that's actually all the retaliation that happens like you thought this would launch a big conflict but no he just tells her like don't do it again or I'll I'll come for you and that's it rainbow just decides that it probably wasn't night Haven after all then rainbow decides to to go to night Haven again but this time just to tell them to stay out of their business and give sollace a cool moment to shine and then they realize both of their gear has been stolen this entire time because someone else has apparently been messing with both teams so all of their conflict was pointless this is horrible but literally none of it matters because it turns out it was all a guy named damos he had orchestrated everything all along this guy then visits Harry tries and fails to take out rainbow operatives in front of him and then tells Harry that old rainbow was better and shoots him damos is basically the sieges community personified you know rainbow used to be feared my time a covert unit of Apex killers and you turned it into the icecapades everybody then tracks damos down and captures him so that is the lore with a lot of fill or cut out because as you can see there's already just so much nonsense in it they were clearly just making pointless story lines to draw out the lore so they wouldn't have to worry about actually doing anything that had a big impact on the game but the worst part is how the lore is not compatible with the game itself first of all if night Haven and rabbow never really got along how come they train together in game you could explain this by saying that the game takes place at a time when the two forces were briefly in harmony before or after their conflict but that doesn't explain damos being a playable character we haven't got a lot of information about de's plan all that we know is that he thinks rainbow is too soft and wants to kill all the operators but now he plays alongside them in their games whether it's in the Wipeout Stadium or anywhere else he trains with his worst enemies in his introduction video the devs were like yes damos hates Rainbow but he's not really a part of the team guys he's just agreeing to practice with them forever mocks rainbow for being basically Airsoft becomes part of the airsoft team oh the irony as you can see the developers decision to change sieg's narrative led to more problems than it solved the lore was poorly strategized as it led to the Developers having trouble explaining why it doesn't line up with gameplay and the pacing itself was also super disjointed and it feels like it took years for anything to happen the stadium basically acted as an environment for these silly stories to play out and then couldn't be scaled anymore and was scrapped had rainbow continued in its original Direction Not only would it have been more coherent but the stakes would be higher and fans would be more engaged there are plenty of directions you could go with real world antagonists that would have actually lifted gameplay up too a new group of scarers that Target Tech could make levels where you can't use anything electric and more levels like Article 5 would challenge players in new and interesting ways the writers could also have those same dramatic emotions they wanted to stir up with nigh Haven but in a much more engaging way to audiences just make it so Ash is brooding because the new opposition is causing her to doubt Rainbow's capabilities something like that would not only be more interesting but it would also tie in with the game raising the stakes around the organization instead of making it a recreational Nerf Club lore and story are a critical part of a community's engagement with a game and fans had been begging to return to sieg's more serious narrative ever since it was abandoned the problem is going back to a more serious threat would mean that Ubisoft would have to spend resources on making more single player gameplay we don't want to do that dude that that would take money we're more interested in appealing to uh Esports and cutting cost by removing all traces of PVE gameplay while we're at it although ask any Esports player what they think of stadium and they'll probably tell you it's their least favorite map it's not even in the ranked map Pool I really don't have any high expectations for this game story because clearly The Narrative Department of Siege has no idea what they're doing of course in a game like rainbow lore is not the final say in a game's success at all this game is doing very well and it clearly didn't need its half-baked World building to do so but judging it strictly from a writing perspective this game's lore and overall story is a failure it's not well written or interesting and worst of all it doesn't stay true to the game itself I have no idea where the story is going to go from here I'm predicting damos will escape from rain B and just wreak havoc for 3 years while still being a playable character in game they're going to like probably chase him around for 2 years before like making him take over nigh Haven or something if you like this video make sure to plant the diffuser on the like button or team kill it I don't care just interact with it thanks for watching I'm lofa

Channel: Lufa

Views: 1,396,042

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Id: nkiP2jOz6Bo

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024