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What is lore?


fallout3k

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When used together with modding... When you make a mod that outfits Brotherhood of steel in medieval knight's armor, you are being lore-unfriendly. When you play a girl that runs around in a night dress and hight heels, nails 30cm long and tons of makeup... it's also lore unfriendly. Because the "washed up" looks a certain harshness is simply part of the Fallout world...thus it's also the "Lore".

Just to put up an example.

Edited by elvinkun
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Here is a link on all the lore of skyrim, if you are interested. Should give you an idea of what it is:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Main_Page

 

Also, when someone says that a mod isn't lore-friendly, it's because the mod is somehow going against what has already been established in the established lore (once again, see link above). One example could be adding guns to a game where the people aren't even supposed to know gunpowder yet.

 

Thanks.

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In fiction, the universe is the world in which the fiction takes place, yet it is not possible for any fictional universe to be defined completely, just as it is not possible to know everything about the real-world, not even if we were a single shared consciousness. Lore is to the game universe as the sum of human knowledge is to the real-world. If it can be established, then it becomes lore. In the game universe, lore is any event or happening of which we can be certain. In the fallout games, there is a lot of choices, a lot of possibilities. When the event or happening is not presented as an option -- when it does not depend on any choices the player makes in the game -- then it is considered to be lore by default. Otherwise, the event or happening can only be established as lore by the next game in the series (unless the next game in the series is a prequel). I will use some examples to show how this works.

 

The first game in the series, Fallout 1, like all games in the series, has a great many possible endings. We know from these possibilities that the formation of the New California Republic, for instance, depends on the survival of both Tandi & Aradesh. Since the NCR is present in both Fallout 2 & FNV, the survival of Tandi & Aradesh is now established as lore. In the second game, Fallout 2, every possible ending involves the destruction of the enclave as a powerful force, so this has been established as lore by default. Similarly, the inventor of Jet, Myron, is said to have died only a year after the destruction of the Enclave, stabbed by a jet addict, but only if the player didn't kill him first. The identity of Myron's killer cannot yet be established (and probably never will), but the fact that he is murdered does not depend on player actions -- that much is known, and that much is lore. In Fallout 3, none of the possible endings have yet been established as lore (as far as I know) -- FNV does not commonly make references to the events of the previous game, nor do any of the FO3 DLCs make many assumptions about the player's actions in the base game. But, endings aside: there is a ton of lore being established during the course of the game, and the same is true about every game in the series. I will list just a few examples. In every game, our conversations with NPCs tell us more and more about the pre-war world, the role of the vaults, the origin & purpose of the FEV, the events that led up to the atomic exchange, the politico-economic nature of the wasteland at various points in time, as well as the nature of the relationships between the factions. In the third game, the terminal entries in Vault 87 tell us more about the process that turns humans into super mutants, and we learn that these super mutants are unrelated to the super mutants from previous games. We can also be sure from not just the base game, but also from some of the DLCs, that the Enclave is almost completely destroyed by the player -- that much has nothing to do with player choice. In the third game, our conversations with NPCs tell us that the NCR corrupt & stretched thin, Ceaser tells us about the origin & purpose of his Legion, and House tells us how Vegas avoided the bulk of the nuclear exchange. All of this is considered to be lore.

 

Lore, in summation, is everything about the universe that does not depend on the player's choices unless it depends on one of those choices which has since been established in a sequal by something that does not depend on any choice other than the previously mentioned choice (or a choice which has been established in the same way).

Edited by HSovieticus
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