Thread 719034596

I'm convinced people who think From Software games don't have a story probably think having a story is when characters give expository monologues where they list off a series of objective facts about the world or tell you their motivation and goals.

We need /a/ mods to fix this shithole

Who is Zanzibart?

Tell, don't show.

>>719034663
Myrmidon's gay lover

Nobody actually cares about the story in from games (along with 99% of all other video games), right? It's all window dressing for everything else. I skip half of the cutscenes in these games because I don't care at all

From software games don't have story. They have backstory and "plot".

>>719035848
What's the difference between story and plot?

>>719034596 (OP)
americans can't read and you need to tell them every single detail through voiced cutscenes or else they don't understand

>>719034596 (OP)
The rise of From Soft, and as a result lore-focused game stories, are a quick and easy way to test someone for autism. You're taking a traditional story with characters, emotions and motivations and REMOVING all of these elements, leaving just the bare-bones exposition aspect. It's an autist's wet dream

>>719036005
It's true. I'm American and I rapidly lose interest in any game where the story is driven by dialogue that isn't voice acted.

>>719036005
Americans on this board would be very upset with your post if they could read it.

>>719035925
Story is things happening outside the main character. Plot is what the main character does

ff7 remake has no exposition and in understood the story throughout. as soon as they try to emulate fromsoftware with rebirth it turned to shit

>>719036148
>froms games dont have characters, emotions and motivations

>>719036207
Why are people fuming with seething and hatred when talking about how FromSoft games are bad and different than other games?
Just play like ANY OTHER GAME. Theres only 99.9% of them!?

FromSoft games don't have a story. Full stop.

>>719036387
They literally don't.

>>719035790
do you really spend your hours mindlessly mashing buttons because it's fun?

>>719036301
>Story is things happening outside the main character. Plot is what the main character does
Dumbest thing I've read all day.
Let me guess... American?

>>719036447
So when you meet an NPC and they talk about stuff they're just saying random gibberish?

>>719036521
You're brown

>>719034596 (OP)
god i miss when fromsoft games didn't just mean soulsborne slop

It's so ironic that he made the post after he got mad about Elden Ring, which has extremely simplistic story in comparison to some of the other titles.

>>719036567
Literally yes. Most of the NPCs don't even fucking talk

>>719036661
So this is all just meaningless jibberish?
>...So you know already, do you? Right. It's true. My father cast me out.
>For indulging my emotions. Forgetting the mission. Punishment for offing his pawns.
>Father...rather, Lord Gideon has offered me guidance all my life.
>I would have done anything for him, to place him on the throne of Elden Lord.
>And yet I... Though it was not my intent... I betrayed him...
>I...can no longer trust in father... To think he'd order his men to enact such tragedy... Where is the justice he purports, in that?
>He once told me that if he became Elden Lord, he would never allow the downtrodden to be cheated ever again.
>Was he simply lying to me?
>No, no, no... How could I say that? Father has always given me his guidance... And now...I've lost it...

>>719036593
None of them have a story, simplistic or otherwise. They are boss fights connected by hallways.

>>719036450
yes unironically

>>719036947
I'm sure it means something to someone, just not 99% of people who play the game.

>>719034896
damn this nigga looks pretty sick, cant wait to fight him

>>719037032
So you're saying when you read those lines of dialogue you're not capable of understanding what it means?

>>719034596 (OP)
I beat Dark Souls 1-3 and I have no idea what they were about. They were fun tho, good 7/10 games

>>719037161
entire plot is
"embrace le fire or embrace a new uncertain world of dark"
the end

the best part of these games is you can choose to engage with the story at an extreme autistic level or just flat out ignore it and you'll have roughly the same enjoyment

>>719037154
So you're saying you're not capable of understanding the meaning of my response?

>>719036301
It's been years since I ever taken a course on English lit but from I recall, story is the "why" and plot is the "how" of what happens.

more like tranzibart ahahah what a homo

>>719037313
You're basically saying "I personally don't care about the story so there is no story"

>>719037032
>>719037313
nta but i understood what you meant, its just that you're wrong
if you cant understand Nepheli's incredibly simple and straightforward plotline you're unironically just illiterate

>>719037273
There is no "engaging with the story" unless you mean just making it up entirely in video essay form.

>>719037436
You're basically saying "I didn't understand what he meant"

>>719037474
Reading talking to NPCs and reading item descriptions is engaging with the story.

>>719037474
there is a gradient between "there is not story its all made up" and "the entire story is spelled out for you with no subtext required to understand it"

miyazaki always place his closer to the former than the later but there is always a simple world with a simple basic premise:

link the fire
find paleblood
find the elden ring

>>719037546
there is no story, you're "engaging" with literally nothing

>>719037540
You quite literally said the NPC dialogue is literal gibberish, then when I posted very straightforward and understandable dialogue you walked it back by saying "OK it's not gibberish but most people just don't care about the meaning".

I like From's games but the levels to which the fanbase obsesses over the most barebones aspects of them is just incomprehensible. There have been numerous threads discussing the "story" in these games, when the story is a bunch of disconnected gibberish written in item descriptions. Numerous threads discussing "builds" when every single build in these games is just level vigor and then level the stat your weapon scales best with. Countless threads of people discussing their "weaponfu" when the weapons are just 3-4 basic animation that are shared between a dozen other weapons. It's just fucking insane.

The DLC shouldn't have focused on Zanzibart.

While we're at it, Mathematics is also made up.
Imagine believing in algebra and analysis lmao. It doesn't exist.

>>719037653
So you're saying you don't understand that there are multiple people posting anonymously and not everyone responding to you is the same person?

>>719037616
How is this dialogue literally nothing?
>>719036947
You think it has absolutely zero meaning whatsoever and she's just stringing random sentences together?

>>719037654
yeah its weird people like playing RPGs with magic and melee combat
crazy i know, turns out this is /v/ for video game discussion
perhaps you'd be more comfortable on /mu/ or /tv/ that discuss other visual or auditory media

>>719036005
I've noticed this decrease in general media literacy

>>719037723
If you're arguing the same point as another person I'm going to assume you're the same person since there's no possible way for me to tell if you're a different person.

>>719037794
So you're saying you can't tell when people are making different arguments?

>>719037875
So you're saying you're retarded?

>americans
mindraped euro

>>719036947
It is all exposition.

>>719037913
So you're saying that you're at the end of your rope rhetorically speaking and your only recourse is ad hominems?

>>719037964
answer the question

>>719037964
A character talking about their emotions and how they feel is exposition?

>>719034596 (OP)
I can understand minimalist story telling, but Souls takes it too far. You literally can’t understand 80% of the plot unless you read a bunch of item descriptions, and even then a lot of it is just implications rather than stated facts.

It’s cryptic for no reason and is just bait for theory crafters like VaatiVidya.

>>719038007
Look it's fine if basic dialogue is too hard for you to understand, I have a little cousin who has trouble with words too.

I'm not going to argue they don't have a story, but I will argue that if you care about the story you're a subhuman retard

>>719036947
>t-t-t-t-they have a story look at this handful of dialogue
bro that's not a story, that's not even a vignette, typical fromsoft assrider logic

>>719038173
That's one single section of dialogue from one single side quest. You want me to post every piece of dialogue and every item description from the entire game?

>>719038124
>and is just bait for theory crafters like VaatiVidya
Vaati is a theory stealer. Hr hasn't "crafted" anything in his whole life and if he did, it was wrong

>>719036947
Unrelated but it's funny that Nepheli's dialogue is being used as an example of meaningful NPC dialogue when her quest was bugged and couldn't be finished for the first month of the game's release. I finished Elden Ring before that update and thought I had either missed something or From fucked up her storyline

>>719034596 (OP)
A good chunk of the story is within in-game text and a lot of these people saying this are partially illiterate.

westurd trash seething at based FromSoft mogging the hell out of the rest of the industry will never fail to give me a good chuckle

>>719034596 (OP)
Stockpile Thomas has better writing than every Borderlands character.

>>719038260
The argument that people have against FromSoft games is that what people think is a story is actually just a bunch of snippets that, in aggregate, add up to something that hints at a narrative.

Posting one of those snippets is not proving anything, and the fact that you think it does shows you are not only dumb, but don't even understand the debate you're participating in.

>>719036450
>NOOOO YOU CAN'T HAVE FUN UNLESS YOU'RE INVESTED IN THE STORY!!!
How do you believe this and still enjoy video games?

Very subtle >>719002518

>>719035790
Based. Story is just a vehicle for gameplay. If you want an involved and decent story read a fucking book, don't play a video game.
As much as I dislike Souls games I applaud that they are overwhelmingly filled with gameplay and not retarded dialogue cutscenes, or shitty 'walky-talky' sections.

>>719038526
Then what is a story?

>"Bro you just don't understand it, you're illiterate, you gotta read item descriptions and piece together clues."
t. guy who couldn't even begin to describe the story to you without extensive googling and vaatividya videos

>>719038968
Don't project your stupidity onto random strangers

>>719036408
Good.

>>719036207
>videogame storyteller finds a way to make the story of a game interactive
>sInCe WhEn DiD sToRyTeLlInG bEcOmE aRcHaEoLoGy On ThE pArT oF tHe ViEwEr NOOOOO

>>719036301
Almost everything in every From game has fuck all to do with the protagonist

>>719034596 (OP)
From can actually write stories if they want, look at Sekiro and Armored Core. Nothing out of this world but a solid and sound framework for the games. It is just that they found tout hey can spew vague garbage explicitly designed to feed 85 IQ morons enough breadcrumbs, and they will fill on their own the massive gaps left in the 14 minutes it took Miyazaki to scribble the lore in a napkin while being blown by hookers (and the 3 minutes it took Martin to name everyone G R M).
When they do that they don't even have to bother changing said history to support level redesigns, since the voices are already recorded and that would be, like, such a pain, bro.

I like reading item descriptions because someone actually went through the effort to bother

No one's saying they don't have stories

They just don't have particularly good ones, and having to read omniscient item descriptions to draw blood from a stone doesn't make for a particularly compelling device for conveying one either.

And that's fine.

>>719039108
>look at Sekiro
>the entire story after you rescue the little kid is a literal fetch quest
Haven't played Armored Core so I can't comment on that.

>>719039270
>No one's saying they don't have stories
I am saying that.

>Thread is defending from soft story telling being told not shown through item descriptions
You don't need to ride their dick that hard.

>>719034596 (OP)
Less is more. Videogames are about gameplay and background lore is really all you need to enrich it, and that can be told through visual exposition or voicelines during actual gameplay. Also, the if the person writing the story is worth their salt, they wouldn't be making videogames anyways, they would be writing books or screenplays.

If you focus too much on the narrative you get dumbass JRPGs and pretentious Playstation exclusives.

>>719034596 (OP)
Who the fuck cares about the story in a video game?

>>719034596 (OP)
People think about that in general, as soon as there's no narrator holding their hand and literally spoonfeeding them info they're incapable of understanding even the most basic of narratives.
People have low to nonexistent standards in general.

>>719039368
Less is more until less is none.

>>719039270
They have fantastic stories

>>719037613
FIND THE ALBINAURIC WOMAN

>>719039532
>IMAGINE

What's with all these "read a book" retards? You never hear someone say shit like "Dude, movies are all about the audiovisual experience, read a book if you want a good story".

>>719039093
>Reading post-it notes is interactive
Are you stupid?

>>719034596 (OP)
Imagine being conned by youtubers into thinking roll poke roll poke roll poke has an actual coherent story after ds and ds1. You're out of your goddamn MIND.

This post really riled up the thirdworldie Fromsoftboys.

>>719039532
For some reason I always imagine this line with heavy microphone spiking.

every lore video:
>this is what might have happened...
>my theory is...
>this item suggests that...
truly amazing story, gripping and immersive

>>719034896
Expect this faggotry to come to the Souls game very soon, what a terrible franchise.

>>719037613
>miyazaki always place his closer to the former
No, you are just stupid.

>>719039321
I said it is nothing to wow about, but it is a functional, coherent story that makes sense from the get go instead of making you chase dragon asses in izalith to get a rare drop "golden covetous turd ring" that tells you the lore of poopoo devourer

>>719034596 (OP)
This tweet amaze me, it literally happened in a DS3 dlc

>>719039591
I'm not saying it's perfect, but there's an attempt at interaction in an interactive medium, as opposed to having expository cutscenes and forced walking segments. I would rather play the game and read the occasional item description and mumbling npc than sit through one more Monster Hunter Wilds cutscene.

>>719039685
Why would they make a lore video about parts of the game which are very obvious?

>>719039792
ask them that, retard

>>719034596 (OP)
>a story is when characters give expository monologues where they list off a series of objective facts about the world or tell you their motivation and goals
Souls games do this, just through item descriptions instead of characters. The stories they tell are not hard to understand in terms of fantasy tropes/themes. But most players can't be bothered to pick up and read every single item, so they rely on Le Epic Loremasters on YouTube who just read it all from the wiki. These guys don't even "craft theories," they just read the descriptions to you in an epic voice and explain the plot on the most direct level possible. That's why they barely made any videos on Sekiro or Armored Core 6 because those games told their stories primarily through dialogue so their "expertise" wasn't needed. The reality is that most players just treat these games as boss rushes. Part of the appeal is that lorefags get a story if they want to look for it, and everyone else gets a boss rush without hours of stupid cutscenes interrupting them. The only annoying part is when the fags that couldn't be bothered to read the item descriptions start telling everyone what an epic story the game has based on the video essay they watched and not the game itself. They're just posers, and all they can talk about is what happened and when but never why you should care, which they'd have to actually play the game and read shit to know. You can see this behavior in lore threads when autists start bitching at each other about irrelevant details buried in item descriptions neither of them actually read instead of why those details matter or not. What the Borderlands fag should learn from all this is that his game would be significantly better if all the miserable dialogue was removed or made optional so that people that just want to shoot shit aren't assaulted by the terrible "comedy"

>>719039750
No it didn't.

>>719039707
>t. retarded faggot who either watches or makes jewtube content and thinks his headcanon is correct and ignores all gaps and leaps of faith required to come to those conclusions

>seething borderlands writer
lol
lmao, even

>>719039842
It was a rhetorical question, retard, there's no point in explaining what is obvious

>>719039821
kek

>>719039946
even a broken clock is right sometimes

>>719039876
No, the stories are just very obvious if you play the game with your eyes open.

It's amusing that a series praised for being unique has been recycling the same handful of story themes/ideas/gameplay elements for a decade and a half at this point and the fanboys still eat it up and beg for seconds.

>>719040017
join my discord and i bet i can prove you are full of shit in less than 5 questions

>>719040017
yup, thanks for confirming what i said

>>719039761
Reading post-it notes is not interactive in the slightest, it is the laziest way to tell a story. There is no author bias or speculation, it's the developers just dumping info onto the player and ignoring the game's world.

>>719040048
Elden Ring is the opposite of Dark Souls and if you don't understand why, you're in no position to be making narrative critiques.

>>719038968
it's simple really
you have to becum the elden lord

>>719040072
>anti-From tranny admits to using discord
lol

When doing this kind of world building it's very tempting to just toss an item description, three names and a voice line implying something and calling it a day.

>>719039821
KINO

"Good story" is just about liking the product. How many fanbases hype up a literal 0/10 story?

>>719034596 (OP)
Random trivia facts that you collect over the course of the game that were written up at the last minute is not a story.
NPCs telling you vague bullshit before laughing and then randomly dying are not characters in a story.
Souls games don't have a story and you cannot pretend that they do.

>>719036148
The irony is I think you got it exactly backwards. The thing that got removed IS THE EXPOSITION. There are no structured cutscenes explaining who wants what, where people are going, or what's happening in the story. The stuff you want is ALL that's left: Characters you meet at random points in their journey, overcome by emotions that (morons like you) can't register because they lack spoon-fed context, all with clear motivational urges you spend the rest of the game watching them succumb to. You're mad because the stories (plural) in FS games are things that happen around the player's journey, and the game doesn't particularly care if you see all of them in one playthrough. Perhaps you would like to watch a movie or read a book instead.

>>719034596 (OP)
The death of sakura fish just made every other thread on this hellsite a fucking sakura fish thread.

>>719040323
>How many fanbases hype up a literal 0/10 story?
Many.

>>719039874
Yes when you kill Sir Vilhelm

YESTH...THE BEFIEETH...HEHEHE....

>>719040145
>Become Elden Lord
>In a land where everyone is shambling corpse who hates
>Zero society, infrastructure, economy/trade
>Your "Queen" is a fucking gender bender and might ass fuck you in the middle of night if you piss her off
Nah, I think I'll just fuck off back to the Badlands.

>>719040186
everyone uses discord, dont tell me you're rocking TS or ventrilo in the year of our lord 2025 my guy

>>719035790
I remember when the first Dark Souls came out, all people talked about was the story, uncovering the lore and shit like that, also how hard it was obviously.

>>719040323
mh fanbase with wilds

ZANZIBART... FORGIVE ME....

>>719040453
>He says when the NPCs either die or turn into statues waiting for the player to help if you ignore them throughout the game
lol

>Do nothing
>Is absolute cinema regardless
HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

If Dark Souls was the only souls game then people would still be impressed by the "story". But since From repeats that shitty formula every game the patterns became obvious and people found out there is nothing behind it. That's all there is to it.

>>719036148
This is absolutely true.
Autists that can't watch a typical film because they can't stand seeing humans talk to one another, obsess over Souls games because they're basically Lore Legos. Putting together random strips of dialog, item description, shit from promotional material to make a coherent story that is absent of all the complicated stuff like human interaction or emotions.

If you can't watch a film that is all about two people talking in an emotional and subdued way, like "The Phantom Thread", but you can watch several hours worth of VaatiVidya or Tarnished Archeologist or Hawkshaw videos, you're cooked, bro.

There are plenty of games that have item descriptions while also managing to include an actual story as well, why is that too hard for From?

>>719035925
Narrative vs Literal Events.

>>719037654
What is your favorite game?

>>719034596 (OP)
>Lore details are obscured through item descriptions, something most people will not read through
>Most of the game is combat/exploration to the point you can go hours without talking to a single NPC
>Extremely toned back story-telling in general
>80% of their games are dying worlds
>NO FUCKING SETTLEMENTS
>The beginning and the end of the games are the only times the story really comes to the forefront
Are you actually that surprised? It's what they want.
Honestly they should have stuck with the King's Field route and just let you imagine whatever the fuck you want.

>>719041054
This might sound a little crazy but maybe they just want to make some of their games that way

>>719039020
Explain the backstory to Elden Ring and why characters did what they did. Please don't leave anything out, even the minor details matter imo.
If anyone disagrees with you on basic facts like who did what or why they did it, you fail.

>>719038594
Im not enjoying vidya if im not invested in story

>>719034596 (OP)
The problem with From Software's storytelling is that it puts all the onus on the player. The player has to collect every item, read every piece of flavor text, and piece it together into the closest thing to coherence they can and hope that it's even worth their time to do so. Meanwhile, the devs are transparently just making shit up as they go and keeping things vague so they don't have to worry about pesky things like continuity or a timeline of events.

Shadow of the Erdtree is honestly one of the worst stories I've ever seen in anything, largely because the more attention you give it the worse it actively gets. It ONLY functions on a thematic level, and even then they literally just say "Miquella abandoned his love" but are incapable of giving us a series of events in which that character synopsis even manifests. It's fucking awful, but it gets a pass because it's vague and esoteric and most of its fanbase just watches Vaati lore and thoughtlessly repeats it. The fact that it repeatedly contradicts the base game's lore and weakens it is just icing on the slop cake.

It's trash that wears fancy clothes, which is far worse than trash that is open and unashamed of what it is.

>Borderlands writer comments about prose

I'd be doing everything in my power to simply collect paycheques and move through life without people knowing I helped contribute to Randy's Magic Tricks.

>>719039568
People actually say that all the time.
Especially about films that are adaptations of books.
Hell, some of the most legendary films ever have basically no plot at all. Jodorowsky is one of the most intense directors of the last century and he's basically never written a coherent plot in his life. Tarkovsky's plots are all about 3 sentences long, and again, hugely influential.

>>719041353
I think you might have a brain problem.

The fucking cancerous souls atmosphere is soaking into all their games. There was no need to make Sekiro world dead as fuck. Even the new Armored Core felt strangely dead despite plenty of people being alive in it.

>>719039821
Project_moon.avi

>>719036567
Stupid faggot

>>719034596 (OP)
to millennials your game doesn't have any story unless half the game is cutscenes

>>719034596 (OP)
The series is so played out at this point

>>719041485
I need purpuose to do things, i dont do things just for a sake of doing it

>>719034596 (OP)
Reminder this guy wrote Borderlands 3.

>>719041707
If you need a story to have fun with a video game then you do not like video games, you like interacting with a story.

>>719039093
While the twatter screencap guy is a retard, you can do piecing together a story through gameplay the right way, like Outer Wilds, and the pisspoor shit way like Dark Souls.
Contrary what is seems, this is not a jab against DS, which is a good game that consists in just killing the enemies while having vague flavor text around for ambiance you are not supposed to give an actual fuck about. The problem comes from the idiots that think there is a story to piece together and go on autismal parades about how deep is their retardation.

>>719041872
Woops, I mean *tirades, not parades haha

>>719041804
I love killing demons and evil, yes i hate most mechanics in games. Like when game force me to use more than one weapon or element its disgusting and dont fit my character or when all dialogue options are dumb

>>719041764
stopped clock, twice daily, etc.

>>719042120
Yeah you don't 95% of video games

>>719034596 (OP)
they dont have story they have lore

>>719035790
only storys that mean shit in games is tatics orge and ffx

>>719042179
you can stop trying to roll with the punches, Randy

>>719036351
ff7 remake is shit

>>719042404
Why these mid stories in particular?

>>719041332
Play the game :)

>>719036450
I am enjoying the last of us 2 right now and its not cause of its dogshit story

>>719042467
Souls storytelling is garbage even if Neil Breen declares it so.

>>719040091
You've clearly never read them because there is bias and speculation.

>>719042582
t. seething Youtube video watcher because he sucks too much to get through Souls games

>>719034596 (OP)
/v/ is too retarded to play Fromaoft games. Let alone comprehend their narrative structures.

>>719042542
Dude. I get that you one of the gameplay-only types, but at some point you have to have some self respect and get your fix somewhere else instead of putting up with literal semantic diarrhea for some crumbs of gameplay
Just get a PC and dump that cuckstation in the trash. You will thank me later.

>>719040671
When I want to talk to my friends I text, call, or meet them in person.

>>719039821
how many times did this happen in er
cause it happen once in bb
not in demon soul or dark (oh wait simough) cant remember 2/3

>>719042595
No there isn't, because the item descriptions are not apart of the game's world, they're the developers talking to the players, akin to a game's manual.

>>719042661
what a stupid, childish comment.

>>719040048
you had to read shitty dialog boxes to know what the fuck anything meant in ff13 none was happy about that

>>719042661
Souls fans are genuinely so fucking stupid they cannot imagine playing Elden Ring, reading the item descriptions, and not liking them. It's like the breakfast question for gamers, they literally lack the brainpower to comprehend what not liking 'Radagon is Marika' would be like.

>>719042814
AIE HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW I COULD ROLL THROUGH THE SLOW AND TELEGRAPHED ATTACK

MY LITERARY EXPERIENCE IS RUINED

>>719042785
Yeah sure that's why item descriptions call Godfrey the first Elden Lord, an objective fact that totally isn't just a piece of propaganda and totally isn't contradicted by what the player directly sees in game. I swear to god you people just straight have not played the fucking game yet you act like you know everything about it.

>>719039860
>That's why they barely made any videos on Sekiro or Armored Core 6
No it's because those games are far less popular.

>>719040636
He asks for forgiveness from his mistress, a lady you already met 20 minutes prior.

>>719042582
BL3 story is so horrendously bad that it actually detracts from the games good gameplay. Souls stories can be completely ignored and you are not forced to listen to dialogue so cringe it brings second hand embarrassment.

>>719041220
>NO FUCKING SETTLEMENTS
Skyrim baby

>>719043000
>Souls stories can be completely ignored
I care about context in video games, and the story in Elden Ring is bad enough to detract from the experience.

I've never played a Borderlands game and don't care how shit they are, none of that changes how shit Miyazaki's writing is.

>>719043094
t. longplay enthusiast

>>719034596 (OP)
Sekiro has a shifty endings except the kill everyone chuddy one.

>>719043052
Little known fact, Skyrim invented towns in RPGs.

>>719042770
3 times?
>Godfrey
>Maliketh
>Messmer
idk if I would count Midra since his fight doesn't really start until he does it

>>719038968
I really don't like the idea of reading item descriptions to know about the story. Why just having an item would give me some knowledge of history related to it? I prefer the Elder Scrolls approach where you get an item but don't necessarily know anything about it until you read about it in an in-game museum or something.

>>719043113
Even Twilight fans are smart enough to understand that someone can read the books, understand them, and not like them. Souls fans really are just fucking vegetables, mental invalids, not even sentient.

>>719042902
Goddamn bro, did you read I wrote. AUTHOR, as in that it was written by somebody, in the game's world and not the developer presenting you with information.

>>719041435
>The player has to collect every item, read every piece of flavor text, and piece it together into the closest thing to coherence they can and hope that it's even worth their time to do so.
Because they never did care.
The flavor text is about as intriguing as pic related but the fanbase keeps pretending that there's more to it.

>>719034896
ENOUGH WITH THE ZANZIBARTS

>>719042868
Floundering fool

>>719041435
>The player has to collect every item, read every piece of flavor text, and piece it together into the closest thing to coherence they can and hope that it's even worth their time to do so.
Because they never did care.
The flavor text is about as intriguing as pic related but the fanbase keeps pretending that there's more to it.

>>719043094
Elden Ring's story is fantastic

>>719043052
Fucking KING'S FIELD had towns. kill yourself.

>>719034596 (OP)
>Woops, looks like you beat me! Now I'm lying here on the floor, bleeding to death, but no hard feelings. Really! Guess that's why I'm called "of Loss". Because I lose to little punks like you! Fuck! Seriously, no hard feelings. Anyways, before I pass out from blood loss and the sweet void of death takes me, let me drop a little bit of lore on you. There's this guy, Zanzibart... I owe him an apology. Maybe I'm apologizing for some wrongdoing in the past, or maybe I'm apologizing for failing to defend this place from freaks like you (no hard feelings!), but you don't need to know that. That's right, I'm going to be vague as fuck! I'm not the type of guy who just dumps exposition on his death bed. Damn, I wish I was dying on a bed instead of this cold hard floor. Anywhoozle, if you see him, give him a big ol' "Zanzibart, forgive me" for me, will ya? Thanks. *dies*
Hire me for Borderlands you fucks

>>719034662
rapeape unironically implemented .mp4 support just because he wanted people to post shit directly from twitter here

>>719043424
Damn, 110 hours and couldn't get past the tutorial and endorses Borderlands 3's author.

Yep, checks out.

>>719034596 (OP)
>objective facts about the world or tell you their motivation and goals

Yes, that's storytelling. We adopted the term "lore" very early to describe the way Dark Souls presents it.

>>719042972
AC6 is more niche, but Sekiro sold 10 million copies, won GOTY, and is getting an anime adaptation. It's more popular than DS1 was when it was new. The reason why lorefags don't make as many videos about it is because its story is straightforward and conveyed through generally impossible-to-miss dialogue rather than item descriptions that everyone is too lazy to read.

The problem with soulshit is that all those games have the exact same backstory. Piecing it together one time was great, doing it seven times to find out it's mostly the same shit again it's terrible. I can't believe people still care about from's lore

>>719043748
>item descriptions that everyone is too lazy to read
Reading the item descriptions in Elden Ring actively makes the story worse, though.

>>719035790
I love games with good stories but yeah, for a certain subset of From games caring about the story is idiotic, you play them just for the gameplay.
Protip for all the idiots that never opened a book: if the author does vague shit and bullshits you to seem deep, there is no depth actual and he is wasting your time. Think of the Emperor's new clothes fable, if you are to dimwitted to conjure up a mental image of your own.

>>719040423
It's fine if you didn't understand it, I know plenty of people who struggle with reading

>>719043945
>>719041332

There is a story. But it's not clear cut where everything is told directly to you.
You have to find each scrap of the story on your own and put it together like a jigsaw puzzle.

>>719036447
retard

>>719044001
>>719042532

>>719037654
just because you can't figure it out doesn't mean no one can

>>719044005
Yes, and your reward for doing this is shit. The problem with Elden Ring's story is that they make you work hard for total shit.

>>719041536
lmao the sheer seethe at getting called out

>>719038124
Thats the point idiot. Miyazaki wanted to emulate his experience as a child looking through books in a language he couldn't read. Although he never got the full pitcure it was fascinating because you could find pieces that were interconnected if you kept reading. How new are you?

>>719044127
>literally just reading
>work hard

>>719044071
>>719044105
This is just a low IQ shell game, an easy way to tell that Souls storytelling is bad is that its defenders are mouthbreathers who resort to 'if you like it you understand it'. Good stories attract people smarter than this.

>>719043304
If it wasn't written by an author in the game's world then why would it give subjective information that gets contradicted by what you see in game?

>>719039591
>nigga never deciphered the lore from armour and achitecture
ngmi

>>719043672
>Yes, that's storytelling.
Maybe if you've only ever read YA novels

>>719035790
I don't completely agree with this, but it 100% applies to FromSoft games.

>>719043813
I wasn't arguing whether any of these stories were good or bad (I don't particularly like Elden Ring's story, but I know what it is), I just resent the notion that they are impossible to grasp unless you get help from YouTubers. These YouTubers literally just read the wiki to you in a sad voice, it's no more or less coherent than what you would get in game if you read the items yourself

>>719044309
Well when every criticism of the story boils down to "it's pure gibberish" despite that fact that there are countless people online who don't consider it gibberish what else am I supposed to believe except that the people who think it's gibberish just didn't understand what all those other people managed to understand?

>>719042532
>>719044071
Okay, I've played the game.
Now explain.

>>719041332
>explain thousands of years of history, most of which was purposefully erased or hidden by Marika

>>719044316
So who wrote the item description for the Twinned set?
Who wrote the item description for Radahn's armour or Bloodfiend's arm?
Who writes the item description for Spirit Ashes or consumables?

>>719044578
I shouldn't have to if you've played it, you should know the story by now. I already know what's going to happen if I do, you're not going to critique the actual story you're just going to nitpick my specific summary of it.

Every thread like this is just 2 groups of fart sniffers trying to sniff their own farts harder

>>719043424
>only 100 hours
Mega yikes.

>>719035790
but muh ludo narrative interconnectivity cognitive dissonance

>>719044632
Who knows, but clearly the information comes from people in the world otherwise there wouldn't be subjective information in them. Otherwise there wouldn't be lines in item descriptions which say stuff like "no one really knows who did this" the developers would just say who did it even if nobody in the story has that information. Do you not know what third person limited perspective is?

>>719044492
You are supposed to realize that most people know there is a story, but around the 2 hours in mark you can see already that it is so bland, base, pedestrian and uninspired, that wasting 500 hours to put together every detail is not only just not worth it, but demonstrates a sheer autism and lack of self-respect and practical intelligence that it's genuinely disgusting watching someone else squander their limited time on this earth doing that.

>>719035790
I've put myself through maybe 5 stories from games. None of them were any good.
Automata, boring
Last of us, boring
Tales of Arise, boring
Breath of fire 4, boring
Devil May Cry 5, boring

These are the only games I read all the shit for and I can't remember any of it.
Video games are not a story medium, they are made to be played.

>>719044792
I am gonna talk shit about Brothers Kamarazov after only reading the first 10 pages

>>719041435
>player has to do things
as opposed to
>player has to sit still and listen
Which one sounds more like a videogame?

>>719044825
Holy zoomer.

>>719044792
lmao that's like watching ten minutes a movie and then saying the plot made no sense

>Two of these threads up at the same time
What pissed off the discord this time? One of the mods stubbed their toe on the coffee table or did we get Duskbloods news that actually looks good?

>>719044654
I don't have to nitpick it.
Anything you say and any characterization that you give any characters will have a large camp of people that also 'played the game' that disagree entirely with you.
Here's a basic one, did Marika have a hand in killing Godwyn? This is something that should be important for anyone that wants to know the story of Elden Ring. But somehow, such a basic fact has two diametrically opposed camps that disagree entirely about it.
Here's another one. Describe Miquella's plans and how he intended to achieve them. Something basic and entirely important to the setup of the DLC. But every time this is asked, there's another new proposal for his rationale behind his decisions in the replies.

At a very basic level the story is impossible to explain without just making shit up to bridge the gaps because it is not well written or well conveyed.
Basic stuff like, Marika broke the Elden Ring and now wants someone to get strong enough to kill the God that rules above her, is not the story of the game. The story is all the shit that you have dumped on you in item descriptions for 200 hours that never makes any complete picture.

>>719044994
their ERP mod for FFXIV got banned

>>719044932
Shadow of the Colossus has one of the best stories in gaming with very minimal cutscene time. If you want to make the player read item descriptions to understand the story, it should minimally be better than an average JRPG story.

>>719045015
>did Marika have a hand in killing Godwyn? This is something that should be important for anyone that wants to know the story of Elden Ring. But somehow, such a basic fact has two diametrically opposed camps that disagree entirely about it.
It's not a "basic fact" it's an intentional mystery.

>Basic stuff like, Marika broke the Elden Ring and now wants someone to get strong enough to kill the God that rules above her, is not the story of the game.
Yes it is, Melina outright tells you in simple english that this is the basic story of the game.

>>719044775
>Otherwise there wouldn't be lines in item descriptions which say stuff like "no one really knows who did this" the developers would just say who did it even if nobody in the story has that information
You've just cemented yourself as an immense retard if you actually believe this. Obviously the developers aren't going to come right out and tell you who did it, either because it's a mysterious or because it's just empty flavour text. There is zero logic to Fromsoft's item description from an in-universe perspective. Enemies literally shit out materials that come with a handy post-it note attached to it.

"worldbuilding slop" is not a replacement for a story

>>719044901
Don't you dare talk shit about Dostoevsky.
Ok, I'll level with you. It is not that bad on its own merits, but since we went through this already for 3 Dark Souls, you can't fault people for realizing early
>ah ok, it is one of those vague mumbo-jumbo lore time is convoluted hahahah NPC just died randomly lol games, lets just turn off our brain early since we already know when you start early with the bullshit, you lay it very thick, Miyazaki!
Pattern recognition is all we have to deal with a world hellbent on wasting out time on pointless fool errands.

>>719034596 (OP)
This is the writer of Borderlands 3, by the way.

>>719044968
You are too stupid to live if you didn't see a pattern after 3 souls games, you moronic retard.

According to Google these are the greatest video game stories of all time:

1. The Last of Us 1 and 2
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
3. God of War (2018 and Ragnarok)
4. The Witcher 3
5. Disco Elysium
6. What Remains of Edith Finch
7. Outer Wilds
8. Alan Wake 2
9. Baldur's Gate 3
10. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

Just so we're all on the same page about what we're comparing the quality of Elden Ring's story to.

>>719045315
Noice one, anon.

>>719045312
Why would I have a serious conversation about a movie with someone who's only seen 10 minutes of that movie? You're a living joke, go be a clown somewhere else.

>>719045374
It's not bait, that's legitimately the result I got when I looked up "best video game stories of all time"

What's your favourite video game story?

>>719045378
>you should watch 15 movies made by the same guy, using the same tropes, even if you realized after watching 3 that is is always the same garbage
I know you don't like hearing that you are an idiot so often, but 66253th time is the charm, anon. Hopefully this time it will stick in the pea you have for brain.

>>719045205
Does it really take that much brain power for you to understand that the information you find in item descriptions is information that most people in-universe know/believe and not just a list of facts from an omniscient perspective?

>>719045015
If Marika killed Godwyn then she would make sure to keep that a secret. That's a fundamental problem with interpreting the story, a lot of the game's events are kept secret by characters in the story. It's like asking who killed Kennedy without full access to all the relevant documents.

>>719045484
And if that same guy deviated from his formula you would never know it while still confidently asserting that you do. Like a drooling moron.

>>719045586
Must suck that some random stranger on the internet that will forget about your existence as soon as he finishes his beer can demolish the only source of self-esteem in your life (being the best bullshit puzzle solver in the world!) in less than an hour.
Farewell, anon.

>>719045515
>Omen Armor
>Malformed armor resembling an Omen with its horns cut off.
>Worn by the Dung Eater. The heavy, sun-shaped medallion represents both the guidance he once saw, and the ring to which it will one day lead.
>Stalwart Horn Charm
>Said to be a budding horn. The ancestral followers believe that the horns of a long-lived beast continue to bud like antlers, over and over again, until the beast one day becomes an ancestral spirit.
Yeah bro, most people in-universe just know or believe this shit. You are an immense retard, trying so hard to defend such nonsensical presentation.

>>719045421
nta but the original nier. I don't think it's the best thing ever but it's my favorite

>>719045586
NTA but Elden Ring generally doesn't deviate from the Souls storytelling formula. If you don't like how DS1-3 told their stories, even for stupid reasons, you won't like ER and shouldn't waste your time. Threads like this only exist because people that don't like these types of stories play FromSoft RPG#7 after hating the last 6 and going "what the hell, this is Zanzibart shit all over again"

>>719036450
How do you think video games were born you retard? It surely wasn't because someone with bad ADHD still wanted to make other ADHD people follow some shitty story.

>>719045936
>Literally the most horrible combination of JRPG non-stop yapping cutscenes + having to read item descriptions (on top of having to replay the second half of the game several times for no reason) otherwise you won't understand anything about the story besides "guy rescues his sister after she gets kidnapped"
Very hipster taste, anon.

>>719046269
Why should I care about what you think though

>>719045243
Dark Souls doesn't have a complicated story .

>>719045315
I am vomit.

>>719038281
he puts many different theories together to form a cohesive story and makes a cool nicely narrated video out of the story, kill yourself worthless retard

>>719046452
What are your picks for best stories?

>>719046546
Inside, Bloodborne and Shadow of the Colossus.

>>719046614
So games that have stories that can be fully told in 2 sentences.

No one talks about the story of fromsoftware games. every thread is just gloating about how easy or hard a certain boss is.

to this day the only thing i know about malenia is that she's a hard boss i should have been spoiled by now compared to story focused games

>>719045804
>allow me to tell you all about the movie I didn't watch

>>719039750
???

>>719042770
it seems like every other boss has a second phase in ER.

>>719034596 (OP)
Everything regarding Dark Souls was losers being pretentious.
>the combat is so le heckin hard bro xDD Prepare to DIEE!!
and it turns out... its barely harder than any other game on normal difficulty
>the story is so deep i cri evrytime :,(
It's a bunch of gibberish. What people think is the story is actually their own fanfiction and what their favourite YouTuber told them, which was also fanfiction with no real backing. Unsurprisingly, this behaviour continued with Bloodborne, then ramped up with DS3, and it carried over to Elden Ring. The whole series has been propped up by grand standing, hot dogging, prima donna's who are desperately trying to seem more than what they actually are.

>>719039821
PEAK

>>719044901
>comparing Dostoevsky to fromslop

>>719043504
good post

>>719037546
>There's totally a story bro
>It just comes from wikipedia articles contrived onto random items

>>719034596 (OP)
You would be surprised how many people need things explained to them in dialogue. There are people that think the star wars prequels are pro democracy because the good guys say democracy is good.

>>719038076
Yes. That's considered a huge no-no in writing. It's telling and not showing.
Having a character talk about their feelings is like high school fanfiction level retarded.

>>719036450
do you really spend hours pressing buttons to slog through unfun gameplay just to read a worse version of a book in slowly scrolling text boxes? or even worse, a poorly voice acted movie?

Dark Souls is unironically one of the worst things to happen to games
>dudeeeee its so hardddd it filtered all the bad players
>"why did it sell so much then and why is it so popular?"
>...
It was always for normies.

>>719047373
>There are people that think the star wars prequels are pro democracy because the good guys say democracy is good.
I forgot about George Lucas' rabid love for authoritarianism. Retard.

>>719038076
It is when it breaks up the pace of the story. The reader should be able to infer the characters' state of mind as they contribute to the plot.

>>719034896
>Twin Zanzibarts
Dear Lord, one was bad enough

>>719038076
Yes. Although it's probably a good inclusion for autists with no tastes like you that need everything spelled out.
>My father cast me out which make me sad!
>He was lying to me which makes me upset!
>I now feel betrayed because I was punished unjustly by my father. This is deeply upsetting!
Just. lmao.

>>719047386
>>719047482
And yet somehow, Miyazaki has managed to concoct storytelling significantly worse than telling instead of showing. With Elden Ring's DLC he literally just has NPCs announce the theme he intended Miquella to convey. So we don't get to see Miquella abandon his love through his actions, we don't get to have Miquella or any other NPC even tell us about it, it's just a character's theme blasted straight to the audience in lieu of actually presenting us with any drama at all.

>>719047579
Trauma dumping is gay and lame but dialogue itself isn't bad if it causes the characters involved to do something. Most videogame dialogue doesn't and fromsoft's is especially bad because it's mostly detached from whatever little plot there is. I'll give Dork Souls some credit because characters died if you talked to them too much. You can basically te them to kill themselves.

>>719034596 (OP)
Yeah they do have a story, it's a complete afterthought though, you can actually take all the lore and shit out of the game and fromsloppers would still gobble it up as long as there are zanzibarts to forgive.
If you can make it from start to finish and not know what the fuck you're doing, where you are and what's going on because the game expects you to pause all you're doing and read item descriptions for the next hour or tab out and have someone else feed you the story on youtube then that's not very good storytelling.
Like, I beat the elden beast or whatever the fuck (actually I died at the same time so the game glitched out, skipped all the cutscenes, locked all the gained souls inside the unreachable boss room and simply respawned me outside it) but what's the point? I don't care about the world at all because the world didn't give me a reason to care about it.

>>719047084
Once you get past your 15 year old russianslop phase you kind of realize Dostoevsky and other hacks like Tolstoy just write slavshit torture porn. They just jerk off to agony and suffering and at best you get some mild allegories to Christ to justify the suffering as good or enlightening. Or sometimes they'll just come out and beat you over the head with it like The Idiot.

I think they're very interesting insights into how fucked slavshitniggers are in the head, but they're drivel. It's the kind of trash that slavs jerk themselves off to because they think suffering in a shithole surrounded by garbage human beings of their own ilk makes them intellectually superior to the decadent west, and likewise, decadent upper-class western liberals jerk themselves off to it because they use it to live vicariously through the political turmoil of the late Russian Empire and early Soviet Union. Really, the only thing I could do is laugh at how fucking shitty it must be to be ever be born a Russian. It might be worse than being a jeet or a nigger.

>>719034896
>lost bandai namycodon of zanzibart
Jesus christ that was funny

>>719045421
WC3+FF (babbys 1st)