It’s like you’re an archaeologist or anthropologist in these games where not only you have to piece together history yourself but it’s culture as well and I think that makes the lore deciphering and discovery all the more interesting since it invokes the feeling of being the first to document and record all the history and culture. It’s kinda like how the first archaeologists that discovered dinosaurs felt
Yo that’s a nice comparison really. We are like historian/anthropologist warriors or something. I like that idea, we come to these worlds to observe and occasionally fuck shit up haha or get fucked up.
ive always felt like a medieval fantasy version of Indiana Jones playing Elden Ring, uncovering all manner of ancient forgotten ruins and finding lost legendary artifacts
Yarnham, old yarnham, and the pthumerian ruins below is very much reminds me of cities in Europe with modern and ancient above ground architecture and the catacombs and such below.
Miyazaki said he loved western fantasy and part of it was he would read it in English and not understand everything. That air of mystery and intrigue trying to parse something was something he said he wanted to convey in his games. I think this attitude is one of the reasons fromsoft can take even relatively simple stories and make them these deep masterpieces. Fromsoft isn't afraid to hide things, they're not afraid to be cryptic. And they're very good at adding alot of deep stuff. They are experts of building deep settings
I think this idea of Miyazaki reading books in English has been blown out of proportion a bit, as it is not properly substantiated. As far as I can understand from the quotes, Miyazaki was largely stumbled by kanji beyond his grade/year, as well as books who's themes were too complex for him - both of these things happened because he was too young, that's the crucial factor, rather than any specific difficulty with English.
I love that they give you the basics of the lore told through some npc's but everything else is left up for you to figure out and interpret. Pouring over the item descriptions and exploring. Never seen a community come together to figure out the full story of these games like this and I love it
@@watertommyz How is reading beyond one's year/proficiency the same thing as reading intermittently in a foreign language? The latter means that preteen Miyazaki could read English. As far as I understand it, that is an extremely unusual situation for a typical Japanese child in the 80s. That aside, the evidence we have, the quotes of him speaking of this, never mention English at all. The point is to have a correct understanding of his situation, instead of assuming Miyazaki has been somewhat bilingual since he was a child.
While not nearly as lore-deep as Souls, you can definitely see it's influence in the new Armored Core as well. You never see a human being in-game, but you fight through human cities, factories, ships, but they exist at an impossibly colossal scale. Like so massive they should buckle under their own weight yet hang in stasis. They're now lifeless, cold, blasted and scorched, but someone built them...
And apparently the surface was supposed to be burned away yet here these monuments stand with power lines and cars in the streets and every spec of paint barely chipped.
@@Bliss467 I'm not that far in, but I don't think the burn was a litteral combustion (how would that even spread through space). It sounds more like it was a radiation wave.
Something I loved about the old ACs that 6 captured as well! Taking on the spirit of Motherwill, or even something smaller like AF gigabase and thinking "wait this would dwarf any other manmade machine in existence at this moment." Because scale makes me forget my AC isn't man-sized sometimes
It reminds me a lot of US city infrastructure, outside of a few places like New York nothing is built to a human scale, you have 12 lane highways going through the middle of cities, and looking at it you struggle to figure out how humans are supposed to exist in these places, it's clear that the world has given up on humanity and only builds itself to accommodate behemoth machines
Randos doing stuff to randos could describe literally every story ever, if you count concepts and inanimate objects as randos as well. You know what this means? We’ve found essence of generic! Keep it well hidden, friend, we wouldn’t want Disney acquiring this relic, or god forbid COMCAST!
@@Ahrpigiwhats disappointing about it? I thought elden ring had the most fleshed out, interesting and fully realized world and lore out of all the souls games. Thats me though
@@thebombdiggity3941 to me, there were too many assorted nouns and vague references, and not enough connective tissue. It all blurred into a soup of ideas that never got details or better description. I loved the vague storytelling in DS1 and BB, but was also frustrated by the lack of hard answers in DS3... It's quite possible after a thousand hours of SoulsBorne I'm just burned out on the style, and the problem is just me. 🤷♂️
One of the weirdest things in all these games is characters casually revealing, usually indirectly, that they're hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and they just look like they're 32
It's forensic storytelling. Every other RPG in recent memory dumps a codex of flavor text on your lap, expecting you to read it to understand the world. Souls does the opposite, they drop you in an established world with no context and give you a task. It's the difference between required reading and a scavenger hunt. Also, Fromsoft's design and writing are really cool and their world's bear to be thought about.
This is what makes Lore Hunters like TB Skyen, Hawkshaw Tarnished Archeologist so cool because they look at the actual details of the landscape, not just supposition and item descriptions
Hell yeah, Tarnished Archaeologist is one of my new favorite lore hunters with how he brings in real world history while also still treating the lore as its own thing. Hakwshaw is great too, his Elden Ring Color Theory video is still one of the greatest bits of lore I've seen. Also, thanks for giving me a new channel to check out. :)
I'm glad you mentioned the Hope that certain characters bring with them, I swear I would never have finished Bloodborne if I didn't have the Doll and the small pleasant little interactions she will have with you. I felt personally attacked when I recieved the Dolls Tear and it says only a fool would find value in it. Like fuck you game she is precious and perfect don't you devalue her having emotions (somehow)!
I cannot begin to express how much your videos get the creativity gears in my head turning! The way you break down themes and details of the world inspires me so much in my own world building!
Being a vet from vanilla Demon souls, EpicNameBro was the lore guy i watched for a while then i was like "dam this sounds sick ass shit but also so vague. I wanna be part of this world"
Unknowability is the most realistic way of doing lore. Because aside from getting people to talk and build a community over a shared interest, this is how history is in real life! We don't have all the answers to things that happened hundreds to thousands of years ago. Heck we sometimes don't have answers to things that's happened only decades ago because it either doesn't become public knowledge or sometimes is stricken away from the record (see the nameless prince in DS1)
Facts. I don't think I ever walked outside and had a homeless guy give me 30min lore dump on Ohio. I doubt it would happen any more frequently post apocalypse too lol
@@Funko777 There just has to be a fine line cause Ohio`s history did happen so everything you discover has a reason why its there and how it got there you just might not now how. So you need trust in Fromsoft that they have one version of things that happened, the second they slip up everything fals apart and it gets frustrating.
For me Hyper Light Drifter encapsulates all of these perfectly. Feels very much like exploring a souls world. I get chills every time i come across one of the Titans and the music swells.
I am also one of the obsessed! I think about the Golden Order and the Shattering waaay more than I think about the Roman Empire.. I just love that I can only know as much as I am willing to discover in these games, which makes me want to fall deeper into each area and know every character and yet I'll never have all the answers.. So compelling! Great video, great points raised!
I'm one of those weirdos that truly believes that the story and LORE absolutely defines games like this. I feel the same way about the Darksiders games, God Of War etc. Great topic and video! Thanks Brett. ,💜💜💜
Elden rings lore is deep and complex , i have also watched hundreds of hours of lore from every creator i can find . The way from soft gives you the pieces and then tells you you have to put them together yourself is brilliant. Idk about you, but i feel like a detective examining the evidence putting everything together coming to a conclusion . It adds another dimension just as awesome as the gameplay itself .
@muramasa870 Are you ok? I spent thousands of hours on Dark Souls Lore, it is my favorite world. But Elden Ring's lore is way more complex, vast and thought out. You should probably replay it with lore focus and see for yourself.
When it came to Marika/Radagon I always assumed it was a combination of soul splitting and rebirth. We know Radagon gave the Moon Queen her rebirth egg, and we know soul removal/splitting is possible (Ranni being an example) So I believe when the Carrion royalty pushed back the golden order to a stand still, marika engaged in the act of splitting her soul and placing that piece in a rebirth Ed male body of her. That new being, Radagon, was then sent to Carrion to play a LONG game of interception. Acting as a general who became remorseful, and repented for his sins, marrying the moon queen. Then all of a sudden, leaving her with kids, which in turn broke her, and helped topple the Carrion. Thus allowing the golden order to usurp them, while they delved into civil war. It’s a pretty solid plan
Sometimes I just get weird thoughts about the lore from time to time. For example: in darkroot garden, we can find the wolf ring. I believe we loot either Artorias' corpse as it belonged to him or we take it off of the corpse of Ciaran, who seems to set up a grave for Artorias' after we defeat him (to account for location difference). I could very well be wrong as it could be a grave robber or something that got caught by the guardian and killed (iirc, this was in an off the trail location behind a fake tree).I just like to think there's a more direct connection, but due to the passage of time, it would not be far fetched to guess it was someone else who picked up the ring in between the time Artorias died and when we go through darkroot.
The beauty of their world is that From Soft leave it open for interpretation. If that fits together in your mind - it is true so long as it does not contradict the little concrete evidence.
For me, Salt and Sanctuary absolutely nails the unreal and bleak setting with glimmers of hope dotted throughout. It also does the lore through item descriptions and environmental storytelling really well. On top of that, it is just a really good metroidvania-style take on a souls game and even incorporates some of the same Lovecraftian elements that Bloodborne does. Highly recommend.
Glad to see you mention Hollow Knight; the world of Hallownest has an ambience of both beauty and sorrow that feels very unique to me even among other souls-like games. I'd personally really enjoy seeing you analyze the game and its characters in particular if you'd ever consider it!
Oh lol maybe I should have finished the vid before commenting about how hollow knight did the story telling and history telling very similarly and quite well unlike many other games who actually tried to make it like dark souls specifically
@@fatbretthave you heard of the Little nightmares series, the lore is told entirely through environment there is not a single line of dialog, if you want you can check it
This was an excellent essay. As a lore fanatic, I really like to hear and dicover new theories and glimpse of lore in forums too, found quite fascinating how to world building a game with this settings. Thanks for the video and the effort
One of my favorite aspects of the Souls games, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring is that each of their worlds all feel broken at a fundamental level. For me, it’s that feeling of brokenness woven into the design of these worlds that really contributes to the feeling of unreality at the core of the games. Sure, we discover or are told some of the events that wounded the fabric of these worlds. However, none of these scraps of info prepare you for how fucked up things really are. I love that we as the players are thrown into the middle of these worlds falling apart at the seams and have to build our own conclusions from what little we can see, hear, and discover for ourselves.
True, we see the consequences of a major disaster but the more we learn it becomes clearer that the world was fundamentally screwed from the start. Kinda like our world lol People complain that they want Fromsoft to make a game that shows these places in their prime and while that has sort of happened to an extent (Ringed City DLC illusion/Anor Londo) they seem to want crowds of normal people and such. I personally much prefer the hostile hell scape though and think our imaginations filling in the gaps is drastically more entertaining
While not a fantasy series I feel like Dead Space checks a lot of these boxes for me, I always come back to Dead Space lore videos and theories. The unknowable reasons behind the Brethren Moons, the multiple marker events that had been covered up throughout its history. It scratches the same itch in my brain that Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring and Hollow Knight do.
One game that I think people of the souls community really slept on has to be the Last Hero of Nostalgaia. Its a souls like through and through. From gameplay to its lore, it is a true gem. Please if you have the time, give it a go. You wont regret it.
One element you mentioned at the end there always stood out to me; the fact that the player enters a world that's seemingly at the very edge of its existence, like it might end at any moment. It invokes a sense of sadness that you missed the glory days, that you'll never get to see great cities like Anor Londo or Yharnam or Leyndell in their prime. It makes you ask question about what happened, how it could have gotten to this, and if there's even any way forward. You fight a sense of hopelessness as much as you fight the beasts inhabiting these worlds. There aren't many pieces of media that intrigue as much as the lore of Fromsoftware games. The manga Blame! comes to mind as a personal favorite, that always transported a feeling of bleak loneliness, fear of the unknown but also curiosity about what happened to the broken world. The Song of Ice and Fire achieves similar levels of deep lore to me; that feeling that there is so much history behind every character, set piece and little anecdote told. I think it's no coincidence Fromsoftware asked GRRM to help craft the underlying world of Elden Ring. Not even the story you play, but all of the history that it's built on. And last but not least, while mired in retcons and the traps of being built on for 20 years, Warcraft lore is still one of my favorite things to delve into. It's less alien and unknowable, more of a comfort zone but I still love it.
The idea of things looking on the surface or at the shallowest level totally normal but upon actual scrutiny make no sense or are objectively impossible or horrifying is also a key element that was used in Lovecraftian writing to highlight the unknowable horror that can so easily lurk in plain sight. In several of his stories it is only by the chance moment that a person stopped to really look closely at something that they realized the danger they were about to fall into or that a town of seemingly normal folk were in fact never human to begin with. Racial undertones aside, taken purely from the horror perspective, this narrative element of the incomprehensible being obscured by the ignorant and naïve eye is a very compelling literary device.
I love to watch the lore videos while I play through the games. Its one of the only franchises that you can do this with. Every other company seems to just be cut scene after cut scene and text boxes with paragraphs of nonsense stopping me from enjoying the combat or exploration of any game. It's just so unique how u can play a game that's all game with little cutscenes and the lore is written on weapon description and a couple enigmatic words from an NPC that you have to decipher. But u throw on some Vaati and listen to the lore of each area and each boss and each race of people while going thru these areas with no stoppage of play. It's just a beautiful marriage
Not a souls like, but the only other game I remember seeing tons and tons of story analysis and video essays about is Metal Gear Solid V. I think many of your points about "unreality", player driven discovery and layerd story telling fit there too.
I would highly recommend the salt duology, salt and sanctuary, and salt and sacrifice. Both of them have bleak settings with complex unreal lore but have fun characters (granted not nearly as in depth as souls) that try to provide hope in a bleak setting. On top of that they are both super fun metroidvaninas with sanctuary having a far more traditional metroidvanina style and sacrifice having a slight monster hunter style to its gameplay as well. I highly recommend them!
Hey FatBrett if you see this comment just wanted to say I really love your videos so much. I always put at least 1 of you videos whenever I go to work. I just work at my local supermarket so just listening to your videos really improves my well being cause without your videos, work would be very boring. I don't even need to watch the screen, you go into so much detail I can visualize everything in my head. Keep up the good work.
I got into these games because of the lore, bosses, and yes, the music. I have gotten fairly decent at most of them, but sub consciously. The lore has always been my favorite part. I've gotten incredibly pissed at some of the bosses but I cant stop myself from coming back time and time again.
For me it's because the Souls games have some of the most memorable & striking worlds I've seen in any form of media & wanting to find out more just becomes a necessity. Vaati & the other Ytbers who contribute to the worldbuilding deserve the love.
Oh BTW, to answer your question of Marika ascending to godhood. It's implied that the outer god perhaps via elden beast granted it to her since she was an emperyan. That appears to be the only prerequisite required in ER for one to gain godhood through the outer gods. Except maybe Malania via the rot God although she is the descendant of an emperyan
This video made something in my head click. It ALWAYS takes me out when I see amazing set pieces that don't make practical sense. I immediately jump into "but people couldn't survive here, where is the logic?" etc., just how I am. Going to the thematic idea immediately puts my mind at ease and explains so much, I am shocked I never realised this before hearing you say this.
I high recommend Lies of P for that same kind of feeling. There is so much you have to read and look deeper into, along with an interconnected world with both despair and hope. It's a great game and I think the first Souls-like to actually nail that feeling I got from the original Dark Souls. I know this video is pretty old by now, but I still recommend it regardless. Great video, love your essays!
My man, you nailed it - this is the best explanation I have come across as to why From's game stand miles apart from other souls like. Loved the essay.
Lies of P does a fantastic job of layering its history, introducing likeable characters, and giving that sliver of hope while ALSO acting as an ADAPTATION of an already classic fairy tale. Not only does it take what the original story does and adapt that well, but it integrates that story with original ideas like Ergo and Humanity Vs Puppetry and etc.
I had the same experience when I played Little Nightmares. I can’t say I like its gameplay, especially the 2, but somehow I kept pushing forward when I played it, spending tons of hours watching TH-cam analyses of its lore, only to learn what was going on in that twisted world. I don’t know why I tend to be obsessed with games full of mysterious backgrounds though limited in narration. But studying those stories; discussing lore with others; watching analyses… all these, are part of the gameplay to me, and give me the same satisfaction of putting together puzzle pieces. It's just fascinating ❤.
I think it is worth mentioning that the hostility and hope is an essential part of any good post-apocalyptic story; stories like The Road, The Last of Us, and Mad Max Fury Road really showcase that aspect in different narrative styles, but do so just as beautifully. It is difficult to be motivated in these settings without hope, and likewise the setting falls apart without hostility and you lose the atmosphere completely, lending more towards different narrative styles and stories. I’m glad that you mentioned these as I am a major post-apocalyptic fan and it is something I have studied for years now. Your work is great!
I think it is also cool that the ways that the worlds don't make sense on a practical level is explained as much from a lore perspective. Like in Dark Souls 3, the world is disjointed and doesn't make sense with kingdoms stacked on top of each other is because in the lore it's literally like the end of time and history itself is collapsing
The alure of the Souls series, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, is they're 'almost' like our world. As you pointed out in your video. They're familiar, but very bizarre beneath it. It's why I think people got so into the Ace Combat series back in the day. It had elements that are like out world, the planes, the cultural notes of the various civilisations, but they're strange, different. It's the fact the story team called it a 'Strange Real world'... and the fanbase started calling this alternate universe Strangereal. It's just close enough to be familiar, but it functions in such a way that it's strange and different too.
World so hostile that friendly face are so scarce. Thats explain why i feel sad when my companion dead during our journey, they are our safe heaven on this harsh world settings.
I beseech thee kind sir, please explore these games more. I enjoy your look at storytelling and worldbuilding a lot. I learned even more about these games than I thought just now holy hell.
Great essay! Plenty of people still love older lore and especially Bloodborne. Doing my 4th playthrough now for the last ending trophy I need for platinum and I never get tired of BB lore.
First time watcher here. Fantastic video. Perfectly describes the things I love about these games, even if I wasn't fully aware of some. Your scripting and visual editing is top notch as well, kept me interested from beginning to end, great stuff. Subbed! edit: also coincindentally I'm replaying Code Vein right now and I find myself skipping all the story and lore bits, because I like the aesthetics and gameplay, but the dialogue and story is just too much "in your face" and thus, I'm not interested anymore, lol.
To me its the same reason why we are obsessed with space. The mystery of it all and the bits and pieces of lore or evidence of the bigger picture whether it be the origin of the universe or fromsoft lore just leaves us wanting to discover more and more about the mystery in question.
I like the idea that the Yharnam we see in the game is simply how the various Dreaming Hunters would perceive the city. They wouldn't be interested in the centers of commerce, the food preparation, the nitty-gritty details of how the place works--they're only interested in the beasts, the people, and the Church. It's like the Dream is enforcing a kind of tunnel vision that keeps them focused on the Hunt without any distractions. There's almost nothing you can take purely at face value in "Bloodborne", and that's part of why I love that game so much.
The connection with Weird Tales is the reason I fell in love with SoulsBorne games. Weird Tales and Lovecraftian lirateraturical philosophy inherently goes against the core basics of any audiovisual media of "Show, do not tell." I wrote my thesis on screenwriting and expressed a question can Lovecraftian storytelling even be told without breaking that philosophy. It took 4 goddamn years of writing and researching to get that revelation on how to actually do it. Once presented and everything, I started playing Bloodborne 'cause I had left all the gaming aside while working on my Thesis and when the Blood Moon event happened, I was practically in tears. That game proved my claims right and later on "The Lighthouse" as a movie.
Having always been bad at fromsoft games I have only played Bloodbourne (only about 3 hours of playtime though) and just finished my first run of Elden Ring around 80 hours. The main reason I even got into the games was the lore and the weapons.
Your videos are excellent! I'm going through a few of your videos right now and really enjoying myself. I'm deeply satisfied with the way you discuss the authorial intent of the developers in a really educated way. A lot of times when people try to criticize or simply analyze authorial intent (such as when you discuss the structure of Yharnam being essentially unlivable and perplexing, for example) they leave it as "this doesn't make sense" or "whaaat were they thinkiinnnggg?!", but you bring the additional perspective of someone who is familiar with actually analyzing authorial intent from an educated perspective. As someone who graduated with a literature and writing degree, it's very refreshing. I love creators who take their own educated perspective and apply that to the content they create. You continually highlight writing and development choices really well! Which I'm sure you're aware of, but for me it's really fun to see and hear (: Thanks so much for your work!
I happened upon a review/lore video about Elden Rings and have been hooked for nearly a year. I personally haven't played a game since trying Candy Crush once in a 2014. Now, hours long lore/video essays about anything are my go-to for the entertainment. I love hearing hearing people talk about subjects they find interesting. I wish I had the attention span to play😅. My most immature hyper-fixation to date 🤷🏾♀️.
Cuz it's neat. Also the Divine Towers are from Farum Azula. The architecture checks out. From the stone architecture to the bridge's vine designs along the railings being in the structure found after Alexander/The Sleeping Dragon. From the bridges having the same lotus pattern in their brickwork as Farum Azula has through it. From the weird stuff on the pillars on the side being found in Farum Azula as well. I take it that the big cloud is where Farum Azula was. Well, with some added stuff because they couldn't help themselves. Also the Yharnam we see past the intro is in a collective dream. Because of the blood. It is to the actual city what the Hunter's Nightmare is to it.
Even though they werent going for a soulslike, this is one thing i think team cherry did really well with Hollow Knight. They layered their history to find pieces of ancient architecture, eggs used as ancient codexes, but its never flat out explained. Its all given in tiny bits that make the player ask questions and start trying to piece the details together to get just a glimpse of what may have been going on in the civilization that the now crumbling ruin of a civilization once called ancient themselves.
While I don't like the slowpaced combat of the Dark Souls series, but when you spoke about interactive discovery of the world/lore, I think of some of my favorite games. Star Ocean Till the End of Time, FFVII/FFVIIR, MegaMan Zero series, Persona 5, Digimon Cyber Sleuth.... just to name a few. Video games are a medium in which the interactive element needs to be integral, even when it comes to the lore and world building, I agree. Great content as usual👏🏿👏🏿
I'm glad you're asking the big questions. Every time I play a game featuring giants, I have to wonder: where did they buy their pants? Is there a Pantsnormous somewhere out there selling giant pants? There must be, and the quest goes on
I'm not a souls veteran, I only play myself Bloodborne (which I love) and Elden Ring, but I've been reading and watching streams and even my brother playing the Souls games for years and for me is the sense of wonder at first, is the: "what is this place? What the hell is going on?" and yes, is like putting a puzzle together with all the little details, there's so many unsaid things, so many interpretations to events, to character actions, to design that what you interpret can be completely different from someone else but most of the time you see the other's point, like: "yeah, I can see why you think that, it kinda makes sense". And then is just your character actions, like any other game even movies and other media the protagonist is the catalyst for change, but in soulsbornering games you don't know the whole truth, you don't know the full history so what you choose is fully your choice, what you think is the best or what you really want, do you want to burn the world? Do you want Ranni to stablish a new outergod? Do you understand why everthing will be better by undying? By kindling the fire? Do you want to forget the impossible to comprehend cosmic knowledge? Do you want to save an old hunter? Do you want to become a cosmic newborn and give the dream and hunters another choice? And all of them is influenced by the world: the few friendly npcs and the hostile npcs, item descriptions, your own interpretation... All of these games really gives you a freedom to learn and choose with the knowledge *you* acquired, with your own worldview both inside and outside the game. So yeah, I love it.
Something id love hear you talk about is more of the hopeful stuff in Bloodborne, is likely the darkest and most grotesque souls when you get deep in it wich makes people overlook stuff like how Laurence wanted most likely to help, Ludwig acomplishments before his downfall, Rom starting human but becoming a great one and holding the red moon, as well as the player gaining insight while having the courage to fight and ascend as a baby great one too
We care because the stories and its details are allegories for life, its many meanings and the forces at play. The dark souls story is so damn deep. Its like somone saying something yiuve never found the words for your whole life, only it doesnt really tell you, it holds your hand.
Honestly I love games like this. It's why I love the game Book of Travels by Might and Delight. The Environmental and item storytelling is just as good, and for those who aren't as interested in massive bosses and would rather feel like an adventurer just making their own way with no certain end, it's a great game. Part ASMR, part adventure action, and with the most well written folklore. The Discord and wiki communities are so fun for that reason.
Salt and sanctuary. It´s so much a souls-like that it´s almost to its detriment, since it is first and foremost also a metroidvania, but without a map. This gives the sense of delving deeper and deeper the same way as Dark Souls, feeling more and more oppressed and isolated, until finally either meeting a fellow adventuring NPC, or opening a shortcut back to familiar places. It has a convoluted story and history of the island you´re on - or is it merely a dream, who´s to say? ;-) Can definitely recommend!
this is an excellent video, it perfectly captures the feeling of wonder and that spark of curiosity that just ignites in you when you actually take an interest into Fromsoft's worlds. Many people think that Miyazaki just writes some random stuff that sounds cool and puts it as a them into the game, but there's much proof against this, the people who craft these worlds, who write the dialogue, draw the concept art, design the levels, write the lore, etc, they care about this stuff.
Youre so right man . I've been playing these games since the Demon's Souls on PS3 and still to this day I am obsess with these games . Fromsoft is my Fav dev of all time
This and Dead Space video are true gems. I'm heavily impressed with your level of story telling and overal intelegence. You deserve at least million subs, keep doing what you do.
One game that fits your criteria for souls-like storytelling is surprisingly call of duty black ops zombies. In the game, there is also a feeling of being an archeologist going around finding easter eggs scattered across the maps, with many hidden quests, and coded messages scatters. Not only that but it also contains the cosmic horror elements, where there is more beyond zombies, and powerful humans fighting for power. It also has many unsolved mysteries which allow for interpretation and creativity, for example the crew on the map shadows of evil. It also has the bits of solace which give the charm of some of the souls games, with the rare appearance of friendly charcters, beloved by the community, as well as the crew's will to keep going for good despite their fate to die. It is something definitely worth checking out! It has a very in depth story to dive into
This is late; but I discovered that the "fear and hunger" games have this kind of world-building; they take a lot of inspiration narratively from souls-likes
Because it’s good story telling and world building. Gives us answers, I too spend far too much time reading rather than playing haha! This is how you know a game is an absolute banger! Only a handful of games have got me like this! Worlds that have me in a chokehold and I wanna know and see everything! Love it!!!!!
Rain World is probably the only game that has lore like Fromsoft games to me. I have been obsessed with it ever since I played it years ago, and still continue to do so. I feel like we Rain World players still feel like underdogs in this videogame lore comparison so you know I highly recommend you to play it. The ideas presented in Rain World is beyond anything I've seen, it has captured me more than the souls games and I have played all of them. I have many more hours in these games compared to Rain World yet I cannot say that I had a more memorable experience than this game, maybe except Outer Wilds. I still remember my first playthrough and I have replayed this game countless times now.
I really want to talk about it because Another Crab's Treasure is straight up one of my favorite games this year and I feel like it captures a lot of these elements well without having even half of the total content of other soulslikes and no item descriptions that tell you lore. And it works especially well because you don't really need to know too much about how the world came to be that way, because the answer is holding the controller. Instead, we're left to wonder how exactly the world was influenced into becoming what it is when by all accounts it should have died instead.
Many people playing these games often seem to seek reason for their struggle in life and find it in these games by exploring ruins, architectures, landscapes, NPC dialogues, item description and shown cinematic in certain conditions; especially the ones feeling left out of the spiritless society and materialistic modernity.
I do still need to actually complete it, but I would say Hellpoint has a couple of these elements. In addition to actually normal splitscreen coop, there are layers to the weirdness. You start being 3d printed out of this goop, slowly make your way around this station you discover (or would if it wasnt the press start screen) that the space station is right above this black hole. Then as you explore more sectors you keep uncovering these tidbits about great wars and AI revolutions and the like that happened on earth. There's an interesting determinist vs free will theme throughout, one of the dialogue options you have is "I am an agent of free will" when asked what your deal is. That NPC is one of the few I've found so the hope/hostility scale is tilted a bit towards the latter. There's a bunch of psychic demons that exist in this world and the mirrored one you access through hidden portals. And the first real STRANTH weapon is a busted off piece of a stone column. Its a fun romp, need to get back into it. No idea how far along I was but it is pretty expansive.
As someone who didn't get into Dark Souls (specifically DS3) until 2019, the story and how it entices you to dig deeper is what drew me. Its story is like that rabbit hole you jump into on Wikipedia, but in game form. Top that with some story elements that leave you with burning questions that just STAY with you; case in point, the fate of Gwynevere and what ultimately happened to her. Is she just gone? Could she be this person we encountered earlier in the game? Is this other character mentioned in other entries connected to her? Is [spoliers] really Gwynevere's daughter, twisted by the Pontiff? You get just enough to tie things together and what's left and isn't delved into leaves you chomping at the bit
I always felt like the Remnant games nailed it in terms of having all of the souls world-building elements. I highly recommend them to anyone into souls. All of the worlds are in a post-apocalyptic state and it's up to you to search for the story, which is both dark and brooding but still manages to have its light-hearted elements. The settings are fantastical but at the same time manage to feel in some way a little practical but not too much so as to ruin the dream like element of the worlds. Every setting is so beautiful and so full of rich history. It's always such an adventure to learn about the lore of the people and their situations.
Pentiment explicitly deals with the idea of layered history and the ways in which history and legend influence people and how it gets used and adapted to serve different agendas in different times. Among many other thought-provoking and gut-punching themes like the tensions of producing art as a commodity and living with your failures and disappointments. It's a very text-heavy RPG with a great illuminated manuscript art style by Obsidian. Very chill, un-souls-like gameplay, but I highly recommend it!
For me, I think of Resident Evil being similar to Dark Souls as far as story telling goes. While nowhere near as vague, I remember playing the first game way back in the 90s as a kid and finding documents detailing what happened in a certain room, or a certain scientists, and later finding a connection through an item or even finding the tragic ending of said scientist somewhere else. This puzzling also contributes to why the lore of Resident Evil really blew up early on. Although now Resident Evil pretty much explains everything for us, in those early days it was more Dark Souls.
I honestly feel like DS and Elden Ring are the closest VG stories we can to our irl world mixed with fantasy. There are so many ancient civilizations that while we have their ruins and artifacts we still know next to nothing of who they were and why are they gone. It’s like being an archaeologist researching a civilization that may or may not have been a mother to other future civilizations you just have to fit the few remaining pieces together and you always have the doubt if you are right or not.
It makes sense for information to be obscured or not available at all, if it is information, that would not be known or documented, because it is "forbidden" or a character is filled with shame for his actions. So it would feel of, if the player would get that information.
To me. Going through these games is like knowing about 45% of a foreign language and trying to read a really gripping novel in that language. You’re not getting the picture, you’re missing things, it’s frustrating, but what you can experience is captivating, rereading this novel gradually fills in more gaps until you have more intimate knowledge of the story.
What I have learned from playing the souls games is that they are very similar to the way we live our lives. We live everyday asking the same questions, if we try too hard to answer existential questions it may lead us closer to insanity. When you think about it, we live in objects called planets, that circle around object called Starts. Then we try to come up with theories about life so that we give answers to weird reality that surrounds us. Our body, our perspective, there is everything weird about them, not different from souls games.
Miyazaki is one of the very very very few people that are not famously considered a genius that I would very much call a genius. And I don't say this lightly. Calling someone a genius is a pretty big statement, but no other piece of fiction, not just limited to videogames seems to make me as obsessed as Fromsofts games do. Maybe I just have a tiny brain, but I am not exaggerating when I say that I simply cannot imagine how a human being can come up with something as unbelievably interesting as what we see in especially modern Fromsoft games. Like I have been watching Elden Ring Lore content almost every day for over a year whenever I wasn't busy with work or university stuff and I still find out new details, each and every one of them fascinating me more than anything ever has. Same goes for the art direction. Not just the incredible environments that have just been getting better and better with every game, but also the beautifully disturbing enemy design. The gameplay is amazing, the soundtrack is amazing, the lore is as I said almost depressingly amazing and to think that all this is being supervised by one man is mind-blowing. I am an artist myself and Fromsoft games are my biggest inspiration by far and sometimes it actually hurts to know that these games exist because no matter how optimistic I try to be, I just feel like I can never reach this level of skill. Not everything about these games is perfect of course, but at least to me the lore and art direction are much closer to this impossible goal of perfection than anything else I've seen before. We are truly blessed to have this company releasing games for us. Not to say that Fromsoft is the only good studio out there but I don't think we'll have anything match the narrative depth of their games in the foreseeable future. I already love the imagery seen in the DLC trailers and I truly can't wait. I haven't been as excited for a new game since Breath of the wild and Shadow of the Erdtree isn't even a game.
I think Warframe's lore contains most of these elements. I spent a lot of time seeing my warframe as a classic mecha sci fi thingy, not understanding why ennemies called me a "tenno". I started digging and didn't expect to fall into such a rabbit hole.
something funny about this video is that like half the times you gave an example of the lore, i just had an immediate knee jerk reaction of "no that's wrong", but it doesn't actually matter and neither of us can be correct regardless because that's the beauty of fromsoftware. these games have such advanced storytelling that in many ways they can tell a hundred stories all at once, and have each of them be true without making the others false even if they contradict eachother. as an example i seem to be completely alone in thinking that bloodborne has a surprisingly player driven story. your character has a history that matters, came to yharnam of their own free will looking for "paleblood", after the transfusion you clearly still remember that goal because you ask the first nice guy you meet about it. my interpretation of that is that paleblood is the blood of the moon presence, which is the source of the evil but also an opportunity for you to become a great one in its stead. to me the personal narrative of the hunter is that you're someone who's been empowered to confront your problems head on and change your own fate, and unlike the many people who tried to ascend before you through evil means and went insane or failed miserably, you succeed by staying strong and doing good things. it's quite interesting to me that in every game besides bloodborne, you just talk to npcs to advance their questline and most of them decide on their own to go to the hub area, but in bloodborne you actively seek them out with the specific purpose to help them reach a safe place, and have to make a dialogue choice to do so. to me that's confirmation that our character is by default a good person trying to do good things, unlike the other games where the narrative is completely unaffected by you being evil or barely holding onto your sanity, although to be clear it's still perfectly valid to play as a character who's horrible or blood crazed
I would argue there is a hidden aspect to why the games are compelling that very few people mention- From worldbuilding and characters are not just a conflict between hopelessness and willpower; they can also be really, really silly. Something that again, very few other souls-like capture. From's team has no issue making goofy looking things like Frampt and treating him with the same gravitas and importance as Nito or Gwyn. You can have this legendary blind archer, who in a single giant arrow shot downs a dragon, and then you learn he isn't blind, he just never takes off his helmet which has had the eye openings blocked with resin making him think he's blind. You can pick up rubbish, and the description will mock you for it. Miyasaki seems to know that just "bleakness versus hope" isn't enough to balance the tone on it's own. Lightheartedness doesn't just come from an amicable face, or a moment of victory, or a character opening up- it can also come from seeing another player's ghost wearing a really stupid hat you didn't know was an option. And while the community doesn't usually talk about it, they get it. How many jokes about the mystery of Big Hat Logan's nickname have you heard? Why does people keep quoting Micolash? Why did Let Me Solo Her wear the jar head gear? Because it's funny, and silly, and goofy. And for all the darkness and death , From games give plenty space for that silliness too. You need a lot of confidence in your worldbuilding to include silliness in your otherwise mostly depressing world.
I adore games that refuse to just GIVE you the entire story and instead tell it to you through environmental storytelling and expecting you to pay attention. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are some of the best examples of this, and it's something only the medium of videogames can really pull off. It's not to the same level, but my other favourite game series - Half-Life has a similar attitude to its plot, where so many aspects of the story are mysteries because you'll only every know what the protagonist can see and hear.
Couldn't agree more. I think I know more about the lore of souls games than I do about cultural history lol. However, I noticed that these games pushed me into wanting to learn more about ancient civilization and mythological histories.
It’s like you’re an archaeologist or anthropologist in these games where not only you have to piece together history yourself but it’s culture as well and I think that makes the lore deciphering and discovery all the more interesting since it invokes the feeling of being the first to document and record all the history and culture. It’s kinda like how the first archaeologists that discovered dinosaurs felt
its this plus the community bands together to piece the puzzle which i like about it
Yo that’s a nice comparison really. We are like historian/anthropologist warriors or something. I like that idea, we come to these worlds to observe and occasionally fuck shit up haha or get fucked up.
ive always felt like a medieval fantasy version of Indiana Jones playing Elden Ring, uncovering all manner of ancient forgotten ruins and finding lost legendary artifacts
Dinosaurs are related to paleontology.
Yarnham, old yarnham, and the pthumerian ruins below is very much reminds me of cities in Europe with modern and ancient above ground architecture and the catacombs and such below.
Miyazaki said he loved western fantasy and part of it was he would read it in English and not understand everything. That air of mystery and intrigue trying to parse something was something he said he wanted to convey in his games. I think this attitude is one of the reasons fromsoft can take even relatively simple stories and make them these deep masterpieces. Fromsoft isn't afraid to hide things, they're not afraid to be cryptic. And they're very good at adding alot of deep stuff. They are experts of building deep settings
I think this idea of Miyazaki reading books in English has been blown out of proportion a bit, as it is not properly substantiated. As far as I can understand from the quotes, Miyazaki was largely stumbled by kanji beyond his grade/year, as well as books who's themes were too complex for him - both of these things happened because he was too young, that's the crucial factor, rather than any specific difficulty with English.
I love that they give you the basics of the lore told through some npc's but everything else is left up for you to figure out and interpret. Pouring over the item descriptions and exploring.
Never seen a community come together to figure out the full story of these games like this and I love it
@@kimlee6643Same point regardless.
@@watertommyz How is reading beyond one's year/proficiency the same thing as reading intermittently in a foreign language? The latter means that preteen Miyazaki could read English. As far as I understand it, that is an extremely unusual situation for a typical Japanese child in the 80s. That aside, the evidence we have, the quotes of him speaking of this, never mention English at all. The point is to have a correct understanding of his situation, instead of assuming Miyazaki has been somewhat bilingual since he was a child.
@@kimlee6643 The point is that there were parts he couldn't read; the exact reasoning is immaterial, the important part is the result.
While not nearly as lore-deep as Souls, you can definitely see it's influence in the new Armored Core as well. You never see a human being in-game, but you fight through human cities, factories, ships, but they exist at an impossibly colossal scale. Like so massive they should buckle under their own weight yet hang in stasis. They're now lifeless, cold, blasted and scorched, but someone built them...
And apparently the surface was supposed to be burned away yet here these monuments stand with power lines and cars in the streets and every spec of paint barely chipped.
@@Bliss467 I'm not that far in, but I don't think the burn was a litteral combustion (how would that even spread through space). It sounds more like it was a radiation wave.
Something I loved about the old ACs that 6 captured as well! Taking on the spirit of Motherwill, or even something smaller like AF gigabase and thinking "wait this would dwarf any other manmade machine in existence at this moment." Because scale makes me forget my AC isn't man-sized sometimes
@@Nitram4392 I like the way you think👍
It reminds me a lot of US city infrastructure, outside of a few places like New York nothing is built to a human scale, you have 12 lane highways going through the middle of cities, and looking at it you struggle to figure out how humans are supposed to exist in these places, it's clear that the world has given up on humanity and only builds itself to accommodate behemoth machines
Lore gives us the reason why we care. Otherwise is a bunch of randos doing things to other randos.
Randos doing stuff to randos could describe literally every story ever, if you count concepts and inanimate objects as randos as well. You know what this means? We’ve found essence of generic! Keep it well hidden, friend, we wouldn’t want Disney acquiring this relic, or god forbid COMCAST!
I'd say that's also why bad or unsatisfying lore makes people so angry (it's me, I'm people still mad about Elden Ring).
You mean life? 😂
@@Ahrpigiwhats disappointing about it? I thought elden ring had the most fleshed out, interesting and fully realized world and lore out of all the souls games. Thats me though
@@thebombdiggity3941 to me, there were too many assorted nouns and vague references, and not enough connective tissue. It all blurred into a soup of ideas that never got details or better description. I loved the vague storytelling in DS1 and BB, but was also frustrated by the lack of hard answers in DS3... It's quite possible after a thousand hours of SoulsBorne I'm just burned out on the style, and the problem is just me. 🤷♂️
One of the weirdest things in all these games is characters casually revealing, usually indirectly, that they're hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and they just look like they're 32
It's forensic storytelling. Every other RPG in recent memory dumps a codex of flavor text on your lap, expecting you to read it to understand the world. Souls does the opposite, they drop you in an established world with no context and give you a task. It's the difference between required reading and a scavenger hunt.
Also, Fromsoft's design and writing are really cool and their world's bear to be thought about.
This is what makes Lore Hunters like TB Skyen, Hawkshaw Tarnished Archeologist so cool because they look at the actual details of the landscape, not just supposition and item descriptions
Hell yeah, Tarnished Archaeologist is one of my new favorite lore hunters with how he brings in real world history while also still treating the lore as its own thing. Hakwshaw is great too, his Elden Ring Color Theory video is still one of the greatest bits of lore I've seen.
Also, thanks for giving me a new channel to check out. :)
@@gunnarschlichting9886no no no no no please no god no stop it
Don't forget vaativitya
Zullie the witch too
I'm glad you mentioned the Hope that certain characters bring with them, I swear I would never have finished Bloodborne if I didn't have the Doll and the small pleasant little interactions she will have with you. I felt personally attacked when I recieved the Dolls Tear and it says only a fool would find value in it. Like fuck you game she is precious and perfect don't you devalue her having emotions (somehow)!
lmao homo
/slowly back away
Dude actually got attached to the doll. She's not real bro.
@@Krakain I mean to be fair none of it is real. You live in a simulation.
Ewww you know that past hunters have fucked that doll right?
I cannot begin to express how much your videos get the creativity gears in my head turning! The way you break down themes and details of the world inspires me so much in my own world building!
Same, my friend!
15:14 Gotta love the “So many holes” as he’s opening the door to Princess Gwynevere’s chamber
Brett knew what he was doing 😏
This comment goes hard
Being a vet from vanilla Demon souls, EpicNameBro was the lore guy i watched for a while then i was like "dam this sounds sick ass shit but also so vague. I wanna be part of this world"
Shoutout to ENB, his videos were awesome ❤
EpicNameBro is goated fr kept up with his stuff for years. Loved his pvp content just as much as the lore stuff
Unknowability is the most realistic way of doing lore. Because aside from getting people to talk and build a community over a shared interest, this is how history is in real life! We don't have all the answers to things that happened hundreds to thousands of years ago. Heck we sometimes don't have answers to things that's happened only decades ago because it either doesn't become public knowledge or sometimes is stricken away from the record (see the nameless prince in DS1)
Facts. I don't think I ever walked outside and had a homeless guy give me 30min lore dump on Ohio. I doubt it would happen any more frequently post apocalypse too lol
@@Funko777I know this is late but this concept is so funny to me
@@Funko777 There just has to be a fine line cause Ohio`s history did happen so everything you discover has a reason why its there and how it got there you just might not now how. So you need trust in Fromsoft that they have one version of things that happened, the second they slip up everything fals apart and it gets frustrating.
For me Hyper Light Drifter encapsulates all of these perfectly. Feels very much like exploring a souls world. I get chills every time i come across one of the Titans and the music swells.
I am also one of the obsessed! I think about the Golden Order and the Shattering waaay more than I think about the Roman Empire.. I just love that I can only know as much as I am willing to discover in these games, which makes me want to fall deeper into each area and know every character and yet I'll never have all the answers.. So compelling! Great video, great points raised!
I'm one of those weirdos that truly believes that the story and LORE absolutely defines games like this. I feel the same way about the Darksiders games, God Of War etc. Great topic and video! Thanks Brett. ,💜💜💜
Darksiders mentioned!!!!
Elden rings lore is deep and complex , i have also watched hundreds of hours of lore from every creator i can find . The way from soft gives you the pieces and then tells you you have to put them together yourself is brilliant. Idk about you, but i feel like a detective examining the evidence putting everything together coming to a conclusion . It adds another dimension just as awesome as the gameplay itself .
Compared to Dark souls it's dogass😢
@muramasa870
Are you ok?
I spent thousands of hours on Dark Souls Lore, it is my favorite world. But Elden Ring's lore is way more complex, vast and thought out.
You should probably replay it with lore focus and see for yourself.
When it came to Marika/Radagon
I always assumed it was a combination of soul splitting and rebirth.
We know Radagon gave the Moon Queen her rebirth egg, and we know soul removal/splitting is possible (Ranni being an example)
So I believe when the Carrion royalty pushed back the golden order to a stand still, marika engaged in the act of splitting her soul and placing that piece in a rebirth Ed male body of her.
That new being, Radagon, was then sent to Carrion to play a LONG game of interception.
Acting as a general who became remorseful, and repented for his sins, marrying the moon queen.
Then all of a sudden, leaving her with kids, which in turn broke her, and helped topple the Carrion.
Thus allowing the golden order to usurp them, while they delved into civil war.
It’s a pretty solid plan
I pretty much came to this exact conclusion when I first played the game. You've gotta be on to something.
Sometimes I just get weird thoughts about the lore from time to time.
For example: in darkroot garden, we can find the wolf ring. I believe we loot either Artorias' corpse as it belonged to him or we take it off of the corpse of Ciaran, who seems to set up a grave for Artorias' after we defeat him (to account for location difference).
I could very well be wrong as it could be a grave robber or something that got caught by the guardian and killed (iirc, this was in an off the trail location behind a fake tree).I just like to think there's a more direct connection, but due to the passage of time, it would not be far fetched to guess it was someone else who picked up the ring in between the time Artorias died and when we go through darkroot.
The beauty of their world is that From Soft leave it open for interpretation. If that fits together in your mind - it is true so long as it does not contradict the little concrete evidence.
For me, Salt and Sanctuary absolutely nails the unreal and bleak setting with glimmers of hope dotted throughout. It also does the lore through item descriptions and environmental storytelling really well. On top of that, it is just a really good metroidvania-style take on a souls game and even incorporates some of the same Lovecraftian elements that Bloodborne does. Highly recommend.
Glad to see you mention Hollow Knight; the world of Hallownest has an ambience of both beauty and sorrow that feels very unique to me even among other souls-like games. I'd personally really enjoy seeing you analyze the game and its characters in particular if you'd ever consider it!
Oh lol maybe I should have finished the vid before commenting about how hollow knight did the story telling and history telling very similarly and quite well unlike many other games who actually tried to make it like dark souls specifically
I honestly think the game Ender Lillies matches all these concepts and is an excellent game that still lives with me years later.
I’ve heard great things about that one! I’m hoping to dig into it once I finish Persona 5 and Dark Souls 2.
I loved Ender Lillies. Fantastic game.
@@fatbretthave you heard of the Little nightmares series, the lore is told entirely through environment there is not a single line of dialog, if you want you can check it
This was an excellent essay. As a lore fanatic, I really like to hear and dicover new theories and glimpse of lore in forums too, found quite fascinating how to world building a game with this settings.
Thanks for the video and the effort
One of my favorite aspects of the Souls games, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring is that each of their worlds all feel broken at a fundamental level. For me, it’s that feeling of brokenness woven into the design of these worlds that really contributes to the feeling of unreality at the core of the games.
Sure, we discover or are told some of the events that wounded the fabric of these worlds. However, none of these scraps of info prepare you for how fucked up things really are.
I love that we as the players are thrown into the middle of these worlds falling apart at the seams and have to build our own conclusions from what little we can see, hear, and discover for ourselves.
True, we see the consequences of a major disaster but the more we learn it becomes clearer that the world was fundamentally screwed from the start. Kinda like our world lol
People complain that they want Fromsoft to make a game that shows these places in their prime and while that has sort of happened to an extent (Ringed City DLC illusion/Anor Londo) they seem to want crowds of normal people and such. I personally much prefer the hostile hell scape though and think our imaginations filling in the gaps is drastically more entertaining
While not a fantasy series I feel like Dead Space checks a lot of these boxes for me, I always come back to Dead Space lore videos and theories. The unknowable reasons behind the Brethren Moons, the multiple marker events that had been covered up throughout its history.
It scratches the same itch in my brain that Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring and Hollow Knight do.
We did it everyone! We have come full circle. We are now talking about the lore of examining the lore of the Souls games!
This is the most underrated gaming channel. You deserve a million subs dude.
One game that I think people of the souls community really slept on has to be the Last Hero of Nostalgaia.
Its a souls like through and through.
From gameplay to its lore, it is a true gem.
Please if you have the time, give it a go. You wont regret it.
This is a criminally underrated channel... Keep it up man. The success you deserve will come!
One element you mentioned at the end there always stood out to me; the fact that the player enters a world that's seemingly at the very edge of its existence, like it might end at any moment. It invokes a sense of sadness that you missed the glory days, that you'll never get to see great cities like Anor Londo or Yharnam or Leyndell in their prime. It makes you ask question about what happened, how it could have gotten to this, and if there's even any way forward. You fight a sense of hopelessness as much as you fight the beasts inhabiting these worlds.
There aren't many pieces of media that intrigue as much as the lore of Fromsoftware games. The manga Blame! comes to mind as a personal favorite, that always transported a feeling of bleak loneliness, fear of the unknown but also curiosity about what happened to the broken world.
The Song of Ice and Fire achieves similar levels of deep lore to me; that feeling that there is so much history behind every character, set piece and little anecdote told. I think it's no coincidence Fromsoftware asked GRRM to help craft the underlying world of Elden Ring. Not even the story you play, but all of the history that it's built on.
And last but not least, while mired in retcons and the traps of being built on for 20 years, Warcraft lore is still one of my favorite things to delve into. It's less alien and unknowable, more of a comfort zone but I still love it.
The idea of things looking on the surface or at the shallowest level totally normal but upon actual scrutiny make no sense or are objectively impossible or horrifying is also a key element that was used in Lovecraftian writing to highlight the unknowable horror that can so easily lurk in plain sight. In several of his stories it is only by the chance moment that a person stopped to really look closely at something that they realized the danger they were about to fall into or that a town of seemingly normal folk were in fact never human to begin with. Racial undertones aside, taken purely from the horror perspective, this narrative element of the incomprehensible being obscured by the ignorant and naïve eye is a very compelling literary device.
I love to watch the lore videos while I play through the games. Its one of the only franchises that you can do this with. Every other company seems to just be cut scene after cut scene and text boxes with paragraphs of nonsense stopping me from enjoying the combat or exploration of any game. It's just so unique how u can play a game that's all game with little cutscenes and the lore is written on weapon description and a couple enigmatic words from an NPC that you have to decipher. But u throw on some Vaati and listen to the lore of each area and each boss and each race of people while going thru these areas with no stoppage of play. It's just a beautiful marriage
Not a souls like, but the only other game I remember seeing tons and tons of story analysis and video essays about is Metal Gear Solid V. I think many of your points about "unreality", player driven discovery and layerd story telling fit there too.
I would highly recommend the salt duology, salt and sanctuary, and salt and sacrifice. Both of them have bleak settings with complex unreal lore but have fun characters (granted not nearly as in depth as souls) that try to provide hope in a bleak setting. On top of that they are both super fun metroidvaninas with sanctuary having a far more traditional metroidvanina style and sacrifice having a slight monster hunter style to its gameplay as well. I highly recommend them!
Hey FatBrett if you see this comment just wanted to say I really love your videos so much. I always put at least 1 of you videos whenever I go to work. I just work at my local supermarket so just listening to your videos really improves my well being cause without your videos, work would be very boring. I don't even need to watch the screen, you go into so much detail I can visualize everything in my head. Keep up the good work.
I got into these games because of the lore, bosses, and yes, the music. I have gotten fairly decent at most of them, but sub consciously. The lore has always been my favorite part. I've gotten incredibly pissed at some of the bosses but I cant stop myself from coming back time and time again.
For me it's because the Souls games have some of the most memorable & striking worlds I've seen in any form of media & wanting to find out more just becomes a necessity. Vaati & the other Ytbers who contribute to the worldbuilding deserve the love.
There's this thing called Fear & Hunger, but there's no hope in it.
Oh BTW, to answer your question of Marika ascending to godhood. It's implied that the outer god perhaps via elden beast granted it to her since she was an emperyan. That appears to be the only prerequisite required in ER for one to gain godhood through the outer gods. Except maybe Malania via the rot God although she is the descendant of an emperyan
39:27 "Idk if people are interested in the lore of older games anymore" ME!! I CARE! give to I the Lore!
This video made something in my head click. It ALWAYS takes me out when I see amazing set pieces that don't make practical sense. I immediately jump into "but people couldn't survive here, where is the logic?" etc., just how I am. Going to the thematic idea immediately puts my mind at ease and explains so much, I am shocked I never realised this before hearing you say this.
I high recommend Lies of P for that same kind of feeling. There is so much you have to read and look deeper into, along with an interconnected world with both despair and hope. It's a great game and I think the first Souls-like to actually nail that feeling I got from the original Dark Souls. I know this video is pretty old by now, but I still recommend it regardless. Great video, love your essays!
My man, you nailed it - this is the best explanation I have come across as to why From's game stand miles apart from other souls like. Loved the essay.
Lies of P does a fantastic job of layering its history, introducing likeable characters, and giving that sliver of hope while ALSO acting as an ADAPTATION of an already classic fairy tale. Not only does it take what the original story does and adapt that well, but it integrates that story with original ideas like Ergo and Humanity Vs Puppetry and etc.
I had the same experience when I played Little Nightmares. I can’t say I like its gameplay, especially the 2, but somehow I kept pushing forward when I played it, spending tons of hours watching TH-cam analyses of its lore, only to learn what was going on in that twisted world. I don’t know why I tend to be obsessed with games full of mysterious backgrounds though limited in narration. But studying those stories; discussing lore with others; watching analyses… all these, are part of the gameplay to me, and give me the same satisfaction of putting together puzzle pieces. It's just fascinating ❤.
I think it is worth mentioning that the hostility and hope is an essential part of any good post-apocalyptic story; stories like The Road, The Last of Us, and Mad Max Fury Road really showcase that aspect in different narrative styles, but do so just as beautifully. It is difficult to be motivated in these settings without hope, and likewise the setting falls apart without hostility and you lose the atmosphere completely, lending more towards different narrative styles and stories.
I’m glad that you mentioned these as I am a major post-apocalyptic fan and it is something I have studied for years now. Your work is great!
I think it is also cool that the ways that the worlds don't make sense on a practical level is explained as much from a lore perspective. Like in Dark Souls 3, the world is disjointed and doesn't make sense with kingdoms stacked on top of each other is because in the lore it's literally like the end of time and history itself is collapsing
Brooooo! You can’t do this while I’m AT WORK!! I’m feeling every minute as if it were two!!
Fingers crossed that Lies of P and Crowsworn manage to hit these points as well 🤞
Great picks
The alure of the Souls series, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, is they're 'almost' like our world. As you pointed out in your video. They're familiar, but very bizarre beneath it.
It's why I think people got so into the Ace Combat series back in the day. It had elements that are like out world, the planes, the cultural notes of the various civilisations, but they're strange, different.
It's the fact the story team called it a 'Strange Real world'... and the fanbase started calling this alternate universe Strangereal. It's just close enough to be familiar, but it functions in such a way that it's strange and different too.
World so hostile that friendly face are so scarce. Thats explain why i feel sad when my companion dead during our journey, they are our safe heaven on this harsh world settings.
I beseech thee kind sir, please explore these games more. I enjoy your look at storytelling and worldbuilding a lot. I learned even more about these games than I thought just now holy hell.
Great essay! Plenty of people still love older lore and especially Bloodborne. Doing my 4th playthrough now for the last ending trophy I need for platinum and I never get tired of BB lore.
the first sentence is so relatable. i love lore in all games but something about the aesthetic, lore and feel of souls games is just different
First time watcher here. Fantastic video. Perfectly describes the things I love about these games, even if I wasn't fully aware of some.
Your scripting and visual editing is top notch as well, kept me interested from beginning to end, great stuff. Subbed!
edit: also coincindentally I'm replaying Code Vein right now and I find myself skipping all the story and lore bits, because I like the aesthetics and gameplay, but the dialogue and story is just too much "in your face" and thus, I'm not interested anymore, lol.
To me its the same reason why we are obsessed with space. The mystery of it all and the bits and pieces of lore or evidence of the bigger picture whether it be the origin of the universe or fromsoft lore just leaves us wanting to discover more and more about the mystery in question.
I like the idea that the Yharnam we see in the game is simply how the various Dreaming Hunters would perceive the city. They wouldn't be interested in the centers of commerce, the food preparation, the nitty-gritty details of how the place works--they're only interested in the beasts, the people, and the Church. It's like the Dream is enforcing a kind of tunnel vision that keeps them focused on the Hunt without any distractions. There's almost nothing you can take purely at face value in "Bloodborne", and that's part of why I love that game so much.
I spent 400 hours on Elden Ring while writing down everything in my RL journal. Time of my life. 😎 (And that was my first playthrough)
The connection with Weird Tales is the reason I fell in love with SoulsBorne games.
Weird Tales and Lovecraftian lirateraturical philosophy inherently goes against the core basics of any audiovisual media of "Show, do not tell." I wrote my thesis on screenwriting and expressed a question can Lovecraftian storytelling even be told without breaking that philosophy. It took 4 goddamn years of writing and researching to get that revelation on how to actually do it.
Once presented and everything, I started playing Bloodborne 'cause I had left all the gaming aside while working on my Thesis and when the Blood Moon event happened, I was practically in tears. That game proved my claims right and later on "The Lighthouse" as a movie.
29:34 - One that can turn these full blooded gods into literal weapons for their avatar to swing around. Oh, how the mighty have fallen ...
Having always been bad at fromsoft games I have only played Bloodbourne (only about 3 hours of playtime though) and just finished my first run of Elden Ring around 80 hours. The main reason I even got into the games was the lore and the weapons.
Your videos are excellent! I'm going through a few of your videos right now and really enjoying myself. I'm deeply satisfied with the way you discuss the authorial intent of the developers in a really educated way. A lot of times when people try to criticize or simply analyze authorial intent (such as when you discuss the structure of Yharnam being essentially unlivable and perplexing, for example) they leave it as "this doesn't make sense" or "whaaat were they thinkiinnnggg?!", but you bring the additional perspective of someone who is familiar with actually analyzing authorial intent from an educated perspective. As someone who graduated with a literature and writing degree, it's very refreshing. I love creators who take their own educated perspective and apply that to the content they create. You continually highlight writing and development choices really well! Which I'm sure you're aware of, but for me it's really fun to see and hear (: Thanks so much for your work!
I happened upon a review/lore video about Elden Rings and have been hooked for nearly a year. I personally haven't played a game since trying Candy Crush once in a 2014. Now, hours long lore/video essays about anything are my go-to for the entertainment. I love hearing hearing people talk about subjects they find interesting. I wish I had the attention span to play😅. My most immature hyper-fixation to date 🤷🏾♀️.
Cuz it's neat. Also the Divine Towers are from Farum Azula. The architecture checks out.
From the stone architecture to the bridge's vine designs along the railings being in the structure found after Alexander/The Sleeping Dragon.
From the bridges having the same lotus pattern in their brickwork as Farum Azula has through it. From the weird stuff on the pillars on the side being found in Farum Azula as well.
I take it that the big cloud is where Farum Azula was. Well, with some added stuff because they couldn't help themselves.
Also the Yharnam we see past the intro is in a collective dream. Because of the blood. It is to the actual city what the Hunter's Nightmare is to it.
Even though they werent going for a soulslike, this is one thing i think team cherry did really well with Hollow Knight. They layered their history to find pieces of ancient architecture, eggs used as ancient codexes, but its never flat out explained. Its all given in tiny bits that make the player ask questions and start trying to piece the details together to get just a glimpse of what may have been going on in the civilization that the now crumbling ruin of a civilization once called ancient themselves.
While I don't like the slowpaced combat of the Dark Souls series, but when you spoke about interactive discovery of the world/lore, I think of some of my favorite games. Star Ocean Till the End of Time, FFVII/FFVIIR, MegaMan Zero series, Persona 5, Digimon Cyber Sleuth.... just to name a few. Video games are a medium in which the interactive element needs to be integral, even when it comes to the lore and world building, I agree.
Great content as usual👏🏿👏🏿
I'm glad you're asking the big questions. Every time I play a game featuring giants, I have to wonder: where did they buy their pants? Is there a Pantsnormous somewhere out there selling giant pants? There must be, and the quest goes on
I'm not a souls veteran, I only play myself Bloodborne (which I love) and Elden Ring, but I've been reading and watching streams and even my brother playing the Souls games for years and for me is the sense of wonder at first, is the: "what is this place? What the hell is going on?" and yes, is like putting a puzzle together with all the little details, there's so many unsaid things, so many interpretations to events, to character actions, to design that what you interpret can be completely different from someone else but most of the time you see the other's point, like: "yeah, I can see why you think that, it kinda makes sense".
And then is just your character actions, like any other game even movies and other media the protagonist is the catalyst for change, but in soulsbornering games you don't know the whole truth, you don't know the full history so what you choose is fully your choice, what you think is the best or what you really want, do you want to burn the world? Do you want Ranni to stablish a new outergod? Do you understand why everthing will be better by undying? By kindling the fire? Do you want to forget the impossible to comprehend cosmic knowledge? Do you want to save an old hunter? Do you want to become a cosmic newborn and give the dream and hunters another choice?
And all of them is influenced by the world: the few friendly npcs and the hostile npcs, item descriptions, your own interpretation... All of these games really gives you a freedom to learn and choose with the knowledge *you* acquired, with your own worldview both inside and outside the game.
So yeah, I love it.
Something id love hear you talk about is more of the hopeful stuff in Bloodborne, is likely the darkest and most grotesque souls when you get deep in it wich makes people overlook stuff like how Laurence wanted most likely to help, Ludwig acomplishments before his downfall, Rom starting human but becoming a great one and holding the red moon, as well as the player gaining insight while having the courage to fight and ascend as a baby great one too
We care because the stories and its details are allegories for life, its many meanings and the forces at play. The dark souls story is so damn deep. Its like somone saying something yiuve never found the words for your whole life, only it doesnt really tell you, it holds your hand.
Honestly I love games like this. It's why I love the game Book of Travels by Might and Delight. The Environmental and item storytelling is just as good, and for those who aren't as interested in massive bosses and would rather feel like an adventurer just making their own way with no certain end, it's a great game. Part ASMR, part adventure action, and with the most well written folklore. The Discord and wiki communities are so fun for that reason.
Salt and sanctuary. It´s so much a souls-like that it´s almost to its detriment, since it is first and foremost also a metroidvania, but without a map. This gives the sense of delving deeper and deeper the same way as Dark Souls, feeling more and more oppressed and isolated, until finally either meeting a fellow adventuring NPC, or opening a shortcut back to familiar places. It has a convoluted story and history of the island you´re on - or is it merely a dream, who´s to say? ;-) Can definitely recommend!
this is an excellent video, it perfectly captures the feeling of wonder and that spark of curiosity that just ignites in you when you actually take an interest into Fromsoft's worlds. Many people think that Miyazaki just writes some random stuff that sounds cool and puts it as a them into the game, but there's much proof against this, the people who craft these worlds, who write the dialogue, draw the concept art, design the levels, write the lore, etc, they care about this stuff.
Youre so right man . I've been playing these games since the Demon's Souls on PS3 and still to this day I am obsess with these games . Fromsoft is my Fav dev of all time
This and Dead Space video are true gems. I'm heavily impressed with your level of story telling and overal intelegence. You deserve at least million subs, keep doing what you do.
One game that fits your criteria for souls-like storytelling is surprisingly call of duty black ops zombies. In the game, there is also a feeling of being an archeologist going around finding easter eggs scattered across the maps, with many hidden quests, and coded messages scatters. Not only that but it also contains the cosmic horror elements, where there is more beyond zombies, and powerful humans fighting for power. It also has many unsolved mysteries which allow for interpretation and creativity, for example the crew on the map shadows of evil. It also has the bits of solace which give the charm of some of the souls games, with the rare appearance of friendly charcters, beloved by the community, as well as the crew's will to keep going for good despite their fate to die. It is something definitely worth checking out! It has a very in depth story to dive into
This is late; but I discovered that the "fear and hunger" games have this kind of world-building; they take a lot of inspiration narratively from souls-likes
Because it’s good story telling and world building. Gives us answers, I too spend far too much time reading rather than playing haha! This is how you know a game is an absolute banger! Only a handful of games have got me like this! Worlds that have me in a chokehold and I wanna know and see everything! Love it!!!!!
Rain World is probably the only game that has lore like Fromsoft games to me. I have been obsessed with it ever since I played it years ago, and still continue to do so. I feel like we Rain World players still feel like underdogs in this videogame lore comparison so you know I highly recommend you to play it. The ideas presented in Rain World is beyond anything I've seen, it has captured me more than the souls games and I have played all of them. I have many more hours in these games compared to Rain World yet I cannot say that I had a more memorable experience than this game, maybe except Outer Wilds. I still remember my first playthrough and I have replayed this game countless times now.
I really want to talk about it because Another Crab's Treasure is straight up one of my favorite games this year and I feel like it captures a lot of these elements well without having even half of the total content of other soulslikes and no item descriptions that tell you lore. And it works especially well because you don't really need to know too much about how the world came to be that way, because the answer is holding the controller. Instead, we're left to wonder how exactly the world was influenced into becoming what it is when by all accounts it should have died instead.
Many people playing these games often seem to seek reason for their struggle in life and find it in these games by exploring ruins, architectures, landscapes, NPC dialogues, item description and shown cinematic in certain conditions; especially the ones feeling left out of the spiritless society and materialistic modernity.
Love how you explained blood borne in about 2 minutes. 👏🏼 Bravo
Great essay. I'm an indie dev working on a souls like. This is very helpful.
I do still need to actually complete it, but I would say Hellpoint has a couple of these elements. In addition to actually normal splitscreen coop, there are layers to the weirdness. You start being 3d printed out of this goop, slowly make your way around this station you discover (or would if it wasnt the press start screen) that the space station is right above this black hole. Then as you explore more sectors you keep uncovering these tidbits about great wars and AI revolutions and the like that happened on earth. There's an interesting determinist vs free will theme throughout, one of the dialogue options you have is "I am an agent of free will" when asked what your deal is. That NPC is one of the few I've found so the hope/hostility scale is tilted a bit towards the latter. There's a bunch of psychic demons that exist in this world and the mirrored one you access through hidden portals. And the first real STRANTH weapon is a busted off piece of a stone column. Its a fun romp, need to get back into it. No idea how far along I was but it is pretty expansive.
Keep making videos, man. Always excited when I see you’ve got a new one out.
As someone who didn't get into Dark Souls (specifically DS3) until 2019, the story and how it entices you to dig deeper is what drew me. Its story is like that rabbit hole you jump into on Wikipedia, but in game form.
Top that with some story elements that leave you with burning questions that just STAY with you; case in point, the fate of Gwynevere and what ultimately happened to her. Is she just gone? Could she be this person we encountered earlier in the game? Is this other character mentioned in other entries connected to her? Is [spoliers] really Gwynevere's daughter, twisted by the Pontiff? You get just enough to tie things together and what's left and isn't delved into leaves you chomping at the bit
I always felt like the Remnant games nailed it in terms of having all of the souls world-building elements. I highly recommend them to anyone into souls.
All of the worlds are in a post-apocalyptic state and it's up to you to search for the story, which is both dark and brooding but still manages to have its light-hearted elements. The settings are fantastical but at the same time manage to feel in some way a little practical but not too much so as to ruin the dream like element of the worlds. Every setting is so beautiful and so full of rich history. It's always such an adventure to learn about the lore of the people and their situations.
Pentiment explicitly deals with the idea of layered history and the ways in which history and legend influence people and how it gets used and adapted to serve different agendas in different times. Among many other thought-provoking and gut-punching themes like the tensions of producing art as a commodity and living with your failures and disappointments. It's a very text-heavy RPG with a great illuminated manuscript art style by Obsidian. Very chill, un-souls-like gameplay, but I highly recommend it!
For me, I think of Resident Evil being similar to Dark Souls as far as story telling goes. While nowhere near as vague, I remember playing the first game way back in the 90s as a kid and finding documents detailing what happened in a certain room, or a certain scientists, and later finding a connection through an item or even finding the tragic ending of said scientist somewhere else. This puzzling also contributes to why the lore of Resident Evil really blew up early on. Although now Resident Evil pretty much explains everything for us, in those early days it was more Dark Souls.
Lies of P is definitely my favorite souls like, they really did well in honoring the world building and discovery as FromSoft.
I honestly feel like DS and Elden Ring are the closest VG stories we can to our irl world mixed with fantasy. There are so many ancient civilizations that while we have their ruins and artifacts we still know next to nothing of who they were and why are they gone. It’s like being an archaeologist researching a civilization that may or may not have been a mother to other future civilizations you just have to fit the few remaining pieces together and you always have the doubt if you are right or not.
We like myths, rabbit holes and escapism.
It makes sense for information to be obscured or not available at all, if it is information, that would not be known or documented, because it is "forbidden" or a character is filled with shame for his actions. So it would feel of, if the player would get that information.
To me. Going through these games is like knowing about 45% of a foreign language and trying to read a really gripping novel in that language.
You’re not getting the picture, you’re missing things, it’s frustrating, but what you can experience is captivating, rereading this novel gradually fills in more gaps until you have more intimate knowledge of the story.
What I have learned from playing the souls games is that they are very similar to the way we live our lives. We live everyday asking the same questions, if we try too hard to answer existential questions it may lead us closer to insanity. When you think about it, we live in objects called planets, that circle around object called Starts. Then we try to come up with theories about life so that we give answers to weird reality that surrounds us. Our body, our perspective, there is everything weird about them, not different from souls games.
Miyazaki is one of the very very very few people that are not famously considered a genius that I would very much call a genius.
And I don't say this lightly. Calling someone a genius is a pretty big statement, but no other piece of fiction, not just limited to videogames seems to make me as obsessed as Fromsofts games do.
Maybe I just have a tiny brain, but I am not exaggerating when I say that I simply cannot imagine how a human being can come up with something as unbelievably interesting as what we see in especially modern Fromsoft games.
Like I have been watching Elden Ring Lore content almost every day for over a year whenever I wasn't busy with work or university stuff and I still find out new details, each and every one of them fascinating me more than anything ever has.
Same goes for the art direction. Not just the incredible environments that have just been getting better and better with every game, but also the beautifully disturbing enemy design.
The gameplay is amazing, the soundtrack is amazing, the lore is as I said almost depressingly amazing and to think that all this is being supervised by one man is mind-blowing.
I am an artist myself and Fromsoft games are my biggest inspiration by far and sometimes it actually hurts to know that these games exist because no matter how optimistic I try to be, I just feel like I can never reach this level of skill. Not everything about these games is perfect of course, but at least to me the lore and art direction are much closer to this impossible goal of perfection than anything else I've seen before.
We are truly blessed to have this company releasing games for us.
Not to say that Fromsoft is the only good studio out there but I don't think we'll have anything match the narrative depth of their games in the foreseeable future.
I already love the imagery seen in the DLC trailers and I truly can't wait.
I haven't been as excited for a new game since Breath of the wild and Shadow of the Erdtree isn't even a game.
I think Warframe's lore contains most of these elements.
I spent a lot of time seeing my warframe as a classic mecha sci fi thingy, not understanding why ennemies called me a "tenno". I started digging and didn't expect to fall into such a rabbit hole.
something funny about this video is that like half the times you gave an example of the lore, i just had an immediate knee jerk reaction of "no that's wrong", but it doesn't actually matter and neither of us can be correct regardless because that's the beauty of fromsoftware. these games have such advanced storytelling that in many ways they can tell a hundred stories all at once, and have each of them be true without making the others false even if they contradict eachother. as an example i seem to be completely alone in thinking that bloodborne has a surprisingly player driven story. your character has a history that matters, came to yharnam of their own free will looking for "paleblood", after the transfusion you clearly still remember that goal because you ask the first nice guy you meet about it. my interpretation of that is that paleblood is the blood of the moon presence, which is the source of the evil but also an opportunity for you to become a great one in its stead. to me the personal narrative of the hunter is that you're someone who's been empowered to confront your problems head on and change your own fate, and unlike the many people who tried to ascend before you through evil means and went insane or failed miserably, you succeed by staying strong and doing good things. it's quite interesting to me that in every game besides bloodborne, you just talk to npcs to advance their questline and most of them decide on their own to go to the hub area, but in bloodborne you actively seek them out with the specific purpose to help them reach a safe place, and have to make a dialogue choice to do so. to me that's confirmation that our character is by default a good person trying to do good things, unlike the other games where the narrative is completely unaffected by you being evil or barely holding onto your sanity, although to be clear it's still perfectly valid to play as a character who's horrible or blood crazed
I would argue there is a hidden aspect to why the games are compelling that very few people mention- From worldbuilding and characters are not just a conflict between hopelessness and willpower; they can also be really, really silly.
Something that again, very few other souls-like capture.
From's team has no issue making goofy looking things like Frampt and treating him with the same gravitas and importance as Nito or Gwyn. You can have this legendary blind archer, who in a single giant arrow shot downs a dragon, and then you learn he isn't blind, he just never takes off his helmet which has had the eye openings blocked with resin making him think he's blind.
You can pick up rubbish, and the description will mock you for it.
Miyasaki seems to know that just "bleakness versus hope" isn't enough to balance the tone on it's own. Lightheartedness doesn't just come from an amicable face, or a moment of victory, or a character opening up- it can also come from seeing another player's ghost wearing a really stupid hat you didn't know was an option.
And while the community doesn't usually talk about it, they get it. How many jokes about the mystery of Big Hat Logan's nickname have you heard? Why does people keep quoting Micolash? Why did Let Me Solo Her wear the jar head gear? Because it's funny, and silly, and goofy. And for all the darkness and death , From games give plenty space for that silliness too.
You need a lot of confidence in your worldbuilding to include silliness in your otherwise mostly depressing world.
I adore games that refuse to just GIVE you the entire story and instead tell it to you through environmental storytelling and expecting you to pay attention. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are some of the best examples of this, and it's something only the medium of videogames can really pull off. It's not to the same level, but my other favourite game series - Half-Life has a similar attitude to its plot, where so many aspects of the story are mysteries because you'll only every know what the protagonist can see and hear.
Couldn't agree more. I think I know more about the lore of souls games than I do about cultural history lol. However, I noticed that these games pushed me into wanting to learn more about ancient civilization and mythological histories.