“overthinking and overanalysing separates the body from the mind” 
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That’s actually a place I long to be, bounding between concepts of infinite complexity, without the burden of a physical form. Truly the space in my own mind would be gloriously expansive with any hope that it would show me what it means to be human.
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although we’ve been reduced to being human, the glory is still there as it’s a precious experience
“recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing”
limitless (from physical experience point of view) mind is still there to explore and perception might be broadened even inside human vessel
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Chivlet,
I’m currently designing and building a game myself, and while I did have lore that predicated my design, it’s really a pretty minor part of the whole picture. Experience and long practice suggest to me that it is totally possible (and really not even particularly hard) to come up with coherent lore for a seemingly incoherent world.
I find it fascinating that your questions about the game focus almost completely on the coherence, completeness and immersibility of the game’s lore. Did you realize that’s what you were doing?
Do you think the lore should drive the design decisions,then?
Or that strong game design should be accomodated by the lore?
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I find that the general idea is extremely important. If you reference Mario, that game had zero lore, in fact, it had no cohesiveness, but that was the part of it that made it so nominal and revolutionary. It didn’t need that. However, if you follow the timeline, of that simplistic game design, they tried to retroactively add lore, inserting canon in situations that didn’t warrant it. It made a disjointed game world that had things that were just silly using the pretense of magic to justify the experience.
Do you think that I was talking about coherence? Because I know I was. I was talking about the development of a game world from the ground up. Starting with what I have to go off of.
Yes, I do think that lore should govern design. Form follows function, but in this regard, they are speaking of a world that was abstracted in a realm of science. Science establishes a known set of rules and functions that further govern the world in which we play. Strong game design is part of everything, of course, and in this situation, we can have both. We have very competent developers that all know their respective roles.
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I’m not arguing with you. I found your perspective interesting (and the fact that you care so much about the lore to be fascinating).
I AM telling you–my life has been dominated by fiction writing and game design and I find the idea of making the lore fit into the game properly to be a relatively minor problem (provided the devs don’t get too far outside of certain cohesiveness bounds, which so far they haven’t).
I can see situations in which a game’s mechanics can (and should) be fit to its lore and situations in which the lore can (and should) be fit to the mechanics. (In a properly-designed game, there will be a mix of the two, and we can already see that emerging here.)
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I never thought you were arguing with me. But I am open for debate and the defense of my position. I’m sorry if the tone of my writing is standoffish, I don’t intend that to be the case, but I have been told that people believe that I want to “win” which is completely not the case. I want to have both sides of any issue explored fully.
Invokes Robert’s Rules of Order.
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I wasn’t bothered. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I was picking on you somehow.
As to the debate… I DO come from the opposite side of the question (at least to a degree). For me, game mechanics should be the primary driver of development, with lore being mostly secondary (and following the mechanics). I DO think that once the game’s lore has been set, violating the rules set down for mechanics is usually bad practice.
I, too, believe cohesiveness is crucial.
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And that’s the fundamental point I’m trying to make. You see, with what we are given, in the game world, we have to make exceptions or allotments towards certain objective based thoughts. I am fine with willingly delaying or even removing logical parameters on account of the game engine, and the basic understanding of the gameplay. Things like floating blocks, eerily flat water surfaces, and lack of accurate liquid physics is something that I don’t care about. In fact, I don’t care that you can double jump, or really get the buffs from the foods. It’s more of an exploration into the annuls of ideas that may have long since been forgotten as a tool for understanding. There is no lore. I know that. There is no reason here. I understand. But my idea of provoking reasonable thought is something that I think I see present in the artwork and development of the environment. Even if I pose these questions now, after the work has been done, it still has a purpose within the confines of discovery. Maybe I can give incentive to the developers to connect the dots between a few things.
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Absolutely, and I think the game engine limitations and even some things like the buff foods could easily be explained by well-thought-out lore.
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Buff foods could be explained by well thought out lore if the game’s lore was based upon magic, but by all written accounts from the developers they want to approach the game’s lore from a scientific perspective, which does not allow for this.
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“Does not allow for this.”
With current REAL science, no.
I can come up with an imaginary science that does allow for this quite easily.
Midichlorians anybody? (Joking, but seriously, pseudo-science isn’t terribly hard, even plausible pseudo-science. Star trek proves that if anything does.)
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…and now you got me thinking about it.
If we posit that the oortlings’ obvious multiphasal, multifunctional evolution is directed by something like a massive, galactic-scale life force that pervades the micro-biome of the worlds, then buff foods are easy to explain. The microbiome is producing agents that, when properly prepared (cooked) interact with the oortlings’ systems to modify their physical properties drastically in various ways.
(There’s a single-paragraph start for you.)
I do see what you’re saying, but that’s also not really the point. There are thousands of theories that could be formed as to why or how these things work, and I’m open to them all. That’s the actual thing I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t think that we should really get involved in pseudo-science, because that opens a door to a nexus of things that I would prefer not to explore. However, that does allow for valid forms of expression, but I think that in my example, I gave a good amount of support as to how this may happen. I think that even then it leaves some room for interpretation. Also, I’m not interested in “explaining away” concepts, but rather allowing exploration and feasible opportunities for expansion.
BrianPWilson was saying something about not being able to explain it via science. I was giving him an example of how they could frame it in setting up good lore. That’s all.
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Yeah, and I understand that. I like your idea, no doubt. It’s just how I am trying to explain my modality of thinking. 
Gotcha. Understood.
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Also, thanks a lot for entertaining my thoughts. <3
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