Discussions around this topic have whet my apatite and left me wanting. @james and other devs… Are there any plans, intentions, or even briefest desires to release any official lore/story prior to 1.0?
My desire stems from my suggestion gone rant and other discussions which arose from it. It is here: What turns you off playing Boundless?
I know for certain that lore is being written… but I don’t know if it will be released before or after 1.0.
This is something I wish to know as well.
I think it would be cool if we had a chance for some input to the lore… after all, we are the players that play before 1.0 
therefore part of the history.
plus some players have some really really cool and creative ideas!
It would be interesting to know what everyone’s expectation is on this.
How are you expecting lore to work, what are you expecting to see, how are you expecting it to be delivered?
We are not doing elaborate cinematic cutscenes or NPC dialogue sequences, Boundless is not that kind of game.
One thing we certainly want to do is to empower players to create their own stories and lore in the game and not be bound to what the game tells them to do.
I really like that “create their own stories” approach similar to how I’ve liked Dwarf Fortress creating infinite amount of stories to tell (due to its randomness and other events that suddenly happens while you play [i.e. as random as I’ve experienced where a dwarf took revenged on the cow who caused the death of his friend. How the friend die is by continuously punching the cow non-stop that he did not eat or drink which caused his death lol]).
It’s a little extreme for Boundless though. What I would want for the game to have is to backup existing items, events, creatures, etc in the game with their own lore. Currently, what we know is just based from the game’s official website and nothing really in-game. So at least we have some foundations to our stories like “This highly combat-focused settlement was made to protect the area from the raging Titans of the north who once destroyed the place etc. etc.”
If I may want to copy a game, I want it to be similar to Endless Legend’s quests as I think it would be doable in Boundless setup. One thing I would request is to make the objectives/quests more appealing by maybe adding some artwork. Below is the sample quests that I’m pertaining to:
An artwork on the left to help us visualize the lore
An extensive background story on the right which I always enjoyed reading
A quick summary on the lower left for the lazy 
The actual objective that you need to do on the lower right.
This could be tied to the existing objectives currently for example, a quest for hunter to kill 20 Hoppers (cause I hate them)
)
)It’s not creating the story for the players itself but it provides foundation story for the players to play with. Players could create statue in this region commemorating the Oortlings that died from hoppers, etc etc.
The post became a little too long but yeah that’s the idea. 
I think that @Lawrey hit the nail on the head. The idea is to provide a base which sets the foundation of the storyline. Players will write their own lore regardless but if that lore is not shared with others, and if no one controls what’s canon, lore will never feel immersive to most players. Having 100 people who all tell the story about the fall of the Oort people without common direction does not create cohesive lore, it creates fanfic… Especially when who the Oort were is currently so open. If you are adiment about having the players provide some of the lore then I recommend that one of your writers/editors act as lore master for a stories/news article submission process.
I’m not expecting cinematics. I’d love to see them for each major event such as the coming world-wipe but I don’t think they are in any way required. Two easy paths towards this are ancient tech, and the silent star gazer in the sanctum.
Here are some story-telling mechanics I would love to see:
Once per day, if you return to the sanctum with an ancient tech (maybe once for fragment, and once for component) the silent gazer talks about the tech and the world it came from. “Ahh, you’ve found a piece of the Oort commerce tower. They say shops lined the halls in all directions and you could find any number of items. Too bad they are the first targets when the titans came…”
An archeology machine where you could uncover more secrets from ancient tech. More advanced stories about their origins and the people who created them. A few comedy interludes such a pieces from some advanced lavatory or something could be mixed in.
Ancient News Articles: A new ancient tech called a memory chip which contains news articles about the past. These can act like journels or books in other games which provide short stories/insights into the Oort way of life. They could talk about the major events such as the discovery of portal tech; and they can speak of the fear after the titans were discovered. Writing the whole thing in Oort would give everyone a reason to learn the Oort alphabet; but makes them less accessible. There’s a choice to be made there.
NPC Storytellers; I do wish there were a few (not many) NPCs which plant themselves near major cities. I suggest having an admin or the lore master decide on where they set up their prefabbed or community built house. They can tell stories to anyone who approaches them once per day. Eventually, they could act as quest givers (perhaps the house is the first quest… But this might be limiting as they can only be done by one player). These should exist in hamlets or higher ranked settlements only… They should be special and relatively rare imho so that players seek them out and have another reason to visit large settlements.
Agents of the enemy: Specially skinned mobs which are higher than the tier of the planet randomly spawn near larger groups of players gathered together. These drop control collers which provide instructions to seek out and destroy Oort tech. These function as ancient tech but the translations are things like “search for a sutible titan portal foundation”. The gazer could provide history around the collars and how the harolded the fall of the Oort as we get closer to the release of titans. Just before titans, they can provide hints like “they’ve found us, they’re coming.” kind of way… Right up to, “they’re here. Warn the people. Defend yourselves from the titans!”.
Collectables from 5 could eventually be used to activate titan portals when we take the attack to them.
Stuff like that @luke-turbulenz. I can probably think of more of you like. I wrote all this on my way to work and at lunch.
I expect lore so it described as for League of Legends or Magic the Gathering. I expect it will be a some kind of book of stories on playboundless.com and national mirrors.
And must be delivered in the game as ruins of ancient ages (prefabs), as codexes as in StarBound, as generated pieces of stories in NPC’s speech.
The Dark Souls series have a great approach where a large portion of the lore is delivered through item descriptions. This could be supplemented with a series of narratives left behind in scattered prefabs across the universe, a bit in the style of Halo’s hidden consoles. Lore is shared by dialog between various characters that were alive st the time, living through the catastrophic events that ended their civilization. This way, an NPC is not required to deliver the lore directly to the player, rather instead it is pieced together from first hand accounts.
<3
I love the idea of finding lore fragments in the ruins (prefabs)… maybe if there is a way to randomly place them so not EVERY prefab has one / the same one ^^
I like the “unspoken” / fragmented lore that is communicated through fragments of scripture / statues, paintings, item descriptions etc… and the best bits being in / around the titans (my vague understanding is that they are a sort of a living dungeon / raid boss… would love to hear an update on the intent for them too)
i envision the Oort being much like Atlantis or other lost civilizations… many stories but no one really knows what happened, and not much to go off of (no magical tome of all knowledge / npc’s with history lessons to give =) )
I believe a good way to have lore in the story without having it as a fully blown way to lead and make a player be forced to play a certain way, would be to have the lore integrated on the items and many other prefabs we will find on the world, as many have already mentioned.
Personally I would like to know more about the Boundless lore,do I think it should be necessary for any player to know, to be able to progress and learn the game? No, I believe it’s and added bonus, to the fans of the game, that just want to know, that bit more.
See it as a normal series in a book, many people will go and read the whole series, and know what they read from it, some will go the extra mile and read side stories, extra content and interviews with the author to know that much more, as it satisfies them. Both groups got to enjoy the story in their own way. There was just that bit much more information for those who wanted to.
Personally I could think about many ways, having lore will be useful. I know having the knowledge tab, discord, forums and youtube will help with people learning the game. But don’t you think it’s a nice change of pace when you learn something through the lore? Or learn some mechanics, never thought about through them? They will not have a huge impact on playability, but will add onto the experience and sense of exploration.
Another benefit, that may be added and I don’t know how you guys would feel about, is, added emotes. Imagine that you have to go to a certain ruin and find the stone tablet, that taught you how to do a special handshake. It will not be game changing, but a feature for those that like to explore. Depending on how you see it, we could have that tablet stay in one place or move.
Maybe by learning bits and pieces (through items, prefabs and the tutorial stage) You get to know of special dungeons, with special codes, that will lead you towards a very nice starting set of gear, or resources that can be found on the wild, but a nice boost to start with.
It gives that little extra to exploration, allowing those players to learn of certain things.
And finally, it serves as an inside joke kind of thing. Many players that love the game will be able to talk about it with others and share their views on what happened. It won’t be necessary for the gameplay, but it adds that much depth to it.
I want the lore to be open ended, not have a specific start and finish, allowing for players to imagine what the oort will be doing, making them learn about their tales and mishaps piece by piece.
lol still reading but couldn’t help myself XD… i would love to learn a cool bow to go with the whole meditating to the sanctum thing ^^ also an idle meditation emote would be cool too =)
Edit: Yeah! what he said 
=P
Prefer Bloodborne 
Well you’re just wrong! DS1>BB
Fight me, scrub!
@luke-turbulenz Now that we’ve heard some ideas about how to incorporate the lore, is there any insight you can provide as to whether or not lore will be available pre 1.0?
