What video games have obscure lore to explain game mechanics?

[golguin]

The best example of this I can think of is Final Fantasy 14. In the game's lore the main character (you the player character) and a few other NPCs have an ability called the "Echo" that bestows a variety of effects to different characters. It gives you special powers and makes you immune to certain magical effects. It's a nice buff overall. What I'm talking about are specific game mechanics that we as people see in order to play the game.

Most special attacks from enemies and bosses display an AOE effect on the ground in order for players to dodge said attack. We see the glowing lines and area for practical gameplay reasons. The characters in the game see them as the flow of aether from enemies.

What about death and doing boss fights over and over again? That doesn't happen in real life until it's successful. Every unsuccessful attempt is just a vision of what may have been thanks to the power of the Echo (visions of the future, visions of the past, visions of memories that are not your own, etc). This power is even acknowledge in game by the player character during a specific cutscene involving Titan and landslides in the new expansion. There are other examples like harder boss fights with new mechanics simply being a story retold by a Bard to make it more exciting for his audience.

What other games are like this?

 

[BannerThief]

One of the three billion things I love about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords is that your main character's innate abilities with the Force, specifically being a weird sort of Force vampire that can feed off of other people's connections, are what justify you being able to level up. Other characters even notice and remark on it.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

Z-Targeting in Ocarina of Time is a game mechanic that lets you lock on to your enemy so the camera focuses on them and Link strafes around them.

It's actually Navi who is flying over the enemy allowing Link to focus. In the final battle against Ganondorf, Navi can't get close to Ganondorf because of his powers. You can't lock on to him in this fight. It serves to force you to aim manually to shoot arrows at him which is the main challenge of the fight.

 

[Dark Knight]

Hm. Judge/law cards in FFTA are explicit examples I think. Since there is both a lore and gameplay implication tied up in each other.

 

[Squarehard]

Xenogears for sure.

 

[golguin]

Z-Targeting in Ocarina of Time is a game mechanic that lets you lock on to your enemy so the camera focuses on them and Link strafes around them.

It's actually Navi who is flying over the enemy allowing Link to focus. In the final battle against Ganondorf, Navi can't get close to Ganondorf because of his powers. You can't lock on to him in this fight. It serves to force you to aim manually to shoot arrows at him which is the main challenge of the fight.

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Yes that's exactly what I mean.

 

[Theswweet]

One of the changes to the series' formula in Ys Seven included "skills" that players could use by pressing the R-button on the PSP along with one of the face buttons. The in-game explanation for the system was that the weapons that the player could find in Altago bestowed these skills (kind of similar to the explanation for a similar system in Falcom's previous game, Xanadu Next)

...of course, that explanation is summarily thrown in the trash once Memories of Celceta and Ys VIII come around, and have the same skills systems. But hey, at least you've got an explanation for your skills in Ys IX - the "Monstrum" curse that the party members have been afflicted with is what fuels those skills.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

I don't know about obscure, but here are some minor examples...

In Trails in the Sky SC (part 2), they didn't want you to start out with maxed-out orbments (magic, basically) from the first game with no new progression to speak of, so they start you from scratch. This is explained as a new generation of orbment technology becoming available, which allows for much more powerful quartz (the magic crystals you slot into them, like materia) compared to the old orbments, but the new orbments are not compatible with the old quartz.

In Seraph, the seraph frees itself from imprisonment by using its power to summon an army of demons to wreak havoc in the facility. Once free, it then sets about killing those demons all over again. Leveling up is explained as collecting scattered fragments of the seraph's original power from dead demons. However, some of that power escapes and is absorbed by other demons, which is why they get stronger the farther you get in the game.

In Death's Gambit, you return to life in a new body each time you die - not a new idea, but the game takes it very literally. Your dead bodies gradually pile up in a pit below town, which you can eventually use to reach a cache of items. Some bosses on repeat attempts will issue new plot-relevant dialogue or simply express frustration that you keep showing up again to harass them.

A lot of games give reasons for why your player character happens to be so strong when NPCs are such wimps. An example is Stranger of Sword City. "Strangers" are humans from Earth who crossed over into another world where gravity is much weaker, making them far stronger than the natives. Strangers can fight and run with little fatigue and can wield weapons and armor that would be impossibly heavy for anyone else. Being thus exceptionally well-suited for monster-slaying, strangers band together in a guild and serve as guardians and hunters for the locals. All of the characters in your party are strangers. They don't explore this concept in any depth, though. I think you still take falling damage.

In Sands of Time, the entire game is presented as a story being narrated by the prince. When you die, he says "No no no, that's not what happened, let me start over" or something along those lines, before returning to your last checkpoint. "And then I fell on the spikes and DIED! Wait, no, is that right? I don't think that's right." I guess when you're skipping through time that much, including to save yourself from spike traps, your memory gets a little jumbled.

In Wizardry 7 and 8, you can import your party from the previous game, but you'll be a lot weaker and missing a lot of your items. This is explained (both times, I think) as your characters growing soft from many months traveling in space, and then having only time enough to grab a few things before being hastily forced out of your craft.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

Virtue's Last Reward on 3DS has some foreshadowing

 

[Korigama]

Virtue's Last Reward on 3DS has some foreshadowing

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So did 999 on DS.

 

[Strings]

Yakuza bothers to explain random encounters (Kiryu is so tough that everyone sends their new recruits after him as an initiation ritual).

 

[pbayne]

Hollow Knight-some of it is obscure, some not so much-but pretty much every core gameplay mechanic is explained as an aspect of the world

 

[Enoch]

Xenogears for sure.

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Yep

 

[Smartlord]

It's sort of a cliched example at this point but the majority of mechanics in Dark Souls are diagetic in some way.

Death and respawn are literally part of the story, since you are Undead. Leveling up and gaining power is through the collection of Souls, and several bosses are said to have grown to their power in a similar fashion. Multiplayer is being summoned or summoning people from other worlds, and the game implies that other worlds and time itself blend into each other.

It's really cool in my opinion.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

I don't know about "obscure" exactly, but Mass Effect 2 has lore to explain why in ME1 your guns didn't have ammo but in ME2 they did. In a span of 2 years, everyone in the galaxy decided that they wanted to use disposable heat sinks in their guns to increase rate of fire and so they modified everything to do that. Apparently this idea had never occurred to anyone until they found the Geth using it, and also try not to worry about why your guns just don't cool down at all now. This all gets explained in Codex dumps, but iirc it isn't acknowledged in dialogue.

 

[Deleted member 39744]

Hollow Knight-some of it is obscure, some not so much-but pretty much every core gameplay mechanic is explained as an aspect of the world

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Can you please explain it?

 

[Omanisat]

I don't know about "obscure" exactly, but Mass Effect 2 has lore to explain why in ME1 your guns didn't have ammo but in ME2 they did. In a span of 2 years, everyone in the galaxy decided that they wanted to use disposable heat sinks in their guns to increase rate of fire and so they modified everything to do that. Apparently this idea had never occurred to anyone until they found the Geth using it, and also try not to worry about why your guns just don't cool down at all now. This all gets explained in Codex dumps, but iirc it isn't acknowledged in dialogue.

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That bit gets explained in an obscure bit of lore in ME 3.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

That bit gets explained in an obscure bit of lore in ME 3.

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lol even better, two layers deep.

 

[Omanisat]

lol even better, two layers deep.

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Lore-ception.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

RPGs where you create your entire party tend not to focus much of the story on those characters as individuals, since it doesn't know who they are. Sometimes these games represent "you" as one of these created characters, other times you're a sort of unseen commander, other times "you" are just the collective group.

Labyrinth of Refrain is sort of unique among those in that it's still a heavily character-driven story. The lead character Dronya and her allies don't directly participate in your expedition. "You" are actually a possessed book under Dronya's command, and you in turn control a small army of animated puppets. Your puppets do all the heavy lifting of exploring the dungeon, including physically carrying you around, but none of them are individually relevant to the story. Thus, while the story focuses on the lives and motivations of the main cast, you still have complete control over your party configuration.

The divide between dungeon crawling with the witch brigade and the story segments in town with the actual cast comes from the fact that the labyrinth is suffused with a miasma that animates your puppets as living, breathing warriors, but is also fatal to humans. Besides that, Dronya isn't much of a fighter, and her magic is mostly along the lines of enchantment and alchemy. Entering the labyrinth involves Dronya literally throwing you down a well, at which point you summon your soldiers to explore on her behalf. Once you return, your puppets revert to lifeless wooden dolls.

Puppets can have limbs or even their head destroyed in combat, but since they're made of wood, they can easily be repaired in town with spare parts. The puppet conceit also explains where your dozens of new recruits keep coming from. Each one is just a literal doll bought from a local woodcarver and imbued with a soul extracted from artifacts found in the labyrinth. The rebirth mechanic lets you roll back a puppet to level 1 and change its class or other aspects while keeping some of its stats and abilities, which is possible because you're transferring its soul and consciousness into a new puppet body, presumably one designed for its new purpose. Since these reborn souls are veteran fighters, albeit in an unfamiliar body, they grow more and more powerful with each cycle of rebirth.

 

[Siggy-P]

I'm a big fan of how the mechanics in Bioshock tie into the lore. It can be pretty clumbsy but I like that everything from the way respawning at checkpoints works to the reason that gameplay mechanics are similar across multiple games all tie into the central plots.

 

[Aegis Renfro]

Mario 64's camera is literally Lakitu holding a camera behind and following Mario throughout his adventure. The camera gets stuck because Lakitu can't move around an obstacle. The C stick allows you to move Mario - the C buttons allow the player to move Lakitu.

 

[Stantastic]

FF XIV was also my first thought, theres a ton of it in that game.
my favourite example is the lore explanation for the retainers.

Retainers are basically the games version of item storage and your window into the player market, each retainer is a npc that the player gets to customize to their liking upon hiring them.

This is explained as the PC being asked to describe their ideal retainer because there are just so many available, and upon the PC describing this person in exact vivid detail (via the games character creator) they are told that there is a retainer that just happens to match that exact description.
in fact there are several! all with distinct personalities that the PC gets to choose from.

the absolutely ridiculous lengths that FF XIV will go to to justify what gameplay contrivances is just wonderful.

 

[Starlatine]

isnt the reason you cant jump in VVVVVV something related to gravity (the whole gimmick of the game)

we had several puzzle/platformers where you cant jump before and they never bother to explain it but it somehows makes sense for Vs

 

[golguin]

FF XIV was also my first thought, theres a ton of it in that game.
my favourite example is the lore explanation for the retainers.

Retainers are basically the games version of item storage and your window into the player market, each retainer is a npc that the player gets to customize to their liking upon hiring them.

This is explained as the PC being asked to describe their ideal retainer because there are just so many available, and upon the PC describing this person in exact vivid detail (via the games character creator) they are told that there is a retainer that just happens to match that exact description.
in fact there are several! all with distinct personalities that the PC gets to choose from.

the absolutely ridiculous lengths that FF XIV will go to to justify what gameplay contrivances is just wonderful.

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Another of my favorites from FF14 is the teleportation mechanic. Teleportation crystals called "Aetheryte" exists in various parts of the world and are controlled by the governing political systems in the region. There is a complex magical process by which the body gets broken down and sent back to the Aetheryte, but it's extremely dangerous and not everyone can do it. It turns out your player character is perfectly suited to teleport and so is every other player character in the MMO. This is why conventional travel still exists for all the NPCs. This is also a big plot point when you encounter an enemy that is somehow able to teleport.

It costs money to teleport as a money sink in the game economy. How it is explained in game? The governing political systems in the area need to maintain the machines and magic that keeps the Aetheryte working so you need to pay with Gil unless you have an "Aetheryte Ticket" that lets you teleport for free.

Why don't we have Aetheryte crystals everywhere as it would be convenient to teleport everywhere? There are many reasons, but a famous reason to not have one next to your main base of operation (The Waking Sands) at the start of the game is that there are political reasons to specifically not install one. The result is you have to teleport to the neighboring area and walk there or take a ferry to where you need to go from another location.

Something fun that I just remembered is that the famous Glove Cursor that appears in most Final Fantasy games also has a lore reason for existing.

 

[Horp]

Bioshock 1 had the weird respawn tank mechanic. Bioshock 1 did however explained magic fairly well within the lore.
And then we have Bioshock Infinite which had the same kind of magic but a completely different and unrelated system which made much less sense its own lore.

 

[Oregano]

Streetpass and Spotpass in Bravely Default is the player interacting with alternative dimensions in the game. It's extremely relevant to the plot.

 

[Dr Zhivago]

Assassin's Creed uses the Animus to explain all the gamey elements - you're essentially playing a game within the game.
In Prey, 'respawning' involves you fighting your way out of the afterlife.
Prince of Persia had the prince remembering the story 'correctly' when the player died. The reboot had you being saved by the sorceress.
In Lords of Midnight, the reason you can switch between characters is because you wield the Eye of the Moon which allows you to join minds with others.

 

[Tribes of Trusty]

Thank you for this thread, I love diegetic mechanics/HUD elements. I did not know about FF14, they are very interesting.

Something fun that I just remembered is that the famous Glove Cursor that appears in most Final Fantasy games also has a lore reason for existing.

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Especially this one.


In Xenoblade Chronicles, Shulk can see ennemy aggro lines because of his sword (The Monado) which grants him seer abilities. It's quite explicited in the game.

In the Uncharted series, Nathan Drake hasn't ever been hit by a gunshot, the "health" system actually represents his luck and how close to being killed he is.

I always thought the Fire Emblem units represented actual military units and not just the character beating each other up. Fire Emblem Three Houses confirm this as you see your units lead by heroes on the battlefield. So units represented by their leader is only for clarity's sake.

999, VLR and Contact have reasons for their mechanics, but saying anymore would be a spoiler

 

[Deleted member 49319]

Xenoblade 2, the difference between main game and Torna's combat system.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

The blocks in Super Mario Bros. used to be people.