Do you like games not because of the gameplay but because of the lore?

You don't need to play the game, you just have to be interested in the lore.

Half the fun of Blizzard games is reading up on the lore, for me.

It's gotta have some really compelling backstory to make up for bad gameplay.

Though I'll admit that's what got me through Killer7 and half of Final Fantasy XIII. Didn't care for the gameplay or the story to either, but the worlds they built were interesting.

So is this basically a more-inclusive version of the "Fighting Games For the Story" topic?

Ummm... I read the Doom novels, does that count? (though I like the games too)

Also, I'm not sure if this counts but I find a lot of games have story elements that, while not really brought up in gameplay, really would be kick-ass if fleshed out. The Genesis version of Shadow Dancer for example has the bad guy being a lizard-demon who controls his minions by pure instinct. I'm not even sure how that makes sense, but that would make a neat concept for an anime.

I know what you mean bro

I like The Elder Scrolls gameplay, but I like its lore even more.

I have yet to binge on Elder Scrolls lore.

Command And Conquer has awesome gameplay but I like the background, especially in the Tiberium universe, a lot more.

I like Elder Scrolls games for both the gameplay and lore. Don't know that I've ever lore-binged for a game/series I haven't actually played, though.

I've done it for Mass Effect.

I often thought that the Metroid Prime games had a lot of strong lore, giving the player a deeper look at the world around them, and giving the respective settings more character(such as Bryyo's Magic Vs. Technology war and the Plight of the Chozo on Tallon IV). In fact, it's often joked that Retro Studios employees(who write the scans) are better writers than the people who actually write the plot.

I find a lot of lore interesting, but hilariously the worlds i find most interesting would be the ones whose games usually have an Excuse Plot. I mean, Elder Scrolls has more than a decade's worth of writing that fills in geopolitical shifts, lifestyles of various cultures, racial tensions, rules for magic and alternate planes of reality... But all I see when I play or read about it is "Generic fantasy universe #102", this time with nice Lizard Folk.

Meanwhile, Ninja Gaiden presents a vision of the near future where rampaging monsters are a fact of life and modern governments employ one-man ninja armies. Doom fluff describes a decaying dystopia ruled by a MegaCorp where the Space Marine protagonist was permanently deported to mars for daring to disobey an order to shoot civilians, and then demons invade. Jeebus, even the Super Mario Bros games are incredibly surreal, and half the fun of the RPG games for me is just running around discovering how a world like this possibly runs itself. And don't even get me started on R Type. Talk about They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.

edited 1st Apr '12 10:39:17 AM by ShirowShirow

Same here.

And the Pirate logs are hilarious.

Whether or not Ridley is in Command is iffy though.

edited 1st Apr '12 10:45:35 AM by Nizbel

Pretty much every game I play, I play for the story.

I still like good gameplay, but it's not the main selling point.

Assasin's Creed is definately this for me. The gameplay has become stale and kind of irritating to control, especially when you're on a time limit and have to jump from rooftop to rooftop only for the game to screw up and have you grab the edge of some object in the way instead of your intended target. Yet, I love the story and it's unique settings, the amount of detail put into the background plot, and all the codex entries by Shawn that actually teach you something interesting and real for once. Plus, the modern-day Templars strike me as almost unstoppable, and it actually scared me as to what they're capable of getting away with: the only other organization that could compare with them was the Patriots from the Metal Gear series (pre-MGS 4, though).

...i like games because of gameplay or story or both most of the time.

the only series with lore that stands out is elderscrolls and the gameplay itself in those games isnt too good untill skyrim.

hell morrowind has such horrid gameplay i honestly cant fathom the idea of playing it for the gameplay of all things

on the otherhand, im a fan of the silent hill series, but i wont play them past the first and sm because i hate tank controlls.

edited 1st Apr '12 11:01:24 AM by Tarsen

First thing I thought of when I saw the topic title was Mass Effect. The gameplay itself is a So Okay, It's Average cover-based Third-Person Shooter with RPG Elements; it's the story that drives the enjoyment of the game.

edited 1st Apr '12 11:03:12 AM by NativeJovian

Well, the Kingdom Hearts series is my favorite because of the killer story, but the gameplay is also extremely good. But bad lore or plot can kill a good game.

I'm not entirely happy behind the concept of this thread itself, because to me it implies you can break a video game down into two separate works of fiction (the game itself and the story). I prefer games where the two are a unified whole. It's kind of supposed to be a single work of fiction.

For example, the first Dragon Age: to unlock the "dark-side" class specializations, you had to do some evil stuff in regards to the story. That was a great idea. However, they stayed unlocked for future playthroughs, even if you weren't evil. That ruined the whole point.

I greatly dislike how Bioshock plays. The little tapes scattered around and the history of Rapture kept me playing however. This is also why I like Metroid Prime. I'm not much of a FPS person nor a Metroid person (I more or less hate the traditional entries), but that lore...

MGS seems to be this to the point where I can't even play it. I'll just watch an LP of it instead.

This is also pretty much the only reason I play fighting games. I detest those and how they play for the most part.

edited 1st Apr '12 12:08:06 PM by Aondeug

@Totem: Your example was technically a bug.

They removed it in the first patch, but fan outcry made them put it back.

Not just refusing the order, but putting the CO in a full-body cast.

By all means, I wouldn't have liked Oblivion. It's poorly animated, the voice acting is terrible, it's choppy, stiff and glitchy.

But goddamn, The Elder Scrolls have a great lore behind it. The sheer size of the world and its history, how rich its universe and mythos is (YES, I know it takes a lot of cues from Tolkienesque fantasy in general, but I stand by what I said), and how big the world feels.

That and the fact that I can always come back to it and keep playing.

I value the story/lore in games a lot.

I dislike Warcraft's, however, especially the changes introduced by World Of Warcraft. The lore is not bad but it runs too much in Black-and-White Morality for my liking, and loves "corruption" a lot (i.e. characters suddenly turning "evil" because of some sort of taint/going insane/etc).

edited 1st Apr '12 2:39:08 PM by Anfauglith

I think Zeno Clash probably fits, if only because I want to know just what in the hell is going on in the acid trip they call a setting.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 would probably be the only example of this I can think of. The gameplay is meh(well, I still enjoy some of it), but it's the story and characterization that makes me like it.