Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-24590102-20140825032324

Harold Burned-Mane wrote:

Smoking.Chimp wrote: A few points

1. A question: If "lore = reality", where is Chicken Little?

2. Nobody said that "reality = In-game reality". What was, and is still, maintained is that: game-mechanics = in-game reality

3. The game mechanics in question were never removed and can still be accessed via the Creation Kit

The rest of what I have to say has already been explained. The onus is on the author to write clearly and uambiguously and this is more so in the case of game developers having to work with game mechanics instead of against them to communicate something other than nonsense.

Invoking game-engine limitations, by way of explanation, is no different to arguing that Tolkien's mithril was the product of limitations to Tolkien's literacy (e.g. a spelling mistake).

Game-engine limitations = game-grammar; Period , full stop, bring out la Prima Donna and fiddle till she bursts into song!

[EDIT]Never-ending typos[/EDIT] 1. What the hell are you talking about?

2. Datadragon said that Lore =/= reality. But lore is reality, that is my point. In-game reality is the consequence of the developers having to change reality to fit the game's limitations.

3. The Blind effect is not in Skyrim. I have the Creation Kit and I've never seen it. And weapons and armor don't degrade in Skyrim, that is also not in the Creation Kit. Those were two game mechanics that were removed from the previous games. These are both realistic mechanics that were removed and made the game break immersion, but that happens all the time in games. Developers can only go so far.

Like for example, how in Arena Skyrim had a bunch of other towns and villages (At least like 14 more), yet they don't appear in Skyrim and no explanation is given why. They clearly do exist according to lore from previous games, and some even show up in Online, but they don't in Skyrim because of the game's limitations. This is another example of in-game reality being different from reality.

The people who write the lore and the people who work on the game mechanics and design are, most times, different people. As such much of the lore contradicts what the player experiences in-game. They usually hire writers, like MK used to be hired, to write the in-game books for TES games.

What the hell is game-grammar? You mean like the wording in the in-game books? I don't get what you are saying.

1. Chicken Little is an element of real-life lore. Chicken Little does not exist in real life but does exist in real-life lore. Ergo, reality=/=lore

2. I said reality=/=lore for very practical reasons

3. Just because you can't find something doesn't mean it's not there. The blind effect is in Skyrim and gets invoked every time "Fade to Black" doesn't complete due to memory issues. _Rahvin_ has added Boots of Blinding Speed to Skyrim, but has improved on the effect in the context of the item. If such detailed visual effects are possible (i.e. to reproduce a combination of visual impairments) then it can't be that hard to simply turn visibility off.

4. Game-grammar is the correct use of game mechanics to clearly and unambiguously communicate what you are trying to present in-game and functions in exactly the same way that regular grammar does when used by authors to clarify what they are trying to communicate in a book or paper.