Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-24590102-20140823062620

Harold Burned-Mane wrote:

Datadragon Odahviing wrote: To contextualize, we must ignore gameplay =/= lore, in fact I came up with an argument against this, which is worded: ''Gameplay =/= lore? But gameplay must be based on lore and lore must be supported by relevant details in gameplay, or else the lore itself is pointless and irrelevant to the game, making it superflous, which essentially = immersion break = crap game.'' Gameplay =/= Lore must always be taken into account. Or else we get to things like, being able to cross all of Skyrim in a day, despite it supposedly being bigger than High Rock, which was at least 10 times larger in Daggerfall than Skyrim is portrayed. Same thing can be said for a bunch of other things, like how I can shot an arrow at a guy's chest and if I am hidden he totally forgets that he was just shot in the chest by a fricking arrow.

A game has limitations, while lore does not. That is why gameplay =/= lore.

In formal textual analysis, we assume that the author means exactly what s/he says and analyse the text according to the rules of grammar and diction without considering the limitations of the author's literacy because the limitations of author literacy constitute an additional and unnecessary entity until such limitations can be proven - which, without confirmation by the author, is indeterminate. For the same reasons, it is not valid to take game-engine limitations into account when trying to ascertain in-game lore and in-game reality. The onus, after all, is on the author to make communication clear and unambiguous and not on the audience to guess the "correct" interpretation. This is why:

game mechanics = in-game reality

Lore is a different matter entirely.

Lore =/= reality

Surely, we all figured this out sometime before we reached the age of consent...?

Within the applicable context, reality exists in lore but is never the entirety of lore because lore comprises other things too. The story of  Chicken Little is a case in point.

There is no in-game evidence to suggest that Uthrax's claim of Falmer blindness actually corresponds to any form of in-game reality. In the absence of evidence, corroboration of this story means nothing because, again, there is a lack of evidence that this corroboration constitutes any form of independent finding of fact. This is what makes the consensus argument such a well known fallacy.

Having said this, there is ample in-game evidence supporting the contrary conclusion that the Falmer are not blind. For example, the Dovahkiincan see while wearing a Falmer helmet. This is true, in context, because it is part of the in-game reality of which the Dovahkiinis a part. This in-game reality could not follow from the blindness of the Falmer because blind Falmer would not leave holes in the helmet where none were needed as this would be counter-productive to the purpose of the helmet and, presumably, the Falmer are not without any brain-matter. It is not lore that you can see out of a Falmer helmet only because nobody else has ever tried wearing a Falmer helmet to see if what they've heard about the Falmer being blind is really true. However, relative to the Dovahkiin, it becomes lore as soon as s/he tries the helmet on and is not blinded - which, by the way, is not beyond the game mechanics. The direct inference which follows, likewise, becomes part of the Dovahkiin's idiosyncratic version of lore. The Falmer are not blind, they just want everyone to believe that they are blind for political=strategic reasons.

This type of lore falls into the same category of lore as the solutions to mysteries. In this genre, the lore intentionally misleads the audience or even specifies the wrong answer because the point of the mystery genre is for the audience to think for themselves and, thereby, discover what the author is concealing from them. How do you discuss the resutling aporia when documenting such lore? Discussion here in the forum is one thing but I think this is a very good reason for wiki pages to have spoiler tags available. Half the fun is figuring out for oneself that the author is playfully taking one for a ride. :^)

