How Dynamic Lore Exposes Nuances About Characters
My two favorite game types are RPG’s, like the Witcher series, and turn-based strategy games (TBS’s), like the Divinity: Original Sin series. Both at times require some skill to play. RPG’s require weighing tactics, battlefield awareness, the characters skills and weaknesses, the opponents’ skills and weaknesses, health, and risk assessment. TBSG’s includes everything above while also adding how many turns you’re allotted to accomplish all that. I enjoy the difficulties these two game types present. Punishment for mistakes is a reward in an of itself. Finding the solution lets me seek more challenging fights. Even with all this love for the difficulty and the strategy parts the game’s part that keep me returning, again and again, are the characters and how they become seemingly actualized people through references to their personal pasts and the integration of dynamic lore in fleshing out their personalities, attributes, and history.
When characters are well constructed we become interested in their nuance appeal. Character appeal can arise from how characters habitually call back to the past to define the present, like in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt when Zoltan comments to Geralt about Dandelion’s portrait. Zoltan’s comments seem like simple backfilling lore or a funny way to introduce an eccentric character, but they serve an important function to the characters. They attach Geralt’s, Zoltan’s, and Dandelion’s past to the present through a physical object, the portrait, while also implying that the characters have a history of adventures before the player’s participation in the story even took place.
The characters’ implied history happens when Zoltan comments on Dandelion’s imposing portrait in which Dandelion stands atop a slain dragon, while he holds onto a claymore. This comment begins a dialogue with Geralt about the portrait and a quest to rescue Dandelion. Players who choose to explore the dialogue options about this portrait are rewarded further story tidbits which exemplify how the characters’ pasts have consequences in the game world.
All this comes to fruition when the player participates in the story to find Dandelion and they come across many side-characters who refer to Dandelion as Geralt’s savior. In the main plot, it is clear, though, that Geralt has time and time again saved Dandelion. This simple addition of story from these side-characters added onto the portrait helps provide insight into the effects Dandelion and Geralt have had on the story previous to the player’s participating.
This dialogue between the Zoltan and Geralt affects the story by adjusting its scope so that the portrait refers to a past previous to the main plot. The characters’ dialogue when referring to a past previous to the main plot adds a time element to the physical portrait which turns the portrait into a dynamic lore piece.
Dynamic lore functions as a character building instrument used to add on to the qualities the characters express during the main plot events. Dynamic lore allows stories to explore nuance facets of a character’s personality, attributes, or past that the main plot can’t or might not be able to incorporate into the larger story. By adding new facets to the characters, outside the main plot, the characters take on a complexity that grows the character into a fleshed out person with their own agency in a story.
The same dynamic lore takes place in the Divinity: Original Sin games. A player participating in the game as Beast is introduced to many characters who refer to Beasts past exploits. Beast is on the run from his cousin the queen who seeks to kill him since he wants to overthrow her tyrannical rule. These exploits are all part of the main quest and beasts storyline, but where we see Beast explored is not just in the main plot but in the dynamic lore that dots Rivellon. Some lore pieces explore Beast’s past using songs, like Laslor, others refer to Beast’s past by his fame coming from his royal blood and his painful familial ties to the queen, like Lohar. These dynamic lore pieces help give the character a past, but they also help establish the character as a person who has had a previous effect on the game world and the “lives” of the NPC’s.
Without these dynamic lore pieces, a player wouldn’t get to know Geralt’s history with Zoltan and Dandelion. They might not get to realize that Geralt dryly teases Dandelion about his exploits while also deeply caring for his friendship with Dandelion. A player wouldn’t see how Beast’s history integrates him into the game’s world and displays how he has affected the characters he interacts with. These references, through physical items in the game world or songs of fame sung by NPC’s, help shape the main characters’ personalities in reference to the world that surrounds them. These dynamic lore pieces give the characters’ pasts a voice which in turn reveals nuances about characters when the main plot is busy telling the larger, encompassing a story.
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