Fell for the lore meme

>RPG Fan from days of late 90s early 2000s / my teenage years
>Play planescape, baldurs gate, arcanum all day
>Be a lore sponge, reading novels and sourcebooks alike memorize gods of forgotten realms (including non human ones) just for fun

>Finally have spare time to play PoE
>Start game, Glanfameme this biameme that eimeme those
>Too many stuff I know jack shit about
>Find out there is 100 pdf of extra material that explains this stuff
>Began to read
>Feels like a chore
>My brain hurts after page 20

Anyone else has this problem? I really can't get into deep lore anymore. Is it because of age-work life? That you are so tired mentally from work and cannot bother to learn new stuff?

Pillars of Eternity?
Path of Exile?

should have said it, its Pillars.
The game literally shoves down your throat 5-6 distinct names even before the tutorial dungen. Was this always the case? What made infinity engine so tolerable then?

Yes, I had the same experience.
We have gotten old. Our brains cannot absorb vast amounts of trivia like a sponge anymore.
It becomes difficulty to learn new stuff and worse, you just don't want to do it anymore.
Work, family, chores, errands, news, retraining, all that shit fills up your brain, your time and drains your energy and money.

We are not young anymore.

When I was younger I used to be heavily into the lore of settings, too. I used to think all of that stuff was interesting.

But nowadays, the simpler a settings lire is, the more I can appreciate it. Whenever I see threads or discussions on some GM's special snowflake campaign setting that they're writing a wiki on to inform their players, I feel comforted to know that at least my players can actually learn about my setting at a gradual pace and be introduced to things in a natural manner.

There is this quote that I remember from a thread I started a million years ago, here on Veeky Forums. I forget what the thread was about, but he said, "Some settings try so hard to not be Middle Earth, that they lose the spirit of a fantasy setting altogether."

very true, lore for lores sake kills me. I understand Obsidian wants to have full IP rights, so its vital for them to "create" a new world. I wish they were bought by wizards, so people could play in the same old and known before FR etc settings
Very true, after coming from work I can only play games that -either requires no brain work or -very mechanical.

Still at act 1 in witcher 3, couldnt bring myself into playing it. I don't know why I expected pillars would be different

I seriously think PoE's lore is just not very interesting. partly because it's just everybody's first D&D homebrew, partly because none of the settlements are really alive enough to find out how the lore impacts people, and partly because you outgrow each section so fast and move on to something else
don't get me wrong, the game is ok, but I think the lore was thrown together as a backdrop for the main characters, who were much more interesting (to me anyway)

Dragon age Origins lore was far more interesting to me, shame Bio ware ruined it on later additions.

I'm just out of the tutorial dungeon at the first town now, but I get the same feeling. Nevermind the fact I play the game in story mode, have little to no interest in combat. Which makes things worse

Right now reading the gods from the guidebook,
>Ondra is a melancholy and mournful goddess
who, legends say, was once in love with the
moon. She is the ruler of all seas and oceans,
and is venerated by sailors, fishermen, those
who live near the shore, and those who mourn
loss—especially lost love

blech,

>Dragon age Origins lore was far more interesting to me
I agree. it was nothing really special and the whole "darkspawn-blights" stuff was totally uninteresting, but the world was cool and I spent a lot of time reading up on what was going on.
I think the appeal of lore is much less to do with its content and much more to do with how it's presented and how it relates to things going on in the game

How do you think Pillars could do it better?

AFAIK, there's been a change in the 'purpose' of lore as popular entertainment has become more complex. After a certain point in narrative complexity, standalone lore just becomes more wordswordswords to keep track of, instead of adding to the story. (My guess is that this is especially important for roleplaying games, since you have to engage and act within the world.)

So now, we want lore to do something to the narrative. It shouldn't just be background to make the world feel more complete. Ain't nobody got time to read about what crops the farmers grow, unless you're driving home a sense of prosperity or poverty or whatever.

well, if I really knew, I'd probably have a job in the field
but my best amateur guess would be presenting it more slowly (nobody likes lore dumps), letting you settle into an area and feel its importance rather than shuffling you along all the time (you'd learn its lore by constant exposure even if you weren't trying to), and picking one or two lore elements to make relevant and prod you with at a time (I think they tried to do this, but still ended up with too many making it overwhelming and uninteresting)
but seriously, despite the game's apparent emphasis on world lore, it's the characters that are really interesting, much as you'd expect from an obsidian game. and they are good.

huh, I heard companions were very bleak compared to other obsidian games, say KOTOR2 or New Vegas. How do they stand out?

Please, no frogposting here.
Use google if you don't actually have a relevant image.

It's part of the reason I've never played Pillars past the first town. It's too front-loaded. There's an art to easing someone into a world, especially a world that's vastly different from our own. Except, as far as I can tell, Pillars isn't that different from most medieval settings. It just feels like it's a lot more because it bashes you over the head with its massive tome of lore right off the bat.

well no, they're not as good as the ones in those games, but I still thought they were pretty good.
just a healthy balance of believable, opinionated, and slightly quirky, without getting nauseating. the humorous little quips are kept to an understated minimum and generally find their marks, their dramatic moments generally don't seem too contrived, and you don't get a massive separation in personality between "everyday character X" and "character X is currently in the spotlight, please pay attention!"
which all sounds like basic stuff but I think a lot of video games struggle with this. bioware in particular

Yeah. Keep those white nationalist hate symbols on /pol/ where they belong.

Don't be stupid.
Just keep dumb memes on the spam boards like /b/ and /r9k/.

You are a pretentious dude, you know that? Stop taking offense from trivial things

The problem here is that Pillars of Eternity is a shit game made by people who thought they were a lot smarter than they actually were.

Disgusting OP pic.
But I think this is mostly because pillars of eternity had SO MUCH BULLSHIT KICKSTARTER BACKER STUFF.

You can't get interested in that bullshit because it's not actually important or relevant to anything.

Also, the setting and plot didn't resonate with me at all.

I dunno, he's pretty justified. Fuck that frog.

I've got time for what crops grow.
But jesus fuck if pillars didn't bore me to tears.

really, what the farmers were growing in gilded vale would've been a passable starting point. I would've been more interested in that, considering I was in the town and looking at the people eating the produce, than I was in vague, generalised political/religious views of regions far away

Kill yourself

the best lore is the one you learn by playing

>I think the appeal of lore is much less to do with its content and much more to do with how it's presented and how it relates to things going on in the game
Exactly how I feel. One of the reasons I liked La-Mulana was due to how much background lore there was that you could discover at your own pace. I feel most GMs should strive to do that rather than sit there like a tour guide droning on about their special snowflake setting. Or at least keep the setting primer to a page or two.

I feel your pain, OP, but I must say in Pillars' case it was a cancer of Not!D&D straining the gameplay.

And it was like it was trying to club you over the head with the Not!D&D aspect.