Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I mean, again, in the early days of the project, we would use that vagueness with our dispatches. We were doing a lot more stories back then, as well as the news updates and stuff like that. The idea was that it was trying to capture the sense of what it was going to be like in the universe. That being said, we made a very conscious effort to not, kind of what we're talking about with the animals, get very specific about stuff. So usually, as far as how much lore influences gameplay and stuff like that, usually the lore starts as a launching place for the gameplay. So they can kind of go, what's sort of established? What's kind of the rough vibe of it? Back in the day, we would have Tevarin characters in stories, but we never described them; we'd maybe make a light allusion to a physical feature or characteristic, but we never were like, they're six feet tall, blah, blah, blah, they have 85 tentacles, none of that stuff. Because again, it was about capturing the feeling of it more than the nuts and bolts of it. So again, the lore will usually work as kind of a launching pad to start discussions about new things. But at the same time, it still tries to be flexible enough where if there's a gameplay reason to do something, they're not inhibited by lore. So it's kind of a give and take. So it depends on the situation.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I think lore is a lot like concept art. In a way, it's a fantastic exploration of ideas. It's a fantastic fleshing out of: this is how this can work. This is a jumping-off point for the game designers, for the artists and stuff to leap from. And sometimes it's a one-to-one. Sometimes what you develop in lore ends up exactly in game, or 99% in the game, just like it matches with the concept art. And then sometimes it deviates quite a bit. Look at how many variations the Freelancer went through before we finally ended up where we were at. So I don't think there's any hard rule. I think that's one of the reasons you struggle with answering that question, because there isn't just a hard and fast 'this is how it always is.' It's where it works, yes.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

And also, you'll notice in our stories and fiction that we'll get more specific once the gameplay has come out. Because then it becomes a little bit more locked down. So then we can talk about nuts and bolts stuff and have it factor a little bit more into the storyline. But again, to use the sculpting/sketching analogy, initially the lore is that rough shape of 'it's vaguely meant to be like this.' It's still flexible enough where you're not locked into a specific form. And so you can make adjustments, is usually the approach we try to take. But yeah, like Jared said, sometimes the gameplay kind of lines up perfectly with what we've established. And sometimes, yeah, we'll have to kind of go back and go, all right, well, how can we sort of retcon the lore to fit with how the experience is actually going to be? Because ultimately, that's kind of the thing: this is something that people are going to be playing and doing.

Mike Kinsella · Copywriter, Narrative Team

Yeah, when you create so much dense lore, again, ahead, like you said, in the early days before there was a lot of gameplay out there, clearly, like with everything, things are going to change, right? As gameplay concessions are taken into account, and as people get in there and actually start playing it and see what's fun and what's not fun, all that stuff is going to change, right? So I think, obviously, it's a fool's errand to parse through all the lore and be like, well, in this thing, they put a data card in this one machine and you can't do that in game and that's weird. It's like, okay, don't do that. Don't nitpick every little aspect of a thing. Please complain to me. But I think it's very malleable. I like the concept art analogy. I never really thought of it that way, Jared, but I like that analogy. It's kind of cool. And like Dave was saying, those first sketches of it early on are more vague and more like it might go this way or it might go that way. And as it manifests in game, you can narrow it down and narrow it down until you've got lore and stuff that matches really, like you said, one to one, as opposed to being more of a concept.