Go Away! Can't You See I'm Reading Lore Here!?

Card of the Day:	Three of Coins
Interpretation:	This is a portent of success. I greatly appreciate this fact, because I was convinced this day was gonna suck. I hope the deck is right!

The more I play games, the more I discover what I like about them.

I love the story. Gameplay can be fine, there are many games that are nothing but gameplay, with only a pretense of a story. Those can be entertaining, but I have a hard time enjoying them as something more than a mere diversion. I want characters. I want events. I want history. I want LORE. I'm not asking for anything grandiose. I don't need an entire backstory novel to go through, but I do want to know why that corpse is in that cage.

Metroid Prime (the series as a whole, actually, but this one does it the best) is quite possibly the ultimate example of this. Metroid Prime has an item called the Scan Visor. You have it from the beginning of the game, and with it, you can scan objects and creatures to gain information about them. You have a logbook that gets filled with different things as you go. There are creatures, pickups, and clues, but most importantly, there is LORE. There are 2 types, Space Pirate and Chozo lore. Space Pirate lore fills the gaps between Metroid and Metroid Prime (canon chronology). Chozo lore tells the story of the Chozo civilization that lived on Tallon IV previously, and the disaster that struck the planet. While Metroid Prime is really all about exploration and discovery, the lore is what made me fall in love with the game. If you think about the background of the game, most of the stuff littered around the game actually makes sense for it to be there. It. Is. Awesome.

As a side note, Metroid Prime 2 is an inferior game to the masterpiece that is Metroid Prime, but I believe that the Lore located in that game is MUCH more interesting than that of Metroid Prime, but I think I'll save that for a later post.

The main reason I bring this up, though, was introduced in the first paragraph. As I play role-playing games with friends, I find that I am caring less and less about the mechanics of the system. I don't really care for optimizing my accuracy or my damage. I want to find the mysteries and solve them. I like being made to think, to put 2 and 2 together. It's not logic puzzles that excite me in these games; that's not what I'm attempting to say. Motives, locations, and trying to figure out where to be and what to do at the right time. That makes me happy.

On a side note, fellow IFGS players, there's a reason I have a book of Legend Lore and Heraldic Lore 1/day each. Information and lore, that's what I like. After all, a suave and intelligent man such as myself would know something about this, right? Because I'm savvy!

Yesterday's Card:	Reversed Strength
Reflection:	No, not ego. Confusion, laziness, and all-around worthlessness. Damn, everything was going so WELL!