FreeGameDev

Just out of curiosity, is there any sort of lore or 'fact's about the 'RE universe'? Or is it just killing because why not?

Are the characters we play humans in weird suits or aliens, or are they cybernetic? Is there any reason behind the team names? Or is it all merely virtual for the purposes of futuristic sadistic betting?

There is no "officially recognised" game lore. The idea behind RE is pretty much "let's create a cool game".

I've heard of some people who wrote some (short) lore, but I can't really remember any of it.

Not formally. I think the real (and more important) narrative is that which is implicit. The strongest narrative in videogames, as a medium, comes in this form. Do some reading on "ludonarrative" and you'll see what I mean.

I was playing AM7's Streets of Rage 2 the other day, and was floored by the narrative in the game. It's just brilliant. Aside from some quasi-scripting through enemy placement, there is absolutely no dialogue, cut scenes, or any other sort of explicit storytelling. And yet, every scene is like a bar room brawl, and absolutely tells its own dynamic, implicit story as you play.

I've also always been a huge fan of Doom and Wolf3d, in part for the same reason as above. "Memorable" things just happen as you play, and they create their own "lore" of sorts. Whether you're Doomguy or B.J., or killing hellspawn or Nazis, lol, it's all the same when you get to the lower principles to which the style of narrative appeals. A loose premise is all you need, really. Just a backdrop for the gameplay-oriented narrative to paint it self upon as it goes along.

Another good example you might be able to relate to is Minecraft. Do you look for similar [explicit narrative-oriented] explanations in other games, like it? I'd feel strange -- especially given Minecraft's goofiness -- to look for some heart-wrenching drama or soaring epic behind it.

I think every artform is best suited to different kinds of narrative. That's not to say it videogames can't have explicit narrative, as they clearly can, but I think there's a "cap" that's set lower than were you to do the same thing in another medium. You're never going to get a Ulysses in the videogame world. Not in the explicit sense anyway.

Sorry, your question was a really innocent one, ha, probably didn't warrant my big rant. Might generate some thought/dialogue though, so what the heck.

"Too long, didn't read" is "no", or "ask Quin", haha. : )

Really, I just wanted to know whether we play as humans or cyborgs or aliens. :P

I guess it really depends on if quin wants to focus on singleplayer. The funcionality is almost there, especially with health pickups and limited ammo (I just recently found that in svn, /<weapon>reload restricts the number of clips when set to a number other than -1). Even if he does make SP functional (and I hope he does), there's no guarrantee he'll want to focus completely on SP, though.

For MP, the story doesn't affect us much since we can't interact with it except by shooting people we're assigned to shoot. It might be cool to have a story, but at this point it's pretty much as much a pert of the game as fan fiction.

Bobbo {l Wrote}:Really, I just wanted to know whether we play as humans or cyborgs or aliens. :P

As other people are saying, your guess is as good as the rest of us. What do you think they look like?

I dunno, if human, definitely in weird armoured suits (think like Halo's Spartans). The legs and boots are quite clunky (but I guess you'd need that for the parkour), although the back of the head spike thing is weird.

If alien, they got some class (top hats).

I think in the end, humans in battle suit things, unless someone could disagree for any substantial reason?

We're playing as aliens with a sort of bio-suite, right?

It is more like Robocop meets the Cylons. You are part (wo)man, part machine, voluntarily re-engineered so you can battle in the arena for maximum entertainment value (spectators and participants alike), safe in the knowledge you will be downloaded and instantly rematerialised to continue fighting; every death becomes a learning experience, you relish the challenge more each life until it all but consumes you, fragging everyone to win the approval of the omnipotent computer referee and announcer.

qreeves {l Wrote}:It is more like Robocop meets the Cylons. You are part (wo)man, part machine, voluntarily re-engineered so you can battle in the arena for maximum entertainment value (spectators and participants alike), safe in the knowledge you will be downloaded and instantly rematerialised to continue fighting; every death becomes a learning experience, you relish the challenge more each life until it all but consumes you, fragging everyone to win the approval of the omnipotent computer referee and announcer.

Okay, that's pretty cool to know, thanks!

qreeves {l Wrote}:It is more like Robocop meets the Cylons. You are part (wo)man, part machine, voluntarily re-engineered so you can battle in the arena for maximum entertainment value (spectators and participants alike), safe in the knowledge you will be downloaded and instantly rematerialised to continue fighting; every death becomes a learning experience, you relish the challenge more each life until it all but consumes you, fragging everyone to win the approval of the omnipotent computer referee and announcer.

So kinda like the hunger games?

As I said, you'll never get a Ulysses in the videogame world... to say the least...

hahaha, favopwn

actually the lore comes from the name

In the distant future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, to Mars and beyond. A vast communications network bridges from colony to colony, human to machine, and machine to human. This seemingly benign keystone of modern inter-planetary society, however, appears to be the carrier of a mysterious techno-biological plague. Any persons so-connected seem to fall ill and die, only to return as ravenous, sub-human cannibals. You, a machine intelligence, an android, remain unafflicted by this strange phenomenon and have been tasked with destroying the growing hordes of the infected, while, hopefully, locating and stopping the source of the epidemic

so, red eclipse.....blood is red....lore

Architect {l Wrote}:actually the lore comes from the name

In the distant future, humanity has spread throughout the solar system, to Mars and beyond. A vast communications network bridges from colony to colony, human to machine, and machine to human. This seemingly benign keystone of modern inter-planetary society, however, appears to be the carrier of a mysterious techno-biological plague. Any persons so-connected seem to fall ill and die, only to return as ravenous, sub-human cannibals. You, a machine intelligence, an android, remain unafflicted by this strange phenomenon and have been tasked with destroying the growing hordes of the infected, while, hopefully, locating and stopping the source of the epidemic

so, red eclipse.....blood is red....lore

Blood Frontier (RE's grandaddy) had a story like this I remember... I kinda wish it hadn't been abandoned because we'd finally have an open-source singleplayer FPS with a coherent story and somewhat competent AI. On the other hand, the gameplay improvements probably wouldn't have been possible if the community still was focused on making Acord's singleplayer.

um, that IS the story, copied from the site, someone asked about lore and i provided

We are not using that story for RE, there is no story, period. People wanted some context and I provided it, as I had to choose the player model design and this was the "idea" I had in mind. Spawn, run, shoot stuff, jump, climb walls, die, rinse, repeat.

qreeves {l Wrote}:We are not using that story for RE, there is no story, period. People wanted some context and I provided it, as I had to choose the player model design and this was the "idea" I had in mind. Spawn, run, shoot stuff, jump, climb walls, die, rinse, repeat.

And fortunately for us all, Quin, you're far better at establishing ludonarratively rich environments than those contexts, be it due to intuition or other faculties. ; ) I was about to tell you not to quit your day job.

I concur, Quin's idea is actually nice and is open to some interpretation. XD

you concur? did you read what favo said?

I... Wasn't... I'm tired. And I wasn't really talking about what favo said.... I'm tired.

qreeves {l Wrote}:It is more like Robocop meets the Cylons. You are part (wo)man, part machine, voluntarily re-engineered so you can battle in the arena for maximum entertainment value (spectators and participants alike), safe in the knowledge you will be downloaded and instantly rematerialised to continue fighting; every death becomes a learning experience, you relish the challenge more each life until it all but consumes you, fragging everyone to win the approval of the omnipotent computer referee and announcer.

Liking the self-awareness. Sort of sounds like Sword Art Online. (For those that don't know, SAO is about a bunch of gamers who get sucked into an mmorpg and die in real life should they die in the game). But with respawning.

qreeves {l Wrote}:It is more like Robocop meets the Cylons. You are part (wo)man, part machine, voluntarily re-engineered so you can battle in the arena for maximum entertainment value (spectators and participants alike), safe in the knowledge you will be downloaded and instantly rematerialised to continue fighting; every death becomes a learning experience, you relish the challenge more each life until it all but consumes you, fragging everyone to win the approval of the omnipotent computer referee and announcer.

Ah an arena story! I like it! Reminds me of Ratchet: Deadlocked (a PS2 game) where Ratchet is pretty much kidnapped and forced to fight in arenas across planets. To be honest, the term "lore" is a bit exaggerated. Because Red Eclipse doesn't have a long story or history. It is one game. But since this was brought up, it does shine light on whether or not a "sequel" would be in the works down the line, eventually.

That's not to say this game isn't good enough. Its a great game. I just figured that devs, every once in a while, sometimes ponder whether they should make a "2" to their previous game. And who knows, if there were to be a Red Eclipse 2, Quin might consider the lore thing to be something of importance and make a whole story mode. For the record though, I love multiplayer. So if that's your focus, you're not letting me down.