Take it from a Kingdom Hearts fan: focusing on lore is a waste of time.
Sure, it might seem important to connect every dot, know every character’s backstory in detail, and commit every single event of every single thing you ever consume to memory. Certainly, media is moving more and more in that direction. So many studio franchises are glorified exposition dumps at this point, designed to explain away every single detail and ensure that no ambiguity or mystery remains.
It’s a practice designed to satiate the hardest of hardcore fans. Not just normal fans, of course, but ones who think every line of dialogue is a reference. More and more fanbases are moving in that direction, with audiences craving explanations for everything, and content mills providing a steady stream of “Ending Explained” or “Who Is White Guy In Shirt #3 (And Is He The New Captain America?)” pieces. There’s a whole cottage industry built around people not being satisfied any degree of ambiguity, and desperately seeking details that connect to something else they’ll eventually buy.
But by enabling and encouraging this kind of obsession, corporations that weave these profitable narrative webs take it as carte blanche to deliver less and less interesting art. Who cares about competent filmcraft, writing, or game development if one bit of dialogue ties two things together, or a character you like shows up? It’s why so many auteurs steer clear of studio filmmaking at this point, and why artists like Scorcese rightfully criticize things like the MCU.
Here’s the thing, though – you can just stop caring. No, really, it’s possible. Instead of focusing on whether or not everything fits a certain canon, or how much it adds to the persistent lore, it’s entirely possible to just enjoy things as just that: things. Not as parts of a larger puzzle, but as the puzzle itself.
And by “puzzle,” I don’t mean that same shallow attempt at interpreting art. Breaking down something predominately on its narrative coherence is bad for your comprehension, and instead, I’d recommend accruing actual critical lenses to look at something through. It’s easy to find scraps of narrative and to re-contextualize them in order to make sense of a larger plot, but simply agonizing over something that may or may not be there isn’t criticism – it’s conjecture.
When playing a game or watching a movie, take notes. Ask yourself how you feel. Ask yourself why you feel the way you feel. Then ask yourself if you think the work was supposed to make you feel that way. From there, debate yourself, and come to your own organic conclusions about something. If you’re playing a game, look at the mechanics critically and think of how much relevance they have to the game. Do they add to or detract from the experience? And what about the aesthetic? Is what you’re playing just expensive and pretty, or is there actual coherent artistry there?
Ultimately, how many Soras there are or where Breath of the Wild fits into the Zelda timeline are fleeting things. Those little details, as time marches on, will slip between the cracks and be forgotten as we grow older. But what will remain, if a piece of art is interesting enough, are the feelings it evokes and the ideas it inspires – narrative inconsistencies be damned.
None of this is to say, obviously, that people who enjoy immersing themselves in lore are bad or wrong or dumb. They’re not! I enjoy a fair bit of that myself, especially when it comes to stuff like the persistent Nier continuity. But meaning is more interesting than lore, and ultimately, something’s artistic merits independent of their narrative significance are what will always separate the artistic wheat from the homogenized chaff.
Anyway, here’s an article I wrote about the lore of a rhythm game.
Next: Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory – The Ending, Explained (Spoilers)
- TheGamer Originals
Bella Blondeau is a lovable miscreant with a heart of gold… or so she says.
She likes long walks in dingy arcades, loves horror good and bad, and has a passion for anime girls of any and all varieties. Her favorite game is Nier: Automata, because she loves both robots and being sad.
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