So we've gotten a few campaigns with lore attached to them and we can stumble upon the occasional lore book, but there's still an unfortunately absence of lore in the world. Additionally, with all lore being told through a few lines of text whatever little lore there is is largely unfulfilling. We need more animated moments in the game, which I know isn't easy to devote time towards, but I think it would be manageable to release these animated lore moments in small installments like with Bilge Rate adventures. But first, I'll explain what I mean by "Emergent Lore".
Emergent Lore:
By "Emergent Lore" I mean moments in the game when you're on an island and something happens that's out of your control but can tease, confirm or contribute to the lore about the island. I'll give some examples below.
Devil's Ridge: On Devil's Ridge there are a few paintings resembling one or two large birds (one possibly being a phoenix). Perhaps an emergent lore moment could be that while on the island you could hear a loud caw, and if you look around you could possibly catch a large mythical looking bird fly away or zoom by. If this bird of legend is a phoenix it could vanish into a puff of flames or smoke. Maybe the bird is just watching you from a concealed location and if you happen to spot it it'll fly off and vanish.
Mermaid's Hideaway: This one is obvious. We all know mermaids exist in the game as we've all hitched a ride with one, but why is it we can never spot a mermaid(s) at Mermaid's Hideaway or even Discovery Ridge. Rare already has the models made, and I'd understand if they weren't prepared to have us interact with them in a variety of ways, but they could still have mermaids occasionally observe us from a distance while on the island. If we got any close to them or entered the sea they would swim into the depths and vanish. This, to me, seems like a quick and easy thing to implement, but I'm no game developer.
Castaway Island: I'll admit, this is far fetched, but on Castaway Island there's a random archway with an altar nearby and I can't help but to think it's some kind of portal. My thinking behind this is that the Ferry of the Damned wasn't around during the Ancients' time, so when they died it was permanent. Perhaps they were experimenting with portals so they can see or retrieve their loved ones. Maybe when you're at the altar, you can do a series of actions that could just briefly get a reaction from the portal, but of course not long enough to use.
The last example isn't actually an example of emergent lore, but I think there should be some lore that we can interact with. Another brief example would be Old Faithful. There are a lot of alters at that island, and maybe if you went to the skull one at the top of the island and did a series of actions you could spawn a bunch of skeletons. Just a thought, but I'll explain more about implementing these lore moments with bi-weekly events.
Bi-Weekly Events:
For some of the bi-weekly events, I think instead of focusing on a challenge they could focus on an island and develop more lore around it including emergent and interactive lore. The event would have commendations and encourage us to explore the island to uncover its past.
These are my thoughts as to how Rare could add more significant and animated lore to the game in a maybe manageable way. I know even something as simple as this would be difficult to do in the small development period given for Bilge Rat adventures, but perhaps these could be done in conjunction with the larger campaigns and could follow as a bi-weekly event when the campaign is over. There should definitely be animated moments in the campaigns themselves, but that's a whole other topic on its own.
But let me know what you think. Do you agree with any of this?
