god, "additional lore and context" is such a threat, activates my fight-or-flight instincts fr

You can apply this to any lore-infested dark fantasy game sequel, and I'm not telling it in a disrespectful way but almost a fact. There is an strange obsession to cater to the Soulsroguelike lorehead crowd amongst recent devs that ruin what the aesthetic genre can strive for. Even Conan the Barbarian had a veil of mystique and strangeness around it.

Nah it's not that strange, it clearly gives games exposure catering to the "what if" and "disgusting amounts of detail" fandom

you really wanna make a postscript by the author that offers some context for situations/places the game was inspired by and some light and non-authoritative discussion of its themes out to be like they misguidedly did a sci fi bible or norco explained! video that blocks interpretation? you really wanna bring up that quote abt what literary criticism isn't and then get this defensive abt preserving the purity of your mystery against the danger of...the author talking abt their intents w their characters whatsoever? or god forbid discussing the louisiana connections a little more explicitly? sry but seems like your engagement with art is narrowed, not the dev's intentions, if you feel threatened by this

also this thing is hardly ammo for fan wiki culture. please calm down

i don't think the dark souls wiki angle brought up by malditomur is at all apropos to this instance but as for vehemently's perspective, i don't think it warrants a response this vitriolic? i don't think it's unreasonable at all to express disappointment at a postscript/coda/follow-up that amplifies certain frictions or frustrations you have with the original work and wish for things to be more liquid. and i sympathize with vehemently's perspective that i could have done without the explanations behind the intent of certain images and moments, as much as i did enjoy learning a bit more about the real history that inspired the game. i didn't respond particularly negatively to ditch whit 1 but i remember feeling similar things to above about lisa the joyful as a postscript to/continuation of lisa the painful, or just as a more culturally ubiquitous example, my reading of blade runner largely ignores ridley scott's insistence about the identity of a certain character because i think that assertion actively makes the film less interesting.

disagreement on this kind of thing can be perfectly productive of course but the assertion that vehemently is "threatened" by this or that their "engagement with art is narrowed" feels wildly unfair to me. apologies if i'm speaking over or misrepresenting anyone here.

I don't feel threatened by it, and I'm not uncalm? I just don't see why its necessary? I'm not going to lie, it feels sort of disingenuous to say that my engagement with art is narrowed given everything else I've written here. This feels like a concern troll of a comment. This is the closest thing I've ever written on this site imo that is even remotely sassy like this, and even this is tempered. I didn't even bother giving this a rating because I don't think that would be fair to the developer. This was written against a recent backdrop of 1) people repeatedly badgering SH2 devs about fan theories on Twitter, and 2) Arkane making a whole post about the lore implications of Deathloop easter eggs. And so it was strange to see a developer like Geography of Robots do a similar thing. I'm not saying their intentions are narrow. I'm not some mystery-obsessive asshole. I like lore. I think it just seems antithetical to many of Norco's goals and themes. I'm not against the real-world context. I welcomed the info about Stacey Ryan in Mossville or factoids about Louisiana geography. But I don't see the purpose of demystifying Pawpaw and telling me exactly who he was and what he got right or telling me precisely what the stone was and where it came from. I already knew who was wearing the bird mask; it's not imperative that I know. That's a pretty significant portion of the text here. That's the stuff that irks me and that's the stuff I'm complaining about

I don't need mystery to enjoy things. I don't think my enjoyment of mystery is threatened by those asides. Authors are allowed to talk about their intentions, I would never say otherwise. Nor would I say authors aren't allowed to talk about their worlds and their carefully constructed lore. And I'm not saying you're not allowed to like this and they're not allowed to make it. I'm not saying it's a threat. What I am saying is that I don't like it, and I don't think it's necessary.

Since you got a pretty vitriolic response I just want to say that I see exactly where you're coming from, it's a pretty strange idea to me to release a follow-up text that seems to only exist to answer questions about the work when the work itself exists in part for those questions to be answered by the person who engages with it

(sorry I just realized that I might not have conveyed that very well, lol, basically I think you are cool and right Vehemently!!! and I think that your interpretation of this work makes sense!)

i think this is just a case of taking the "threat" word a bit too serious on this context
also, offcourse my comment didn't relate to the point significantly (they never do, do they, I'm very chaotic) but the sentiment is there, I hate being explained of everything especially having friends (pd I love my friends this is me being an asshole) that obsess with inch and crannies for every consumist hobby they have and they won't shut up about it, so I share the sentiment

no one has done this, but since this is getting more comments, and just in case someone pivots, please do not flame ludzu. I'm sure they're not trying to come from a bad place and my interactions with them have been positive. I do appreciate the validation of course haha. just wanna nip that in the bud.

i'll step back to say engagement w the game itself is narrowed rather than art at large, sorry, but basically i still think this review just feels like an overreaction to what this is doing when it seems p harmless to me, and it doesn't by any means sabotage what the main game does as much as you've suggested. and it's just not comparable to sh theorist terrrorism at all. the bird mask thing i'll give you, that's something we could've picked up on easily w/o commentary on it, much of what else is in this though either has an underlying intention to elucidate on some of the pet inspirations going into norco (like the ufo orb stuff gesturing at gnostic mysticism thread without defining it TOO much) or at most bringing up certain concepts w/i characters to be interrogated further (if the word they chose for pawpaw is authenticity, then what does him having all this backstory brought up actually entail in relation to him? what does a story that is "real" in norco mean?), and that makes it hard to take this too strictly like its the cheat sheet giving you the concrete answers, even knowing this came out of answering some steam guy's questions. is this necessary? prob not. and i'm not rly interested enough to insist on any quality of it that hard past this. cant help but feel like this review works at norco from a bad angle tho, if you feel like straight out explaining the story for you is the final purpose of this side thing. part of the frustration comes from how i'm tired of seeing the game framed in similar ways ky0 is, which it feels like you're doing implicitly here, when its goals are more different than ppl are going to give it credit for. all i rly think ultimately tho is: this ideological case being made for this that's been expanded into the comments, out of something the dev released relatively quietly on itch as companion to their commercial release, as if its giving into the hands of "explaining every aspect of the story" and runs counter to their what their game is abt, i just don't see how it's worth that scrutiny at all. not just bc the main game can stand on its own with or without this but feels like ppl are being too stringent w what "less is more" is, just bc "more is more" isn't necessarily true either. just don't think abt it this way so straightforwardly if you look at this sidegame ig?

I've routinely gone out of my way not compare it to KRZ as I think that would be pretty unfair, though it undeniably is on my mind. I'm obviously not beyond the implicit comparisons, but it's not something I was trying to do at all. It might be that I applied an expectation of mystique when it was unfair and not their goal, but at the same time, I still felt disappointed to see these things disambiguated. I can get into ideological postures as to why I think that doesn't work, but I don't think it's really important, because it relies on my own aesthetic interests. The long and short of it is that I didn't personally like it. Norco in general is a game I wanted to love, even accepting it as the total mess it is, but I just couldn't sink into it. When I look back at Norco, that's my emotion, and this return to Norco left me disappointed and irked, probably in great deal to that disconnect.

It's possible that I'm overemphasizing the things I didn't want answered over things like historical context and thematic framings. But like, that's just part of how we experience art. Sometimes you dislike part of a thing and that supersedes the greater experience. So if I am, it's just like, how I experienced it. I dunno. I can't really undo that.

I suppose my frustration here ludzu is that I feel like you are asking me to justify or defend positions that I don't hold? I really don't feel like I'm holding it to a high standard or nitpicking or blowing this out of proportion. I'm not saying this is a big deal or anything. I'm not angry at the devs. I don't really know how to make that more clear. It just left a sour taste in my mouth, and I'm laying out why; that's all.

i dont rly care to make you repent or change your opinions on anything esp when you dont feel like you are making any grand statements, ig at this point i just put what im saying this out there so that others can consider there might be more to this to find in relation to what norco is doing than just being a gauche author's cliffnotes for that game, like any other gauche cliffnotes to "explain" opaque works like w silent hill. i got upset initially bc i thought you were conflating any context provided by the author outside the work w lore you dont like, but i dont think thats strictly the case now. idk what to talk abt at this point if it is actually that simple for how you mean to express your feelings abt the games, so sorry for misunderstanding

You're totally fine, a big part of any conversation is getting on the same page. I think it's fair to want others to be aware that there's other stuff in there they might think is worth knowing, even if I think it demystifies too much

I do want to clarify one thing: I mention the SH2 stuff not because I think it is directly related to this, that stuff is obviously significantly worse. It's more just that stuff like it has been on my mind. I've been thinking about bookkeeping-crit and the insistence on authors explaining their work for a lot, and those were two pretty recent events. This is definitely nowhere near that level. But it is why I felt the need to write this, rather than just have the thought to myself quietly.

Coming back to this (and this is not a direct response to ludzu, more a thought in general), I wanna clarify what i mean by "leaving me with questions". I mentioned this in relation to mystery and ambiguity, which I think is very prominent, but I also wanna clarify that I don't limit it to that. What I mean by "questions" in this context is when art sparks curiosity in me. A question in relation to art often doesn't necessarily mean a secret, but a reason to return to it, to return to thinking about it. That's ultimately a very personal thing. I dunno, just a minor clarification.