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Yugioh releases lore on a more consistent basis than League

Noctis Lunaris·6/17/2015, 3:07:39 AM·30 votes·3,606 views

No, I'm not joking either.

Yugioh, if you were unaware, has had a long running narrative dating back through the release of Synchro Awakening and up to the most recent set released stateside, Crossed Souls, and the next set in line, Clash of Rebellions, ending the 3rd arc as they focus on printing the Anime cards in the as-of-yet-unreleased Dimension of Chaos set. The lore was originally released via the now discontinued Duel Terminal Machines and the Master Guides they came with, but has since shifted to the Konami blog.

How is this relevant? Two reasons.

  1. Konami handled the lore better by providing the Duel Terminal setting, and finding some ways to forcibly end arcs that fit within the setting. Rather than retconning it each time they started an arc, each arc ends in a manner that wiped the slate clean for more fun down the line when they revisited it. The first arc starts with 4 tribes fighting for supremacy, gets derailed by aliens, giant mecha, flaming dinosaurs, even more giant mecha, an ancient tribe plotting world domination, Greeks riding dragons who are also spears/swords/stabby things, and ultimately ended with an ancient 3 headed frost dragon freezing the world over and stopping time. Rather than cutting this out, they went ahead and gave us another arc involving ancient forces of order and chaos getting into a slapfight because the fighting of 4 new tribes woke them up, and was an even wilder ride than the first from start to finish, while keeping the entirety of the first arc canon. Second arc actually kickstarts the 3rd one, which begins right where the 2nd one ends.

If they could come back from an Ice dragon turning the world to a popscicle, I'm pretty sure you could've written your way out of whatever corner you wrote yourselves into, and if the IoW absolutely had to go, you could've have just used the Duel Terminal School of handling blockades that prevent you from starting new stories (or end them in DT's case); Completely and utterly nuke it from orbit within the canon, in the most excessive and over the top manner possible.

  1. When the Duel Terminal Machine was discontinued, rather than killing the lore with it, they simply moved it to the main sets (DT cards were released in seperate sets titled ' Hidden Arsenal'), and providing the lore through easy-to-find-and-all-in-one-place posts for those who wanted it, which are all on Konami's official website. There was no real incentive to continue the lore either, it wasn't even that deep as it was just a thing they did to try and make the DT machines feel less hollow, but they knew some people liked it, which was why we got a 3rd arc at all.

Say what you will about the card game's balance, at least we knew when we were going to get lore, and we knew that we would be getting it for quite a while, namely across several sets, with just enough bits of lore to speculate on between sets that we at least had something to discuss while we waited. All we got for Ekko was a cinematic and a comic, with some bits in the Q & A, and random posts by reds (Still salty on the whole Lissandra is blind thing), which, in time while vanish, and I'll have to hope it's somewhere on the wiki so I'm on the same page as everyone else during a lore discussion.

12 Comments

The Ecdysiast6/17/2015, 10:03:49 AM4 votes

Above all else, I absolutely LOVE the Gem Knight/Gusto/'lswarm/Constellar lore!!! It's SO GOOD. That said, I agree. If you look, Riot erased most of the lore. The JoJ was gold (of course, when I read through it, the Dominion story bored me to death so I started skipping it) But it's a shame how many people think Morgana's a bad baker. She's not. She owns a bakery. What do you not want to have happen at a bakery you own and run? Muthafuckin burnt cookies, that's what. And everyone I talk to has no idea. They have no idea Xin Zhao is most likely over sixty years old. Yet the JoJ was stopped long before I read it, which is a terrible disservice to the players whoa actually care about lore.

Of course, they'll release a video for a champion that shows clear drawbacks to his universe-altering device (injuries inflicted are still present on the user after the reset, as shown by the fact he could no longer use the broken arm, so NO HEAL. There's no fucking giant explosion, unless the man he was fighting had like 200000 HP and could take all four of them.) for lore, but they have no obligation to even make THAT accurate.

Fiddlesticks causes nightmares and fear, yet bases all his strength on crows. Thresh ruthlessly tortured prisoners until he was hung by his own chains. Not only are there not chains around his neck (he has no neck), but he's also a support. Because "ripped out their eyes, tore flesh, and struck fear so deep into heartless murderers that the mere sound of his chains caused them to be paralyzed with fear" definitely translates to "here, have a shield, I'll save you from danger."

TL;DR: I agree the lore needs to be more consistent. Taric's not as cool as Gem Knight Master Diamond, and needs to be. Lore needs to be more accurate to gameplay, but not vague like it is now to outright allow any kit whatsoever to fit it because, "he's from the Freljord and holds two axes and is a jungler" can mean anything.

Chespin20136/17/2015, 5:37:34 AM2 votes

you do know that yu-gi-oh has existed for well over a decade right of course its gonna have more lore than league

76Summers6/17/2015, 5:32:17 PM2 votes

Constellars for life

Big Bang Bob6/17/2015, 6:27:10 AM1 votes

I don't know why they changed the whole lore if they were going to take forever to release content. I mean, at least a general description of what's going on in the world would have been nice.

Motajo6/17/2015, 3:14:22 PM1 votes

I didn't know Yu-gi-oh was still a thing. I'm not surprised it's more consistent though.

Occams Raiser6/17/2015, 11:33:45 PM1 votes

I am going to pull my hair out. Stop this stuff about lore. RIOT HAS SOOOOOOO MANY PROBLEMS! Why would you care? IT wasn't that good was it. They Aren't putting out LOL novels. I wish people would beg for different game modes like they beg for lore.