Stories That Don't Want to be Told

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—

They won't make it easy. But if you put in the work, it'll feel more rewarding!
...right?

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• Talebot — The Talent
• The Taleoids — The Talent's Helpers
• Benjamin Cook — Writer, Director, & Voice Actor
• Kathryn Healy— Researcher & Writer

[TheTaleFoundry]

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[balevoid]

"A well designed world can tell its story in silence." - Hidetaka Miyazaki

Even within the same world the experience of someone creates its own story and thus each perspective is a different story. The story that doesn't want to be told but experienced.

[HEXoslav]

The C programming language manual fits this description exceedingly well.

[sleepingbee]

My first thought on this was Shadow of the Colossus. A game with no lore collectables, no audiologs, no diary, almost no NPCs to interact with, and not a single moment where someone turns to the screen and starts lore dumping. The characters act as though they're all fully aware of what is going on, so they never need to say it out loud for the player's benefit. If you want to come to a conclusion about what happens both during the events of the game, and what lead up to those events, you must play the game multiple times and traverse the game world all by yourself, observing the smallest of details and connecting the pieces.

The other games in the trilogy, Ico and The Last Guardian, are like this as well, but I think Shadow of the Colossus does it best.

[amgoose]

HOUSE OF LEAVES MENTIONED ‼️ WHAT THE FUCK IS A RELIABLE NARRATOR ‼️⁉️🗣️

[dicyanoacetylene]

There is one example I can think of.

There was this poet that had a piece of their work tattooed onto 20 different people, and nowhere else.

Their work only exists in their head and scattered across 20 different people.

When one of those people die, then the story will forever be broken.

[djukor]

Sometimes i wonder if the kill everyone route or as fans call it the ""Genocide" route in Undertale is a story that does not want to be told.
As if the game tries as hard as possible to stand in your way of finishing the story of "what if you killed every single major character" in a video game.

[kingofbirds]

i think a good argument for not "making it easier" for people is that the difficulty is *part* of the story to an extent
you really feel like youre fighting tooth and nail to develop the skill required to make it in that world, and your reward for that devotion is seeing the story to completion

[Blessom]

Is that the Moon Presence from Bloodborne in the thumbnail.

[elliart]

Not sure if this counts but a fun reccomendation is "Ella Minnow Pea". It's a book comprised of letters from this fictional town that venerates a statue of the man who coined “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” which contains every letter of the alphabet and is written on the pedestal. One day one of the letters falls off, then another, then another, making them now "banned". So as the book goes on you need to decipher the increasingly creative workarounds they're forced to use to communicate, with the last chapter containing only L, M, N, O, and P.

[whisperpone]

I really like ergodic literature not because it forces me to work harder to read it, but because I enjoy the feeling of being genuinely lost in the pages

not just lost in the immersive sense, but lost in the 'hiking without a map' sense.

[twotothehalf]

Wait, so... history is ergodic literature. There is no grand narrative baked into the natural world, just causes and effects. Trying to piece together history requires going through materials that are obtuse, incomplete, or nigh-inaccessible, if it's even there at all. Great work has to be put in to translate the pieces of data into a coherent story. You can read compilations of these stories in textbooks, encyclopedias, scientific journals, but the actual play of history is just... life, and no one can ever live a hundred thousand lifetimes through the eyes of a hundred billion people to experience the entirety of it.

[Broomer]

I remember that the biggest inspirations for the creator of the Souls Series came from a simple moment. When he was younger and he would read foreign fantasy books. There would often be parts of the story where his knowledge of the language failed him and he had to guess and theorize how the parts that he didn’t understand connected with the parts he did understand. This too informed his writing style in the game as he leaves vague hints and clues that tie in some way to the parts the game lets you know without any struggle. Putting you in that same position of knowing parts of the story while having other parts clearly be there but obscured just enough to make you wonder what happened in those blurry moments.

[LycorisRadiata]

erotic literature is my favorite genre of literature.



thank you auto-subtitles.

[hokuhikene]

0:35 Yeah, Rainworld is really the perfect example for that. Beautiful game, but one of the hardest games to set a foot in.

[VeritabIlIti]

I appreciate the personal angle you put on this topic, and to a large extent it's true: everyone is going to have their own interpretations, their own experiences. But especially regarding the community aspect, Miyazaki himself has discussed how the other half of the difficulty argument is that the game is designed to be figured out and conquered by a community. While there are some bad apples, the overwhelming majority of these communities want to help you progress and fall in love with their favorite media. However, they won't do it for you: they will give you knowledge, but only you can beat the odds.
As for why, especially with Elden Ring, the stories themselves are told in this way because it just makes sense for the world. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are worlds of untrustworthy gods and foolishly ambitious mortals all struggling for themselves: some for survival, some for power, some for understanding. There are mysteries that we will never get answers to because the gods that they concern dont want us to know about them. We have to parse through various perspectives and lives and consider what is coming from a reliable source and what is purely relative. And for many, this active engagement is what keeps us pushing through to find the next clue, even if we feel in our hearts we'll never get all the answers. The recent Elden Ring DLC in particular brought this to a point for me. Fans wanted it to explain mysteries from the base game, but it largely introduced new mysteries unique to the Land of Shadow instead. Instead of telling the story the fans want, these media tell the stories the worlds require.

[titaniumteddybear]

Oh, I thought of another example: The SCP Wiki. Excellent video by the way.

[ExtremeVariety]

The difficulty of Dark Souls is inseparable from the story.

The game has three canonical endings, two of these happen when you finish the game, the other one happens when you stop playing because you lose the will to continue.

I won't spoil the specifics, but resilience in the face of a difficult goal is one of the key themes throughout the game's story. Every character you meet is working towards a difficult goal. You get to see the horrible fates that meet those who lose the will to continue. This is the fate of your character too, should you fail in the face of adversity.

[JDKT]

"where real men test their mettle!"

My femme ass having beaten every souls game and finished Bloodborne multiple times.

But all jokes aside, I think video games are a perfect medium for this kinda of writing. It allows you to feel like you're discovering the story layer by layer by exploring every little corner of the games universe and setting.

[littlephrog]

I read house of leaves last year and to say its my favorite book would be an understatement. The general plot is fairly straight forward and it doesn't really change with or without the all the 'extras'. However, with this book you can choose how far you want to go into exploring the book, there are so many layers but the plot remains the same, its completely unique and fantastic.