[Poll] On DST's Lore Development

[GetNerfedOn]

Spoiler

Arthas: You've been waiting for me Dreadlord. You are Mal'ganis.
Arthas: As I can see, My people, are now yours.
Arthas: You will now turn this city household by household, until the flame of life has been snuffed out... Forever.
Mal'Ganis: You will not allow it Prince Arthas. Better that these people die by your hands, than serve as my slaves in death!

filler text because i only wanted to post the poll lmao

as always, vote and discuss freely in the comments

[Capybara007]

Since the last updates it feels like they are just inventing more story on the go instead of knowing where they are heading.

[Eughstein]

I want them to end story of gorge and forge events, not even in new event, but idk maybe some short cinematic that would explain everything 

[goblinball]

I wish we got more lore focused on the “real world” aspects (stuff like maxwell and Charlie’s backstories) instead of the constant and the ancients. The character shorts kind of do this however most of them are closer to side stories than anything. Don’t get me wrong, ancients lore is cool, however the idea of “mysterious ancient race which did magics and suddenly vanished!!” has been done to death (and this isn’t the first or even second time said ancient race was bugs, strangely enough), and I personally think the setting of early 1900’s America is much more interesting.

[Catteflyterpill]

2 hours ago, goblinball said:

I wish we got more lore focused on the “real world” aspects (stuff like maxwell and Charlie’s backstories) instead of the constant and the ancients. The character shorts kind of do this however most of them are closer to side stories than anything. Don’t get me wrong, ancients lore is cool, however the idea of “mysterious ancient race which did magics and suddenly vanished!!” has been done to death (and this isn’t the first or even second time said ancient race was bugs, strangely enough), and I personally think the setting of early 1900’s America is much more interesting.

Of course ancient race has been used a lot, it's a common trope. Same with orphaned protagonist, or entering a magical new world, or having to find a powerful item before it gets into the wrong hands. Things like this have been done for centuries if not longer, it's just in the DNA of storytelling. It's how the story puts its own spin on develops things in a new or interesting way. Nothing wrong with the trope, Klei just has to not fall for predicable storytelling stereotypes and pitfalls. 

And I gotta be honest, a constructed realm of monsters and shadows and the history behind it seems a little cooler than The Great Depression. But that's just me. 

[jtubio88]

I'm Will like to know about the other islands of the contant.

Like the mactus iceberg 

Or the corvus land 

[maradyne]

Honestly, several of my hopes have been dashed against the rocks of dropped plotlines...getting a little hard to actually look forward to new developments.

My one hope now is that they continue with Max's and the Codex's lore through the character shorts.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i dont like the many plot holes we have and even more if you add hamlet to the equation

[Cheggf]

It's hard to care about the story too much when it takes 7 months for an update, which is just dropping the previous thread in the middle of it and going to the next. They aren't even big updates with a lot going on, it's about as gradual as what you would expect from weekly updates.

[Szczuku]

I voted "no strong opinions" only because of what the old lore means to me. Otherwise I'd have probably chosen "unsatisfied"

That's because nowadays... dst's lore is slowly beggining to look like that drawing of a horse with super detailed butt and absolutely rushed face.

Klei has so far dropped 2 lore arcs with no reason to do so whatsoever.

Gateway arc was straight up abandoned. That was b4 Covid and Tencent so I can only blame Klei for that, frankly quite stupid, decision. Gorge's end could've been perfectly connected with RoT's beggining and imo Klei should just suck it up, admit that they have missed an opportunity and make a proper connection. I've already explained how to so I'm not going to repeat myself. Especially since chances of devs actually doing it are so low.

RoT's sudden, anticlimactic, frankly terrible ending I'd like to blame on Tencent, that y'know some chinese censorship law forced Klei's hand. But I've been on these forums for almost 5 years now, so I know that Klei's not as flawless as some might believe. Maybe devs just didn't feel like continuing RoT and decided to wrap it up *cough* *cough* Hamlet *cough*.

And that's what brings me to the lore.

It's quite evident that the devs are making it up as they go. Best evidence is Ancient's lore:

Spoiler

After murals, Metheus, atrium and Fuelweaver we had a pretty solid understanding of the general gist of Ancient's past. They had simple lives on the surface, something forced them to go to the caves where they struggled untill they've discovered nightmare fuel and overdosed on it.

One thing that I noticed and paid attention to was how murals implied that b4 the fuel ancients had heads and were reddish. After the fuel they lost their heads, gained a giant, gaping mouth on their stomachs and their crapace turned orangish. And of course then they turned into Nightmarebeaks. That lore was all good and dandy untill Forgotten Knowledge happened. Ancient Archives are filled with statues that depict Ancients as those versions with no heads, the ones which I headcanon to be post nightmare fuel.

Furthermore there's now a giant lore hole: Why did the Ancients abandon their Lunar Ruins? Even if they were no longer powered it's probably better to live with your Dust Moths among solid walls and cookware instead of venturing to the Constant's caves. And why there's apparently absolutely no records of Lunar Ruins in regular ruins? No mural ever mentions a 2nd, older city. Nothing about the moon.

Like I said- Klei made it up as they went and it would've been ok if only they had updated regular ruins. But no, ruins are still outdated and so Ancient's lore is just confusing instead of interesting.

And don't even get me started on RoT's writing..."Oh there's a race of Crab People. What? No of course they're not important, you'll only meet 2 members of their species, one of them is brain-dead due to moon altar and the other one only cares about fish and bottles. We won't be expanding on them just like we've never expanded on Walruses. Oh, also "Them" are no longer the mysterious shadow entity that rules over the Constant, that you've grown attached to since singleplayer's adventure mode. "Them" is just the nickname for Constant's eldritch gods. The Moon's one of them; yes it's getting bullied by an old man and Charlie, who probably has no idea what she's doing cuz we have no idea how to weave her into the narrative. THey HavE reTurNEd!1! cuz they (the moon) were always here. Oh yeah, Wagstaff's here and he has godmode on."

Someone once wrote in a forum post "Dst's lore went form 'captivatingly deep' to 'annoyingly confusing'" and I'm starting to agree with them.

Not to mention the general shift of dst's tone- as it also affects the lore.

[minespatch]

I'd like closure on the gateway arc.

[LiamAshvinn001]

8 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

i dont like the many plot holes we have and even more if you add hamlet to the equation

Didn't Wanda's introduction to the lore fix that up? Hamlet and Shipwrecked were probably alternate timelines, where the survivors were in different parts of the Constant

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 hours ago, LiamAshvinn001 said:

Didn't Wanda's introduction to the lore fix that up? Hamlet and Shipwrecked were probably alternate timelines, where the survivors were in different parts of the Constant

so basically?

and even such lame solution were applied it wont explain certain things

11 hours ago, Szczuku said:

It's quite evident that the devs are making it up as they go

just like the updates: sea intruduced because people ask non stop for sw and now we have buggy things and mobs (and bosses...) that dont interact with boats and the sea, glass farming methods becoming more useless with each update, etc

they really need to make a plan with the updates and write the whole lore to work with it

 

btw who the hell was that dead guy in the moon island? 

[Vixen Doe]

Not sure if me combing through character examination quotes for hours is a good way to consume a series' lore. We gotta have a little something more. Throw us a bone or something

[-Variant]

3 hours ago, LiamAshvinn001 said:

Didn't Wanda's introduction to the lore fix that up? Hamlet and Shipwrecked were probably alternate timelines, where the survivors were in different parts of the Constant

Hamlet and SW are both canon to the DST lore. They're simply explained as Wilson's attempts at escaping, from sailing to flying before eventually making full circle to DST. Warly's update post said he sailed from SW to DST, we can assume Wormwood fell and Maxwell has some quotes talking about the time he was king in SW, mainly with Wobsters appearance changes. 

 

11 hours ago, Szczuku said:

One thing that I noticed and paid attention to was how murals implied that b4 the fuel ancients had heads and were reddish. After the fuel they lost their heads, gained a giant, gaping mouth on their stomachs and their crapace turned orangish. And of course then they turned into Nightmarebeaks. That lore was all good and dandy untill Forgotten Knowledge happened. Ancient Archives are filled with statues that depict Ancients as those versions with no heads, the ones which I headcanon to be post nightmare fuel.

Furthermore there's now a giant lore hole: Why did the Ancients abandon their Lunar Ruins? Even if they were no longer powered it's probably better to live with your Dust Moths among solid walls and cookware instead of venturing to the Constant's caves. And why there's apparently absolutely no records of Lunar Ruins in regular ruins? No mural ever mentions a 2nd, older city. Nothing about the moon.

I can't exactly explain everything, and yes there are a ton of plot holes, and you don't have to like this explanation either but I am offering to explain some things.
I can't entirely explain the heads thing, maybe that was an oversight. But the reason there's not a single piece of reference material to the Archives existing is because there wasn't supposed to be any. If anything we know the Ancients can get things done, simply look at the Military biome or the vastness of the place. We know that the Ancients desperately wanted to abandon Alter and the Moon magic. 
That's where the Fountains of Knowledge come into play, in their attempt to move onto Nightmare Fuel entirely they sealed away the Archives and quite literally, flushed their knowledge of Alter down the drain. Hence the stored knowledge capsules. 
This is also shown with the burial of Alters... altars. They buried them across the land and hid the Resonator to uncover them. Preventing Alter from being awakened again.
Anyways with that said it makes sense for there not to be any knowledge about the Archives existing. It was all buried and covered up. They did a good job at it too.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 minutes ago, -Variant said:

They buried them across the land and hid the Resonator to uncover them. Preventing Alter from being awakened again.

another good question. If the moon is in the space (or might be just in the sky in the constant) how they were able to reach there to use the alters?

[-Variant]

12 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

another good question. If the moon is in the space (or might be just in the sky in the constant) how they were able to reach there to use the alters?

Unfortunately I've been trying to figure this one out myself. I can't really offer much in regards to explaining this one but I'm going to assume Alter can manually lift/place down its Alters for them back when they worshiped it. We see it send down its pawn when trying to defend itself from Wagstaff in-game, maybe its in the same vain. Or maybe they had another resort or tools to commune/use them at the time, something akin to the Sealed portal. 

[QuartzBeam]

19 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

another good question. If the moon is in the space (or might be just in the sky in the constant) how they were able to reach there to use the alters?

They grew a giant beanstalk that led them to the moon. Duh.

[Szczuku]

47 minutes ago, -Variant said:

We know that the Ancients desperately wanted to abandon Alter and the Moon magic. 

Sorry but where exactly is that stated? 

Yours is not a bad explanation but to me that just sounds like your personal headcanon (unless I'm missing some info).

Here's mine:

Ancients had appreciation for the 'Moon' mainly because it was a source of a good building material, the moon rock.

Alter has sent down its 3rd altar as that's just what eldritch beings do: they look for subjects. Maybe it has noticed that a group of bug-people had begun collecting pieces of its shell and decided to strike there.

Ancients discover the 2 pieces and began wondering what to do. Soon they had constructed the 1st Moon Stone. With the altar in the stone and the full moon above, they've been given lunar knowledge and began worshiping Alter. Many new Moon Stones would be created during that time, to power their stuff. Soon the Ancients would discover the iridescent gem and its battery-like properties. The altar would only work every full moon. So Alter was never awake to begin with and the Ancients didn't know that it was actually an eye. 

Something (lets say it was Gnaw, cuz why not) began making life miserable on the surface. The Ancients gathered what they could and headed to the caves. Unforunately the altar wouldn't work underground. To save their precious Alter-translator from, lets say Gnaw's Merms, they disassembled it and burried its parts, creating a device needed to find them once Gnaw was over. In the caves over many years Ancients have constructed the Lunar Ruins, being able to use lunar magic thanks to iridescent gems. Storing knowledge in water was just how they did that, maybe due to Alter, maybe that's just how humanoid bugs do.

Plot hole. Something forces them out of the Lunar Ruins and either due to some disaster or simply the passage of time only the Ancient Archive remains nowadays.

See? It's nothing more than my own headcanon and yet I believe it makes enough sense (up untill the plot hole). So yeah, unless I'm missing some critical information your explanation is just your headcanon to me.

[Ohan]

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Warly's update post said he sailed from SW to DST, we can assume Wormwood fell

I can imagine there being tropical islands somewhere across the ocean of the dst continent from where Warly sailed but imo Wormwoods arrival cant be as easily explained. Suppose he fell from the hamlet mountain plateaus where did he fall down to? The dst continent has no mountains so he couldn’t have ‘fallen’ directly into DST. Which I think means he must’ve sailed or something to dst from the hamlet continent after he came down the mountain plateaus.. 

if we’re talking plot holes, Wormwood’s arrival is a big one imo. Not only his arrival but also the way he has not been connected to an entire content arc focused around the moon at all. It’s like the detail that his gem fell from the moon was completely forgotten. 

im not talking about some grandiose reveal where wormwood turns out to be alter’s baby and undercover agent with accompanying refresh where he gets crazy moon powers but just something to address the fact that he’s literally a creation of the moon. Until then my headcanon is that the hamlet moon is not the same moon as in dst 

could also just be that his gem falling from the (a?) moon was just a cute story thing for klei as a simple way to introduce a new character in hamlet and nothing more lol. And when dst’s moon arc came about they suddenly remembered they added a survivor that was created by the moon but decided it was too much trouble to connect a fringe DLC character to the main “plot” and so didn’t bother.. that’s another headcanon of mine 

ok Wormwood rant over

[Capybara007]

13 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Not to mention the general shift of dst's tone- as it also affects the lore.

unrelated but have you seen how bearger looks in the terraria crossover animation compared to the ingame bearger? its underwhelming

[FourthLess]

4 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

unrelated but have you seen how bearger looks in the terraria crossover animation compared to the ingame bearger? its underwhelming

A lot of recent animations look worse compared to the ones from the past. rwys one was the worst in terms of butchering characters imo. (poor Webber and Wormwood)

[cropo]

An extremely hard question to answer. It definitely feels different from the old Don't Starve story.  The old one kind of had this satirical display of Western colonialism, the games mechanics, dead civilization having aztec/native-looking inspiration and artwork. Pigs having names but players needing to exploit them to survive in the world, etc.  It feels like the main ''theme'' of the game has changed to an epic battle between a force of darkness and another unknown force, with the characters stuck in the middle of it. The old 1920's setting and aesthetic is there, but it doesn't really have the same feeling as the old game.

 

The story is clearly being made up as they go, but I don't really see why this is a bad thing. Aren't most stories made up in chunks rather than fully planned out painstakingly from the very start?

 

Rather than blaming Tencent, Klei, or Covid for how the story is turning out I would honestly put the blame on the consumer market, the unyielding power of a live-service game rather than Singleplayer experiences to remember, trying to get a bunch of people in on Multiplayer like every other survival game so they can have silly moments on twitch streams. The profitability in marketing towards that group of people is just too powerful, and the story wouldn't have survived if they tried to keep it the way it was in SP imo. 

 

I don't entirely hate the direction DST's plot has unfolded, in fact there are a lot of cool things that have come due to it....but in terms of preference I kinda like how it used to be better.   The games still great though, and new content that is fun to play keeps coming out and there's literally no other game like this on the market so yeah.

[-Variant]

3 hours ago, Szczuku said:

Sorry but where exactly is that stated?

It's never outright said. Nothing in the lore is or has been. What I said is as solid as what most people believed was the source of Thulecite way before Moths came into play. My wording there was rough, I should've just said that they turned away from Lunar Magic and wanted to cover up their tracks.

Regardless all I said was picked up from environmental story telling alongside the Ancient murals. You can very obviously see the use of both Shadow and Moon magic and their turn away from Moon magic in the murals. 

Though there's some other bits that are said in quotes, like them not living off the Fuel originally and them storing their knowledge away.

Also I didn't and won't claim I know everything, I'm moreso just trying to explain where I believe they're headed lore wise. To tie up loose ends like giving an explanation as to why we've never seen or heard of the Archives till now. Scypham did some excellent lore posts during RoTs development that I'd advise trying to dig up. You don't have to agree with any conclusions but the facts and evidence go a long way.
 

[Hornete]

5 hours ago, -Variant said:

Unfortunately I've been trying to figure this one out myself. I can't really offer much in regards to explaining this one but I'm going to assume Alter can manually lift/place down its Alters for them back when they worshiped it. We see it send down its pawn when trying to defend itself from Wagstaff in-game, maybe its in the same vain. Or maybe they had another resort or tools to commune/use them at the time, something akin to the Sealed portal. 

I'm thinking Wormwood is some kind of pawn/prophet from Alter too. It's weird that a green gem just.... supposedly suddenly fell from the moon onto the Constant. But I've no idea what Alter would want Wormwood to do. Poor Wormwood doesn't really have much moon stuff going for him despite being born of it.

I guess he uh, is the only one of the characters who knows what to do with the knowledge capsules from the Archives while all the other characters question what to do with it.