Having farily recently gotten more into the Endless IP, I think this sheds some light on many desgin choices regarding narrtive. On the whole, I think it is a good mentality.

However, I think the problem that arrises with the fact that there is no one Auriga map, for example, or that no real time-line is established is that it makes the lore feel very...secondary, for lack of a better term.

While the idea that the player creates their own canon, so to say, it perhaps robs someone the notion of there being a sense of "permanency". I think in general that this is a major problem for IPs that in different ways suffer from "cannonzation issues" (Star Wars and Fallour are two of many that comes to mind.) To try and make my point as clear as I can, the fact that there is such a thing as the Dust Wars, but then what comes after that during the events of the Endless Space games for example, is entirely left up to the player, makes the lore and descriptions of everything to be less prioritized.

Obviously, this is a set of video games, with more installments to come. It is also games that focuses on gameplay rather than narrative or story, which is nothing I have a problem with. The issue I might have is just that fact that (being someone who finds immersion and narrative to be a major motivation for engrossing oneself in games, movies and books) having it feel like a side activity coupled with few established events and lack of a main story or primary focus, leaves it too thin to be engaging. Having many facts vague and mysterious is something I actually like a lot. As in, what really happened to the Endless, who are the Lost and so on. But I can't shake the notion that without the narrative aspect being more relevant, it ends up making the galaxy feel limited, not endless.

By writing this, I am not trying to harshly critque the writing team, Amplitude or anyone in the community in general. This is just sort of where I've ended up with the lore. In so many aspects, I adore these games and I am actually finding myself in a community that I feel somewhat comfortable in. The reason I write this is simply because things like this make up major things that I think and wonder about. Often, frankly. I had the idea of posting something about this (lore and the IP itself) one of these days, and then I saw that the lead writer posted something relevant to those thoughts, it gave me a perfect room to share some thoughts.

Have a wonderful day.

Its super silly to ask on my part but its possible to get at least a cobfirmation on some numbers like , how big is the endless galaxy or how many people is a pop , how big is a ship or how fast it is or when the endless died or small stuff lile that :p ?.

Or maybe some info on the biology of the endless space races like the sophons or the cravers there will be information like that or maybe a book focused on or something lile thst  in the far future.

Thanks beforehand.

And a more far more important question , there is the posibibility that we might get a novel or an endless space book in tje future i would love one , i can dream i guess.

Sorry about my english and thanks alot.

There's one problem with this idea, we aren't given the tools to make our canon a reality. One persons canon could be that the Drakken or a hero of the Drakken survived, while another's canon could be that the broken lords or cultist survived, yet we aren't given the tools to be able to experience that in ES2, E.L's technical sequel in lore. We are only able to play as the vaulters and we cant use heroes like Namkang from E.L. Its a good concept that all playthroughs are canon, but in practice, it just falls flat. Perhaps ES3 could fix that, by bringing all the factions, heroes and Species from E.L and ES2 into one game. Allowing everyone's canon to become reality.

The two game world/universes of EL and ES are only tenuously connected. The Vaulters are clearly in both, and Opbot is all over the place, but I like to avoid too much obvious crossover between the games and game worlds. The reasons for this are:

- The Endless Universe is enormous; there could be a hundred different planets like Auriga so I don't want it to appear that Auriga is at the center of all of our games

- Following on to that, there could be thousands of factions like the EL factions, and hundreds more like the ES factions, that we will discover alongside you all as we continue to make games

- Having some crossover is good so that the community has references and anchors and the occasional Easter egg, but too much of that means too much repeated content -- and no credible maker of video games would make their players happy with that

In addition, if we were to do the opposite, and have lots of EL factions in ES and pull the two game worlds tightly together, then suddenly the vast galaxy that was exploited by the Endless telescopes into a pretty small package.

Finally, given all of that, and the multi-dimensionality of space-time and the desire to make a player playthrough be a valid story, we would really rather not condense the gigantic possibility space of the Endless games down to a linear set of "first this then that...". Things will eventually seep out over time that shrink that possibility space, like the Vaulter story in ES2 altering the end of EL, or Amplitude releasing a canonical map of Auriga, or .... other things we are working on (mwa ha ha haaaa). But I want to keep that sense of wonder and vast scope of potential stories as wide as possible for as long as I can.

-Slow

So the chances of seeing Researcher Namkang and the Drakken being allies with Senya Snowridge and the Hissho in a future Endless space game are low but never zero?

Slowhands wrote:

The two game world/universes of EL and ES are only tenuously connected. The Vaulters are clearly in both, and Opbot is all over the place, but I like to avoid too much obvious crossover between the games and game worlds. The reasons for this are:

- The Endless Universe is enormous; there could be a hundred different planets like Auriga so I don't want it to appear that Auriga is at the center of all of our games

- Following on to that, there could be thousands of factions like the EL factions, and hundreds more like the ES factions, that we will discover alongside you all as we continue to make games

- Having some crossover is good so that the community has references and anchors and the occasional Easter egg, but too much of that means too much repeated content -- and no credible maker of video games would make their players happy with that

In addition, if we were to do the opposite, and have lots of EL factions in ES and pull the two game worlds tightly together, then suddenly the vast galaxy that was exploited by the Endless telescopes into a pretty small package.

Finally, given all of that, and the multi-dimensionality of space-time and the desire to make a player playthrough be a valid story, we would really rather not condense the gigantic possibility space of the Endless games down to a linear set of "first this then that...". Things will eventually seep out over time that shrink that possibility space, like the Vaulter story in ES2 altering the end of EL, or Amplitude releasing a canonical map of Auriga, or .... other things we are working on (mwa ha ha haaaa). But I want to keep that sense of wonder and vast scope of potential stories as wide as possible for as long as I can.

-Slow

Hopefully this doesn't sound aggressive because I certainly don't mean it that way (and feel free to correct me), but one of my biggest complaints about the Endless Universe is that there's a lot of non-concrete lore that I can't dive into. For example, the Vaulters probably were the only faction to escape Auriga, but other factions could have. While the looseness of the lore adds to the mystique around the lore in general, it's frustrating to know that there's no "right" outcome for anything, and removes a lot of my want to dive into the lore and "uncover" what's going on. As a player, knowing my playthrough isn't canonical doesn't particularly bother me, it's just an interesting alternative story.

Another thing I find frustrating is that there's no explanation as to why things are different in ES1 and ES2. Why aren't the Sheredyn an autonomous faction anymore, and are demoted to just being a subfaction within the empire? Why aren't the Harmony considered a major faction anymore? Where did the Automatons go?

And probably the thing I find most frustrating is the increasing amount of factions with The Lost in their backstory, but no real explanation as to what the lost are, or a timeline of events when things have happened. For example, when did the Nakalim rule? Did they overlap with the Endless? What led to their downfall? Do The Lost facilitate the creation of races, because most worlds with the lost tend to be.. special (with Auriga and Koyasil being the biggest examples).

Thank you for a work, love what you write!

CaptainCobbs wrote:

Hopefully this doesn't sound aggressive because I certainly don't mean it that way (and feel free to correct me), but one of my biggest complaints about the Endless Universe is that there's a lot of non-concrete lore that I can't dive into. For example, the Vaulters probably were the only faction to escape Auriga, but other factions could have. While the looseness of the lore adds to the mystique around the lore in general, it's frustrating to know that there's no "right" outcome for anything, and removes a lot of my want to dive into the lore and "uncover" what's going on. As a player, knowing my playthrough isn't canonical doesn't particularly bother me, it's just an interesting alternative story.

Another thing I find frustrating is that there's no explanation as to why things are different in ES1 and ES2. Why aren't the Sheredyn an autonomous faction anymore, and are demoted to just being a subfaction within the empire? Why aren't the Harmony considered a major faction anymore? Where did the Automatons go?

And probably the thing I find most frustrating is the increasing amount of factions with The Lost in their backstory, but no real explanation as to what the lost are, or a timeline of events when things have happened. For example, when did the Nakalim rule? Did they overlap with the Endless? What led to their downfall? Do The Lost facilitate the creation of races, because most worlds with the lost tend to be.. special (with Auriga and Koyasil being the biggest examples).

Thank you for a work, love what you write!

The Answer to the first question can be found in the first text of the thread, the Devs want everyone's version to be canon and while we might see more backstory and lore about factions and people, we wont see what is considered the right outcome in major events, as it would break the Devs belief in making your own canon.

For the Second question, Ive heard in videos on the Endless Universe youtube channel that ES2 is a reboot of ES1, though the Devs are unsure whether it is  soft or hard reboot, as it has some of the same characters but at the same time, new major factions have replaced previous major factions.

Im gonna have to agree with you on the third question, the lost do seem to be replacing the endless as the mysterious long lost civilization, Its starting to feel more like Lost Space instead of Endless Space.

Yes yes I'm aware it's a reboot, but I find the point of "everyone's version is canon" to be very.. off-putting. "If no everyone's version is canon, no one's is". Since a large portion of the events that happen aren't canonical, I don't feel like the canon itself has much weight in my gameplay. The 'dynamic canon' just feels like a lame solution to something that could be much cooler.

The Lost just feel like a more endless endless, I don't find their lore as it is now to be particularly interesting, and hope that the concept is improved in the future.