like the title says.
Where can I find out from FDev what lore still is considered canon?
- Thread starter Orion_Ancient
- Start date
There is no one, canonical place for ED lore. Nor is there a place where they lay out he old lore and categorically state "This is true, this has been altered, this has been retconned out of existence". We've basically had to guess, in combination with the occasional official statement.
As a general rule, the Order of Canonicity is:
- ED in-game sources (places such as Galnet, the system descriptions, tourist beacons, etc).
- The ED game manual.
- ED officially-licenced fiction.
- FE2 in-game material, manual and licenced ficiton.
- FFE in-game material, manual and licenced fiction
- Original Elite in-game material, manual and licenced fiction.
As a general rule, much of the original-Elite stuff has been retconned. Most of the original procedurally-generated star systems have not been included in any subsequent games (except for the tiny Old Worlds cluster around Lave), and the nature of the galaxy, where humans lived side-by-side with dozens of intelligent alien species, is radically different.
Much of the FE2 official canon has been retained in the game, in terms of the basic historical timeline of galactic colonization and the millenia-old Federation-Empire conflict. Many (but not all) of the procedurally-generated planets from the FE2 galaxy were copied over into ED, along with their written-for-FE2 history.
The FFE game had a Story, in which the player could choose to side with either the INRA or the Alliance on the Thargoid question. Unfortunately, that game was so buggy, it wouldn't actually let you side with the INRA; the only viable option was siding with the Alliance, saving the Thargoids, and getting given a Thargoid scout ship of your own to fly around as a reward. Alas, that particular piece of lore (that someone saved the Thargoids from an evil INRA plot to wipe them out back in the 3250s) has been officially declared retconned. The alternate history, in which someone became an INRA agent and wiped the Thargoids out completely, also never happened. ED assumes none of the Thargoid-related events in FFE never took place.
I am always skeptical of official novels as canonical sources of information. For example, many people quote the original Elite novels to cite the existence of factions within Thargoid society (nice Oresrians and xenophobic Kalaxians, or some such). No, sorry, but I don't think that piece of lore has survived - it dates form a time when the galaxy teemed with intelligent aliens, and that time has never existed in ED. If I recall correctly, the Oresrians were originally a completely different species to the Thargoids, they merely bore a superficial physical resemblance to them - which can obviously be no longer the case. I would therefore assume that Thargoid culture is homogeneous, until and unless you see in-game evidence otherwise.
As for improvements in Lore, we are supposed to be getting some kind of Codex later in the Beyond season, which is supposed to be giving us a more user-friendly way to search for and keep track of the official lore.
As a general rule, the Order of Canonicity is:
- ED in-game sources (places such as Galnet, the system descriptions, tourist beacons, etc).
- The ED game manual.
- ED officially-licenced fiction.
- FE2 in-game material, manual and licenced ficiton.
- FFE in-game material, manual and licenced fiction
- Original Elite in-game material, manual and licenced fiction.
As a general rule, much of the original-Elite stuff has been retconned. Most of the original procedurally-generated star systems have not been included in any subsequent games (except for the tiny Old Worlds cluster around Lave), and the nature of the galaxy, where humans lived side-by-side with dozens of intelligent alien species, is radically different.
Much of the FE2 official canon has been retained in the game, in terms of the basic historical timeline of galactic colonization and the millenia-old Federation-Empire conflict. Many (but not all) of the procedurally-generated planets from the FE2 galaxy were copied over into ED, along with their written-for-FE2 history.
The FFE game had a Story, in which the player could choose to side with either the INRA or the Alliance on the Thargoid question. Unfortunately, that game was so buggy, it wouldn't actually let you side with the INRA; the only viable option was siding with the Alliance, saving the Thargoids, and getting given a Thargoid scout ship of your own to fly around as a reward. Alas, that particular piece of lore (that someone saved the Thargoids from an evil INRA plot to wipe them out back in the 3250s) has been officially declared retconned. The alternate history, in which someone became an INRA agent and wiped the Thargoids out completely, also never happened. ED assumes none of the Thargoid-related events in FFE never took place.
I am always skeptical of official novels as canonical sources of information. For example, many people quote the original Elite novels to cite the existence of factions within Thargoid society (nice Oresrians and xenophobic Kalaxians, or some such). No, sorry, but I don't think that piece of lore has survived - it dates form a time when the galaxy teemed with intelligent aliens, and that time has never existed in ED. If I recall correctly, the Oresrians were originally a completely different species to the Thargoids, they merely bore a superficial physical resemblance to them - which can obviously be no longer the case. I would therefore assume that Thargoid culture is homogeneous, until and unless you see in-game evidence otherwise.
As for improvements in Lore, we are supposed to be getting some kind of Codex later in the Beyond season, which is supposed to be giving us a more user-friendly way to search for and keep track of the official lore.
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This was built from Galnets, in-game sources and official novels. Not 100% complete, but a fair stab at the dated information. The right hand column relates to old lore.. some has been retained, but some discarded. The dates certainly don't match.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ej6vbPPE7R9LbaYMMcAh5fftVa4d4hoGdaft3itb_6s/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ej6vbPPE7R9LbaYMMcAh5fftVa4d4hoGdaft3itb_6s/edit?usp=sharing
This ^ but I would go further and say that the first line "- ED in-game sources (places such as Galnet, the system descriptions, tourist beacons, etc)." is the ONLY canonical sources we can go by. It doesn't mean I don't like or even would prefer some of the book story lines to what we are presented in game but its just the reality of it. They have retconned out the old and are re-writing the story as ED goes on.
I think this is very relevant as to why there is so much pro-thargoid sentiment out there and why others don't seem to understand it. The books paint a very different picture of the Thargoids and their nature but what we have in the actuality of the game I don't now or in the future will represent the book versions and their civil war etc. Unfortunately I think what we have with the current generic baddie Goids is all we will get.
I put together a timeline of the Alliance history.
At the bottom of the first post are links to Primary Sources.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/365538-A-history-of-the-Alliance-from-in-game-sources
There is a spreadsheet of all the Tourist Beacons in Game. And that is CANNON.
And then there are the FFE journals. These are all the newspaper articles from FFE.
You’ll see placeholders for your CMDR name and for NPCs you have interacted with and factions.
The newspapers have very different “tones” and some journos are just making it up, and some won’t appear unless certain mission conditions are met, so sorting out “Cannon” is very messy.
There are planetary descriptions which have been brought forward EG Ross 128 the Prison planet.
Drew Wagar signed an NDA to see some of the lore that Michael Brooke’s has developed.
But the reality is that that they are moving the story forward. No one will ever sort out “what actually happened” because it’s all rubbish. Why spend the effort to figure out if Mic Turner was killed by Fed agents or INRA or Thargoids. It’s better to have conflicting stories left as rumors and tales rather than try to figure out “So if Meredith Argent went to Prison, does that mean Thargoid technology is used in Lakon drives, but not Gutamaya?” There are too many dependencies and “yeah but”s to straighten it out.
For me: read the old material read the new material. Join the dots in whatever way seems most plausible tell your tale.
[video=youtube_share;7ikxvy3EinM]https://youtu.be/7ikxvy3EinM[/video]
At the bottom of the first post are links to Primary Sources.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/365538-A-history-of-the-Alliance-from-in-game-sources
There is a spreadsheet of all the Tourist Beacons in Game. And that is CANNON.
And then there are the FFE journals. These are all the newspaper articles from FFE.
You’ll see placeholders for your CMDR name and for NPCs you have interacted with and factions.
The newspapers have very different “tones” and some journos are just making it up, and some won’t appear unless certain mission conditions are met, so sorting out “Cannon” is very messy.
There are planetary descriptions which have been brought forward EG Ross 128 the Prison planet.
Drew Wagar signed an NDA to see some of the lore that Michael Brooke’s has developed.
But the reality is that that they are moving the story forward. No one will ever sort out “what actually happened” because it’s all rubbish. Why spend the effort to figure out if Mic Turner was killed by Fed agents or INRA or Thargoids. It’s better to have conflicting stories left as rumors and tales rather than try to figure out “So if Meredith Argent went to Prison, does that mean Thargoid technology is used in Lakon drives, but not Gutamaya?” There are too many dependencies and “yeah but”s to straighten it out.
For me: read the old material read the new material. Join the dots in whatever way seems most plausible tell your tale.
[video=youtube_share;7ikxvy3EinM]https://youtu.be/7ikxvy3EinM[/video]
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