Trope Talk: Environmental Storytelling

[@freddyP300]

Working in a research lab provides me with great real life examples of Environmental Storytelling. Last week while reaching into a machine I hit my head on a pillow taped to a protruding metal rod I didn't see, and instantly knew alot about the world.

[@rebeccacourtney5286]

That is amazing

[@jabisdumb]

*I am taking notes*

[@joaomrtins]

Tô operate a hydraulic press you have to be instructed to NEVER leave the lever on. If you are using it it's in place. Once you've achieved the pressure it's on you hand, so if you're gonna take a look on whatever you're pressing, you don't pop you eye out.

[@Nortarachanges]

I am immediately in love with the pillow-provider. They are a true hero who doesn’t want those who come after to suffer as they have

[@caltheuntitled8021]

@@NortarachangesThey may also be included in “those who come after” themself

[@gumbatlal]

My favorite example of environmental storytelling was when I went to Ikea and the fake foam apple in the fruit bowl had a bite taken out of it.

[@1996Stein]

Was it a fake bite or did someone bite the fake apple and put it back? Lol

[@candy-coatedrose513]

I came to my college's gym for the first time, and there was a sign in a hallway near the women's locker room stating that 'This is NOT the women's locker room. IT IS A HALLWAY.'

[@SoaringLettuce]

Reminder, every industrial warning sign you've ever seen is there because someone at some point got hurt doing what the sign warns you not to do. That's environmental storytelling right there.

[@atroxiv]

OSHA guidelines are eldritch texts inked with the blood of thousands.

[@Rainears129]

So growing up, I knew my grandfather actually had a bit to do with vehicle safety (according to dad, he's one of the people who helped develop the reflective tapes on the backs of semi-trucks because people in small sports cars used to decapitate themselves thinking they could drive under them). What I didn't know is that my great grandfather (grandpa's FIL) is actually one of the people behind why holes in streets and roads have to be so clearly marked (he fell down a hole while walking one day, dying very young).

[@alecdickens1042]

"Do ***NOT*** Sit On The Generator" That one sentence conveys a very eventful/tragic day for some poor fool who wanted to take a break.

[@kingsadvisor18]

Okay... I'm only going to ask this... ONCE Who. The fuck. Has been drinking the shampoo?

[@Canadamus_Prime]

Shake hands with danger

[@wolfdragonblood2015]

since i'm early for once i just wanna briefly mention the doll from mulan. you know the one. the singular abandoned doll with no child to hold it that gave modern audience an immediate understanding of the horrors of war and the threat the huns posed to this country and it's people. the doll that stops the jovial "a girl worth fighting for" song dead in it's tracks. nobody says "the huns burned this village and slaughtered it's people" they just show you the aftermath and all the characters reaction.

[@joendeo1890]

Not just that but it weaves the somewhat silly song into the serious moment. The men were singing selfishly of what they wanted in a partner, and saying they would fight for that woman. But at the end of the song they learned the hard way that the real girls worth fighting for. The little girls who can't defend themselves from the huns. Symbolized by the doll. The doll's owner was the girl worth fighting for, and now she was gone because part of the Chinese army failed.

[@gerstein03]

@@joendeo1890this. And the movie doesn't outright tell you this with something like Mulan singing "a girl worth fighting for" as she puts the doll down. It's entirely implied and you need to be told what the symbolism is which makes it more effective

[@hiwaga7399]

It also completely changes the mood of the film. A Girl Worth Fighting For is the last song in the movie and after it cuts abruptly the rest of the movie stops being a wacky adventure musical.

[@OriginalCreatorSama]

@@hiwaga7399 tbh that description alone points out how those young bright eyed kids now experience the horrors of war. they're men now. The songs in their heart are replaced with a silent determination to do what they must to protect what they love. Not a lack of hope, but hope used as fuel to fight for a world where those horrors won't exist anymore.

[@joyc.e.7511]

Omg, such a great example! Everytime I watch that scene I get chills due to the implications. Even as a child I understood it and it really brought home how awful war was, nothing to be excited about.

[@ReapCykes]

Cheese is actually environmental storytelling of the transformation of milk

[@maximutatro3176]

Underrated

[@A_Shrubbery1901]

@@maximutatro3176it's been 20 minutes, let them cook

[@popolekupasupport2246]

​@@A_Shrubbery1901 Raw cheese>Cooked cheese

[@maximutatro3176]

@@A_Shrubbery1901 hows it taste?

[@TreeHairedGingerAle]

...This comment has changed the entire flavor of my life. Thank you 🖖🏾✨

[@ElusiveMysteryMan]

Adventure Time is a great example of subtley telling a post apocalyptic horror story in the middle of a kid's show through environmental storytelling.

[@mcv2178]

Never thought of that....kinda noticed, but never NOTICED that I had noticed, if you get me. Thanks!

[@stevejakab274]

Just the opening credits is a great exercise in environmental storytelling.

[@hiwaga7399]

I had caught on to the first scene in the opening credits since season 3 was rolling out and it still took me til season 7 to realize what happened

[@yeahkeen2905]

@@hiwaga7399the fact it took seeing your comment today for me to realize that the literal first thing we ever see in Adventure Time is a destroyed landscaped littered with nuclear bombs is blowing my mind

[@jsc1jake512]

Especially one of the new longer episodes called Obsidian. It shows more of Marceline's backstory and really sells the tragedy of what the Mushroom War left behind as the land was still healing (It's called the mushroom war because of mushroom clouds due to nuclear war).

[@hectorrodriguezgonzalez8938]

Props to Red for not bringing up Avatar for an entier video, i know it was dificult

[@poenpotzu2865]

But she did show Reboot

[@hectorrodriguezgonzalez8938]

@@poenpotzu2865 hey we can't be asking for the imposible here

[@thatcrazynerdgirlproductio4481]

Especially considering the environmental storytelling in Gyatso’s corpse being surrounded by Fire nation soldier bodies

[@al_eggs]

or the battlefield in Zuko Alone

[@krisharmon5572]

​@@poenpotzu2865 At least I got one spot off my bingo card

[@AnthanKrufix]

Best Environmental Storytelling: A cliff in Dark Souls with the message "Try Jumping" surrounded by 3 dozen bloodstains.

[@anewhero1216]

Or “Liar Ahead” in front of another message that is suggesting that the normal wall in front of you is an illusory wall lol

[@NihongoWakannai]

ok... but maybe those guys are just bad at jumping and didnt do it properly

[@thomaswalsh4552]

Why are there bloodstains surrounding the message? Is the message at the bottom of the cliff? Are the bloodstains at the top of the cliff?

[@johhada9304]

​@@thomaswalsh4552 In the games, bloodstains appear where a player was a few seconds before dying

[@thomaswalsh4552]

@ ah, thanks

[@bdletoast09]

Bethesda: SKELETONS. SKELETONS IN FUNNY POSES EVERYWHERE.

[@goroakechi6126]

FromSoft looking on nervously

[@brownjacket2339]

Raider's Outpost: Corpses! Spikes! Half a dozen teddy bears with funny hats reading newspaper or something.

[@greenhydra10]

@@goroakechi6126 Don't give up, skeleton.

[@KLBizzy1]

@@goroakechi6126 With a helping of Berserk references here and there.

[@MarinaInChains]

also teddy bears and mannequins!

[@mightyone1000]

Table of unfinished dinner. Moldy food. Aged milk. Ashtrays. Still warm coffee. Rats and other pests in the cupboards. Cake. Bottles of opened wine. 2 empty glasses in a single occupancy home. Smoking food on the oven. Kitchen knives in a place they shouldn't be. Photos on the fridge. So many environmental story beats in the kitchen.

[@Gunbladefire]

A cigarette tray filled with stubs. The smell of mildew as a soft wind shudders through a broken window. A door with it's hinges ripped off and discarded. Paint peeling off the walls. Somehow there is a singular untouched McDonald's burger in the middle of the room on the coffee table. It is left untouched, and if you did not know better...... edible.

[@rowdyriolu1]

@@Gunbladefire Bro it's McDonald's. _Everybody_ knows better XD

[@ikustioa6963]

Pointing out this stuff in Undertale to my daughter is really fun. Toriel’s house has a dusty kids’ room with broken and mismatched old toys, and a single chocolate bar in the fridge; Alphys’ lab seems like she’s just a goofy loser, but the visible workspace isn’t being used and there’s a half-empty bag of dog food; Asgore’s kitchen trash is full of discarded attempts at making his wife’s old recipe-pretty fantastic.

[@al_eggs]

It’s impressive that Toby Fox could add all of that depth to what seems like flavour text without it being heavy-handed. Describing what’s physically there implies backstory, and there’s no need for further exposition.

[@ikustioa6963]

@@al_eggs I didn’t realize till someone pointed it out that the weapons and armor are all torn/burned/old because they belonged to the other murdered children.

[@logicaloverdrive8197]

​@@ikustioa6963Wait WHAT?! THAT'S SO COOL!

[@Tinker-13]

You just reminded me of how in Deltarune, there a trash can in the kitchen that has a floral scent to it. In Chapter 1 Asgore asks you to give Toriel a bouquet of flowers he made. After giving her the flowers, the trash can has a stronger scent.

[@titadogelo5090]

@@logicaloverdrive8197not only that, the order the pair of items appear is also the order each soul is used in the Photoshop Flowey fight. That, together with the Ball Game in Snowdin, gives a surprising amount of information about the children, despite none of them ever being directly mentioned other than “we killed them for their souls”

[@laurenvelentzas5044]

I’m glad you brought up how cleanliness can be used as environmental storytelling too! It’s easy to notice when a room is messy or dirty because most people are used to clean environments, but seeing a setting that’s supposed to be dirty and messy be unnaturally sterile is just as cool (One of my favorite things is when a story has a chaotic wild rebellious character turn out to have come from a really uptight stifling background, and that’s reflected in their house or their room being way too neat for their entire vibe.)

[@NobodyC13]

I watched David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo the other day and thought about how that film used environmental storytelling about messiness and cleanliness. Mikail Blomkvist is investigating all the Vangers and their homes on their ancestral island, most of the homes are old Swedish mansions, probably built before the turn of the century, with Henrik Vanger 's mansion (the person who hired Blomkvist) being warm and cozy to signify him as the good Vanger. Then Blomkvist visits his brother, Harald, a former Nazi and recluse, and his home is cluttered with relics and memorabilia and unabashed about his past his past: "Hide the past like they do? Under a thin, shiny veneer? Like an IKEA table? I am the most honest of all of them. [Blomkvist: "The family?"] Sweden!" Then we get to the house of Martin Vanger, the brother of Harriett, the missing person of the investigation. Martin's house sticks out because it's a modern minimalist contemporary glass mansion compared to the old and classical designs of the other Vanger mansions, and throughout the whole story Martin, apart from Henrik, seemed to be the white sheep of the Vangers. Then the twist happens and the very nice and very clean Martin Vanger turns out to be the worst of all them all, with his mansion actually having a torture dungeon in the basement and Martin actually being a serial rapist and killer, perpetuating the same religious based murders as his father did on women half a century prior.

[@NemisCassander]

I was personally thinking about in space environments, one way to signal that the robots have taken over is to have everything unnaturally clean.

[@caseypalme9656]

Particularly if there is a murder scene or something, and the party returns to it and the entire place has been scrubbed clean, not even dust to show footprints. One of the moments which signals just how dangerous of a situation the investigators are in if their quarry has the ability or resources to fully scrub a scene between the characters finding the body, and then returning with the cops.

[@JJJSmit9026]

One example I find really fun is the gelatinous cube in D&D. It slides across the ground, picking up and dissolving every small object and every speck of dust until nothing is left. You can get the strange experience of a spotless floor coupled with dusty and abandoned desks and shelves.

[@Obi-Wan_Kenobi]

You see, when Anakin was telling us about the sand being coarse and rough and irritating, he was ACTUALLY utilizing environmental storytelling in the most literal sense!

[@ClericOfPholtus]

Anderson Skydiver talks deeply of this while laying out his thesis

[@eliavrad2845]

"Show, not tell" somehow applied in reversed to environmental storytelling

[@sebastianevangelista4921]

You are everywhere, dude! How do you do it?

[@magnusbane420]

​@@sebastianevangelista4921 having the high ground has many benefits

[@orsolyafekete7485]

@@magnusbane420 benefits some may consider... unnatural?

[@kheegimunkhuu9303]

I love how the reverse of the whole cleanliness thing can also work very effectively. Instead of characters coming across an unexpectedly messy place, they can instead happen to be somewhere where it's EXPECTED to be dirty, cluttered and poorly maintained (like an abandoned building), but come across an area where it's surprisingly clean and very suspiciously well kept to indicate that someone is in there and maintaining the place to be livable.

[@daviddaugherty2816]

That kind of reminds me of every piece of space sci-fi where the survivor they came to check up on is surprisingly okay...

[@Dr_shooty]

I think my favorite example from arcane is Silco's office. It is very much your standard mob boss astetic, carved wooden desk, glass wiskey tumbler, nice leather. And then on his desk his ash tray is graffettied piece if junk metal, same with his coffee mug. Despite it completely being at odds with his image of cleanliness and power he basically has the art project mug and tray made by his kid.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

Aww.

[@I5g58]

I think I enjoy the murals the most. They show that there is beauty in the undercity that doesn’t exist in piltover. They showcase people trying to find meaning in their life. And their is something just deeply beautiful about a person in a unjust situation creating a piece of art to share with the world

[@matthewschoen9827]

Zelda and Links house having one bed is some A+ environmental story telling.

[@doandadrestarahma5290]

You can hear the fanfic writing itself

[@anewhero1216]

Link’s weapon racks have been replaced with photos, the dinner table has two chairs, I believe I remember hearing that if you have a BotW save file where you finished The Champion’s Ballad the photo of the Champions with Link and Zelda is still on the shelf, Zelda felt the need to construct a private study under the well outside, the house being treated as “Zelda’s House” but fully allowing you to sleep in the bed, but even with all that, the people of Hateno Village don’t seem to know Link as well as they do Zelda paints a pretty detailed picture of the events of the last 8ish years - Link and Zelda are implied to be a couple, and are very busy helping to rebuild Hyrule with Zelda working with the people and Link stoically protecting people from monsters with his characteristic silence lol

[@megaing1322]

I just realized that environmental storytelling is so much more prevalent in Video Games than other media types because Chekhov's gun doesn't apply to the same degree as in other (even visual) media: Even if a background detail exists, is large and has quite a bit of effort put into it, there is no expectation that it will take a central role in the story. Large Open World games have potentially entire towns, houses, NPCs, ... that will never come up in the normal gameplay.

[@thomasallen9974]

very true however the environment does ALOT about informing what could be expected. A long time action fan knows that a generally circular area that contains little cover is usually an arena with either 1 tough foe or many weaker ones. This is even more prevalent if you happen to find a convenient cache of supplies.

[@dysr]

@@thomasallen9974Same with games bordering on the survival horror genre; if there’s a conspicuous body lying around or monster skulking around in the background, there’s a good chance you’ll end up fighting either it or it’s killer. See: Nightmare in Metroid Fusion.

[@Vinemaple]

In WoW, on patch week, you get environmental storytelling _in action._ If a quest in a new zone sends you to a place littered with *player* skeletons, stop, observe the environment, check for threats, and *carefully read your quest text.*

[@Stratelier]

@@Vinemaple Similarly, in several Souls games you can find messages left behind by other players (which may or may not actually be useful), as well as bloodstains left behind where other players have died.

[@wavesofbabies]

Not... Necessarily true. Usually if something has had the time, care, effort, and love put something into a video game, if was on purpose to be there. It's similar to animation in that way, as everything that is there was made by someone. This is in contrast to shooting on site for live action, where you get a ton of aspects of the scene that was picked by the director but existed in that way regardless of the film being made.

[@flibbernodgets7018]

If you like environmental storytelling, talk to an archaeologist. One I know told me of a site they found where neolithic humans were making projectile points, and there was a big pile of flakes/unfinished pieces and then waaaaaay off from the main cluster was a lone, nearly finished arrow head with a broken tip. They figure whoever was making that was almost done with it when they snapped it, got mad and chucked it as far as they could. This remarkably relatable and human story is still preserved for us across thousands of years by nothing more than the placement of dirt and rocks.

[@emilyjanet455]

That's genuinely kind of beautiful. I feel you, neolithic human.

[@typacsk]

I don't want to spoil the specific book, but there's a mystery set in the southwestern US where that specific thing is a **huge** plot point.

[@barleysixseventwo6665]

As a Civil Transportation Engineer, I’m very much in the opposite corner from Red. I’m always noticing background details and trying to piece together the past stories that might have made things hope they were, even when such details _weren’t_ intended! (Somehow cobbling together a history out of randomly generated video game landscapes, for instance). I think it’s because, as a Civil Engineer, a lot of what I do involves iterating on the work of past engineers. “Why did they make a road like this? Why is there an unusually barren area here? Who tries to make an intersection with 6 entrances?!” There are always answers! You just have to look up the old platts and city records to figure out why.

[@annekeener4119]

Exactly. Dumb rules and traditions usually start for a reason, even if that reason is eventually forgotten or completely goes away over time. It’s smart to evaluate whether they are still important or meaningful to keep going, but those trying to make change have to remember there are reasons stuff was built the way it was and to account for those reasons.

[@nerothewateruser8030]

Well now I have to know if you have found out why someone would make an intersection with 6 entrances-

[@gearandalthefirst7027]

@@nerothewateruser8030 Because every traffic engineer is issued a Government Special specifically to use on anyone who tries to stop them from adding more theoretical vehicle capacity. Which is a problem when they build a 8 lane highway through the middle of a city that was built 200 years before the invention of the stoplight.

[@billcox6791]

In a smaller way, I love the little stories told by doors and windows that have been bricked over. “And where the wall is built in new And is of ivy bare She paused-then opened and passed through A gate that once was there.”

[@Vinemaple]

I tell myself that the vehicles and structures in XCOM 2, that catch fire and explode even when hit by an ordinary pre-invasion bullet, are because ADVENT doesn't care about safety regulations. And whenever my memory tries to point out that, in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the same was true of normal human cars and buildings, I violently shush it and pretend not to hear.

[@anarnarqelion4403]

Theorizing is enrichment for fans. Yes the polar bear spends a lot of time on thawing and gnawing on the giant ice ball with the food in it. He labors for a long time to get his food. That does not mean that pre-thawing the food and just giving it to him would do him a favor. The puzzling over the missing scene and reading a bunch of fics and metas over how that one conversation might have went and how the characters got from point A to point B is the enjoyable part and presenting a definitive official version takes a lot of the fun out of it.

[@Duiker36]

Yup. A game isn't fun for someone if you hand them the controller while the victory screen music plays.

[@Charles-In-Charge]

SHOCKED I didn’t punch “Zuko Alone” on my bingo card this time

[@twojuiceman]

Same. I was counting on it

[@meghanhenderson6682]

No overt fawning over Reboot or Avatar...Red's showing complete rebellion against our bingo cards.

[@zenebean]

The giant stone earthbender rings embedded in that one field Zuko passes through live rent free in my head, and that's like the first few minutes

[@thetypingdragon]

@@meghanhenderson6682 She did overtly fawn over Ghibli though, so there is that.

[@diablominero]

Some guy on tumblr pointed out that Padme's job in Star Wars Episode 1 is environmental storytelling about Naboo's history. She's a child queen with a team of decoys to keep her from being assassinated and a limited term that expires before she's an adult. "I know you assassinated the last monarch, but you wouldn't assassinate this adorable kid, would you?" "Fine, if you're going to assassinate kids, I'll make your kid dress up the same way and stand next to them, so your assassin won't know which one to kill."

[@maddie9602]

It's fascinating to imagine what led them to that point. The fact that it's typical for queens to be crowned as children and abdicate as adults implies a situation like the Edo period Japanese emperors, where the queen is just a figurehead and most want out of the job as fast as possible to pursue actual political careers and actual power and influence. But the team of decoys imply, as you said, that assassinations are common on Naboo. Why would you assassinate a figurehead? But if the queen's not a figurehead, why is it the norm for her to be a child? It's fun to think about!

[@ASpaceOstrich]

@@maddie9602 Is it the norm for them to be a child, or was the last queen assassinated before the current heir was of age and they don't practice regency. Perhaps to discourage potential regents from assassinating.

[@belisauriusfish9406]

This is something interesting to think about. Because Naboo is usually portrayed as this beautiful, peaceful place, but they did have nasty conflicts with the gungans in the past, and it is the place that gave us the most trustworthy politician, Sheev. Even if there’s not immediate concern over someone assassinating their child queens, it still implies that it’s something that’s happened to the point where they take precautions.

[@charlottemyates629]

Another thing to take into account is that Monarch of Naboo is an elected position meaning the majority of the voting population of naboo picked a child to lead them and this is something they do regularly.

[@CalypsoRaven618]

Huh... that... that is a perspective.

[@CooperBriggs-m3y]

Every noodle scene must be written by a secret Italian

[@barbarayhivjaneahl3198]

You win the internet today

[@geosustento8894]

Noodles existed in China before Italy had pasta, though. Also, it's called NOODLE incident. Not pasta incident

[@bloodmongerzero4431]

Or asian

[@stevejakab274]

Tampopo offers you some ramen.

[@CooperBriggs-m3y]

@@geosustento8894 mama Mia

[@spy.mp4773]

A funny example of unintentional environmental storytelling I found recently: I play a monopoly mobile game called Monopoly Go, where you can attack your friends and other random people by wrecking one of their buildings, when you chose which building to wreck, if a building has already been wrecked you can see the profile picture of the person who wrecked it, so I came across someone whose profile picture was him with a girl (most likely his girlfriend) and all of his buildings were wrecked, and most of them where by the same person, the same girl who was in his profile picture

[@stuffz4040]

Covert advertising?

[@danielchen1047]

"Show, don't tell" really is such an ubiquitous rule for storytelling, huh?

[@Splicer-lb5xb]

With a little nuance, but yeah seems right.

[@anzaia2164]

Storyshowing

[@SixofQueens]

Absolutely. Except for the handful of instances where it isn't.

[@justinmartin4407]

As others have said, it's a rule in the same way that "I before E" is a rule. It works more times than not, but in weird and foreign instances, it doesn't. "Tell, don't show" is important, when trying to get a point across quickly, especially if it regards minor characters, but even in this instance, there should be "show, don't tell" in the background, or directly before or after. Maybe "Show and tell" should be the rule.

[@SixofQueens]

@@justinmartin4407 Or "show, unless you HAVE to tell."

[@HumbleTeller]

Breath of the Wild is a masterclass in environmental storytelling for me. I adore how most of the main ruins in this Hyrule were caused by the calamity 100 years ago. Ruins that show the escalation of the devastation without saying a single word. Hearing the S.O.S. morse code in the background of each of the divine beasts' themes giving a small timeline of when each of the champions were killed. Like how some of the S.O.S. calls are immediate while others are later on in their themes but become much more frantic towards the end

[@metarcee2483]

My favorite bit is the design of the towns, Rito Village in particular.

[@playingshadows123]

This is why I love old houses. If you pay attention, you can see decisions that past owners made to solve problems. And how those decisions affected future owners, and how those future owners dealt with said new problems. It's layers upon layers upon layers of history built into the environment.

[@anonymousperson4214]

When I was being taught to realistically weather reproduction antique furniture (long story), the old lady showing me was always very specific that wear spots had to come from realistic actions of humans. A part of carving that's easier to pull than the actual door handle. A place you use as an impromptu step stool when you're a child reaching to the back to get the cookie jar. Scuffs from things being taken out of low cupboards. Shiny spots on things people would touch regularly. It was like building human history into a piece for furniture from the most beautifully mundane side of life :)

[@metarcee2483]

Considering the repairs we've had to make to our house's "fixes," I can tell you that the last owner incorrectly thought himself a handyman.

[@marieroberts5664]

Since you did mention Tolkien and the Mines of Moria, I immediately thought of Gimli and another example of the world building and environmental storytelling... "I've seen better cheer in a graveyard" says Gimli to his companions as they go through the village/town below Edoras. You see the townsfolk - no laughter, no smiles, everyone gawks at the strangers but no welcome, no calling out to others to come see the new people FEATUREING A DWARF, AN ELF AND GANDALF HIMSELF! The folk are all dressed in black, but not rags, mourning. Everyone seems healthy and no starvation or beggers, but no children nearby. Still going through the routines of daily life, but not much will to do it. The village being overrun has everything and everyone looking not rich, but functional, the clothes are simple, but not ragged, and no one had anything black on. Mom has a horse, and can put a small bag with some rations together and get her healthy children on the healthy beast and get them to safety. Tells you a lot without saying a thing.

[@horseenthusiast9903]

Yes!!! I love how the environment of Edoras tells the story of Rohan's struggles before any members of the fellowship even really know what's going on in Meduseld. Along with this, I like how you can see Meduseld (and Edoras overall) mirror the state of Theoden. While he's held in thrall by Saruman and Wormtongue, the fires are low, the hall seems cold, and everything has this tinge of sadness and neglect. When Theoden comes to himself again, Meduseld is well-lit, people are eating, the people of Edoras are a bit busier outside, horses and riders are going to and fro, and there's even a guy walking what looks like hunting dogs in Meduseld.

[@FuzzyStripetail]

Cleanliness is next to dawning horror for that "No, I just live like this" coffee (or some other invariably hot drink) holding guy with awesome hair whose friend thought he was ransacked.

[@kaistephens2694]

Stares at Iori Junpei’s dorm room

[@anewhero1216]

@@kaistephens2694came here to say the same thing - rich girl Mitsuru, seeing a teenage boy’s messy room and thinking Junpei’s been robbed lol

[@Vinemaple]

I'm sure Red didn't come up with that bit, but she did a very good job sketching it out.

[@DarthRayj]

There's a scene in one of my favorite anime where one character (A) who's very studious, perfectionist, and dedicated to her work is in the hospital; she gets visited by one of the other characters (B) unexpectedly while she's walking through the halls, and returns to find character B is concerned that she got attacked because her hospital room is an absolute mess; only to find out that A basically doesn't take any care of her room because all she spends time on is her work and her studies, leaving her laundry all over and not caring whether anything is put away neatly unless it's crucial for her work.

[@ghoulboss7848]

11:34 I audibly scream "YESSSS" when red said this. As a background designer who cares immensely for environmental storytelling, we quite literally have a colloquialism that goes "A good background is the one nobody noticess" This more so goes into the perspective and architectural design of a BG, as people only tend to notice backgrounds if something is off about it, but its also a good rule of thumb, and can be very effectively applied to the atmospheric aspects and mood of a scene. Thank you for pointing this out, Red! You get it!!!!

[@StonetheDestroyer42]

Something I love about Hollow Knight's environmental storytelling, specifically, is that the creators of the game, Team Cherry themselves, jokingly defer to their fans to piece together the lore, because they didn't bother figuring out what anything meant beyond a core scaffold. And I think I like it so much because it's funny, but also because that's kind of how real history is uncovered. There wasn't some grand author writing events and then putting the fragments of those events into their setting, stuff happened, things got left, and sometimes between then and now, more stuff happened which wildly changed the context in which those first clues might be discovered, making piecing together that story nigh impossible.

[@metarcee2483]

I wonder if the reason the menderbug never got infected is because he's entirely content. He has nothing he wants that he doesn't have, nothing that he wishes would change, and no desires that can't be met. That's why The Radiance can't get to him; it's not because he's got such strong mental walls like Hornet, but because he's basically Sam Gangee.

[@skeleman5883]

I was honestly waiting for a mention of the original Bioshock. Just the juxtaposition between Andrew Ryan's introductory speech and the reveal of the outside of Rapture with what Rapture has become is absolutely brilliant

[@wakwakwakc337]

im surprised bioshock was not mentioned considering the fact that the audio logs you can find play big part in telling the whole story of the game

[@skeleman5883]

@@wakwakwakc337 That too, but if we talk about all of the genius environmental storytelling in the original Bioshock we'll effectively write the script for a whole Detail Diatribe so I went with the immediate example

[@ToonedMinecraft]

​@@wakwakwakc337 I think audio logs were not what she exactly meant with environmental storytelling. It's kind of just "storytelling", only a different perspective from a different time. There is much more you can do than audio logs.

[@poenpotzu2865]

This made me remember in Adventure Time when Bonny was scavenging a concenience store. People have pointed out that the whole scene has this mini story of the people who lived and died there. Best of all Bonney just goes there and gets her stuff and leaves.

[@yannismorris4772]

Oh I need to rewatch that

[@poenpotzu2865]

Season 10 Episode 4 Bonnibel​@@yannismorris4772

[@ShaunTheCrazyOne]

She Did It! She made it through a Trope Talk without bringing up Avatar.

[@aubrey2622]

I thought the air temples were coming up for suuuuure

[@DisAnimated]

This is why I love the Psyconauts games, because the levels take place inside characters minds the environmental and character storytelling are very direct way

[@arbiterally101]

Legitimately a strong premise to a game and one that gives so many bizarre ways to look at a characters perspective. A straightforward look at stuff just doesn’t work nearly so well as Black Velvetopia’s exploration of rage, or the Milkman Conspiracy’s exploration of paranoia.

[@wraithcadmus]

@@arbiterally101 In the sequel Bob's Bottles was hard going at times. It's very real.

[@NobodyC13]

​@@arbiterally101"What's the color of the sky in your world?" -Tim Schaffer

[@redemptionjack4657]

I am the Milkman, My milk us delicious.

[@laurabruce9948]

I look at the faded remnants of black tape 6ft apart in front of stores now and it gives me chills. Clearly we lived on but it wasn't always a guarantee

[@nkbujvytcygvujno6006]

As someone who can’t go outside anymore even to get groceries and has multiple relatives who died after the quarantine because people refused to care about people who have weaker immune systems and ended the quarantine too soon because Trump took over the CDC and created a rule that they couldn’t release any info without the permission of a board he approved and ended the quarantine too early because of this while in office, you sure have a lot of fun pretending you’re not killing us, don’t you. Disabled people just don’t exist to you. Even the ones who are only permanently disabled now because they got Covid from unmarked people multiple times (or even just once).

[@JoKad17]

OSP trademark: trope talk about environmental storytelling referencing Miyazaki's movies while not referencing Miyazaki's games.

[@Epicmonk117]

Yeah, I was kinda annoyed she didn’t mention any FromSoft game, or even show screenshots while discussing things in the generic. They’re easily some of the best - if not _the_ best - environmental storytellers in the industry right now.

[@SoulQueenoD]

Miyazaki has games? 👀

[@YayaFeiLong]

@@SoulQueenoD different Miyazaki Hayao Miyazaki - Studio Ghibli Hidetaka Miyazaki - FromSoftware

[@saulwiner2999]

@@YayaFeiLong Yes, but also check out the Ni no Kuni games - games made in collaboration with Hayao Miyazaki.

[@Epicmonk117]

@@SoulQueenoD OP was making a pun off of Hayao Myazaki of Studio Ghibli, and Hidetaka Myazaki of FromSoftware (the creators of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and Armored Core).

[@WandersNowherre]

One of the things I've learned more recently in my journey as a writer is this; leaving space within your story for your readers / audience to fill in with their imaginations is vitally, vitally important. Sometimes what you leave out as as important as what you put in, or more so. And if you put two stories side by side, it's often the one that has those spaces that will fire up the imaginations of generations of fanfic writers and artists and cosplayers, whereas the neatly tightly wrapped one might be successful and praised but then slip quickly out of memory. This is true even if the 'filled-in' story is the more competently written one. The human imagination CRAVES those spaces. They are where our dreams live.

[@noelbedard8252]

I get so excited every time Red brings something back to Arcane. it's such a good well of narrative shenanigans, you could analyze bits of it for a year's worth of trope talks and get through maybe an episode.

[@al_eggs]

i recommend Schnee’s videos if you want lots of Arcane analysis

[@crimsoneclipse0618]

Arcane is so good the famed romance disliker Red wanted to see Cait and Vi kiss.

[@Skeletonk]

Bloodborn's environmental storytelling is on another level, but many people don't stop to appreciate it the first time. "huh I wonder why there are so many empty prams around here? Sure is weird all these steel coffins are chained shut."

[@danirodriguez3682]

I mean don’t we all decorate with chained up coffins and empty baby strollers? Don’t worry about it. I’m sure this is a totally normal night in a totally normal city.

[@shanewelz6836]

Or the full moon that hangs in front of the clouds…

[@TonksMoriarty]

Honestly, try applying this to the real world sometimes. Real life is a sloppy writer, but sometimes there's small things which you'll notice that'll tell something resembling a story. In my home city, behind a retail park , there's a set of partially uncovered train tracks, the tarmac hiding it damaged from years of neglect. Through this, I learnt the site of the current retail park was a goods yard for trains. This revelation made sense of structure of the park, with the park being inaccessible from the direct South despite there being an bridge over foliage & a road on top of that bridge. Looking on mapping software shows that passage under the bridge leads directly to a piece of curved train tracks as if it once also went straight. So overall, you get a story of a city who has a declining goods industry getting one of their goods yards repurposed into a retail park, and there's clues to hint at this past.

[@gordongraham2064]

My favorite local bit of environmental storytelling is, there's a small office park called "Weston Plaza" with a modest parking lot in back. Most of the parking spaces have identical, boring black-text-on-white signs that read "Reserved for Weston Plaza," but one parking space near the street has a blue sign with fancier script that reads "Reserved for Joe Weston." That space, as it happens, is striped out to mark it as a no-parking zone. Altogether, it's a cute little memorial bit of environmental storytelling.

[@dizzydaisy909]

u should be a crime scene investigator

[@MichaelRainey]

I live near a military base and it used to be supplied by rail that ran right through the heart of the city. They've long since taken up the tracks but Railroad Drive is right there marking its old course. There's also Theater Drive where the old drive-in theater used to be.

[@darcieclements4880]

It's been hypothesized that the reason humans can read writing is because we originally evolved to read the landscape and animal tracks. Basically having the ability to visualize what happened in the past by looking at the signs left in the present. Trackers are people who excel at this. I spent some time studying the art as a teenager and to this day I pick up on things that others don't. I definitely encourage everyone to spend some time studying those techniques so that your brain starts to pick up on it because it makes the world a lot more interesting.

[@hiwaga7399]

"real life is a sloppy writer" is a such a lovely line.

[@Nerdnumberone]

One bit of environmental storytelling that jumps out at me from a tabletop RPG is when we opened a door to a completely clean room in an otherwise dirty dungeon. We immediately closed the door and decided to come back later. We didn't know why this room was so different, but it spooked us. There were other hostile and messy creatures in the dungeon that likely would have moved into the room if it were safe enough for them. We eventually explored the room after exhausting other avenues for exploration (and probably resting to get our spells back). It turns out there was a gelatinous cube in that section of the dungeon that ate any grime or creatures that would get in, but couldn't (or wouldn't) open the door. There were other possibilities, like an aggressive cleaning construct or a magical cleaning mechanism. I don't recall what our speculation was because this was years ago. IIRC, we were playing "Adventurer, Conqueror, King System," aka ACKS, an offshoot of 2nd edition D&D made by someone who wanted the economy and setting to make more sense. I heard there was some controversy about the developer some time after I stopped playing, but I haven't looked into it. There are some interesting mechanics (like high level mages being able to create new spells and hybrids like owlbears), but it lacks a lot of the streamlining and quality of life improvements of later editions.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

Making new spells is cool cause thats, in theory, literally what a wizard does. They *do* magic in a way that the other classes don't, but the reality of DnD as a game makes a wizard actually studying and doing magic like that unbalanced and therefore never happens. The class fantasy of being a wizard. A magical scientist who explores and experiments with the system of magical physics that underlies reality is a huge one, and a woefully unexplored one.

[@stevejakab274]

The problem with environmental storytelling in TTRPGs is that players will inevitably ignore the important bits of the environment, and fixate on some minor detail that doesn't mean anything.

[@victorayorke7123]

@@stevejakab274 Thats the fun part though - the more your players obsessively pull on a minor detail, the more you can feed more details and context into their hands and give them deeper ways to engage with the world.

[@NemisCassander]

As a veteran of D&D and well-versed in the tropes of the genre, if I ever saw a suspiciously clean area of a dungeon, I immediately think, 'Gelatinous Cube'.

[@SouthernGothicYT]

my all time favorite example of the noodle scene is from ATLA of Sokka telling the story how he got 2 fish hooks stuck in his thumb. Like I can see that whole scene breaking down in my head lol

[@ethanmcfarland8240]

Also it establishes Sokka and Katara had a normal family life before the war made its way to the South Pole

[@ssjaydk]

"The main way is to drop the player into an unclear scenario where something has happened, offscreen. They're basically in a crime scene." This right here just opened my eyes up so much and it's so simple when I think about it. I'm so happy you create these videos, they help me so much with my writing. Keep up the great work!

[@fluffyking94]

I know Red will never play the Fromsoftware games, but they are the masters of this. The story of dark souls is built upon you putting the pieces together yourself (to the story's detriment in some cases.) Every Fromsoft player character is almost always showing up long after the big crazy sh*t has already happened. Almost everyone is dead, and the ones who are still around are half the people they once were (or less so in some cases) and very little of the story is actually told to you because of that. You have to take what information you can from the items you pick up and the environment of every zone. Playing dark souls really made me learn to appreciate environmental and contextual story telling.

[@JoshuaSmith-mf9uj]

From Fromsoft games work especially well for this because it feels like almost every enemy/item/setpiece can have its placement justified if you think about it hard enough. Very rarely is something put somewhere "just because". Of course, you could say "Fromsoft have been lazy and have just made a bearbones world and the community does all the heavy lifting patchworking a story into existence" but I think its clear almost everything is planned out.

[@miirshroom]

So many skeletons posed in comedic arrangements. There's a whole deep rabbit hole in Elden Ring around thinking about where each corpse was going (or running from), what is the last sight they saw before death, and sometimes what object are they holding that became a lost treasure upon their death.

[@gabrielgarcia9822]

I feel that Fromsoft games are often a bad example, because they reach the point often where you have to speculate the majority of what happened based on a random drop in the corner of the map. (Havel)

[@gunnarschlichting9886]

​@@gabrielgarcia9822 They aren't perfect, sure, but there are plenty of smaller examples you can find. Architecture in particular is extremely deliberate and can reveal a lot.

[@ADruid25]

I was going to say this exact thing, but ive heard some describe a Fromsoft game is like playing an archeologist, so much of their lore is bound up in item description and location aesethic.

[@jujubeans32088]

This video made me find a silver lining rough childhood. I grew up (day care to high school) in a deeply traumatizing religious school raise to believe that EVERYTHING film, video, movie, or comic was about or related to Christianity. Most assignment boiled to explaining why or how the story related the religion and could include background elements, authorial history, or even historical events. While it has left a number of long lasting issues in my life, I realize that this very early training to search media for metaphors or story elements supposedly hiding in plain sight made me understand and investigate my media with an Environmental Storytelling lens at a base. And that has served me well as I have transitioned into an academic focusing on media studies and narratives across media.

[@basharic3162]

I'm sorry for your trauma, but being able to critically consume media is a superpower nowadays. There's so much manipulation going on constantly. In fiction, when the creators are taking us for a ride we wanted to go on it's great. In advertising, and the varying biases of news sources, being aware of the manipulation is critical to resisting it and basing decisions on your values not the ones someone paid a lot of money to try and convince you to adopt. Most of us live in fully-engineered human environments without ever realizing everything we're interacting with was a DECISION a person made to accomplish a goal of some kind. That goal may be something practical, or it may be something manipulative.

[@thatoneguyiii1003]

Good environmental storytelling is really similar to a mystery plot, as it’s a lot more fun to figure out what’s happening from environmental elements than Old Man Joe telling you the life story of every location in the game.

[@theoctopus7191]

What I love about Elden ring is partly how much it centers its environmental storytelling. The environment design and item placements/descriptions convey 90% of the story and it took over a year for the lore community to (mostly) make sense of it. Even now, there’s a lot that’s never supposed to be “solved” because the destruction of history/the past is a core theme.

[@Krwzprtt]

Reminds me of when hbomberguy made his video about the Killing Joke movie, and pointed a panel in the original and how it used background elements to deliver information, even just by having a shelf full of liquor to imply Jim Gordon has a drinking problem. Or, TLDR, the curtains are blue for a fucking reason.

[@RorikH]

Don't know if it was the same video, but I also remember someone mentioning that Alan Moore's original script for the comic spends a lot of time telling the artist what to include in the scenery, which some comic books really neglect as just the background.

[@kaleenar963]

Your Gordon example and “The curtains being blue” refer to two very different things. The curtains thing is supposed to be a dig at analyzers that are like “The author made the curtains blue because blue is a sad color and the character is sad in this scene” which if the blue is supposed to tell you that about the character, it doesn’t really make any sense because there’s likely no reason for the audience to think/know that the character decided to specifically hang up blue curtains because they were feeling sad right at that moment, especially if they were blue in this set piece before the sad thing happened. The bottles of alcohol tells you something about the character like the curtains were supposed to, but that thing actually makes sense because of course an alcoholic has alcohol in their house. A lot of people have used the “Curtains are blue” thing to just be like “Ew symbolism”, which is unfortunate because it originally made a good point of how not to draw conclusions or give hints about a character. Sure there’s no real harm in making things blue in a sad scene, it’s aesthetic, it’s moody, I get it, but a bad writer or analyzer shouldn’t use it as a replacement for more realistic context clues (For example, if the character is sad maybe it should be communicated in their body language? Just a thought.)

[@kachosuffer7]

Hung up blue curtains because they like the color blue

[@nothingorother302]

​@kaleenar963 except it's very common to use visual language to communicate the mood of characters and other things that can be difficult to externalize without coming across as clunky. Especially in visual media. Having a character stand alone in a dark, otherwise empty street can be a much more evocative way to tell the audience that the character feels lonely than having the actor make a sad face. Colour symbolism is a very common way to do just that. Communicating character's emotional state and the overall feel of a scene using the environment, what clothes the characters are wearing etc. Of course none of it "makes sense" strictly speaking. A depressed character isn't more likely to choose blue curtains. But if we see a character in a room where the light is filtered through blue curtains, making the entire room a colder, less natural colour, we the audience are naturally going to associate the colour of the scene with the character's internal state. Same for green lighting indicating that Zhaun (or however you spell it, it's been a while since I watched the show) has poisonous air. Obviously, this kind of visual symbolism is less noticeable and arguably less effective in written media, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Many authors are fond of communicating important ideas and emotional states through symbolism, while others prefer using more direct descriptions (their shoulders were sagging, their eyes downcast, that sort of thing). Neither of these approaches are wrong, they're just using different methods to communicate different types of information. I do think the ew, symbolism crowd often fail to understand, though, that for symbolism to be effective, the audience has to be willing to engage in it. And this is true whether or not any partcular piece of symbolism was intended by the author. So yeah, whether or not the curtains are just blue or blue for a reason, is something the audience has to decide. I'm gonna stop rambling now. Huzzah!

[@arturoaguilar6002]

@@RorikH Yep, the same video.

[@erinfinn2273]

Dunno if anyone has mentioned this, but the opening sequence of Eddie Valiant in his office in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Is a masterclass of environmental storytelling, with absolutely no dialog.

[@willtheprodigy3819]

The video games “Journey” and “What Remains of Edith Finch” both have great environmental storytelling.

[@catkittycatcatkittycatcatcat]

a little bit surprising she didn’t talk about many games. What Remains of Edith Finch and several other games like that basically exist entirely for the concept of environmental storytelling!

[@starlesscitiess]

EDITH FINCH MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️

[@eee1453]

Journey has environmental storytelling? Outside of the murals?

[@willtheprodigy3819]

@@eee1453 I kind of thought the whole game was environmental storytelling, no? There is no dialogue - it’s your interaction with the environment that is driving the story.

[@stevejakab274]

"Walking simulators" are pretty much entirely environmental storytelling.

[@swampprinceofsaturn]

I think one of my favorite kinds of environmental storytelling is when we get to see the place where a character lives or works, and when clear attention has been paid to that. How messy it is, how much stuff they keep, what things they keep and where, etc etc. You can communicate so much about a person this way when it's done well!

[@vianabdullah2837]

Metroid Prime does this really well I think. Since the genre itself is about finding context clues within the environment in order to figure out the next course of action, the developers weave in a scanning feature that lets you obtain information on anything from corpses to logs from Space Pirates. So the gameplay not only makes you get a clearer picture on how the world is laid out, but also the events that transpired before Samus arrived on the scene.

[@RorikH]

yeah, I enjoyed Dread, but I really miss actually getting to scan the world for info. It made everything feel so much more alive.

[@Gynoidmm]

I love how an adventure Time does this a lot. You don’t even get the chance to appreciate the backgrounds because it goes so fast

[@Theology.101]

Probably not going to get mentioned but the game Dead Island 2 is absolutely KILLER in environmental storytelling like this 7:05. Obviously not the exact same cause, you know, zombie apocalypse. But its a dully contained story. In a house in Beverly Hills, you find a bike hit by an ambulance, two cars that swerved into each other, a red smear instead of a rider and a phone. A kid planned to get hit by an ambulance, hitch a ride and get med evac’d. The house the ambulance is near has a bloodstained gurney, and inside is a Zombie wearing a hospital gown. Simple story told right there. The Ambulance was picking up an infect person, it broke free and killed the emt, the driver got out of there, hitting a kid and causing one car to swerve and the one behind it to hit them. And its communicated only very briefly

[@LunaSmith-s2m]

I also like that game environments specifically signal things to the player. Walking into certain areas is hilarious from an outside perspective Worst hallway you’ve ever seen, super confined, dark and dirty: eh fine Large, clean, well lit open room: oh no Large, clean, well lit open room with a treasure chest in the center: OH NO

[@Stratelier]

Save point placed before a door leading into a large, open, well lit room:

[@sethtorres5202]

Eldin ring is an excellent example of this. Especially since the details of the story is intentionally vague and many pieces of lore that contribute to the overarching story you can only find by talking to specific people, going to specific places, and fighting certain enemies. This not only rewards the player for exploring but it makes you feel like a larger part of the plot of eldin ring since the only reason why you know what you know is because you sought it out yourself. Your understanding of the world is directly tied to the effort you put into it. This kind of storytelling turned me off from the game at first cuz I felt very overwhelmed by not knowing anything at all but it's grown on me a lot since and now it's probably one of my favorite ways to interact with a video games's story

[@daniellerobbins6503]

As a kid, I fell in love with Norman Rockwell pictures because so many of them tell a story. The more you look at the details in his art, the more you discover what's happening. "A picture is worth a thousand words."

[@jeremy1860]

No joke, but there was a time when, as a kid, one of my favourite things to do was just pause whatever movie I was watching just so I could stare at beautiful scenery shots. Environments and backgrounds were just fascinating to me, and I'd sit there, just taking it all in, trying to notice every little detail about it like I was playing a game of Where's Waldo 😊

[@horseenthusiast9903]

Yeah!!! I didn't do that as a kid, but I do it now, and it's so fun. Recently I had a good time looking at all the tapestries and carvings in Meduseld in LOTR, looking at all the little knick-knacks and plants and stuff in the Octavius's apartment in Spider-Man 2 (that one makes me sad, because Rosie and Otto very clearly have such a nice, comfortably cluttered, harmoniously decorated home, and then everything...well), and looking at the barracks and gunships the clone troopers have in The Clone Wars (my favourite gunship art is that of the Bad Kitty, and it kinda warms my heart seeing the clones DETERMINED to put pin-up posters in their barracks despite the fact that they're probably not technically allowed to own anything).

[@thetacoman9657]

can't believe I just watched a 20 minute video primarily about thematic concepts surrounding "dawning horror" and "cleanliness" without seeing a single nod to either of the two Portal games

[@a.morphous66]

I know the big cliche of video game environmental storytelling is carefully-arranged bodies, but one of my favorite examples of this is in the first Halo. You're constantly finding human bodies scattered around, which in gameplay terms just diegetically justify ammo refills for your assault rifle but in terms of the story communicate something very important: that the crew of the _Pillar of Autumn_ has been fighting for its life on every corner of this ring, and that humanity is FUCKED without the Master Chief. There are no Covenant bodies. These Marines are being butchered without contest and you are the only thing that can save them. And when you start finding Covenant bodies and blue blood all over the place during a spooky abandoned level midway through the game, if you've been paying attention you immediately realize that _something else_ is out there.

[@tbotalpha8133]

A lack of Covenant bodies doesn't necessarily mean that the Covenant are surviving every fight. It could just mean that they're winning most fights, and then taking the time to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades. Which could imply respect for their own dead, or maybe they're doing it just to reclaim and recycle their comrades' equipment. Instead of leaving it to waste in the middle of nowhere, or potentially letting human scavengers get their hands on it.

[@a.morphous66]

@@tbotalpha8133 It's the lack of blue bloodstains anywhere that indicates to me the Covenant are taking few to no casualties. Even if they were simply cleaning up their own fallen afterwards and, I dunno, taking a mop to the floor, it still shows us that the Marines are being defeated and that every part of the Ring is absolutely locked down by the Covenant.

[@a.morphous66]

@@tbotalpha8133 All good points! Bloodstains are such a prominent element of the post-battle landscape, and they naturally are something very difficult to clean up, so not including them indicates to me the Covenant are taking few to no casualties. And if they were sustaining losses, that they could afford to mop all that mess up tells us that the territory we're in is VERY firmly Covenant-controlled.

[@daviddaugherty2816]

​@a.morphous66 It's been awhile since I've played Halo:CE, but I'm pretty sure you don't find bodies in that vault. Just blood.

[@a.morphous66]

​@@daviddaugherty2816 In the mission introducing the Flood? You can find bodies, but not in the main areas. They're piled up in side rooms.

[@FlailSnail222]

I think the vaults in Fallout New Vegas are peak environmental storytelling. Sure I’ll forget lines of dialogue, and all the details of the intensely complex political situation going on in that game, but I’ll never forget lockpicking a door in vault 22, where all the people got turned into spore zombies, and finding a large, medium, and tiny sized spore zombie. And then seeing the crib in the corner of the room.

[@maiaharlap]

Yaaay, Arcane as an example in a trope talk video! My fangirl heart sings!

[@animeotaku307]

Nickelbet it’s going to enter Red’s stable of shows she will often refer to in her trope talks alongside Avatar, Justice League, and Reboot.

[@neganick]

This particular trope is the reason my first response to any apocalyptic event is starting a journal. If i don't make it out alive i can at least entertain the dude who loots my body!

[@Iweleth]

There's a recent game I love named Ender Lilies (and the sequel Ender Magnolia to a lesser extent) that handles environmental storytelling in a way that Dark Souls often gets praised for. In Ender Lilies you play as a young mute priestess who is the only one left in a fallen kingdom whose inhabitants have become undead monsters. And it is by exploring the kingdom of Land's End, encountering the bosses and the cutscenes after you defeat them, and especially the item descriptions and notes found that you learn what happened. The story already happened, all that you can do anymore is bring peace to the damned souls that remain.

[@user-ez9ng2rw9c]

I got so excited looking at the vaguely Mistborn background in the thumbnail. I cant wait for the hard magic systems episode when red eventually goes through Brandon's catalogue.

[@theanimeunderworld8338]

background might not be as important, but the setting really makes the scene hit.

[@annekeener4119]

If the story, plot, and characters are the cake, background and setting are the frosting and decoration. A cool world and backstory won’t save a bad plot and characters just as tasty frosting and pretty decorations won’t save an awful cake, but it can elevate the good into the sublime.

[@RedActed_Games]

This particular trope is why I'll die on the hill that Minecraft is a horror game

[@samueldimmock694]

It's more complicated than that. Minecraft was an open-world horror survival game that let you accumulate enough power to turn it into a different kind of game (turning the horrors into mere dangers), then accumulated various post-apocalyptic elements via environmental storytelling. The Nether has always been pure horror, and until recently, single-player Minecraft had a very strong sense of existential isolation (villages were added after a while, and also pets, but until recently they were just isolated groups of people who were decidedly not like you and had no influence that extended beyond the borders of their not-entirely-safe homes), which in recent updates has been somewhat replaced by strengthening the post-apocalyptic eldritch horror elements; also the End, particularly after the End update, has provided a new, concentrated version of the existential isolation that has always been a core part of Minecraft, making it very clear that you don't belong there and should really just go home. But this existential isolation and the post-apocalyptic desolation that is now somewhat on its way out weren't necessarily horror-inducing, and the other horror elements could be beaten back with enough power (well, maybe not the Warden), so Minecraft was never entirely a horror game. But yes, there are strong horror elements, and given the extreme sandbox nature of Minecraft, if you focus on those elements, it is definitely a horror game, mixing elements of survival horror, eldritch (Lovecraftian) horror and existential dread.

[@insertusernamehere3173]

I just had surgery and this makes me feel so much better cause now I can watch something I like.

[@mildlysinister6229]

One of the most under appreciated pieces of environmental storytelling was in one of the later episodes of avatar the last airbender. In the episode where Ang goes to school, near the end he and Katara perform what seems to be a traditional fire nation dance. Interestingly, the dance mirrors the beginning forms and continues to mimic moves from an Agni Kai, as the two take the Agni Kainstart position and imitate fire blasts and dodges throughout the dance, which then ends in a dip similar to a tango’s. It implies the dance has some sort of fire nation enemies to lovers story behind it, but nothing more is said. I love this bit of storytelling, and no one ever mentions it so I thought I would ramble about it here.

[@xXxXxXxAllianaxXxXxX]

If done well, environmental storytelling can essentially be the strong backbone of your stories. I always love how the background does more showing without telling and reveals the story gradually. Kinda like how when you first play BotW and TotK that , while they do give you a little history of what’s happening, interacting with the environment and seeing the changes that happened hits you harder than voicing out the history would have been. It also hits harder for those who grew up with the Zelda series and can see the devastation of their beloved landmarks from the passage of time.

[@rainmanslim4611]

One of my favorite bits of environmental storytelling is one small detail in Bloodborne. In central Yarnham, the lanterns on the walls in the sewers look like they're being held up by these ghostly messengers the player uses to send messages to other players, showing that the Hunters used to traverse the city via the sewers to bypass the crowds on the streets when they went beast hunting.

[@thetardisisblue1110]

For whatever reason, the Moviestruck episode that Red was on where she and Indigo watched Alien has become my go-to choice for background noise. I don't even know how many times I've listened to it at this point. So when Red says "it's good for dawning horror" I immediately say, "well, she'd gonna throw in some clips from Alien" and lo and behold Side note: Indigo/ Sophia if you somehow see this comment, I love Moviestruck so much, I always get so excited when you post a new episode.

[@TwoMoreThan4042]

I'm sure I won't be the only person who mentions this but From Software are absolute masters of Environmental Storytelling. Even just looking at the stairs in Anor Londo tells so much about the city and how it operated.

[@Soumein]

What's scarier: walking into a messy, bloody room in a clean house, or walking into a clean room in a messy, bloody house?

[@nightfall3605]

If that clean room is empty, that’s the scariest. It implies either the survivor that was trying to keep a sense of hope and normalcy didn’t make it and neither will you, or it’s the nest of the hunter that is obviously out there between you and the exit.

[@alicebrouillard4483]

My favorite bit of real life environment storytelling is all the warning signs before the infamous can-opener bridge. Truly a sight to behold!

[@knotofknots4645]

I think another excellent example of environmental design is Outer Wilds. It’s a game about exploring the environments and piecing together what happened to understand what is currently happening and it does this really well.

[@videoket]

I wish this game wasn’t so brutally hard (although that’s part of its harsh beauty; nature doesn’t care about you!)…I would finish it if I didn’t keep dying!

[@TravellingTortuga]

I love how environmental storytelling was incorporated into The Owl House. Granted, that was mainly incorporated after they learned that nearly all of the third season was to be cut, but I think that they did so well with the background detail, in Hollow Mind especially. There is also the general amount of clutter in the owl house itself, adding to Eda's disdain for perfection, and the reasons behind her hatred of the coven system. For Hollow Mind, so much of Belos' past is implied by the portraits, and the more you notice, the more sick it seems. Then there are the little things in Thanks to Them that imply that something is still out there, and that they quite literally aren't out of the woods yet. Even more during For the Future, as well. There were so many tiny forshadowing details that I didn’t even notice the first time around.

[@toastywhiteboy7822]

We need to have an episode about the idea of when to have the main characters win or lose, I feel it’s under discussed. When does a main character, or even side character deserve a win? Did they earn that victory? How will they handle defeat? Hajime No Ippo put the idea in my head and it’s been living rent free since.

[@EthanKironus8067]

7:04 - The middle of RWBY V6 is utterly terrifying. Our bruised and battered heroes have just learned a horrible truth about their world after being stranded miles from their destination, and stumble across an abandoned farm complex just in time to take shelter from a massive blizzard. It's dusty but in good shape, and they start to cautiously explore, for supplies and answers as to what happened. Then they find the bodies wasting away in every bed in the complex. Then they find the diaries. Then they exhibit unusually depressive behaviour and argue about just giving up. Then they drop the magic lamp down a dark well and have to venture into the tunnels beneath the farm to find it. And as they eventually escape a fire starts. One of the main plots of V4 is also a masterpiece of this, albeit more drawn-out and less concentrated. There's also V8, primarily the mid-to-late episodes, which flip the province script by setting the horror in a familiar location.

[@onlyindeathdoesdutyend.8333]

Yes, the Mountain Glenn mini arc of Volume 2 is also a masterpiece of environmental storytelling.

[@EthanKironus8067]

@@onlyindeathdoesdutyend.8333 Oh, I didn't even think of that. RWBY is a gem on so many levels. It might seem cliche to say that kind of thing, but a lot of the time we just use it without any reference to the finer details like we're discussing here. And RWBY has a lot of work in those details.

[@onlyindeathdoesdutyend.8333]

​@@EthanKironus8067 You're absolutely correct. I must have watched hundreds of anime over the years but RWBY is still so memorable and unique despite starting out as a web series made by a bunch of gamers. What I really like about it is that unlike most shows the story doesn't revolve around the protagonists, even side characters like Hazel and Emerald make choices which affect the plot in meaningful and humanising ways.

[@EthanKironus8067]

@@onlyindeathdoesdutyend.8333 I've seen shows which do that particular aspect (fleshing out side characters) better, but you're right. Its characters are complex in that very few of them make only one kind of choice; they go through points of uncertainty where their choices are up in the air, and none of the characters have stayed static. Pretty impressive considering how much of the first few seasons were played by ear. Neo's intervention during the Paladin chase in V2 was a last-minute inclusion. Monty Oum deserves credit for having had the zeal to back up his impulses, and CRWBY for being able to run with those ideas.

[@legomaniac213]

From Software games are great at this. As Yahtzee said in his review of Dark Souls 1: "If you ever see a tower in the distance, you'll know you'll go there someday, and there will be something horrible inside who's favorite food is your face!"

[@JarieSuicune]

??? But, then that's predictable? Like, I get the excitement of "Oooh, this place looks cool I wonder what new horror awaits me around the next turn!", but I think the environmental storytelling is from the existence of the interesting tower and its surroundings rather than "oh, I'mma die again in a bit just gotta get to the creepy tower."

[@stanislawwitkowicz918]

Everyone reading comments I whole-heartedly recommend Hollow Knight. You'd be hard-pressed to find more than like, five characters that simply tell you how it is and what has happened. Everyone else speaks in riddles and environment does the rest of the work. This is actually a rather extreme example of environmental storytelling, where so little is told straight that it can be difficult to understand, but that's what makes figuring it all out on yourself so incredibly satisfying. I'm sure that for Red that would be a fun challenge.

[@DoomMomDot]

one cool trick is to have the environment change either slowly or quickly. if you are going through a clean, well-maintained place, but suddenly find an area that has been trashed, you know bad stuff is going to happen.

[@mentalrebllion1270]

This trope reminded me of the background storytelling that is going on throughout Adventure Time, especially in any flashbacks by the oldest characters like the Ice King, Marceline, and Bubblegum. We learn a lot about this “Mushroom War” and its fall out and even more about the Lich and his role. Honestly I find it fascinating the stories that can be noticed in the background of these scenes. They aren’t just filler. It’s obvious the artists are trying to convey a story there too. Each element has a function and reason.

[@spottedwombat7103]

I always appreciate games that lean into environmental storytelling the souls series and the last of us really stick out to me as great examples

[@dicyanoacetylene6220]

Enter a facility with functioning lighting: all is proceeding as normal Enter a facility with malfunctioning lighting: something is wrong Enter a facility with malfunctioning lighting, but there's lit candles everywhere: something happened, but the residents adapted Enter a facility with malfunctioning lighting and unlit candles: something went wrong, they adapted, but it wasn't enough

[@brookerickettson4950]

The film Pitch Black first half is a brilliant example of the dawning we’re screwed environment piece together process. The second half is just the survival ( or lack of) of the dwindling group. Great watch, just maybe watch it in daylight!

[@christopherwebster6354]

One of my favorite pieces of environmental storytelling comes from one of my favorite video games, Bioshock: In the Farmer's Market, you'll come across a place called the Silverwing Apiary, where you'll need to go and explore to collect an enzyme you'll need to progress the plot. Since the place is filled with bees, in order to make it safe to get this enzyme, you need to activate a device that fills the room with smoke to put the bees back in their hives, and it only does this for a short amount of time. I love this because it perfectly encapsulates everything that went wrong with Rapture's business practices without a single line of dialogue drawing attention to it. Instead of providing safety equipment to properly protect their workers, the Silverwing Apiary installed a complicated device that puts their workers under a tight time limit because they figured a single machine would be cheaper long term and the resulting crunch time everyone's under would yield better performance and profits.

[@Respectable_Username]

For some reason the thumbnail made me think this was yet another Detailed Diatribe in a row 😂 Love both video types, especially when they're good and long like this one 😊

[@Jonathon_Hennessey]

From Software's video games are really good at environmental storytelling. By the time your character joins the story, almost all of the characters are dead or worse and you learn the game's stories by the items you pick up and examine in your inventory.

[@Keenath]

I don't think item descriptions count as environmental storytelling, though. It's *indirect* storytelling, and environmental is a specific kind of indirect storytelling, but environmental is more about what you can observe of the world. Where you find a specific item might count, though, depending on the context. If you find the sword of a great hero jammed into an altar through the ribs of a skeleton that's wearing a crown, that's telling you a lot more than the item description.

[@apophis7712]

​@@Keenath One of my favorites is in Bloodborne when you find a red ribbon after killing a pig If you know, you know...

[@RorikH]

What helps this stuff work so well for Horror is that a major cause of fear is the lack of power (think how totally non-scary The Last of Us' clickers would be to Samus Aran), and if we don't see the monster we don't know much about it and therefore lack the power knowledge gives us, as well as not having the power to fight it since it's not there to fight.

[@LooneyLempke]

One particularly excellent example of the "dawning horror" type was the planet Miranda in Serenity. Part of what made it so chilling is the fact that it subverted most of the tropes mentioned in the video: everything is perfectly well lit and pristinely clean, but it's just dead silent. *Then* you start to see the bodies and slowly piece together what happened.

[@DarthRayj]

I thought about this too!

[@davidhowell8407]

24 seconds that's a new record for me

[@calihoyer1415]

GOD this kind of thing makes me so happy and makes me wanna be a set designer for theater, because the set designer's job is Literally Just This--finding the details in the script that indicate what environmental storytelling is already there, then extrapolating from that to enrich that environment and even expand on it to a degree to impart the story to the audience on a ~vibe~ basis. And just like the environmental storytelling in other visual media, a lot of the details go unnoticed, sometimes even by the actors on the set. Same thing with props and prop design, which also makes me very happy: it's the intersection of environmental storytelling and Crow Brain Like Exploring Thrift Stores And Antique Shops For Unique And Funky Things

[@beaudoty3465]

Next Trope Talk you should do is Villains Destroyed by The Power they Sought.

[@annekeener4119]

That’s kind of covered already in the trope talks on MacGuffins and Ancient Superweapons.

[@solalabell9674]

The ancient super weapons has a lot of that but it’s might merit it’s own video

[@Prototype-357]

"Hoist by his own petard", I always keep Tv Tropes open in another tab for these occasions. 😊

[@Duiker36]

I hope the next trope talk is about entitled audiences.

[@LaKremint]

One of my favorite moments so far, for a sound design class I'm taking was our teacher showing us a scene from Arcane, specifically the bridge scene in the opening, and how the sounds change the entire damn setting, hearing the individual noises really shows just how horrifying the scene is and its beautifully done.

[@lightningbutterfly3519]

The first half I was constantly thinking about Arcane and was pleasently surpised when you mentioned it

[@bywatergal4177]

This makes perfect sense, and I really appreciated the breaking down of Arcane's environment because you're absolutely right

[@satansamael666]

Dune is surprisingly good as another on environmental storytelling. The different planets and worlds provide a specific expectation of what those worlds should look like and how it interacts in universe is also quite amazing.

[@wellstiscool]

It makes complete sense that the phrase was originally coined by a theme park designer. I would listen to a whole lecture from somebody who works for something like Halloween Horror Nights on how they convey horror stories through set design.