Nintendo Franchises With The Most Complicated Lore

Nintendo is a monolithic company. For decades, they’ve pioneered in the field of gaming, and in the process have wound up with some of the most recognizable franchises in the world. Their older consoles are filled with classics, and the Switch is still growing a healthy catalog of titles, even years after its release.

Most Nintendo titles released today have a fairly direct narrative to follow, but with such a breadth of franchises under its belt, and so many games within each, it’s little surprise that some Nintendo titles have accrued a serious amount of lore over the years. Swapping between writers, directors, and gameplay philosophies means that some games have worlds too complicated to map, or timelines that start to look less like timelines and more like ambitious roller-coaster diagrams. These Nintendo series in particular have a wealth of complicated lore to keep up with.

5 Fire Emblem

How Do The Iconic Heroes Of Each Game Interact?

The Fire Emblem series is known for its engaging, iconic characters more than anything else. Also maybe for crowding out SSBU’s roster of fighters, but that’s an article for another day. What really makes the protagonists, their comrades, love interests, and enemies shine, however, is the story and setting they’re involved in. Certainly, in some titles, the characters are doing the heavy lifting, while in others, such as Three Houses, a complex and engaging narrative keeps players coming back.

The complicated nature of Fire Emblem is found in how all these games interact. Engage, despite having a relatively one-note story, managed to open a huge can of worms with the emblem system. Manifestations of past Fire Emblem heroes and protagonists can be recruited into the player’s group. These previous characters have the memories of their original counterparts, but are illusions? Or spirits? If all these games exist on the same world or plane, how do these emblems have memories of every potential story route the player could have guided them through? This one feature unwinds the tight, isolated nature of the other FE games into something vague and complicated, not really fixed by Engage.

4 Kid Icarus

Open-Ended Stories And Lore

For a long time, the beloved Nintendo character Pit had fallen from favor and grace, left to malinger in obscurity while other, more successful franchises took center stage at Nintendo. Even today, the Kid Icarus series is not the first to come to many people’s minds when they think of Nintendo’s gallery of heroes, despite some very solid, open-ended games where players can take ahold of the upstart angel.

Kid Icarus: Uprising was one of the best games on the 3DS, but its open-ended nature has left a lot of fans confused about the nature of Angel World. How strong is Palutena? Is Icarus a source of her strength, or just her most reliable angel? How do the aliens from Uprising fit in with this Greek-mythology-inspired world’s lore?

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3 Golden Sun

A Compelling Fantasy Title That Raises A Lot Of Questions

The Golden Sun series has had entries that are frequently mentioned among the top titles of any console. Whether the GBA or Nintendo DS, these JRPGs hit the perfect balance of gripping, engaging gameplay with a detailed and intricately written setting that sparks the imagination. By the series’ third title, however, there were more than a few questions being asked about the nature of this world in Golden Sun.

The relationship between many of the magical concepts in this game is obscure. Psynergy, alchemy, and the lighthouses that control them are integral parts of the game, but how do they interact? The lighthouses can unseal alchemy, but how was the magic of alchemy sealed in the first place? There’s a lot of frankly esoteric lore behind psynergy and alchemy in Golden Sun, and the wealth of writings on these topics asks much of the player.

2 Xenoblade Chronicles

Incredibly Dense Lore And Worldbuilding

Xenoblade Chronicles has a tremendous amount of lore and worldbuilding spread across its three mainline entries, and in particular, the incredibly novel nature of this setting is what makes this game so popular among so many JRPG enthusiasts. There is something to love in every game throughout the series, but these dense narratives host a lot of complicated lore within them.

The deaths of Bionis and Mechonis, how these two gods shaped the world of Xenoblade Chronicles, and the nature of the legendary Monado sword are all expanded upon in some very interesting, but obscure directions, and the Xenoblade universe has seriously accrued some deep lore in its lifetime.

1 The Legend Of Zelda

A Timeline Of Massive Proportions

Since 1986, The Legend of Zelda has been a massively popular series for Nintendo fans across the world. The sense of adventure and exploration, combined with a high-stakes, high fantasy story has been the perfect recipe for watershed titles on every platform. There’s no shortage of difficult dungeons or scenic worlds for players to explore in almost every game.

The game has a habit of nonlinear releases and a timeline that fractures Link’s identity into an adult in some entries, but a child in others, and a timeline where he’s a defeated hero also exists. Nintendo won’t open up on where the newer, open-world releases fit into this convoluted timeline, and retcons across new remade titles just add another layer of confusion to the mix.

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