Really good video man, words cannot describe how happy I am to see it released. As the loreman who painstakingly wrote and sourced all of the lore wiki, it warms my heart. And yes, I think we can put you in the Honorary Lore Nerd club now.
@@Matas626You forgot to take away their access to electronics, tricky things somehow make wifi and computers from things like calculators. Only give them food.
One of the most interesting things about the lore, is how far back it goes and how deep some of it's elements are, which is something people most likely wouldn't expect for this kind of game. Amazing video.
This is absolutely fantastic. Great storytelling for complicated stuff like this, easy to follow despite the intricacies! Bonus points for the pronunciation of Veli (I screwed that up and felt the wrath of the lore nerds ; ) ) Thumbs up all all the way!
Thank you for this video Ward Wardenson, finally truth may defeat the supporters of the "Warden Empire" and "Colonial Republic". I remember the old days, when you tried to put "lore" in your videos, and the mistakes you were making. Even though you were wrong, you accepted the fact that what you said was not correct when it was told to you. This video is for now the only proof of redemption from a Foxhole RUclipsr who tried to use lore in his videos before. I honestly thank you for making this. There are some very minor mistakes (like Speaking Woods actually being Nevish which we learned recently) but they are so small that only the lore nerds (me for example) might notice them. One thing I especially loved about your video is that you didn't lean towards one faction, you spoke of both faction's good and bad side. Now, there's only one thing I can say to end this comment... Welcome Ward Wardenson, honorary member of the Lore Nerd Club.
So in conclusion TO HELL WITH THE BLUEBERRIES LETS GOR COLLIES!! FOR THE LEGION!! FOR THE END IS OUR GLORY!! But in all seriousness as someone who for a while has researched foxhole lore it is awesome to see it all laid out properly so bravo to you.
Perfect lore summary except at the very end. Matt the lore dev said that every player war is canon to the universe. We are actively fighting the wars after the burnout. Matt even said that the only reason seasons dont change is due to gameplay limitations. The devs will not include player events into the ingame lore. They will only cover everything up to the first player war. The rest of the story we make ourselves.
@@enstatite2479 I mean, the wars aren't necessarily lore accurate portrayals of the setting. Wouldn't be very reflective of lore when there are odd starts, and then the restarting tech trees every war. It was originally said that the wars were all canon and there was a dark age between them, but I am about 95% sure that was retconned and changed due to well...All our technology being lost between every war wouldn't make sense.
There is no bias recorded in the lore, leaving me to believe that the historians of this universe aren't Caoivish, Mesean, Velian, or anyone active in the conflict but an outside observer, that's why there knowledge on specifics is limited but it's just a crackpot theory of mine 😅
@wardwardenson it's okay. The collies are still invaders in my book. I'm just a simple snow farmer thrown into the perpetual war simulation I love how callums was built by a sell out though lmao
That's a very fitting interpretation you made at the end! One of the neat things about Foxhole is how much it manages to say about war, simply through the mechanics. By making use of the top-down perspective typical of RTS games, while locking each player in control of precisely one unit, it achieves a sort of forced perspective. It's really unique. The player is presented with a world where soldiers are basically just numbers, indistinguishable from each other. Yet the player is also required to attach their personal goals to one of them, to engage with the game. I don't mean to sound sappy, but this seems like an exercise to develop empathy. Like, you are literally watching a tiny nameless soldier move on a battlefield, get shot at, and eventually die in some horrible way; and the whole time you are referring to that soldier as "me" or "I". The mechanics and presentation naturally invite you to internalize the experiences of a nameless, unremarkable being as your own: literally empathy.
The lore is like 20% of why I like a game. I also specifically like games where there is a lack of a "Storyline" but there is plenty of lore. I like to dig for the lore and I like seeing easter eggs of the lore rather than the lore being a cutscene or like some book you have to read or something.
Talking about RL, but I really like that period where mysticism transforms into pragmatism. Where a warhorse might still get mowed down by a machine gun possibly. The time period where the concept of a computer was in it's infancy, but people also believed in wizardry, sorcery, and possibly unicorns. A time period where you might work hard for coper coins to buy delicatessen meat for your wife to turn into delicious picnic sandwiches for a Saturday outing instead of using EBT to buy factory-pulverized meat wrapped in plastic to take home to your girlfriend so that she can yell at you for getting the wrong one or something. That's why I like this game. It captures that time period pretty well even though it is fiction. I think most men want stable money, stable women, and less plastic.
As a French Warden player (and RUclipsr), I have to admit that your video is nice. I made a French video about the lore with Rubis. Thank you again, see you on the game. I’ll subscribe to your channel. Best regards.
very well written. Like you, before watching this video I thought the lore was super lackluster and disparate but this is actually great. It feels like a realistic set of conflicts and the unique lore for the colonials and wardens is incredibly interesting.
What Awesomeduud said. Though, yes, if you want to compare the Meseans vs the Caoivish of whose worse (they both have done bad things, Caoivish for example evicted the highlanders, busting the lughbone dam, etc), the Colonials/Meseans are worse since they have stripped countries of their history (Velians), made questionable allies, and have been overall very Imperialist.
Excellent work! It's truly a shame so much misinformation has gone on for so long, but it's really on the game's lack of intro for that. I understand wanting to allow for discovery, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted all 25 minutes of this info as part of a bloated tutorial or something. But like, the fact no one (save for the game's biggest fans) knows the name of the CONTINENT is crazy. That should be something you learn in your first week of playing the game, not SEVEN YEARS like it took me. I've been inadvertently telling people the wrong info on news broadcasts for literal years. There needs to be a short and sweet lore introduction video. Nothing more than 30 seconds to a minute. Make it biased and hype like propaganda so players can later discover the grey area themselves. It would also go over critical info like: - The name of the continent. - The name of the war (I've been calling it "The Foxhole War" for seven years and spreading the misinformation). - The title of your faction's leader (literally everyone calls Callahan the Emperor even though that's incorrect). - Why you're fighting (this could be me, but I orignally believed the Colonials were like the American Colonials, who were being lorded over by the Wardens because it sounded like the latter were prison wardens). Again, short, sweet, hype, completely skippable. That would dispel SO much lore misinfo and unify the whole thing with the devs' actual vision for their world.
Hey, hi! For some extra context on this. We made the big decision early on to not do any kind of exposition and give players the option to discover more about the world as they played or stumbled into things in the environment. I think a big part of the "misinformation" is mainly due to the nature of how we did early access with Foxhole. That being, we developed the game from only a prototype alongside our players. In those first years, a lot of the worldbuilding was in its infancy. That's not to say more can't be done to provide a better introduction to the world; I've obviously always wanted that, haha. It's just been a matter of focus and things that dev effort is spent on. Alone, I only have so much to work with in terms of development tools for something like that. Sometimes, I think folks forget that our team is still *very* small, even compared to some of our indie contemporaries.
@@NorthernPixels1 Thanks for the response Matt! You and the team have put so much love into the lore, it kills me when longtime players (me) get the most basic stuff wrong (the name of the continent lol). I'm at least aware of some of the challanges of being a super-small team, but I can only imagine how much work that needs to get done we don't see. I only hope y'all can claw out some time to work on something (in a new tutorial?!) that can give the next seven years of new players a bite of that tasty lore!
This was recorded at the actual battle of Red River, an event hosted by SiegeCamp to test their new Engine (the engine used for Anvil Empires). Hundreds of mostly foxhole players participated on a single map.
Collies eat babies and does not seek for freedom but for power, influence and lands of others. From the mesean empire to the republic they still attack as the wardens defend i didn't ear any exeption if not the veli's civil war where the wardens did help the royalist veliens. I don't want to be too much of a faction loyalist cause robert luv game doesn't like them but yeah i don't eat babies
@@lokyinng5155 The wardens have two soldiers named FiletofBaby and Mr. Baby Eater respectively. It isn't propaganda. It is just fact. Wardens are barbarians!
According to the lore and heavy speculation on my part, there have been 3 Boreal Wars. The first Boreal War ended with Mesean Legions breaking their teeth on the 1st Boreal Line and being forced south of the Bulwark. The second Boreal War ended when the Meseans successfully broke the 1st Boreal Line and broke their teeth on the 2nd Boreal Line. From what I can deduce there's a 3rd Boreal Line, Whedon's Row is very likely a part of it. The third Boreal War ended when the Mesean broke themselves on a more heavily fortified 1st Boreal Line. My theory is that we're currently fighting after the 3rd Boreal War, and the reason we're getting more advanced tech is due to both sides recovering from said Boreal Wars.
@@noobrebuilder8260 RUclips has deleted my comment for the third time. I would say the lore isn't inconsistant as it's more hidden. It's pretty reductive to say inconsistant as it ignores that you can piece together the big picture by finding ingame lore pieces hidden around the map, inference, and also the supplemental stories you can find in the Foxhole official website called A Chronicle of Ashes. Great series, written by the main lore writer.
That's how real history is though. Both sides of a conflict have their own narrative of what happened, to paint themselves in the best light possible. What you are told happened vs. what actually happened can be very different things, and it is often not possible to ever know the truth.
If you have been around since the game came out you would know that the DEVs did not release lore for at least a couple of years and in fact encouraged players to write it themselves. The wardens built our own culture and cult around Callahan. Its why we shout his name and die for him that is not DEV lore, that was created by us. Foxhole lore is low effort and suppose to be "mysterious" when all it really is, is the fact the DEV in charge of lore was crap at it.
Fantastic Video. Really enjoyable presentation.
The lore dev himself? It's an honour!!!
Matt himself!
did he get anything wrong?
Thank you for making this, the lore community may finally recover from the damage done over the years.
The lord of the beef brought a darkness upon lore chat
You did it, you've found the story of Foxhole.
After years of looking, I have indeed found it o7
Really good video man, words cannot describe how happy I am to see it released. As the loreman who painstakingly wrote and sourced all of the lore wiki, it warms my heart.
And yes, I think we can put you in the Honorary Lore Nerd club now.
Who is this bozo, I didn't let you out of the basement
Thank you so much for writing the wiki! Without it this video would probably not have happened!
Is it possible to join some lore discord for foxhole? as lore is one of the things i like reading and creating
@@Matas626You forgot to take away their access to electronics, tricky things somehow make wifi and computers from things like calculators. Only give them food.
*Points* Loreman
One of the most interesting things about the lore, is how far back it goes and how deep some of it's elements are, which is something people most likely wouldn't expect for this kind of game.
Amazing video.
Yeah it's very broad and for just an endless war simulator
This is absolutely fantastic. Great storytelling for complicated stuff like this, easy to follow despite the intricacies!
Bonus points for the pronunciation of Veli (I screwed that up and felt the wrath of the lore nerds ; ) )
Thumbs up all all the way!
Yeah, the prenunciation of some of the names is very hard 😅
Thx for watching 😊7
Holy crap someone's done it. An actual comprehensive lore video with sensible timeline.
This is the most accurate lore video you'll find everybody.
Thank you for this video Ward Wardenson, finally truth may defeat the supporters of the "Warden Empire" and "Colonial Republic". I remember the old days, when you tried to put "lore" in your videos, and the mistakes you were making. Even though you were wrong, you accepted the fact that what you said was not correct when it was told to you.
This video is for now the only proof of redemption from a Foxhole RUclipsr who tried to use lore in his videos before. I honestly thank you for making this. There are some very minor mistakes (like Speaking Woods actually being Nevish which we learned recently) but they are so small that only the lore nerds (me for example) might notice them.
One thing I especially loved about your video is that you didn't lean towards one faction, you spoke of both faction's good and bad side. Now, there's only one thing I can say to end this comment...
Welcome Ward Wardenson, honorary member of the Lore Nerd Club.
My completely unbiased and absolutely correct understanding of Foxhole lore: Colonials are literally Satan, and Wardens never did anything wrong.
FACT CHECK: true
True and factual!
No lies detected!
Correct
Community notes labels this as a completely true and unbiased fact.
So Seige Camp's next game Anvil is a spiritual prequel to Foxhole
So in conclusion TO HELL WITH THE BLUEBERRIES LETS GOR COLLIES!! FOR THE LEGION!! FOR THE END IS OUR GLORY!!
But in all seriousness as someone who for a while has researched foxhole lore it is awesome to see it all laid out properly so bravo to you.
We all know the colonial menace started it! Proud sons of Callahan would never fire the first shot!
Really wish the devs could find a way to incorporate player wars into the lore. It would be tough but could be really cool if done right
nah
Perfect lore summary except at the very end. Matt the lore dev said that every player war is canon to the universe. We are actively fighting the wars after the burnout.
Matt even said that the only reason seasons dont change is due to gameplay limitations.
The devs will not include player events into the ingame lore. They will only cover everything up to the first player war. The rest of the story we make ourselves.
Pretty sure that was actually retconned and the video is the updated explanation, no?
@Dougi233 i highly doubt that. It would go against one of the core ideas of the game.
@@enstatite2479 I mean, the wars aren't necessarily lore accurate portrayals of the setting. Wouldn't be very reflective of lore when there are odd starts, and then the restarting tech trees every war. It was originally said that the wars were all canon and there was a dark age between them, but I am about 95% sure that was retconned and changed due to well...All our technology being lost between every war wouldn't make sense.
We have to take starting conditions and tech with a grain of salt. But the player wars are definitely canon.
Great video, well paced story!
Can't wait to see your version, subbed!!!
This was such A good lore explanation and with the analogy at the end. well, done.
Nice one, well narrated ! I learned most of it trough pieces of lore i found ingame but quite a lot was missing. This was great !
Like I said in your stream, everybody thinks they are the good guy!
Nice lore video, Ward Wardenson for Archon!
There is no bias recorded in the lore, leaving me to believe that the historians of this universe aren't Caoivish, Mesean, Velian, or anyone active in the conflict but an outside observer, that's why there knowledge on specifics is limited but it's just a crackpot theory of mine 😅
@wardwardenson it's okay. The collies are still invaders in my book. I'm just a simple snow farmer thrown into the perpetual war simulation
I love how callums was built by a sell out though lmao
cant wait for anvil empires!! Foxhole but medieval sounds so cool
That's a very fitting interpretation you made at the end!
One of the neat things about Foxhole is how much it manages to say about war, simply through the mechanics. By making use of the top-down perspective typical of RTS games, while locking each player in control of precisely one unit, it achieves a sort of forced perspective. It's really unique. The player is presented with a world where soldiers are basically just numbers, indistinguishable from each other. Yet the player is also required to attach their personal goals to one of them, to engage with the game.
I don't mean to sound sappy, but this seems like an exercise to develop empathy. Like, you are literally watching a tiny nameless soldier move on a battlefield, get shot at, and eventually die in some horrible way; and the whole time you are referring to that soldier as "me" or "I". The mechanics and presentation naturally invite you to internalize the experiences of a nameless, unremarkable being as your own: literally empathy.
Really awesome video man. Really enjoyed it💯
The lore is like 20% of why I like a game. I also specifically like games where there is a lack of a "Storyline" but there is plenty of lore.
I like to dig for the lore and I like seeing easter eggs of the lore rather than the lore being a cutscene or like some book you have to read or something.
As a Warden I didn't realize this is why we were at war. I thought we just started fighting the Colonials because they're green
Suck it blue!
Congrats on 1k subs bro.
Thx!!! MOre vids to come!!!!
Shame, no mention of Hanged Man
Separate episode perhaps?
This is a great and unbiased video, made me like the Colonials more.
Talking about RL, but I really like that period where mysticism transforms into pragmatism. Where a warhorse might still get mowed down by a machine gun possibly. The time period where the concept of a computer was in it's infancy, but people also believed in wizardry, sorcery, and possibly unicorns. A time period where you might work hard for coper coins to buy delicatessen meat for your wife to turn into delicious picnic sandwiches for a Saturday outing instead of using EBT to buy factory-pulverized meat wrapped in plastic to take home to your girlfriend so that she can yell at you for getting the wrong one or something.
That's why I like this game. It captures that time period pretty well even though it is fiction. I think most men want stable money, stable women, and less plastic.
As a French Warden player (and RUclipsr), I have to admit that your video is nice. I made a French video about the lore with Rubis.
Thank you again, see you on the game. I’ll subscribe to your channel.
Best regards.
All I gotta say is those wardens ARE DEVIOUS for the loughbone dam!
For Caovia I March On. Wardens for life.
very well written. Like you, before watching this video I thought the lore was super lackluster and disparate but this is actually great. It feels like a realistic set of conflicts and the unique lore for the colonials and wardens is incredibly interesting.
First time seeing any land pass Raka.
Good content, I just thought about finding all the lore in the game
Glad you enjoyed it!!!
such a masterpiece
Glad you enjoyed it ❤️
it interests me that what is the gameplay with the muskets is it like some sort of an event for foxhole that happened ?
Actually, the lore is what I say it is!!
Personally I see the colonials as the aggressors because they are the ones who first invaded veli
The Republican Velians invited the Meseans the same way the Hands of Veli invited the Caoivish
What Awesomeduud said. Though, yes, if you want to compare the Meseans vs the Caoivish of whose worse (they both have done bad things, Caoivish for example evicted the highlanders, busting the lughbone dam, etc), the Colonials/Meseans are worse since they have stripped countries of their history (Velians), made questionable allies, and have been overall very Imperialist.
@@grugmangaming5152 Although the colonials are technically the worst morally. The overall lesion is that when everyone is an A**hole, nobody is.
@@NoNameNolasname Exactly
7:12 anno 1800 lmfao
Excellent work! It's truly a shame so much misinformation has gone on for so long, but it's really on the game's lack of intro for that. I understand wanting to allow for discovery, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted all 25 minutes of this info as part of a bloated tutorial or something. But like, the fact no one (save for the game's biggest fans) knows the name of the CONTINENT is crazy. That should be something you learn in your first week of playing the game, not SEVEN YEARS like it took me. I've been inadvertently telling people the wrong info on news broadcasts for literal years.
There needs to be a short and sweet lore introduction video. Nothing more than 30 seconds to a minute. Make it biased and hype like propaganda so players can later discover the grey area themselves. It would also go over critical info like:
- The name of the continent.
- The name of the war (I've been calling it "The Foxhole War" for seven years and spreading the misinformation).
- The title of your faction's leader (literally everyone calls Callahan the Emperor even though that's incorrect).
- Why you're fighting (this could be me, but I orignally believed the Colonials were like the American Colonials, who were being lorded over by the Wardens because it sounded like the latter were prison wardens).
Again, short, sweet, hype, completely skippable. That would dispel SO much lore misinfo and unify the whole thing with the devs' actual vision for their world.
Hey, hi! For some extra context on this. We made the big decision early on to not do any kind of exposition and give players the option to discover more about the world as they played or stumbled into things in the environment. I think a big part of the "misinformation" is mainly due to the nature of how we did early access with Foxhole. That being, we developed the game from only a prototype alongside our players. In those first years, a lot of the worldbuilding was in its infancy. That's not to say more can't be done to provide a better introduction to the world; I've obviously always wanted that, haha. It's just been a matter of focus and things that dev effort is spent on. Alone, I only have so much to work with in terms of development tools for something like that. Sometimes, I think folks forget that our team is still *very* small, even compared to some of our indie contemporaries.
@@NorthernPixels1 Thanks for the response Matt! You and the team have put so much love into the lore, it kills me when longtime players (me) get the most basic stuff wrong (the name of the continent lol). I'm at least aware of some of the challanges of being a super-small team, but I can only imagine how much work that needs to get done we don't see. I only hope y'all can claw out some time to work on something (in a new tutorial?!) that can give the next seven years of new players a bite of that tasty lore!
What a nice video and seems to be about what i thought of the lore.
Glory to the Warden Empire
22:16 Where did you get this map?
You really are John Foxhole!
This video will be what I'll be sending to my friends, to the question, “What's Foxhole's lore?”
I selectively only heard the information to come to the one logical conclusion: the Colonials are the baddies.
Now this sounds better
I see, no wonder Civil War is common on the Colonial sides
Anyways a Fascinating Video
I wish to know how did Iain Callahan participate in VELI civil war, isn't it hundreds year after Caovia country found?
I am french and it is a great video
I recognized some of the games used to visualize aspects of the lore, but some I did not. Does anyone know all the games referenced in this video?
Awsome video👍
What’s the top down rifle musket footage at 9:35 from?
A very old foxhole event that was a server test iirc, it's called the Battle for Red-River.
This was recorded at the actual battle of Red River, an event hosted by SiegeCamp to test their new Engine (the engine used for Anvil Empires). Hundreds of mostly foxhole players participated on a single map.
@@Thramoun Ngl they should bring it back as a standalone game with some polish and mechanics
Top down holdfast
I had the same question, that looks cool as hell
Damm good video
thx for watching!!!
Do all the Easter eggs next!
Is the musket gameplay shown actually from Foxhole? Or from another game I've never heard of?
It's from a playtest the devs ran for "Foxhole: The Battle of Red River"
It would be so cool if they made a foxhole hearts of iron 4 mod
Top video
what about the 3rd faction that emerged during the current wars? the ones who follow the footsteps of the first Callahan? Peace.
Wait... it's all just rome?
*GUN POINTED*
ALWAYS HAS BEEN
@@Pudsy everything is rome...
Justice for Westgate🗣️🗣️
When do you explain the whole warden baby eating and why the warden constantly provoke the freedom loving colonials?
wasn't that the reverse
also neither of the faction eat baby that just propaganda
Collies eat babies and does not seek for freedom but for power, influence and lands of others. From the mesean empire to the republic they still attack as the wardens defend i didn't ear any exeption if not the veli's civil war where the wardens did help the royalist veliens. I don't want to be too much of a faction loyalist cause robert luv game doesn't like them but yeah i don't eat babies
@@lokyinng5155 The wardens have two soldiers named FiletofBaby and Mr. Baby Eater respectively.
It isn't propaganda. It is just fact. Wardens are barbarians!
Blue berry eat dogs n cats
So in this fictional world, what are the fictional Asian countries doing?
to be honest not even the devs that make the lore know the lore
They know.
According to the lore and heavy speculation on my part, there have been 3 Boreal Wars.
The first Boreal War ended with Mesean Legions breaking their teeth on the 1st Boreal Line and being forced south of the Bulwark.
The second Boreal War ended when the Meseans successfully broke the 1st Boreal Line and broke their teeth on the 2nd Boreal Line. From what I can deduce there's a 3rd Boreal Line, Whedon's Row is very likely a part of it.
The third Boreal War ended when the Mesean broke themselves on a more heavily fortified 1st Boreal Line. My theory is that we're currently fighting after the 3rd Boreal War, and the reason we're getting more advanced tech is due to both sides recovering from said Boreal Wars.
Honorary member of the lore nerd community? Brother you made a video on lore. you're a lore nerd.
This is a great video but the pronunciations are a bit off
the lore the devs wrote is inconstistant, the have written themselves into a 40k trap.
that is their intention to be honest
@@noobrebuilder8260 yes, but it makes it hard to change and shows inconsitant time line that could be written better and make alot more sense.
@@noobrebuilder8260 RUclips has deleted my comment for the third time. I would say the lore isn't inconsistant as it's more hidden.
It's pretty reductive to say inconsistant as it ignores that you can piece together the big picture by finding ingame lore pieces hidden around the map, inference, and also the supplemental stories you can find in the Foxhole official website called A Chronicle of Ashes. Great series, written by the main lore writer.
That's how real history is though. Both sides of a conflict have their own narrative of what happened, to paint themselves in the best light possible. What you are told happened vs. what actually happened can be very different things, and it is often not possible to ever know the truth.
@@galiantus1354 no it's not, you are referring to propaganda. i am referring to game timeline and technological development. it is really bad
early
yap yap
Dev lore is shite.
What's your canon then?
If you have been around since the game came out you would know that the DEVs did not release lore for at least a couple of years and in fact encouraged players to write it themselves. The wardens built our own culture and cult around Callahan. Its why we shout his name and die for him that is not DEV lore, that was created by us.
Foxhole lore is low effort and suppose to be "mysterious" when all it really is, is the fact the DEV in charge of lore was crap at it.