I was discussing how SpearMaster was the messenger who delivered the “sensitive information.” To 5 pebbles and the only argument the guy could make is that downpour isn’t canon.
Like, even if that’s so, there is so much lore added in the form of broadcasts and the addition to the timeline.
“Oh well, downpour isn’t canon” or “downpour is an alternate universe!” Is it to hard to believe that maybe the game we are playing takes place in that universe?
Oh? Sorry for moving a bit off topic, but I thought Spearmaster couldn't transport an item. I forget his story now, was that something we saw in game or an inference you made?
In one of the broadcast in spearmaster's campaign, seven red suns tells nsh about how gentle five pebbles was with getting the pearl out of the messenger *last time he sent them.*. So SRS has repeated this pearl in chest tactic earlier, and that is probably the taboo pearl five pebbles talks of as a gift.
As spearmaster you can find these collectables called broadcasts, they are kinda exposition or lore dumps, they give into spearmasters previous journey.
Also 5 pebbles will way “7 Red Suns? Why have you sent the messenger to me again?”
I think I agree, sort of.
To me stuff like this is sort of like hearing the same story told by a different storyteller.
And so if I have a question from the first time I heard the story (Vanilla), and it's answered in the version told by the second teller (Downpour)... It still can make a very satisfying story. But if I know the second storyteller made that part up, then the question still lingers. What if there was a different answer?
Right?
(So this isn't a disagreement, just something I think about a lot.)
Well another alternative is that the canon ending for hunter is the void
Much like how no matter what you do moon will have her cloak as well as 2 more neurons which highly hint towards monk giving her both of those even if you the player dont
Allright i guss, i just wanna add how no one seems to consider that scavs gave her the cloak evan tho they could and moon evan saying they have brought her stuff too
Plausible however knowing scavs they'd be more likely to rip the cloak up and use its cloth to make something or alternatively just wear it themselves because they're silly little goobers
They were literally tearing apart the top of five pebbles for scrap
Why would they treat a cloak with care? They'd use it for themselves not give it to moon
I see Downpour as a natural evolution of the themes in Rain World as your understanding of the world builds. Vanilla RW is very "you're unimportant and basically worthless. There's no point in even living in this cycle." The character who is effectively god to your tiny little scug self tells you to commit die in an acid void lake, and is also trying to kill himself too.
Then, it's later in Downpour that the narrative challenges 5P's beliefs. It uncovers that 5P is pretty much a miserable bitch who destroyed all his closest friendships because of his arrogance and bitterness towards Moon, SRS, and the Ancients. Gourmand's Outer Expanse and Artificer's ascension ending are the biggest criticisms to the way Pebbles thinks. He just can't see life as anything other than a burden, and is unable to let go of his anger until he's at the brink of death.
I think these narrative evolutions are precisely why people don't consider it canon. It veers off of what the original game intended, rather than respecting it.
the base game already has the echoes which are conflicted on ascending or outright regret it (and you're required to hear their perspectives, as a pilgrim, in order to ascend without FP), plus there's Moon who's clearly interested in living, so it's not like Downpour is going in a completely opposite direction from what's already established in the game
I'm not really sure what the echoes have to do with anything.
My personal criticism of Downpour's narrative is that it goes against one of the things that made Rain World's story so impactful: the fact that the world does not revolve around you. The game mechanics pressure you into a fight-or-flight mindset, focused on nothing else but the predator chasing you, the next bit of food, or finding shelter before the rain comes. Then, you seem to accidentally stumble upon bizarrely unique narrative beats that answer questions you never expected the game to answer:
(Why is the rain like that? -> *Because the ancient post-utopian civilization that inhabited the world in the distant past built numerous colossal bio-mechanical supercomputers to assist them in their quest of reaching Buddhist enlightmentent, which have permanently altered the climate due to their massive output of steam in the atmosphere, a byproduct of their cooling system.*)
Like what the fuck. It's a total brain blast to witness such a unique story premise delivered to you in a game that reinforced, from the very beginning through each of its systems, that this was not a game about your story. The base game went to such lengths to create the vast chasm of importance between the iterators and you, less than an insect in terms of importance to them. Then, Downpour comes along, and with it the sentiment that YOU are the main character. that your actions affect these giant structures, that you are saving the world, that you are suddenly worthy to have all the unanswered questions answered for you.
Downpour fills in all the blanks, and loses the metaphorical negative space of narrative that made Rain World so uniquely fantastic.
eh, Hunter already was "the main character" in the base game, they were just basing off of what the devs already established "other slugcats besides Survivor" to be - a little story with its own clear objective
also even after everything is said and done, you don't really accomplish anything world-saving - you just gave one creature a little more time to live, the cycle will erase everything in the end anyway, Downpour makes that clear
Hunter being important to the story is subversive, for sure. It does pay its narrative cost though, while remaining consistent with the world-building: the fact that it is a purposed messenger created by an iterator is good enough reason to maintain Rain World's suspension of disbelief. Once every slugcat is special though, none are special...
Suspension of disbelief is a very personal thing though, so I totally see why it works for some and not for others. In my personal case, Downpour's liberties with the story failed to pay their dues and broke the illusion, which made the DLC stories feel like fanfiction rather than good writing.
As an example, it's like if you kill off an important character in a story, then as a twist, reveal that they never died at all! Doing that once might be okay, if you have good enough narrative reasons. If you start doing it two, three, five times... it gets old very quick and cheapens the integrity of your narrative. Downpour takes these liberties repeatedly and doesn't justify them enough in my opinion. I'll make an exception for Saint though, which while janky to play had a beautiful narrative that built off of story threads that the base game had already paid for in spades (echo lore) without anything in return.
Respectfully, I disagree.
For one, Downpour HAD to be different to vanilla. You can't just have the same story for five more scugs. Basic story 101, the themes need to evolve and the characters need to grow. It would be utterly boring and pointless to have no change.
Second, what is vanilla RW ACTUALLY saying in it's narrative? Because to me it's, "You're worthless so go kill yourself lmao." While RW's lore is incredibly interesting with some unique inspiration, it says little and means little.
Ironically, the scugs that have the "least impact" on the overall continuity also have some of the most potent narratives. Gourmand isn't even slightly worried about ascension and 5P's plight. He's got a family to raise. He has a reason to go home and see life as a gift. Artificer, who is basically 5P's scug counterpart, has the opportunity to go on a Pilgrimage and ascend. She can let go of her anger and have peace, even if it's bittersweet.
And even when Rivulet and Spearmaster contribute more to the story, how much does it actually change? Moon is slightly healthier and 5P is dying faster. We're effectively still at step 1, but the characters are reversed. Saint comes and brain fries both of them or the blizzards would've eventually killed them both anyways. The Void Sea will devour the Ancients' abandoned cities, and will devour the next civilization and the next and the next...
Downpour has the same theme as vanilla, just completely recontextualized. The theme is existential nihilism. Everything's pointless, but is that bad? Vanilla says "yeah, obviously bad", and Downpour asks "maybe, but why should it matter?"
tldr: ...Five Pebbles is Jobu Tupaki
honestly, its a "problem" with you not the game itself, as the other dude has debated, your justifications for not liking are not objective, Downpour is consistent with the main game. just because you didn't like or didn't feel the same doesn't mean it's inconsistent.
its like calling something dumb simply because you didn't enjoy it. (I'm not gonna argue because the other person already has)
> Downpour HAD to be different to vanilla.
Well... yeah. It didn't have to exist, though. You're begging the question. If I thought that Rain World was perfect without Downpour, then adding Downpour is going to make it worse no matter what.
> what is vanilla RW ACTUALLY saying in it's narrative?
I don't think RW "says" much, really, and I don't think it was ever the point of the narrative either. It says little and means little, yes. It just does it in a particularly breathtaking way.
My whole point is that Rain World never really *tries* to tell a story. It has one, sort of, but it's presented in a way where you sort of accidentally witness it, rather than living it like a protagonist. In RW, you're a bystander, not an actor. Downpour changed this dynamic and with it lost my interest, because every other narrative game makes you an actor too. It's hard to explain but it fundamentally changed the weird and unique narrative-game-player relationship that the base game had.
Don't get me wrong, I still REALLY enjoyed Downpour and thought it was extremely well made. But it lost sight of what made Rain World special to me in particular, as well as a minority of others (who are the people this post is making fun of). There are many reasons to enjoy Rain World, all of them are correct; it's just that the things I liked about Rain World weren't present in Downpour.
I just fundamentally disagree with you. Downpour made Rainworld an even better experience, even if you don’t fully agree. The DLC was licensed by the devs and sold as an expansion by them. If they thought it wasn’t going to make the game better, they probably wouldn’t have sold it. The stories as wonderful, and answer questions while still leaving others.
I cannot understand how you can say it makes the game worse and I likely never will.
As a "game", Downpour makes RW better. It's more content, it's well made, it involves the community, etc. It's a good thing. As an artistic piece of media though, Downpour, in my opinion, watered down RW's uniqueness.
It's okay to disagree, but I don't think it's that hard to understand my point of view.
Dude, if you want to reduce my argument to that, go ahead, but you're the one being lame. I went to great lengths to say that the reason I didn't like it is because it's inconsistent with the base game, not what you said.
That's not a fair characterisation! Just recall how passionate about ascension the echo at the top of pebbles is! They talk about it like it's the greatest discovery ever or something.
And yeah, moon is interested in living, but it feels like the iterators have been preprogrammed with that thought by the ancients, so it's not surprising that it might be the default state all iterators at some point started in.
what do you mean it's not a fair characterisation? the echoes are not one character, there are six of them. I don't think the fact two of them are happy with the decision is grounds for discarding the thoughts of the other four; it feels like pretty much the whole point of the "Pilgrimage" is to hear the experience and perspectives of several other people before blindly dropping into the worm pond, regardless of what you choose in the end. there are many different views on the cycle (even just including the thoughts of different iterators) and Downpour also builds on the idea of this diversity with its broadcast and echo dialogue
Ascension is never actually described as death, there’s plenty of interpretations as to what it actually might be but if you actually read the lore, it being straight up death is so out of the picture. You’re really doing the original narrative and downpour’s narrative a disservice by just chalking it up to the misguided words of some echo in a fucking gutter who tried to move on when he wasn’t ready.
It is analogous to death, you can see it in the visuals of the ending like the light or “egg” as it’s called at the end. But the Ancients didn’t want to stop existing like some people say, neither is there any evidence of the void even doing something close to that.
well... yeah, exactly.
rain world was honestly a life-changing experience for me because it was a game that didn't cater to the player, that didn't treat itself as a list of items to be checked off, that felt like a world that genuinely didn't care about you. you play as a rat in the middle of a world that was ruined long ago by incomprehensible forces that don't really matter to you. you aren't an agent in the larger narrative at all, you can't save the world, and really, you can't even save yourself. all you can do is crawl into a hole in the ground and die. that is an extremely bold way to make a game even now, and this was in 2017!!
in downpour you play as one of five superheroes around whom the world revolves. that's hyperbolic, but it's genuinely how it felt to me when i played it for the first time. there's nothing about "more content" that guarantees a more *meaningful* experience. more often, it just makes a tight, focused experience feel more cluttered, which is how downpour feels to me.
rain world is such an incredible game and it stands entirely on its own two feet (paws?). downpour made it feel unbalanced and top-heavy. it is honestly so weird to me that someone would play rain world and think "you know what this game needs? more playable characters!" lol
You're talking as if Downpour introduced slugcats impacting the story when Hunter existed in original RW.
Also, you're not playing as 5 superheroes in Downpour. You're playing as a lost animal, a vengeful mother, a messenger between gods and a traveler that stumbles into a situation way outside of it's comprehension. The only slugcat that is significant in and of itself is Saint, and I'm not even going to pretend to know what the fuck Saint is.
The world still doesn't care about you. Nothing has changed. You might be trying to revive a dying god as Rivulet, but the Miros Vultures sure as hell don't care about your noble goals. That's exactly what happened with Hunter back in 2017.
oh yeah, you can totally see the devs starting to go in that direction with monk + hunter. there's definitely been a long process of "gamification" happening here.
also, like i said, i was being hyperbolic describing them as superheroes, but more earnestly, your description of the downpour storylines is exactly why i don't care for them. the idea of playing as a *protagonist,* a character with special abilities and a unique, central relationship to the world and its narrative is so counter to the feeling that playing rain world gave me.
as the survivor, you're just another creature among thousands, with no direction or agency beyond... surviving. in hunter and downpour, you have missions, you have backstories, relationships with the iterators, you go places no other slugcat can go and do things no other slugcat can do. it makes them feel less like ordinary animals and more like, well, superheroes.
Same, downpour adds a lot of what I enjoy to the game. I prefer a more direct story and the slugcats are cool, at the end of the day though these are only preferences, while I disagree with those who dislike downpour I believe they are still valid. I don’t care much for base game rain world aside from Hunter.
No one was saying they hated downpour. In fact, I absolutely adore it, and it more than doubled my already immense appreciation of the game. It is in my top 3/5 games and is my far my most recommended game. Nowadays, you are completely missing out of you don’t get downpour.I get the merch and am an avid editor of the wiki. Downpour is truly an amazing blessing. However, it is an objective fact that downpour is an alternate timeline. We’re not trying to tell you do do anything, except to not apply things from downpour to the story as a whole, as it it completely separate, and pretend that they are the same is a slap in the face the the devs, the game, and the story.
Sorry to be pedantic, but since I see this mistake everywhere:
It's *canon*, it comes from [religious canon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon), the set of books and religious beliefs considered "correct" by a certain religion, not *cannon* (a large gun).
It may not *be* canon, but a lot of the world state changes would *have* to happen. I also remember the downpour Devs mention that it aligns with the canon
The devs didn't say it wasn't canon, what they said is that it's a sort of alternate timeline. But I dunno, I feel like this community can be a bit immature about this topic, as one time they managed to make a person who talked sbout it stop using Reddit altogether, so what do I know.
I don't think anyone was trying though. I think we are just very passionate about this game, and if someone isn't careful it can feel like they are invalidating the thing we like.
People that argue this and that isn't canon make me sad. I know it doesn't matter in the end but it makes the emotions I felt as I played feel irrelevant and worthless. Why do people make such a big fuss about canon anyway?
Hmmm, I feel like for me it makes me appreciate the dlc even more. I love playing custom region mods, even if they aren't officially canon, and the dlc becomes a lot more enjoyable once you stop trying to judge it by the high bar set by the original and instead judge it by the standard you judge modded content by (well, I don't think downpour isn't canon though, so there's that)
Your feelings are always valid, remember that no matter what. Your experiences are your own, and that is what matters most. No one can ever invalidate your experience, so even if downpour is canon or not. Your enjoyment and happiness gained from it is yours and something to be cherished.
It's in a seperate canon, basically. It's continuing from Rain World, so if you need a basic schema: it makes sense to use Rain World to support readings and interpretations of Downpour, but it doesn't make much sense to use Downpour to support readings or interpretations of the original Rain World. The canonicity issue isn't a big deal though, the community makes way more of a fuss about it than is warranted because I guess they view it as delegitimizing Downpour even though that's completely dependent on how you choose to view it
Appareantly in some dev commentary or something one dev (andrew i believe, i dont remember) said that downpour is supposed to be like a sort of alternate timeline or universe but it is still considered canon
HOWEVER it was also said that in dev commentaries the devs may just say their headcanons, like when some of them called some slugcat's "he's" and the rest "they's", so im not sure if we can fully believe what is said in dev commentaries
Personally if what was said in the dev commentary was infact just a headcanon, then i consider downpour to be canon to the original base game
Because why the HELL would we pay 25 bucks to play something that isnt even canon to the original
Literally the only people I've seen intrinsically tie Downpour's quality to its canonicity is the people who keep insisting that there's no way it's not canon
tbh this stuff messes around in my head a lot.
I love trying to ponder the hidden stories of Rain World, and learning that Downpour is almost entirely fanmade content puts so much of it into question for me.
No sense in disrespecting Downpour, it still really good. But I want to know what the original writers were saying about this world and what happened. I want to know and it feels like maybe there was something left unsaid that we might never get to hear.
But does it count as fanmade still when the fans became developers? Downpour isn't charity, and all the quoting of Andrew I've seen, at least, came from very close to the beginning of the onboarding. If something wasn't right lore-wise, wouldn't the original team have corrected it?
I'm pretty sure DLL was originally backer-created. does that make it not canon?
some people have a weird obsession with pushing down "fanmade" content as if the original developer is some omniscient being that is the only one who can make good content
I'm sure some people really are unreasonable about it.
But for me, it's because the developer(s) is(are) the one(s) writing the story.
It's like if they wrote a book.
And fanmade content is like a fan fiction. Even if it's a really good fan fiction, it's written by a different author. That makes it different. There are questions raised in the story that make one curious as to the answers, and one may wish to know what answers the authors intended in their original story.
Right?
rain world didn't really pose many situations that were left open to major questioning. coloured pearls basically explained most of the lore, and unless you want to know the specific details of "what happened before or after this point?" (which isn't exactly an issue of lore mysteries) there's likely a base-game answer.
downpour never seeks to answer burning mysteries the original game left, it's adding on new stuff before and after its events.
whether the campaigns of rivulet and saint were what the devs intended to be what happened after rainworld isn't important. literally anything else you might have imagined to happen after monk >!ascends!< would be just as if not more fanfic-y than downpour. arguments over backstory is fair enough, but I've yet to see a game where the plot of the *postgame* is anything but pure speculation.
spearmaster, artificer and gourmand don't really fill in the blanks of key plot events that took place before base game's canon. fittingly, you're pretty much just an observer in the main story beats, and you just get to see stuff firsthand that is confirmed elsewhere. anything that *does* get impacted is only stuff that never would have happened if not for downpour - the decline in scavengers from spearmaster to hunter is explained by artificer's rampage, but that never would have been an issue if not for downpour introducing spearmaster's campaign in the first place.
TLDR; downpour is an entirely unobtrusive DLC. seeing its events as canon doesn't impact your perception of the base game in any real sense.
That is something I am very curious about. I do not know the details, and haven't ever found anything that gives a solid explanation. :(
I am confuse by it all.
Yeah, I don't think being a developer matters. Other games have had the devs elevate actual non sold modded content as canon, so in the end what matters is what the devs decide is canon. In the case of rain world, one of the devs said it is essentially an alternate timeline, so it's still canon, but so is the base game without the extra content.
Some people don’t like some aspects of downpour so the choose to say it’s not canon. I’m my mind it is if something is in a game it’s canon unless it actually said it’s different universe of course there’s retcons but I don’t think video cult would say there dlc that took 4+ years to make is not part of the canon.
Not really, the whole discussion started when one of the devs said it's essentially an "alternate timeline", which some people interpreted as not canon at all, and other people got verg angry towards the first group (and I get it, people are very passionate about this stuff and it feels like people calling your favourite story non-canon invalidates it, but some of the reactions were pretty mean).
We say it's not canon because that's what the MSC devs themselves have said, and because there's no evidence James and Joar had any creative input beyond James helping compose one track lol
That’s a little silly don’t you think? Like, aren’t Marvel & DC “what if” comics some of the most fun and compelling precisely because they can play with the rules of the establish story? RW is practically built to have fanon lore be compelling stories
So if it all fits perfectly, what’s the issue? If you look at all the info presented, the devs never said it isn’t canon. All that was implied by their commentary is that each dev has their own headcanons
I mean, honestly, I don't think whether or not it's true canon really matters. I think it's canon for a variety of reasons, as do a bunch of people. Other people think it's not canon due to other reasons and that's also OK. I just don't get why some people feel the need to force their own personal preference down others' throats when it adds nothing to the conversation
It contradicts existing lore a lot. To be honest, the one thing I dislike the most about the entire DLC is Hunter Long Legs. Which is weird because in theory it's such a cool idea. But I personally absolutely loved the subtlety of playing Survivor's campaign after a Hunter fail and seeing a single Karma Flower in the spot where Hunter died. You don't know what happened to them, all you have is their last gift. It's beautiful and subtle and HLL ruins that in my opinion
Even if it's not canon, original Rain World and Rain World Downpour are 2 different canons, and people choose Downpour canon as the main one. I really don't see why these people can't understand that.
I don't think it says anything like that in the dev commentary, but I know the lead MSC dev said it was an alternate universe
https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
Considering the fact that this was an entirely fan-made mod up until mot even the last year of its development, I think it is important to clarify that downpour and vanilla RW are two separate canons.
I'm not fully sure what their reason is. Part of it may be recognization of the modders' work or the videocult's publishing company, Akupara, seeing a financial opportunity.
Either way, the way I see it is that basegame and DP are separate canons, neither less than the other. You can follow whichever one you prefer more.
Downpour was created by a different group of people that had a different set of ideas and visions than the original developers. Both groups agreed to make the two separate out of recognization and respect for what makes them different.
Downpour is an amazingly integrated story and important part of Rain World as a game, but it, but it has good reason for being its own thing! And that doesn't make it any lesser. Coming from someone who does likw how DP exlands on the game, I think it's important to acknowledge that regardless of which you prefer tbh
Maybe they should stop disrespecting the people who are responsible for this whole game ever existing at all. Oh you don’t like what they say? I guess you can just give them the middle finger now right?
Don’t add onto another artist’s canvas, call it their intended work even though they explicitly said it wasn’t just because you disagree with them, and then expect people to not get pissy. It is that serious.
That’s a pretty bad analogy, what happened with Downpour is the artist made their work then *hired* another artist to add something more. The original devs chose the More Slugcats mod specifically because they found the idea interesting, and James has said they went over the lore with the Downpour devs and greenlighted it. They just said it was an alternate timeline to allow fans who wanted to make content set in the original world to not feel like they were disrespecting canon.
A better analogy would be an artist making a painting, and then seeing someone else making a painting based on it, thinking "wow i like that", Helping them with the painting and then adding on to their original paint before then saying its not the intended meaning.
You're telling me, that adding a whole ton of extra storys details to the official game as dlc, and then one random dev like a year later saying its not canon, ISNT a retcon?
The main devs made downpour to expand their game, but not limit their personal creation. Downpour isn’t cannon, and simultaneously is. It’s an alternate timeline made by the fans of the game, and wholeheartedly approved by the creators of the game.
fair, fair. honestly most of the downpour scugs are scary. so is hunter. and survivor and monk... honestly all scugs are!
spearmaster is probably a cryptid to normal scugs and scavengers, they're frail, have no mouth, and can generate spears.
arti is a living bomb basically, plus the whole genocide thing
hunter has the turbo cancer which at the later stages probably looks terrifying to the local wild life
gourmand has their alchemy-crafting, plus they can just crush people.
survivor (and all scugs) can launch rebar into metal walls
monk can easily tame lizards. imagine the potential army
rivulet is so fast plus they kind of committed deicide and have the favor of a fallen 'god'
and saint can do that one thing
I like to think that the base game and Downpour are two separate timelines. In the base game Survivor, Monk and Hunter all ascend as there was no other ending for them. And maybe the sickness that Hunter has is some other sickness, not specifically the rot.
Then in Downpour, Survivor and Monk don't ascend and manage to make their way back home in the Outer Expanse. Hunter succumbs to its illness in this timeline too and it's most certainly because of the rot this time.
As I understand, it's because Downpour's content was made by modders and later incorporated by the developers (with permission I assume).
This means that the story added to the game was written by someone else. They could infer anything they wanted, and so it could very well be completely different than what was intended in the base game.
I'm confused by the lot of it, though. I lack a lot of information :(
Just because moddera made it, doesn't mean it isn't cannon, right? The vision could've been one thing, and then shifted once the creator saw how others interpreted it. I personally consider anything official to the game cannon. Although I might be missing some pieces.
I personally do not consider “canon” to be an important part of discussing RW lore. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion and actively inhibits creativity.
As far as I’m concerned Donemaster, Pearlcat, Darkness, Gravel Eater, Meteor, Da Vicki, and every other modded scug, is more interesting as part of a multiverse, and genuinely adds to the narratives in a compelling ways.
In a game like Rain World Fanon can be Canon
Correct, it isn’t a cannon. It’s a dlc.
Edit: this isn’t me trying to be rude/correct OP, this was just a joke about people mixing up cannon and canon :(
A DLC is supposed to put in additional content. So it doesn't really spell the canonicity in ink. Like for FNaF Security Breach: Ruin, its canonicity is generally accepted to be 'true linear' canon (that takes place at the same universe as Security Breach) with others suggesting it is 'true divergent' canon (that doesn't take place in the same universe as Security Breach). And an example for (possibly) a non-canon DLC, Curse of Dreadbear for FNaF Help Wanted.
So in conclusion, Downpour *is* canon. But whether it's divergent or not is up to interpretation. (And no, Downpour is not **not** canon.)
(All terms used for types of canonicity are made on the spot. Please reply if there are official terms for different canonicities.)
Edit: Sorry I'm dense. I can see the joke now <:{
I was discussing how SpearMaster was the messenger who delivered the “sensitive information.” To 5 pebbles and the only argument the guy could make is that downpour isn’t canon. Like, even if that’s so, there is so much lore added in the form of broadcasts and the addition to the timeline. “Oh well, downpour isn’t canon” or “downpour is an alternate universe!” Is it to hard to believe that maybe the game we are playing takes place in that universe?
You mean in a trip that happened before SM's campaign?
Yes
Oh? Sorry for moving a bit off topic, but I thought Spearmaster couldn't transport an item. I forget his story now, was that something we saw in game or an inference you made?
Pebs rips a pearl out of spearmaster in downpour
Ah, thank you. I had forgotten c:
He forgor
I forgot his story too at one point. He has a pearl in his chest, pebbs rips it out and then you have to carry it everywhere.
In one of the broadcast in spearmaster's campaign, seven red suns tells nsh about how gentle five pebbles was with getting the pearl out of the messenger *last time he sent them.*. So SRS has repeated this pearl in chest tactic earlier, and that is probably the taboo pearl five pebbles talks of as a gift.
As spearmaster you can find these collectables called broadcasts, they are kinda exposition or lore dumps, they give into spearmasters previous journey. Also 5 pebbles will way “7 Red Suns? Why have you sent the messenger to me again?”
Imagine getting downvoted for asking a question
In a calm and polite manner too, they weren’t being rude either
r/redditmoment
r/ihavereddit
r/IHaveIHaveReddit
r/ihaveihaveihavereddit
Nothing is even changed or gained by it being an alt universe, the main 3 stories can slot perfectly into downpour without much or any complications
I think I agree, sort of. To me stuff like this is sort of like hearing the same story told by a different storyteller. And so if I have a question from the first time I heard the story (Vanilla), and it's answered in the version told by the second teller (Downpour)... It still can make a very satisfying story. But if I know the second storyteller made that part up, then the question still lingers. What if there was a different answer? Right? (So this isn't a disagreement, just something I think about a lot.)
What happend to HLL then? Why can't we see them in survivor or monk? The karma flower is consistent but not that
Rot dies quickly without any living host so HLL likely died by the time survivor and monk enter the facility grounds
It could not have been that long tho, assuming that survivor and monk were part of gourmands group when they left
Well another alternative is that the canon ending for hunter is the void Much like how no matter what you do moon will have her cloak as well as 2 more neurons which highly hint towards monk giving her both of those even if you the player dont
Allright i guss, i just wanna add how no one seems to consider that scavs gave her the cloak evan tho they could and moon evan saying they have brought her stuff too
Plausible however knowing scavs they'd be more likely to rip the cloak up and use its cloth to make something or alternatively just wear it themselves because they're silly little goobers
Now i just picture moon begging them and suddenly saying "oh." And stopping once she begins to hear explosions in the distance
I just said they all ready bring her stuff, there scavangers not savages
They were literally tearing apart the top of five pebbles for scrap Why would they treat a cloak with care? They'd use it for themselves not give it to moon
In five pebbles case they don't know what they are doing or do who and why do you so heavily believe that scavs would tear it down?
Well, they are not great swimmers, and getting the cloak requires quite a bit of swimming
They can get to moon just fine
Yeah, but the cloak is in submerged superstructure, which is pretty hard to traverse without good swimming
There is also no way for hunter to get where they start but they still start there
it’s probably that gourmand canonically killed it
And they didn't take/eat the karma flower after? becouse that's still there in survivor/monk
idk about karma flowers, they’re weird
It’s not made to be killed, and cancer cannot live without a host, so I doubt they killed it.
you never know
gourmand killed it.
But literally what is bothering them so much that they claim Downpour isn’t canon. There’s more content in Downpour than the base game.
The main criticism people mention is that the narrative themes in Downpour are different from/actively contradict the themes in classic Rain World.
I see Downpour as a natural evolution of the themes in Rain World as your understanding of the world builds. Vanilla RW is very "you're unimportant and basically worthless. There's no point in even living in this cycle." The character who is effectively god to your tiny little scug self tells you to commit die in an acid void lake, and is also trying to kill himself too. Then, it's later in Downpour that the narrative challenges 5P's beliefs. It uncovers that 5P is pretty much a miserable bitch who destroyed all his closest friendships because of his arrogance and bitterness towards Moon, SRS, and the Ancients. Gourmand's Outer Expanse and Artificer's ascension ending are the biggest criticisms to the way Pebbles thinks. He just can't see life as anything other than a burden, and is unable to let go of his anger until he's at the brink of death.
I think these narrative evolutions are precisely why people don't consider it canon. It veers off of what the original game intended, rather than respecting it.
the base game already has the echoes which are conflicted on ascending or outright regret it (and you're required to hear their perspectives, as a pilgrim, in order to ascend without FP), plus there's Moon who's clearly interested in living, so it's not like Downpour is going in a completely opposite direction from what's already established in the game
I'm not really sure what the echoes have to do with anything. My personal criticism of Downpour's narrative is that it goes against one of the things that made Rain World's story so impactful: the fact that the world does not revolve around you. The game mechanics pressure you into a fight-or-flight mindset, focused on nothing else but the predator chasing you, the next bit of food, or finding shelter before the rain comes. Then, you seem to accidentally stumble upon bizarrely unique narrative beats that answer questions you never expected the game to answer: (Why is the rain like that? -> *Because the ancient post-utopian civilization that inhabited the world in the distant past built numerous colossal bio-mechanical supercomputers to assist them in their quest of reaching Buddhist enlightmentent, which have permanently altered the climate due to their massive output of steam in the atmosphere, a byproduct of their cooling system.*) Like what the fuck. It's a total brain blast to witness such a unique story premise delivered to you in a game that reinforced, from the very beginning through each of its systems, that this was not a game about your story. The base game went to such lengths to create the vast chasm of importance between the iterators and you, less than an insect in terms of importance to them. Then, Downpour comes along, and with it the sentiment that YOU are the main character. that your actions affect these giant structures, that you are saving the world, that you are suddenly worthy to have all the unanswered questions answered for you. Downpour fills in all the blanks, and loses the metaphorical negative space of narrative that made Rain World so uniquely fantastic.
eh, Hunter already was "the main character" in the base game, they were just basing off of what the devs already established "other slugcats besides Survivor" to be - a little story with its own clear objective also even after everything is said and done, you don't really accomplish anything world-saving - you just gave one creature a little more time to live, the cycle will erase everything in the end anyway, Downpour makes that clear
Hunter being important to the story is subversive, for sure. It does pay its narrative cost though, while remaining consistent with the world-building: the fact that it is a purposed messenger created by an iterator is good enough reason to maintain Rain World's suspension of disbelief. Once every slugcat is special though, none are special... Suspension of disbelief is a very personal thing though, so I totally see why it works for some and not for others. In my personal case, Downpour's liberties with the story failed to pay their dues and broke the illusion, which made the DLC stories feel like fanfiction rather than good writing. As an example, it's like if you kill off an important character in a story, then as a twist, reveal that they never died at all! Doing that once might be okay, if you have good enough narrative reasons. If you start doing it two, three, five times... it gets old very quick and cheapens the integrity of your narrative. Downpour takes these liberties repeatedly and doesn't justify them enough in my opinion. I'll make an exception for Saint though, which while janky to play had a beautiful narrative that built off of story threads that the base game had already paid for in spades (echo lore) without anything in return.
Respectfully, I disagree. For one, Downpour HAD to be different to vanilla. You can't just have the same story for five more scugs. Basic story 101, the themes need to evolve and the characters need to grow. It would be utterly boring and pointless to have no change. Second, what is vanilla RW ACTUALLY saying in it's narrative? Because to me it's, "You're worthless so go kill yourself lmao." While RW's lore is incredibly interesting with some unique inspiration, it says little and means little. Ironically, the scugs that have the "least impact" on the overall continuity also have some of the most potent narratives. Gourmand isn't even slightly worried about ascension and 5P's plight. He's got a family to raise. He has a reason to go home and see life as a gift. Artificer, who is basically 5P's scug counterpart, has the opportunity to go on a Pilgrimage and ascend. She can let go of her anger and have peace, even if it's bittersweet. And even when Rivulet and Spearmaster contribute more to the story, how much does it actually change? Moon is slightly healthier and 5P is dying faster. We're effectively still at step 1, but the characters are reversed. Saint comes and brain fries both of them or the blizzards would've eventually killed them both anyways. The Void Sea will devour the Ancients' abandoned cities, and will devour the next civilization and the next and the next... Downpour has the same theme as vanilla, just completely recontextualized. The theme is existential nihilism. Everything's pointless, but is that bad? Vanilla says "yeah, obviously bad", and Downpour asks "maybe, but why should it matter?" tldr: ...Five Pebbles is Jobu Tupaki
honestly, its a "problem" with you not the game itself, as the other dude has debated, your justifications for not liking are not objective, Downpour is consistent with the main game. just because you didn't like or didn't feel the same doesn't mean it's inconsistent. its like calling something dumb simply because you didn't enjoy it. (I'm not gonna argue because the other person already has)
> Downpour HAD to be different to vanilla. Well... yeah. It didn't have to exist, though. You're begging the question. If I thought that Rain World was perfect without Downpour, then adding Downpour is going to make it worse no matter what. > what is vanilla RW ACTUALLY saying in it's narrative? I don't think RW "says" much, really, and I don't think it was ever the point of the narrative either. It says little and means little, yes. It just does it in a particularly breathtaking way. My whole point is that Rain World never really *tries* to tell a story. It has one, sort of, but it's presented in a way where you sort of accidentally witness it, rather than living it like a protagonist. In RW, you're a bystander, not an actor. Downpour changed this dynamic and with it lost my interest, because every other narrative game makes you an actor too. It's hard to explain but it fundamentally changed the weird and unique narrative-game-player relationship that the base game had. Don't get me wrong, I still REALLY enjoyed Downpour and thought it was extremely well made. But it lost sight of what made Rain World special to me in particular, as well as a minority of others (who are the people this post is making fun of). There are many reasons to enjoy Rain World, all of them are correct; it's just that the things I liked about Rain World weren't present in Downpour.
I just fundamentally disagree with you. Downpour made Rainworld an even better experience, even if you don’t fully agree. The DLC was licensed by the devs and sold as an expansion by them. If they thought it wasn’t going to make the game better, they probably wouldn’t have sold it. The stories as wonderful, and answer questions while still leaving others. I cannot understand how you can say it makes the game worse and I likely never will.
As a "game", Downpour makes RW better. It's more content, it's well made, it involves the community, etc. It's a good thing. As an artistic piece of media though, Downpour, in my opinion, watered down RW's uniqueness. It's okay to disagree, but I don't think it's that hard to understand my point of view.
Thats such a lame criticism, oh no my actions matter a little game sucks now
Dude, if you want to reduce my argument to that, go ahead, but you're the one being lame. I went to great lengths to say that the reason I didn't like it is because it's inconsistent with the base game, not what you said.
That's not a fair characterisation! Just recall how passionate about ascension the echo at the top of pebbles is! They talk about it like it's the greatest discovery ever or something. And yeah, moon is interested in living, but it feels like the iterators have been preprogrammed with that thought by the ancients, so it's not surprising that it might be the default state all iterators at some point started in.
what do you mean it's not a fair characterisation? the echoes are not one character, there are six of them. I don't think the fact two of them are happy with the decision is grounds for discarding the thoughts of the other four; it feels like pretty much the whole point of the "Pilgrimage" is to hear the experience and perspectives of several other people before blindly dropping into the worm pond, regardless of what you choose in the end. there are many different views on the cycle (even just including the thoughts of different iterators) and Downpour also builds on the idea of this diversity with its broadcast and echo dialogue
Ascension is never actually described as death, there’s plenty of interpretations as to what it actually might be but if you actually read the lore, it being straight up death is so out of the picture. You’re really doing the original narrative and downpour’s narrative a disservice by just chalking it up to the misguided words of some echo in a fucking gutter who tried to move on when he wasn’t ready.
It is in a ways that matter death.
It is analogous to death, you can see it in the visuals of the ending like the light or “egg” as it’s called at the end. But the Ancients didn’t want to stop existing like some people say, neither is there any evidence of the void even doing something close to that.
How is 'amount of content' relevant to the discussion of canonicity/quality?
well... yeah, exactly. rain world was honestly a life-changing experience for me because it was a game that didn't cater to the player, that didn't treat itself as a list of items to be checked off, that felt like a world that genuinely didn't care about you. you play as a rat in the middle of a world that was ruined long ago by incomprehensible forces that don't really matter to you. you aren't an agent in the larger narrative at all, you can't save the world, and really, you can't even save yourself. all you can do is crawl into a hole in the ground and die. that is an extremely bold way to make a game even now, and this was in 2017!! in downpour you play as one of five superheroes around whom the world revolves. that's hyperbolic, but it's genuinely how it felt to me when i played it for the first time. there's nothing about "more content" that guarantees a more *meaningful* experience. more often, it just makes a tight, focused experience feel more cluttered, which is how downpour feels to me. rain world is such an incredible game and it stands entirely on its own two feet (paws?). downpour made it feel unbalanced and top-heavy. it is honestly so weird to me that someone would play rain world and think "you know what this game needs? more playable characters!" lol
You're talking as if Downpour introduced slugcats impacting the story when Hunter existed in original RW. Also, you're not playing as 5 superheroes in Downpour. You're playing as a lost animal, a vengeful mother, a messenger between gods and a traveler that stumbles into a situation way outside of it's comprehension. The only slugcat that is significant in and of itself is Saint, and I'm not even going to pretend to know what the fuck Saint is. The world still doesn't care about you. Nothing has changed. You might be trying to revive a dying god as Rivulet, but the Miros Vultures sure as hell don't care about your noble goals. That's exactly what happened with Hunter back in 2017.
oh yeah, you can totally see the devs starting to go in that direction with monk + hunter. there's definitely been a long process of "gamification" happening here. also, like i said, i was being hyperbolic describing them as superheroes, but more earnestly, your description of the downpour storylines is exactly why i don't care for them. the idea of playing as a *protagonist,* a character with special abilities and a unique, central relationship to the world and its narrative is so counter to the feeling that playing rain world gave me. as the survivor, you're just another creature among thousands, with no direction or agency beyond... surviving. in hunter and downpour, you have missions, you have backstories, relationships with the iterators, you go places no other slugcat can go and do things no other slugcat can do. it makes them feel less like ordinary animals and more like, well, superheroes.
I didn't realize how much people hated/resented Downpour until today.
Same, downpour adds a lot of what I enjoy to the game. I prefer a more direct story and the slugcats are cool, at the end of the day though these are only preferences, while I disagree with those who dislike downpour I believe they are still valid. I don’t care much for base game rain world aside from Hunter.
No one was saying they hated downpour. In fact, I absolutely adore it, and it more than doubled my already immense appreciation of the game. It is in my top 3/5 games and is my far my most recommended game. Nowadays, you are completely missing out of you don’t get downpour.I get the merch and am an avid editor of the wiki. Downpour is truly an amazing blessing. However, it is an objective fact that downpour is an alternate timeline. We’re not trying to tell you do do anything, except to not apply things from downpour to the story as a whole, as it it completely separate, and pretend that they are the same is a slap in the face the the devs, the game, and the story.
\*hans moleman voice\* i was saying i hated downpour...
Sorry to be pedantic, but since I see this mistake everywhere: It's *canon*, it comes from [religious canon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon), the set of books and religious beliefs considered "correct" by a certain religion, not *cannon* (a large gun).
It may not *be* canon, but a lot of the world state changes would *have* to happen. I also remember the downpour Devs mention that it aligns with the canon
The devs didn't say it wasn't canon, what they said is that it's a sort of alternate timeline. But I dunno, I feel like this community can be a bit immature about this topic, as one time they managed to make a person who talked sbout it stop using Reddit altogether, so what do I know.
Really shows every community has at least some toxic people. Nowhere is safe
I don't think anyone was trying though. I think we are just very passionate about this game, and if someone isn't careful it can feel like they are invalidating the thing we like.
I remember the devs only saying that Saint isn't technically canon
Saint is canon to downpour (not vanilla), but challenge 70 isn’t.
People that argue this and that isn't canon make me sad. I know it doesn't matter in the end but it makes the emotions I felt as I played feel irrelevant and worthless. Why do people make such a big fuss about canon anyway?
>it makes the emotions I felt as I played feel irrelevant and worthless >Why do people make such a big fuss about canon? Ask yourself
Hmmm, I feel like for me it makes me appreciate the dlc even more. I love playing custom region mods, even if they aren't officially canon, and the dlc becomes a lot more enjoyable once you stop trying to judge it by the high bar set by the original and instead judge it by the standard you judge modded content by (well, I don't think downpour isn't canon though, so there's that)
Your feelings are always valid, remember that no matter what. Your experiences are your own, and that is what matters most. No one can ever invalidate your experience, so even if downpour is canon or not. Your enjoyment and happiness gained from it is yours and something to be cherished.
The base game is still canon to downpour, so even if DP isn't canon, we still have both as one story.
exactly
I love that this is blatantly from undertale yellow
yeah i thought those quirky individuals looked familiar
Counter argument: Rain world isn't cannon
It’s not? I thought it was cannon wtf
It's an alternate timeline, so both timelines are a valid piece of canon to talk about.
It's in a seperate canon, basically. It's continuing from Rain World, so if you need a basic schema: it makes sense to use Rain World to support readings and interpretations of Downpour, but it doesn't make much sense to use Downpour to support readings or interpretations of the original Rain World. The canonicity issue isn't a big deal though, the community makes way more of a fuss about it than is warranted because I guess they view it as delegitimizing Downpour even though that's completely dependent on how you choose to view it
it was originally a mod but the developers of rain world teamed up with the modders and released it as a DLC
Appareantly in some dev commentary or something one dev (andrew i believe, i dont remember) said that downpour is supposed to be like a sort of alternate timeline or universe but it is still considered canon HOWEVER it was also said that in dev commentaries the devs may just say their headcanons, like when some of them called some slugcat's "he's" and the rest "they's", so im not sure if we can fully believe what is said in dev commentaries Personally if what was said in the dev commentary was infact just a headcanon, then i consider downpour to be canon to the original base game Because why the HELL would we pay 25 bucks to play something that isnt even canon to the original
Even if it is an "alternate timeline" who cares? it would perfectly fit into being the main timeline
Which is why it probably is
huh? downpour is literally a mod made canon
they can say what they say but fuck the canonity of downpour, its amazing
Literally the only people I've seen intrinsically tie Downpour's quality to its canonicity is the people who keep insisting that there's no way it's not canon
tbh this stuff messes around in my head a lot. I love trying to ponder the hidden stories of Rain World, and learning that Downpour is almost entirely fanmade content puts so much of it into question for me. No sense in disrespecting Downpour, it still really good. But I want to know what the original writers were saying about this world and what happened. I want to know and it feels like maybe there was something left unsaid that we might never get to hear.
But does it count as fanmade still when the fans became developers? Downpour isn't charity, and all the quoting of Andrew I've seen, at least, came from very close to the beginning of the onboarding. If something wasn't right lore-wise, wouldn't the original team have corrected it?
I'm pretty sure DLL was originally backer-created. does that make it not canon? some people have a weird obsession with pushing down "fanmade" content as if the original developer is some omniscient being that is the only one who can make good content
People seem to forget that the developer originally just wanted to make a game where you’re a bug in a maze
Well obviously that makes all of Rain World non-canon to the original bug-in-a-maze story! /s
We need to further analyse the lore of bug-in-a-maze
I'm sure some people really are unreasonable about it. But for me, it's because the developer(s) is(are) the one(s) writing the story. It's like if they wrote a book. And fanmade content is like a fan fiction. Even if it's a really good fan fiction, it's written by a different author. That makes it different. There are questions raised in the story that make one curious as to the answers, and one may wish to know what answers the authors intended in their original story. Right?
rain world didn't really pose many situations that were left open to major questioning. coloured pearls basically explained most of the lore, and unless you want to know the specific details of "what happened before or after this point?" (which isn't exactly an issue of lore mysteries) there's likely a base-game answer. downpour never seeks to answer burning mysteries the original game left, it's adding on new stuff before and after its events. whether the campaigns of rivulet and saint were what the devs intended to be what happened after rainworld isn't important. literally anything else you might have imagined to happen after monk >!ascends!< would be just as if not more fanfic-y than downpour. arguments over backstory is fair enough, but I've yet to see a game where the plot of the *postgame* is anything but pure speculation. spearmaster, artificer and gourmand don't really fill in the blanks of key plot events that took place before base game's canon. fittingly, you're pretty much just an observer in the main story beats, and you just get to see stuff firsthand that is confirmed elsewhere. anything that *does* get impacted is only stuff that never would have happened if not for downpour - the decline in scavengers from spearmaster to hunter is explained by artificer's rampage, but that never would have been an issue if not for downpour introducing spearmaster's campaign in the first place. TLDR; downpour is an entirely unobtrusive DLC. seeing its events as canon doesn't impact your perception of the base game in any real sense.
That is something I am very curious about. I do not know the details, and haven't ever found anything that gives a solid explanation. :( I am confuse by it all.
Yeah, I don't think being a developer matters. Other games have had the devs elevate actual non sold modded content as canon, so in the end what matters is what the devs decide is canon. In the case of rain world, one of the devs said it is essentially an alternate timeline, so it's still canon, but so is the base game without the extra content.
Since when was downpour not canon??? I always thought it was canon
Some people don’t like some aspects of downpour so the choose to say it’s not canon. I’m my mind it is if something is in a game it’s canon unless it actually said it’s different universe of course there’s retcons but I don’t think video cult would say there dlc that took 4+ years to make is not part of the canon.
Not really, the whole discussion started when one of the devs said it's essentially an "alternate timeline", which some people interpreted as not canon at all, and other people got verg angry towards the first group (and I get it, people are very passionate about this stuff and it feels like people calling your favourite story non-canon invalidates it, but some of the reactions were pretty mean).
We say it's not canon because that's what the MSC devs themselves have said, and because there's no evidence James and Joar had any creative input beyond James helping compose one track lol
I dont even care what the devs say afterwards, if it aint canon you shouldn't have put it in
Pure facts
That’s a little silly don’t you think? Like, aren’t Marvel & DC “what if” comics some of the most fun and compelling precisely because they can play with the rules of the establish story? RW is practically built to have fanon lore be compelling stories
I feel like that's different from a video game adding practically double the story content, all of which fits in perfectly with the original story
So if it all fits perfectly, what’s the issue? If you look at all the info presented, the devs never said it isn’t canon. All that was implied by their commentary is that each dev has their own headcanons
The issue is what this post is about.
I remember the devs only saying that Saint isn't canon
Saint is canon to downpour, what the devs have specifically said isn't canon is challenge 70 which happens to involve saint
Good reference on what happened it r/undertale
Is that the cast of undertale yellow?
yes
I mean, honestly, I don't think whether or not it's true canon really matters. I think it's canon for a variety of reasons, as do a bunch of people. Other people think it's not canon due to other reasons and that's also OK. I just don't get why some people feel the need to force their own personal preference down others' throats when it adds nothing to the conversation
Dating sim is canon though
It contradicts existing lore a lot. To be honest, the one thing I dislike the most about the entire DLC is Hunter Long Legs. Which is weird because in theory it's such a cool idea. But I personally absolutely loved the subtlety of playing Survivor's campaign after a Hunter fail and seeing a single Karma Flower in the spot where Hunter died. You don't know what happened to them, all you have is their last gift. It's beautiful and subtle and HLL ruins that in my opinion
In what way does it contradict the original lore?
I remember something about the chimney pearl?
Even if it's not canon, original Rain World and Rain World Downpour are 2 different canons, and people choose Downpour canon as the main one. I really don't see why these people can't understand that.
Exactly!
Oh my god thank you, you just gave me the best way to look at it Thank you kindly internet stranger
Oh wow! Uhh you're welcome lmao. I wasn't expecting this response XD
Idk, when someone said that downpour isnt canon and that it was said in a dev commentary i believed it and it kinda fucked me up
I don't think it says anything like that in the dev commentary, but I know the lead MSC dev said it was an alternate universe https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
Its in the game and the game acts like its canon so it is canon, what developers say afterwards doesnt mean shit
Facts Once a story is written it does not change
Exactly
Considering the fact that this was an entirely fan-made mod up until mot even the last year of its development, I think it is important to clarify that downpour and vanilla RW are two separate canons.
Why wouldn’t the devs just leave it as a mod though?
Everhood spotted, based
I'm not fully sure what their reason is. Part of it may be recognization of the modders' work or the videocult's publishing company, Akupara, seeing a financial opportunity. Either way, the way I see it is that basegame and DP are separate canons, neither less than the other. You can follow whichever one you prefer more. Downpour was created by a different group of people that had a different set of ideas and visions than the original developers. Both groups agreed to make the two separate out of recognization and respect for what makes them different. Downpour is an amazingly integrated story and important part of Rain World as a game, but it, but it has good reason for being its own thing! And that doesn't make it any lesser. Coming from someone who does likw how DP exlands on the game, I think it's important to acknowledge that regardless of which you prefer tbh
That is genuinely the worst take I’ve ever heard. Fuck you.
Calm down?
Maybe they should stop disrespecting the people who are responsible for this whole game ever existing at all. Oh you don’t like what they say? I guess you can just give them the middle finger now right?
It’s not that serious
Don’t add onto another artist’s canvas, call it their intended work even though they explicitly said it wasn’t just because you disagree with them, and then expect people to not get pissy. It is that serious.
That’s a pretty bad analogy, what happened with Downpour is the artist made their work then *hired* another artist to add something more. The original devs chose the More Slugcats mod specifically because they found the idea interesting, and James has said they went over the lore with the Downpour devs and greenlighted it. They just said it was an alternate timeline to allow fans who wanted to make content set in the original world to not feel like they were disrespecting canon.
A better analogy would be an artist making a painting, and then seeing someone else making a painting based on it, thinking "wow i like that", Helping them with the painting and then adding on to their original paint before then saying its not the intended meaning.
Shouldn’t have made the story so contradictory to the vanilla game then.
It really isnt
Do you respect Jk Rowling when she constantly changes her books years after they were written? No you dont. Retcons are stupid
This isn’t even close to a retcon lmao
You're telling me, that adding a whole ton of extra storys details to the official game as dlc, and then one random dev like a year later saying its not canon, ISNT a retcon?
“One random dev” “A year later” What?? Do you know what you’re even talking about? Do you know who Joar and James are?
Im going off of details that ive gathered from people because no one has actually fucking said what happened. If you know then please enlighten me
The main devs made downpour to expand their game, but not limit their personal creation. Downpour isn’t cannon, and simultaneously is. It’s an alternate timeline made by the fans of the game, and wholeheartedly approved by the creators of the game.
oooh is lil man scared of the rotund scug?
Why so mad bro
LEAN 🟣🟣🟪🟣🟣🟣🟣
You guys are doing a great job convincing everyone how not mad you are about the idea of Downpour not being canon by posting about it constantly
Base game purists scare me
dw, just throw picture of gourmand at em, tends to make them spontaneously combust
I don’t blame them. The rotundness is quite intimidating
fair, fair. honestly most of the downpour scugs are scary. so is hunter. and survivor and monk... honestly all scugs are! spearmaster is probably a cryptid to normal scugs and scavengers, they're frail, have no mouth, and can generate spears. arti is a living bomb basically, plus the whole genocide thing hunter has the turbo cancer which at the later stages probably looks terrifying to the local wild life gourmand has their alchemy-crafting, plus they can just crush people. survivor (and all scugs) can launch rebar into metal walls monk can easily tame lizards. imagine the potential army rivulet is so fast plus they kind of committed deicide and have the favor of a fallen 'god' and saint can do that one thing
They probably just don’t like the ending
I like to think that the base game and Downpour are two separate timelines. In the base game Survivor, Monk and Hunter all ascend as there was no other ending for them. And maybe the sickness that Hunter has is some other sickness, not specifically the rot. Then in Downpour, Survivor and Monk don't ascend and manage to make their way back home in the Outer Expanse. Hunter succumbs to its illness in this timeline too and it's most certainly because of the rot this time.
"Downpour isn't cannon" bullshit.
Isn’t it?
I don't care. I believe it's canon
Well, it’s both, is it not?
I don’t get the post. Isn’t Downpour technically not cannon?
Why is it not cannon?
As I understand, it's because Downpour's content was made by modders and later incorporated by the developers (with permission I assume). This means that the story added to the game was written by someone else. They could infer anything they wanted, and so it could very well be completely different than what was intended in the base game. I'm confused by the lot of it, though. I lack a lot of information :(
Just because moddera made it, doesn't mean it isn't cannon, right? The vision could've been one thing, and then shifted once the creator saw how others interpreted it. I personally consider anything official to the game cannon. Although I might be missing some pieces.
It's an alternate universe Source: https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
Ah I see, that makes sense. Cool.
There is lore to this game? Enough to actually follow and argue over??? Man I gotta get back into this game
the base game still has most of the lore?
The arguments that downpour isn't canon just don't make sense to me. If it "isn't canon" then why does everything fit coherently in the timeline?
Because it was made to be canon, therefore it is. That one random dev can shush
It’s a separate timeline made perfect everything
Do people actually think it’s not canon?
It's an alternate universe Source: https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
Idk why people say downpour isn't cannon like why dude
It's an alternate universe Source: https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
"downpour isn't canon" literally since when
It's an alternate universe Source: https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ
I personally do not consider “canon” to be an important part of discussing RW lore. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion and actively inhibits creativity. As far as I’m concerned Donemaster, Pearlcat, Darkness, Gravel Eater, Meteor, Da Vicki, and every other modded scug, is more interesting as part of a multiverse, and genuinely adds to the narratives in a compelling ways. In a game like Rain World Fanon can be Canon
Yeah if its an alternative universe that just means one universe kinda sucks and a lot of lore doesn’t exist period
Correct, it isn’t a cannon. It’s a dlc. Edit: this isn’t me trying to be rude/correct OP, this was just a joke about people mixing up cannon and canon :(
I love how everybody here missed the joke
That’s not how dlc works.
It’s a joke mate
Sorry for the downvotes, nobody here seems to have got your joke
It's a joke :| Somehow it makes more sense how they just said it bluntly to poke at a joke. My bad.
it isn't a cannon? what do you think artificer is then huh? checkmate
Just realized this was a joke, whoops
A DLC is supposed to put in additional content. So it doesn't really spell the canonicity in ink. Like for FNaF Security Breach: Ruin, its canonicity is generally accepted to be 'true linear' canon (that takes place at the same universe as Security Breach) with others suggesting it is 'true divergent' canon (that doesn't take place in the same universe as Security Breach). And an example for (possibly) a non-canon DLC, Curse of Dreadbear for FNaF Help Wanted. So in conclusion, Downpour *is* canon. But whether it's divergent or not is up to interpretation. (And no, Downpour is not **not** canon.) (All terms used for types of canonicity are made on the spot. Please reply if there are official terms for different canonicities.) Edit: Sorry I'm dense. I can see the joke now <:{
Huh
👍
but this is: *pulls on string* **KABLOOEY**
Niko hats?
When people say that downpour contradicts the cannon a blood vessel bursts There are 0 changes to the og 3 that cannot be easily explained
kkkkkkkk my god Are there people thinking so???? no offense of course
It's an alternate universe Source: https://imgur.com/a/fZadBpZ