A Severe Lack of "Vorthos" Content on Arknights YT 

It's me, I'm the Vorthos player I did think about making videos speculating about the sh*t I think about, like what "current" nightzmora culture would be like now they've somewhat settled in Sargon (a nation that's like 5 different cultures, some VERY different, in a trench coat and could be a whole entire video by itself) when they're clearly based on the Mongolian culture, in specific Genghis Khan (my bet would be something like the Scythians), whether they experience racism from virtually everyone due to their conquest, what their abilities would look like in gameplay without the stage mechanics of the Kazimierz events (playable nightzmora when), so, anyway, yes, I support this very much (And Vivi is great and I WILL die on this hill)

A YT streamer by the name of Kuma did a stream dedicated to solely read the Degen event. It was fun.

I very much want to discuss the lore more on my channel but also want to discuss the current events happening on global. So that balance is something I want to adjust to. Not to mention wanting to have my own video on some of the more basic elements of the story and lore just to have my own spin on it. If all goes well hopefully I get more character focused videos out soon™

Not only is it because the EN playerbase is smaller. But also because the EN playerbase itself is made up of TONS of people who don't speak English or aren't fluent enough to be comfortable dedicating so much time to a discussion. So, while you may easily see a handful of discussions on CN with a hundred+ people chiming in, you'd be lucky to find a single discussion on EN with more than a dozen comments. And that's just purely down to numbers. Arknights is a HUGE game, but it's not anywhere near that in terms of English speaking players.

I’m definitely glad to see you move forward with this. I’m curious to see who will be the characters that will appear in your analysis. (Probably Stainless.)

Looking forward to what you have planned, and I’ll share this with as many people as possible. Your content has been interesting and even rekindled my interest to build some of the Operators like Flamebringer and Carnelian before I kept getting Ops like Yato Alter, Mumu and Arturia. So you have my support all the way

I'm working on something

You like Mudrock because of her outstanding gameplay performance I like Mudrock because of her story invoking themes of oppressed minorities migrating from place to place unwillingly while pursued by colonial opportunists, as well as her theming as the Golem of Prague We are not the same (but we are both valid) You like Degenbrecher because of her extreme power level I like Degenbrecher because she's the answer to a question I have pondered all my life: "What if snow leopard Henry Ford hired the Undertaker as his personal bodyguard" Arknights lore is what got me into this game, from the cyberpunk dystopia of Kazimierz, the Lovecraftian plight of Iberia and Aegir, the apocalyptic threats of Sami, the truly rich and intriguing cultural premises of the Sarkaz and Sankta, and the genuinely engaging story of a revolutionary movement being hijacked by an imperial power. Oripathy is frequently called "Rock Cancer" by the fanbase, and while that is accurate, the way the Infected are treated by society at large is very reminiscent of the AIDS epidemic during the Reagan Administration and other years. How ignorance about how the disease is transmitted translates to completely irrational treatment of its victims, how those in poverty are much more likely to contract the disease in the first place, how some minority groups already hated by the majority are much more vulnerable to it, how regardless of its severity it is likely going to be a permanent health concern for the rest of your life and will never truly leave your body. Arknights is a truly vibrant setting with a diverse cast of characters. Different side stories tread into entirely different genres depending on the characters involved and its a shame that there aren't more channels talking about it.

Not sure if it is inherently an Arknights problem, even for other games the "Vorthos" content (while more than AK) is still on the rarer side compared to all the other types around.

From what I see, Chinese people generally love their high sci-fi novels, and are more willing to read long ass works on a regular basis. Compared that to the average global gacha players and yeah.... While these discussions do exist in various discord servers, general players need to be more excited for Arknights lore for youtube videos to be worthwhile. Ofc this is just my observation and I could be wrong, but it's fact that Chinese sci-fi novels are really good (and long).

Looking forward to your character analyses! Lore discussion vids are a favorite of mine across fandoms, especially since they are often something I can put on in the background, vs having to sit down and read when I might not have that time to dedicate to it. So thankful for ASTR, it does help alot in catching up to stories when I can't read everything during an event.

use a voice over coward!

Vorthos is the late game player who usually is burned out or already deeply dug into the lore.

Huh. I was just involved in a discord convo about NPC jail breakout nominees. Also, Terra Exploration are my fave vids from the official channel lol

7:03 And this is a hill I'm willing to die on. As good as having clairvoyance is, being behind basically kill any form of interaction/hype as there is no reason to discuss the old stuff when the new content is right around the corner. And unlike HSR leak with Penacony, this is content that has been technically released, so people are more lax with spoiler stuff. I play GI, HSR and Nikke which has all the server in the same patch and discussion is lively as everybody is in the same boat. I have fun discussing about how strong/weak a character is, how fun the event is or the greater impact the event has in the story as a whole. Arknights also has this discussion/interaction aspect of it but being behind basically just tell the player to just see what is in the store 6 months in to the future to get your answer.

One thing for sure if you enjoy arknights story, it locks you to the game way more than gameplay does

The lore/story is quite enjoyable but I don’t always have time to sit down and read for 4-6 hours. Going back to reread events shows me how much many people miss out on the story but especially the characterization of the operators. I had very little interest in Horn until reading the story and used nearly all my pulls (200+) for one copy on her debut banner. 6 off banners later and she’s one of my most used characters. At the very least, I recommend reading the operator files for characters that any players use. Some are fantastic and it’s a great way to care more about them.

3:15 ,this here is definitely one of the biggest factors,since a lot of what "Vorthos" Arknights players do is text after text after text of discussions,not the most video-esque way to convery all those revelations,theory crafting,neuron connections,and breeding compatibility debates. This also means a very untapped marketplace for RU-vidrs to start going full ham(like they do in Star Wars,Transformers,and especially Touhou)about literally anything that can be discussed,may not be the most viewed content,but definitely a potential for the some of the highest quality content that won't have claims about stealing. If any of y'all are poised and willing to do this content,I suggest you start hopping into every forum,social media(Reddit and Discord especially),video comment section,and anywhere else where you can find small tit bits of discussion,gather them up,and then present them. Start a whole series about old theories and show how they've either come true,became partially true,or even outright false,that could last you quite the while. And also for the love of midsections,do back up all of your videos,because another big reason is that RU-vid is an arse hat that will randomly slap a video or even an entire channel for no valid reason,which is also why this very comment is going to be backed up because SCREW YOU RU-vid!

Well there is a channel called dokutah blob

If I'm allowed to give a thought on this. This may relate also to how lore theory videos tend to go in the event that future content proves them wrong. Spoilers for various mihoyo IPs at the bottom and various lore youtubers videos being posted at a point in time when certain things weren't confirmed yet below. The paragraph after that then details translation stuff with no spoilers whatsoever. . . . . In the genshin fandom, I can recall IslandXD not being as willing to make genshin lore videos because leakers spoil lore while he's making his videos that then prove him wrong. With genshin while they have leaks, global is on the same schedule as CN with only a single day between them. In the HI3 fandom I can remember Potato Almanac making a video about how he thought at the time that Durandal isn't the original Kiana when the community theory was that she was. A few chapters later (those chapters were released almost half a year AFTER he posted it) he was proven wrong and to this day people still bring up his failed prediction when discussing people making lore theories and that being made worse because he was releasing his videos while the content regarding what he's talking about was still being released (a lot of Elysian Realm stuff, hell even his pardo video disproved how quickly they died AFTER the Elysian Realm arc wrapped up when the only stuff he had to go by back then was the files in ER, chapters 29-31 and the fact that the Second Eruption manga specified that in the battle against the 14th Herrscher 2 MANTIS soldiers were dead 5 minutes into the engagement written at a point in time when the only finalized concept arts for the Flamechasers was Fu Hua and Kevin with everyone else being a vague silhouette in the panel), making him look unreliable for getting some parts wrong. For Arknights, I can recall lore youtubers like Lauli and Qaiser and more recently EIZEN and Living Rain but over time they seem to focus more on compiling what's known into something coherent... But I see barely anyone make speculative theory videos anymore and the 6 month gap between CN and Global probably makes it so some theories are disproven before they're even spoken of in EN. There's also some stuff that get lost in translation when taking Chinese things and translating them to English. I say this as someone who is Bilingual with English as a second language and having accidentally picked up Japanese and Chinese from consuming anime/donghua and then getting into fan translations leading to about a third-and-a-half language because my comprehension of those two languages is kindergarten level. but some nuances in linguistics get lost in translation inevitably. People talk about how Chinese games' stories seem really yappy but then the thing is, it's probably way more concise in Chinese solely because 1 character is a word and a single syllable where in English 1 character is a letter in a word. So we have EN not being too happy about chapter 8's writing but then CN praises it. It also probably doesn't help that China and Japan have had more cultural exchange over the years that less gets lost in it when compared to America and Britain, the countries that have historically spoken the most English. For example there's a style of polite Chinese formal speak that's really short and concise and is described as being an eloquent speaker. This style of formal speak has 2 characters to be made an example of translated into English, we have Alhaitham in Genshin(translated into the most condescendingly rude possible way ever) and Lan Wangji from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (described as eloquent speaker but the english speaking fandom writes him like he's an autistic child incapable of communication from how he got translated). When you know something like this happens you then become like me, not being literate in Chinese but understanding just enough sentence structure to get the gist of the broken english that google translate will give me and then cross-referencing that with the JP translation by watching JP arknights youtubers play through if they read stuff out loud to see if there's anything I missed. This makes it so a more linguistically capable person could probably make a whole niche of arknights lore content on comparing the JP localization with the EN localization and cross referencing that with CN's text just to be able to pick out if anything was glossed over. As a Southeast Asian, I also find that every voiced dialogue to most Japanese and Chinese games seem ruder in English dub even when it's not supposed to be and for this reason English dubbing to me is grating. Arknights might be the sole exception to me about that and it's only because of the accents. American accents are still grating on the ears for me.

population diff is the biggest reason aside from CN/JP side embrace their gaming culture much deeper than EN, from cosplaying to making an entire movie for lone trail. and sadly that's considered absolutely nerd and nolife in global still which discussing the story and lore in detail also includes in that. in the end gacha is still a gacha, a curse that one of its main stimulus in the culture it's the hype with char release and pulling them, yt cc know exactly what sells more and perpetuate the mass flooding of the content available. but one yt comment in an AK video reminds of what HG been trying to do with AK story all this years, and that is intellectual exchange with the readers, that includes current issues aswell. and that something not everyone ready or want to engage with, absolutely fine ofc that just mean it's not made for them

oh yeah! Surtr finally got some story and personality thanks to IS4!

Theres mountain, then i came

I wanna see someone who can build their own stories based on lore or worldbuilding with massive appeal or someone who do hours long analysis on specific characters with massive chunks of related in-game content supporting them. I believe that we are far from the era of Arknights lore related compact content and people's demand of contents are evolving through time. The problem is the nature of content creation for producing those said contents requires a lot of efforts to achieve that goal. Who's willingly gonna do those demanding tasks for serving those said contents and who's gonna support them?

I'll be the FIRST one to say i am part of EN cant read. But its still nice to see the lore being discussed on the CN side. I'd like to see the formats they use.

Big L for me for not being able to read Chinese.

I think there's a lack of Arknights Vorthos content simply because Arknights doesn't cater that well towards the Vorthos playerbase. There are two main reasons why I think so: First of all, it doesn't have the best storytelling. While "hardcore" Vorthos players care mostly about the lore and care less about the story itself, it does mean players who ordinarily might care about lore, won't. I would consider myself somewhat of a Vorthos. Hell, I read up on Warcraft lore despite never having actually played World of Warcraft, same for League of Legends. But not so for Arknights despite playing it. It doesn't help that some event stories rely on you having read other event stories. I suspect the CN side may have a better storytelling that is diluted through translation, obviously can't confirm though. Secondly, Arknights simply doesn't have a large enough playerbase. This is partially our of Arknights's control, but making stages easier would theoretically increase the amount of Vorthos who actually give the game's lore a shot. Perhaps this is why W Alter and Logos are so strong, as an indirect way of making the game easier (that I dislike, but whatever). Due to the low amount of Vorthos player, it is hard for a community to form. If we look at Reddit, League of Legends has loreofleague. r/loreofleague has 0.5% as many members as r/leagueoflegends. 0.5% of the r/arknights subreddit would give only 1.2k members. r/genshin_lore has less than 0.4% as many members as r/Genshin_Impact. I suspect that the CN playerbase is either larger or more "hardcore" and therefore are willing to spend more time on it; ie. Some players may do both high risk CC as well as do a deep dive into the lore

I want to read the story but damn it is really to long and consume a lot of my time.

If HG wants for people to care about the story they should at least start working on the presentation. Its been said for years that Arknight's story writing is built almost solely on bloated monologues about vague philosophical ideas that make it hard to actually care about the characters or the story, as it just tries to be overly pretentious without much actual substance. If you just sit down to read through the entire AK story without having to clear stages and stuff it would still legit take you WEEKS and MONTHS just due to how long even a single stage dialogue can take, I find it outright hilarious that HG had to add forward dialogue scrolling options up to something like x32 times speed just because Kal'Tsit decided to start another 2 hour rant about the color of bananas or some insignificant dumb shit. And through that entire time you'll have to cope with completely static, unvoiced visual novel dialogue box with the occasional full screen illustration. (well I guess HG would actually go bankrupt if they decided to actually voice all that masterful writing) Even I myself personally find it difficult to care about story when I try to look at the map of the stage first and think about my strategy when I'm getting hit by a 20-30 minute dialogue about nothing right before starting the stage, so I completely forget about everything I was thinking through. So I just skip the story and hope that I will "maybe" read it some other time. And it repeats with every single event or story chapter. "Other time", "Other time", "Other time"... Yea, no, who am I kidding?