All There in the Manual: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[Saint Beast]]'' anime series and OVAs are more illustration than substantial, the whole story happens in the audio dramas.

* The ''[[Kiddy Grade]]'' Artbook contains a timeline for the main characters and the changes in attire as well.

* For ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED|Gundam SEED]]'' there is, in addition to 10 Drama CDs (six of which are set before the series starts, three set during the series, and one post-series), 10 novels that go into more detail about the characters and events, several Manga series (''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray|Gundam SEED Astray]]''), and a few OVAs and TV specials, an official website that has a lot of extra information about the Cosmic Era...including a highly detailed [http://www.gundamofficial.com/worlds/ce/background/timeline.html Timeline] that goes back about 100 years before the start of the series.

** Not to mention at least one plot point from SEED (Kira surviving the Aegis' self-destruction) was explained in the Astray manga.

* Any character in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' that might come across as a [[Flat Character]] probably has most of his/her personality only displayed in the profiles. Some characters can only be seen in the author's blog.

** There's also a lot of references to past events that you might not understand without either pausing to read the history annotations or looking it up. Then again, pretty much everything in that show is related to past events, even Chibitalia's dress.

** Done. http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Baccano

* The canon of ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'' is distributed across two anime series and an OAV, a good many drama CDs, and several manga and short stories. Fortunately the first anime series is pretty well self-contained, but in the absence of the material from the drama CDs the drastic changes between it and sequel series ''Weiss Kreuz Gluhen'' make no sense at all. Naturally, [[No Export for You|only the two anime series have been officially released to western audiences]].

* ''[[Shadowrun]]'', especially in the first through third editions, put nothing more than a timeline in the core books, but had a vast multi-leveled metaplot through the published adventures and, most well-known, the in-character "comments" section of the sourcebooks. Each story arc of the story of the metaplot was hinted in previous books, from the bugs to the Otaku.

* In the board game ''[[Talisman]]'', the entire story of how the victory causing Crown of Command got to be where it was and why the world is in its current state is in the manual, and easily ignorable for players who just want to roll dice and acquire treasure.

{{quote|The point to having such a long backstory was three-fold: 1: to ensure the GM would never actually read it and 2: Since he would never read it except for in excerpts i pointed out to justify things, I could re-write and change things around completely at random without anyone noticing and MOST IMPORTANTLY 3: Convince everyone that I was serious about this character, and that it wasn't simply the game wrecking bullshit that it was. Dickish yes, but he really did have it coming.}}

* ''[[Anima: Beyond Fantasy]]'' is another good example. The game has a fairly rich setting that, however, is scattered among a RPG (and its manuals), a miniatures game (better said, its manual), several card games, and a videogame. No doubt [[Crack is Cheaper]].

* While it's not critical to playing the games, the [[King's Quest]] manuals have massive amounts of [[Backstory]] and character notes. The Peter Spear player's guide cranks it [[Up to Eleven]] with a creation myth for the universe the series is set in, documents "written" by the characters, and a fictional history of Daventry. And that's not even touching the [[Fanon]] on the universe...

* The manual for [[Sid Meier]] games, particularly the original Pirates, [[Shown Their Work|are loaded with historically-accurate details]] about the era you're playing, including Silver Train and Treasure Fleet routes, information on known pirates of the era, detailed notes on the cities, and commentary on the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the era's firearms!

** You also need [[Chain of Memories|the spinoff on the GBA]] to understand some of the plot points of ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' -- which is a [[PlayStation 2]] game like the first.

*** In an odd surprise from [[Square Enix]], ''Re: Chain of Memories'' was released in North America in December 2008 (but not in Europe, because [[Memetic Mutation|Square-Enix really hates Europe]]). For the unaware, this is a remake of said GBA game, but on the PS2, and in Japan it came bundled with the [[Updated Rerelease]] of KHII.

** One word: ''Dragon''. It's the single most powerful being in Gensokyo and the Border which defines Gensokyo won't exist without its approval, but in-game it's only ever alluded to in Iku's lines (of whom she's a messenger). It's getting even more [[Egregious]] because the kappa is a race that as a whole revere the Dragon, yet Nitori (your kappa ally) never speaks of it in-game.

** Some of the side material managed to do this to ''itself''. More specifically, the side-story ''Bougetsushou'' was split into three parts: the main story, ''Silent Sinner in Blue''; a collection of character-focused vignettes, ''Cage in Lunatic Runagate''; and a gag-manga, ''Inaba of the Earth and Inaba of the Moon''. ''Inaba'' isn't really important to anything, but ''Runagate'' explains a few things that were glossed over in ''Silent Sinner''. Also, it has ''the ending'', and the explanation for why the whole thing happens that comes with it.

** Although ''Warcraft Adventures'' would have had that info apparently - they just canceled the game so it was all put in books.

*** That said, the more basic information about it really is [[All There in the Manual]].

** The Dungeon Journal often reveals details about bosses that don't come up in the game, particularly for those that don't appear in Expanded Universe works. For example, Asira Dawnslayer's entry reveals that she was a mercenary who worked for the Twilight Hammer Cult, then was slowly corrupted until she [[Meaningful Rename|changed her name from Sunbright to Dawnslayer]].

** Perhaps the most egregious example is the return of King Varian Wrynn. To sum up, since the game was first released, there had always been a long and involved questline involving finding out what happened to the missing king. This quest line cut off suddenly at around level 30 with the capture of someone that might have some information, and a letter to the player saying that they would be called on again when the prisoner divulged his information. Fast-forward several years and the quest line was slightly expanded, only to dead-end again with no real conclusion. In Wrath of the Lich King, the king was suddenly back with (from the perspective of someone who doesn't follow the [[Expanded Universe]]) no explanation whatsoever. Why? Because they literally took a quest that had been left dangling in-game for four years and concluded it in the comic book series, in which the missing king is the main character.

** Around this time, [[Jerkass|Fandral]] [[Fantastic Racism|Staghelm]], the [[The Scrappy|widely hated]] archdruid of the Alliance, suddenly gets replaced, and an early quest in Mount Hyjal in Cataclysm involves escorting him from his prison to prevent the Twilight Hammer cultists from breaking him out. The reason why he was imprisoned is revealed in Stormrage; Xavius manipulated him into corrupting Teldrassil by using an image of his dead son, and when the image vanished and he essentially lost his son again, Fandral lost his sanity.

** It gets even more complicated when including the RPG sourcebooks as legitimate sources of information. At least one piece of information is totally inaccurate (the death of Maiev in the sourcebooks was rendered obsolete when she showed up in Outland as a major plot point). This calls into question any assumption made based on the sourcebooks.

* Trying to make at least some sense of the [[Gainax Ending|confusing ending]] of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]''? See ''The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2'' which explains some things such as {{spoiler|the existence of both real and AI Rosemary'.}} All this and more were eventually compiled into the ''Metal Gear Solid 4 Database''. Good thing [[Regional Bonus|Europe got lucky in getting ''The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2'']], although the latter has quite a few errors on its part.

** ''Metal Gear Solid 2'' also featured a fictional novel titled ''In The Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth'', a tell all account written by Nastasha Romanenko exposing the true events of the Shadow Moses Incident from her perspective. This novel elaborates a lot on the Shadow Moses Incident from the support group's end.

** The ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots|Metal Gear Solid 4 Database]]'' is has received some criticism for not resolving some things, getting some info wrong, and retconning some things.

** The Japanese manual for the MSX2 version of ''[[Metal Gear 1987]]'' included bios and artworks of the main characters and bosses (including an explanation of Schneider's motive for creating the resistance movement), and gave the specifications of TX-55 Metal Gear as well as the designs for it. A fan translated version can be viewed [http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/mg1remi/mg1reme.htm here]. In contrast, the English manual for the European MSX2 version only included the standard playing instructions, although it's not as bad as the English translated version of the NES port's manual, which pretty much butchered the story.

** The ''[[Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake]]'' manual also elaborated quite a bit on the game's story and other things, and was absolutely vital to playing the game and understanding the story (in fact, it was even needed for a certain part of the game that probably made it far too difficult to be beaten otherwise). For instance, it elaborated on exactly how Solid Snake managed to infiltrate Zanzibarland, the history of Zanzibar Land as well as its statistics, including military strength and natural resources, a history of FOXHOUND, and bios for the main characters. It also explained a bit about the landmarks of Zanzibar Land, and the backstories of several bosses, and specifications of several vehicles encountered in the game, including the Goliath tanks, which were originally supposed to be fought as a boss but were removed due to time constraints and kept as part of the scenery on the first floor of Zanzibar Building, the Hind Ds, which explained that these were modified, the Gigant, and the Sikorsky Dragoon (the chopper that was briefly seen in the ending of the game that {{spoiler|took out a platoon of Zanzibar Land personnel when Snake and Holly White were surrounded due to running out of ammo.}}). Like its predecessor, it gave the statistics of Metal Gear D, as well as elaborated on the mass production of Metal Gear G that Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar alluded to in game. It also explained how to use tap codes in this game, which makes the manual absolutely necessary to use to get Dr. Madnar's frequency, and thus get further into the game. A fan translated version can be view [http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/Operate.htm here].

** The original'' [[Metal Gear Solid]]'' included a segment where Kenneth Baker tells Solid Snake that the only way to contact Meryl Silverburgh is to look at back of the "CD case" to find out what her frequency. This is a reference to an actual screenshot on the back of the game's boxart, which depicts Snake conversing with the character in question via Codec.

* ''[[Video Game/Microcosm|Microcosm]]'' apparently takes place on another world in the distant future, involves a multi-generation war between [[Mega Corp|MegaCorps]], an assassination attempt, and Cyberpunkish corporate espionage. You wouldn't know this from playing the game. It's a [[Rail Shooter]] with controls that makes Baby Jesus cry himself to sleep at night, and an opening FMV that is almost as long as ''[[The Godfather]] II'' but explains NOTHING about the labyrinthine story. The manual's story lasts for more than twenty pages, including a three or four chapter story, an atlas of the fictional future star system it takes place in, and an long essay on why the [[Mega Corp|MegaCorps]] are fighting and how crappy their planet is. All this for a rail shooter that would have to be as bad as ''Superman 64'' to be run-of-the-mill.

* ''[[Xenogears]]'' had {{spoiler|most of its entire second disk}} removed from the plot due to rushed development, and much of its plot only becomes clear in the [[No Export for You|Japanese-only]] Perfect Works. Thankfully, it has been [http://www.flickr.com/photos/29956195@N08/sets/72157616593453778/ been translated into English].

* [[Valkyrie Profile]] has the Japanese-only ''[[Materials Collection]]'', which contains tons of information about characters and settings. Since the game series is not as popular as, say, Final Fantasy, it has not been translated.

** Also, to understand who the characters are (especially some of the characters not in cut scenes, like Coyote and Con) you have to read the manual with the game. It's also nigh IMPOSSIBLE to solve some of the puzzles without this information.

* ''[[Homeworld]]'' has a large manual which describes the history and technology of your faction leading into the campaign, and goes into quite a bit of detail. However, the intro cutscene usefully summarizes the parts which are directly important.

* ''[[Samurai Princess]]'' has some smaller info like character ages that are not mentioned in story on the cast page.

* ''[http://aetheria-epics.schala.net Aetheria Epics]'': A significant amount of background information to the world not mention in the comic proper has been described in the site's forum, simply because the author candidly answers most non-spoiler-y questions posed by fans.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has had several conversations and references to other events which are only explained in extra stories in the print versions of the story. The author has ''kindly'' pointed this out.

* ''[[MSF High]]'' has highly detailed background in the library section of its site and on its forums, as well as the RPG rulebooks