History VideoGame / Folklore

* BonusBoss: one of the DLC missions for Keats ends with a battle with multiple Amaryllises, or, having scored enough points, an empowered version of [[spoiler:Livane]]. Faster, much more health, and its main attack takes away a quarter of your lifebar.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: There are two variants of this:

** The Folk, [[spoiler: they are actually souls of the dead who have yet to find peace merge as a single entity, removing their individuality.]]

%%* BareYourMidriff: The Cloak of Sidhe, and later the Cloak of Midnight Sun.

The story is told through two perspectives - Ellen and Keats play separate storylines through the same areas until a certain point in the game, allowing the player to start filling in the gaps between the overall storyline. Ellen's powers come from the various Cloaks she wears, which allow her passage into the Netherworld, while Keats' are drawn from having been transformed into Ellen's guardian merely by being within her presence the first time she donned the Cloak. And then, there are the Folks, which are both enemies and weapons to the protagonists - the game's defining feature is the ability to subdue the various Folks and absorb their Ids in order to utilize them as weapons within the Netherworld.

The game's method of delivering its plot is also of note - instead of relying solely on FullMotionVideo, it also switches between that, a series of comic-book style story sequences, and traditional dialogue.

* ActionGirl - Ellen
* AgentScully - Keats. It takes a ''lot'' for him to actually accept the supernatural. Even when he travels to the worlds of the dead, he merely shrugs his shoulders and calmly assumes he must be going insane.
* AncientConspiracy - With poor Ellen at ground zero and Keats dragged along for the ride.

* ArbitrarySkepticism - Being an AgentScully obviously means Keats is prone to this.

* AwesomeButImpractical - A number of Folks can fall into this. The Gargantua summons a KillerRobot that fires a BFG... but it's got a second or two delay between firing and hitting the enemy and it's kinda hard to aim.

* BadassBookworm - Keats. Definitely does not look the type of guy to beat the crap out of demon souls with his bare hands...
* BadassCape - As part of the Battefield Cloak.
* BadassLongcoat - Keats again. He even gets to wear a modified version of it in his Transcended form.
* BareYourMidriff - The Cloak of Sidhe, and later the Cloak of Midnight Sun.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: The plot is essentially kickstarted by [[spoiler: Cecilia's childhood wish, as she's chased around by Herve's murderous, insane mother, that people didn't kill each other. Unbeknownst to her, since she spilled her blood and made the wish within the Henge, it echoed within the Netherworld, creating the Half-Life known as the Scarecrow - whose ultimate goal is to reveal the horrors of hell to humanity in a belief that if people realized just how terrible death is, they may think twice before risking it in war and crime.]]
* BigDamnHeroes - Keats busting in on the courtroom scene to rescue Ellen.
* BodyguardCrush - While Keats is basically thrown into this role against his will, he genuinely comes to protect Ellen out of a sense of chivalry. Then again, he later learns he might not have had much of a choice anyway...

* BoringButPractical - All of the shielding folks don't seem like they're that great if you master the dodge step, but with health recovery being virtually nonexistent in the game outside of specific areas of the map, they can be a godsend in prolonged boss fights, [[StoneWall Spriggan]] in particular.

* BurnTheWitch - [[spoiler: This is the reason Ellen and her mother left Doolin in the first place: their sensitivity to the existence of the Fairy Realm led to them being accused of many of the tragedies that befell the town.]]

* ClothesMakeTheSuperman - Ellen's power in the Netherworld comes from the different cloaks she wears. Presumably, so does Livane's.
* CrapsackWorld / CrapsaccharineWorld - Most of the Netherworld Realms, at least by way of FridgeHorror, but also justified as these Realms base on the fears of humans about the afterlife.

* DeadAllAlong - [[spoiler:Keats, kind of - Halflives are essentially ghosts, but they're not the souls of people who were alive in the first place, they're created by strong desires or wishes. Keats was created by Herve's final wish to save Cecilia's life, and in that sense could be said to be a remnant of Herve, in the image of Cecilia's drawing of how she thought Herve would look as an adult.]]
* DeadpanSnarker - Keats.

* ElementalPowers - All folks except the non-elementals use attacks based on one 'element'. They include the classical elements of fire, water etc. - and such 'elements' as 'Destroy' or 'Slash'.

* ElvesVsDwarves - The Fairy Lord's beautiful fae subjects and Livane's shady and brutish-looking ones. [[spoiler:Subverted in that Livane's people are actually the noble ones, while the Fairy Lord and his people are most ''definitely'' not.]]

* {{Expy}} - O'Connell has a probably-not-coincidential resemblance to Creator/VincentPrice.
* FakeLongevity - Unfortunately, the game does suffer from a bad case of this. For the first five worlds, you must complete them twice - once as Ellen, once as Keats. Aside from different enemy placement and a few level layout changes, there's very little differentiating the two playthroughs.

* FramingDevice - The murders happening in Lemrick/Doolin. This is what brings Ellen and Keats together, and are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mysteries surrounding the town.
* GetBackHereBoss - Brigantia, the guardian of the Undersea City. It's a huge sea serpent that spends most of its boss fight hiding in holes in the rocks surrounding the battle area, tossing out bombs or popping out only to immediately vanish into a different hole. It's not a powerful boss, but getting it to hold still long enough that you can actually ''hit'' it is quite a chore.
* GottaCatchEmAll

* IncrediblyLamePun - ''[[JudgeJuryAndExecutioner "I'll throw the book at you!"]]''

* KangarooCourt - The trial that Ellen is subject to in Hell Realm is full of preconceived conclusions, as it's meant to be a symbolic representation of her own guilt
* LaserGuidedAmnesia - Ellen can't remember anything about her life from before the time her mother died (and apparently her mother's death as well).

* LightIsNotGood - [[spoiler:The Elves.]]
* LighthousePoint - Kind of serves as a motif for the game.

* MisunderstoodLonerWithAHeartOfGold - [[spoiler: Livane, whom we find out is much more noble than she initially seems, and WAY more than the Fairy Lord.]]
* MrFanservice - Keats again.

* PainfulTransformation - Keats' first cutscene in which he is given his Transcended form. When he reverts back to normal, he remarks that "Even the pain feels real". He also writhes around a lot when the player activates his Transcended Mode, so it apparently still hurts no matter how many times he does it.

* ParentalAbandonment - Ellen never knew her father and her mother died... But then she receives a supposed letter from her mother revealing that she is actually alive. [[spoiler: And then this is subverted: Ellen's mother abandoned her to protect her from the machinations of the Fairies.]]
* PrimalStance - Keats in combat in the Netherworld, especially in Transcended form.
* RealIsBrown - Doolin is colored in shades of sepia and dull yellow, compared to the bright colors of many areas of the Netherworld.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld - [[spoiler: Livane]] is at ''least'' 5000 years old given the game's timeline.

* RuleOfSymbolism - Each Netherworld Realm represents collective human thoughts and views about what the afterlife is like.
** The Faery Realm represents pleasure and bliss. It's mostly a LostWoods with GhibliHills and flowery meadows, and it's the home of the Faery King's court.

* ScaryShinyGlasses - Keats does this a lot. His glasses also glow bright purple when he's fighting in the Netherworld.
* SceneryGorn - Warcadia, the Endless Corridor and Hellrealm.
* SceneryPorn - The Faery Realm, the Underwater City and the Netherworld Core.

* ShoutOut - The title of the magazine Keats writes for is Unknown Realms, one of the titles for the game while it was in development.

* {{Stripperiffic}} - The Twilight Cloak.
* SuperMode - Keats Transcended form, which drastically boosts the powers and effects of his attacks until the gauge runs out.
* TallDarkAndSnarky - Keats can come off as this when faced with some of the more insufferable characters.
* TheFairFolk - The Faeries in this game fight you about as often as they help you. And then there's the Folks themselves, which just want to kill you on sight outside of the sidequests.
* TheLostWoods - The Faery Realm is essentially this, with a mix of GhibliHills thrown in for spice.
* TomatoInTheMirror - [[spoiler: When Keats finds out at the end of the game that ''he'' is a Halflife and the player discovers that he's not really a reporter at all, his "office" was just another part of the Netherworld, and the magazine he supposedly wrote for folded 17 years earlier. This is further enforced by one of the downloadable quests in which an outsider to the village couldn't see Keats because she didn't believe in magic.]]
* TownWithADarkSecret - Doolin.
* TrialOfTheMysticalJury - Judge Yama's court, which puts Ellen on trial for breaking the laws between the human and other worlds.
* UnderwaterRuins - The Undersea City.
* TheUnFavorite - Suzette's mother went crazy after losing her son and husband and took it all out on Suzette.
* TheUnfought - Baral, the Evil Eye, [[spoiler:guardian of the Netherworld Core, primary reason for the Netherworld gates opening in the real world, and the being who shapes a large part of the plot (because everyone is trying to get to that Netherworld Core for one reason or another). Mentioned several times by NPC's to be so powerful that none of the strongest priestesses of ancient times could defeat him, and yet Ellen defeats him as a CutsceneBoss.]]
* VisualNovel - Some of the cutscenes and nearly ''all'' of the in-game dialog (as in, non-cutscene) has the feel of one.
* WaistcoatOfStyle - Keats.
* WellIntentionedExtremist - A lot of them; none of the villains are really in it for themselves.

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: a rare case where eternal life doesn't refer to biological life but rather to knowledge that there is a life after death. [[spoiler: Livane's argument, and the reason for her conflict with the Faery-Lord, is that "only mortal men are driven to create eternal things" - in other words, it is mankind's inability to know what death holds that motivates people to accomplish things in and truly appreciate their lives. Whereas the Faery-Lord benevolently (but misguidedly) wants mankind to know the afterlife for a place of bliss, and the Scarecrow believes that letting them know it as a place of torment would essentially intimidate them into thinking twice before killing each other, Livane believes that the only solution that lets humanity truly grow is to keep the afterlife unknown.]]

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: a rare case where eternal life doesn't refer to biological life but rather to knowledge that there is a life after death. [[spoilder: Livane's argument, and the reason for her conflict with the Faery-Lord, is that "only mortal men are driven to create eternal things" - in other words, it is mankind's inability to know what death holds that motivates people to accomplish things in and truly appreciate their lives. Whereas the Faery-Lord benevolently (but misguidedly) wants mankind to know the afterlife for a place of bliss, and the Scarecrow believes that letting them know it as a place of torment would essentially intimidate them into thinking twice before killing each other, Livane believes that the only solution that lets humanity truly grow is to keep the afterlife unknown.]]

** Special mention goes to Scarecrow, though. [[spoiler:Absorbed all the fear in the world and planned to [[MeaningfulName terrorize]] humanity into being more compassionate.]]

* LivingMemory: [[spoiler:The dead don't continue to exist in the Netherworld]], they are dead. [[spoiler:All what remains of them are]] echoes [[spoiler:in form of memories that a folk named Mnemosyne feeds on and can 'replay']].

* AwesomeButImpractical - A number of Folks can falll into this. The Gargantua summons a KillerRobot that fires a BFG... but it's got a second or two delay between firing and hitting the enemy and it's kinda hard to aim.

* EarlyBirdCameo: Scarecrow appears in the book of fairy tales in the game's opening cutscene, right before you meet him in Ellen's prologue.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia - Ellen can't remember anything about her life from before the time her mother died (and apparently her mother's death as well).
* LastLousyPoint: Gainging all the Folks isn't as easy as it sounds, and the Karma Release Conditions to unlock their full potential can get exceptionally time-consuming to check off.

* MisunderstoodLonerWithAHeartOfGold - [[spoiler: Livane, whom we find out is much more noble than she initially seems, and WAY more than the Fairy Lord.]]