Retcon overconnection of dots is a pox upon storytelling
What is overconnection of dots? I will use Star Wars as an example. The droids R2D2 and C3PO are in episode 1 revealed to be built by Anakin. Why? Can they just not be droids who have been with the rebellion? In fact, does that not make them more interesting? Indeed it does, and such is the curse of overconnection.
Now, please keep in mind that overconnection is different from simply telling more backstory. Staying in the Star Wars universe, Rogue One told more backstory without overcennecting (with the possible exception of the very end).
Overconnection stems from a desire to tie the bag together - unnecissarily! It has been around for ages; Jesus's apprentice Mary Magdalene, for instance, WAS not a prostitute, despite popular belief. There is in the bible a prostitute called Mary and later there is an apprentice called Mary... and 700 or 300 or whatever years later, a cabal of priests decided they were the same person, with no evidence what so ever to support that notion.
So, why should one avoid overconnecting? Because it, invariably, makes the story less interesting.
You need more evidence before you are convinced? Sure thing!
The trade federation making the plans for the death star = blargh!
Jon Snow being of noble dragon lord origin = hand me a bucket!
The new alien movies revealing aliens to be experimental weapons = I will hug the toilett all night long!!!
Final remark; note that overconnecting is different from "fantastic encounters" which is a fine practice. What is a fantastic encounter then? Well, you take one story and overlap with another story, in orders to force two interesting agents to interact. For instance; aliens versus predator. It, too, have been around for ages. For instance, Herodes died before Jesus was born. Their encounter is forced, due to the interesting "What if?" stories such an encounter yields.
Now, please keep in mind that overconnection is different from simply telling more backstory. Staying in the Star Wars universe, Rogue One told more backstory without overcennecting (with the possible exception of the very end).
Overconnection stems from a desire to tie the bag together - unnecissarily! It has been around for ages; Jesus's apprentice Mary Magdalene, for instance, WAS not a prostitute, despite popular belief. There is in the bible a prostitute called Mary and later there is an apprentice called Mary... and 700 or 300 or whatever years later, a cabal of priests decided they were the same person, with no evidence what so ever to support that notion.
So, why should one avoid overconnecting? Because it, invariably, makes the story less interesting.
You need more evidence before you are convinced? Sure thing!
The trade federation making the plans for the death star = blargh!
Jon Snow being of noble dragon lord origin = hand me a bucket!
The new alien movies revealing aliens to be experimental weapons = I will hug the toilett all night long!!!
Final remark; note that overconnecting is different from "fantastic encounters" which is a fine practice. What is a fantastic encounter then? Well, you take one story and overlap with another story, in orders to force two interesting agents to interact. For instance; aliens versus predator. It, too, have been around for ages. For instance, Herodes died before Jesus was born. Their encounter is forced, due to the interesting "What if?" stories such an encounter yields.
2
Comments
I don't like stuff like Anakin-made-C3PO because it feels like a glaringly obvious nod at the fans instead of a natural part of the story. You know the shot from Rocky horror picture show when Tim Curry stares right into the camera with a raised eyebrow and goes "Well, how about that"? That's what I feel a movie does when trying to connect the dots like that. "Wow, C3PO was actually made by Anakin - Well how about that, audience!".
This was heavily foreshadowed by the books, so much so that many fans pieced it together well before it was revealed in the show. I agree with your overall point but this is a bad example.
God knows the average toilet deserves a snuggle for all the crap they take from us.
Actually, I guess that's what I don't like with it. Because Faldorn and Ajantis should be continuity, but they really aren't. They're just... there. They are not continuing anything, just briefly connecting the two games.
Unless travelling with his mentor is another over-connection.
The spider lady (always forget her name) was retconned too to tie Irenicus into the first game. No where was she mentioned in his backstory from the second game and it contradicts him having another lover than Ellesime.
As for Centeol (the spider lady), in vanilla and charmed, she will mention a "Jon Icarus". So there is a tenuous connection, but not a solid one.
The Centeol stuff again is vanilla contents that was expanded further by BG1NPC mod to mention Jon Irenicus. In the Sandrah Saga part3 you finally will see the connection:
A lot of mod contents is build on unused/unearthed vanilla contents. There was a lot of stuff left in game files that never appeared during play but that was found by modders and brought back for use. When the original game was published, nobody really cleaned up the game from unised files...
There were even planned quests and NPCs etc that were never pursued. Modders reused them, expanded them. Old classic mods like NTotSC are build from such material.
As such, the OP is only partly correct as far as BG is concerned - there is a lot of hidden stuff in BG1. Sometimes BG2 was making references or use of that with the devs forgetting that the BG1 contents wasn't in the published game.
http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/12/six-siders-space-hamsters.html
Rogue One, on the other hand, was both a retcon (from Dark Forces) and connected plot points that didn't really need to be connected for the larger narrative. But it was still a great movie. So I think your claim that it is "invariably" bad is rubbish.
It is a bit of a lazy way of writing - rather than come up with an original plot, simply write a story to connect existing plot points. And the new Alien movies are certainly rubbish. The bioweapon idea has been a fan theory since the first movie came out, but I would call it far too obvious to be interesting. I didn't much care for the shoehorning of BG1 NPCs into BG2 either.
So I will settle for saying it "sometimes" makes the story less interesting.
I could go on at length about this using Rise From The Ashes (the 5th case in the DS port of Ace Attorney 1) as an example, but it would be summarized as "when does 'wink wink nudge nudge say no more' stop making sense within the story?"
"There are two worlds here. There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe—the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don't intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don't get too involved in the parallel universe."
And George did disregard the EU when it suited him. For example, George didn't use Zahn's Spaarti cloning cylinders in Attack of the Clones. He came up with a different cloning technology that the clones grow at an accelerated rate through childhood and adolescence.
If George still owned Lucasfilm and was producing Episodes VII, VIII, and IX, he wouldn't be caring about treading on EU continuity either.
It's something humans do a lot, which is why it's important to challenge that kind of thinking at every opportunity.