Questions Regarding PoE lore

Story Spoilers if anyone cares

So I have been recently investigating PoE's lore and had some questions regarding the state of lore in the game. Mainly is everything added to the game relevant to the lore or are some things just there for game content?

The reason I ask this is because of one thing that doesn't really make sense to me. I know the story behind the Shaper and why he created the countless worlds we go to in the atlas. I also know they added to the story with the conquers and our role in the atlas story changed. At this point I believe the Elder fight no longer makes sense for us to be in but from a game content point of view was left in the game. What has me wondering if the GGG thinks about the lore of their world or if they just add game content and try to build lore around it as they go is The Maven. Why is The Maven able to witness the fight with you and The Elder? If I understand things correctly the disappearance of The Elder is why The Maven decides to pay us a visit in the first place.

I did think for a little bit that maybe The Maven takes The Elder from wherever it is we trapped him and adds him to her collection, and in doing so creates a gateway for Sirus to return since there doesn't seem to be any explanation for how he returns. Either way though it doesn't make sense that she witnessed us fighting him. I mean the conquers are in the game and the final Maven invitation could of just been us fighting all 4 of them at once instead of The Feared. Would of made more sense and still would of been a really hard fight. Also considered that maybe The Maven can manipulate time someway.....I didn't play during synthesis or breach so I don't know if there are any reasons why she shouldn't be able to witness those fights either.

idk just wanna know if I should be thinking about this or if there is no point in trying to track the lore cause if most of the game content is just there for content and not relevant than I'm not going to try sifting through it.

When you delve into PoE's lore, remind yourself that it is prone to retcons and deus ex machina. And, sometimes, total scour of pivotal parts of the storyline.
By not playing Synthesis alone you have bode farewell to a lot of in-depth knowledge of secondary characters, from Barkhul to Ondar and even a bit of Merveil.
And, most important, you lost the plot behind Venarius himself: you go into the Cortex and you find him summoning things, calling out Valdo's name clearly and so on. You never get to know that the Venarius you see was just a demented spirit in the Coast, calling himself Cavas, asking for a kind soul to remind him of who he was. You don't get to know why he is trying to synthetize "something" (though enough knowledge of the Shaper's lore would eventually explain it, were it not that the 16 Shaper Memories are no longer in the game). You don't even get to know that YOU are the one that reminds him he is Venarius by exploring the original 6 Shaper's memories (another retcon'd storyline, which also hold why the Guardians were 4, and were called "captor"). And you even get more baffled when he says "To think we were once allies. Even friends". And you are not the wiser.

However, GGG cleverly did this "it's a storyline that has been forgotten" with a character that has the power to remove memories and fabricating new ones. So, in a certain way, it does explain why you "don't remember" dealing with him during your human player's lifetime

Each league that comes tries to dab a bit into the lore. Some do it slightly, like Harvest and Ultimatum. Some does it heavier like Synthesis and perhaps this Expedition. My suggestion is to thread carefully or wait for a major content (Atlas of the Worlds, War for the Atlas, Conquerors of the Atlas, Echoes of the Atlas...) to find a lore to settle for a bit.

Oh, and the fact you can fight Guardians, Shaper and Elder even now that they have been defeated by the Conquerors? It's because Zana makes you revive a memory. Looks like Venarius taught her something in the end, isn't it.

Thanks for the reply, I didn't realize how important synthesis and other removed content was to the story and am going to see if there are any sources out there that allow me to sort of catch up on the story in the game. Kinda wish they would make books some of this games lore is really interesting.

I know the name Venarius. If I remember correctly he was the ruler of Oriath that originally contracted Valdo to repair the map machine, and the one who released The Elder with promises of power. I did not realize he was the guy in synthesis since I have not done much of those maps since reading up on the lore. Before I was assuming "his captors" referred to when Valdo was imprisoned for not completing the map device and perhaps Valdo just took the soldiers that Venarius brought with him that lost their minds to The Elder and sort of just repurposed them although that's just a guess.

Unlike other games, well... some other games..., the story here is evolving as we play. You start out as an exile in one world, but by the time you get to mapping you're actually in a later time. I forget what term GGG uses for this mode of story telling, but it's really hard to figure out "lore" if you think of lore as being static. There is different lore for a starting character than there is for a character in mapping. Stuff happens. Then you start all over again and stuff hasn't happened yet.

My advice is to think of all of this as being a dream rather than some alternate reality.