Writing Tutorials, or Press Start. . . to Start - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 124

12.5 Narrative Models
Whatever the medium, writers face the same challenge—creating a memorable open-
ing that grabs the player and throws them into the story.
Grab Them by the Nose
The Hollywood-blockbuster approach starts a story with spectacle. A plane blows up,
a huge space battle announces the start of an alien invasion, or a car crash smashes
the main character's world to pieces. This sort of spectacular opening puts the player
ontheedgeoftheirseats,feedingtheplayerpromiseofmoreactionandspectacleto
come. Action RPGs regularly employ video cutscene openings to achieve this.
Onimusha 3: Demon Siege opened with a huge cinematic that at the time was one
of the most expensive ever seen, while other action series such as Metal Gear Solid
use spectacular cinematics throughout. More recent games such as King Kong have
made these fabulous cutscenes partially interactive, allowing the protagonist limited
control as the cinematic unfolds. The thing all of them have in common is that
the visuals paint in a larger world beyond the levels the protagonist inhabits while
highlighting the narrative's genre, setting, characters, and conflict.
Writer beware! Remember that when planning a big opening, the energy at the
end of such an opening should carry into the first interactive section. A game that
has a huge opening then drops the player into a lethargic, slow-paced tutorial risks
not only a sense of anti-climax but also risks alienating the player from the game and
the story.
The Slow Burn
In contrast to the spectacular opening, the slow burn gives the player time to orient
themselves before presenting the moment of change that pushes the protagonist into
the central plot.
X3: Reunion starts with an integrated tutorial where the protagonist takes a group
of rookie pilots on their first training flight. This level gives the player a chance to
learn about the universe, the lead character's place within it, and the antagonist (an
alien species invading the universe) before beginning the main narrative in the second
mission.
This slow-burn approach gives the player a chance to learn details and become
comfortable before the moment of major change. Just as the player can need time to
take in the game's controls, if the game's story is complex and requires the player to
take onboard a large amount of information, spreading this information allows the
player more chance to take these details in and means there is less chance of bulky
chunks of exposition damaging the game flow.
The Retrospective
The retrospective creates narrative drive by beginning the story at the end (or part-
way through a story) and looking backwards. Often beginning the story in a perilous,