Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Call to Adventure
Refusal to the Call
Meeting with the Mentor
Crossing the First Threshold
Tests, Allies, and Enemies
Approach to the Innermost Cave
The Ordeal
Reward
The Road Back
Resurrection
Return with the Elixir
Let's go through each of these to learn a bit more about them. We'll use Toy Story as an
example to see how the structure matches a story you probably already know well.
The Ordinary World
We start in the ordinary world and show our hero in his everyday environment, before anything
has happened to him. Why start before the adventure actually begins? Well, we want to get to
know our hero a bit before we plunge him into danger, and to do that it helps to see his
background. This is the time to show him at his best, to let the audience start to like him.
Hopefully, we will then be as shocked as the hero is when we plunge him into change, and the
player will share his motivations.
This is also a good stage to introduce little teasers of what is going to happen later. We're sort
of saying to the player, “Yeah yeah, this is ordinary and boring, but stick around, something is
about to happen.” This is called foreshadowing. In our pirate story, that could be two kids playing
on the beach where Flynn is watching the sea. They are playing with swords and one of them is
wearing a skeleton mask.
The Ordinary World is a stage that can be missed out altogether or appear later in the order.
For example, the story could begin in the middle of the action, and then in a quieter moment
later on, the hero can sit back and tell someone else where he came from. Alternatively, we can
leave it as a mystery and never explain who this hero actually is. That would work well for the
games using an invisible hero (see Chapter 7) as the player character.
In Toy Story , this part of the movie shows Andy playing with Woody in a lovely sunny room.
Woody is Andy's favorite toy and Woody loves Andy right back. Woody is also regarded as
something of a hero by all the other toys and he takes good care of them all. The foreshadowing
here is threefold. First, the birthday party is mentioned, and then the house move, and lastly we
get a good look at nasty Sid, the horrid neighbor kid who likes to torture toys.
The Call to Adventure
This stage is where the hero, or sometimes just the audience, realizes that something is about to
happen. It is the event that starts the ball rolling. In our pirate story, this is the poisonous fog that
comes creeping in as Flynn watches.
In Toy Story , it's the birthday party. We see that although all the toys seem happy, they are all
living with one fear—to be scrapped because newer and better toys enter their owner's life.
Woody himself does not seem worried and spends a lot of time calming the other toys down. He
 
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