Level and Mission Development - Video Game: Storytelling - page 162

▪ What is the player/PC either doing or being asked to do?
They are further framed by several more considerations:
▪ Who is the player character?
▪ What makes sense for the story?
▪ What's consistent for gameplay?
An effective if oft-used example of this being done right is showing an
antagonist doing something horrible—either to the player or another in-
game character—and then almost immediately allowing the player to at-
tack him. Making the player angry at an enemy is a great way to provide a
strong emotional undercurrent to what would otherwise be just another
combat encounter. As long as attacking the enemy makes sense for the
story and the player character at that point in the experience, everything
should line up and feel right to the player during the battle, and satisfying
once the bad guy has been taken down.
If misalignment is going to happen, though, it will most likely happen
while mission events and goals are being conceptualized, with no one
keeping an eye on possible dissonance.
Potential mismatches from this group of considerations include:
▪ The player character does or wants to do something that the player
does not want to do.
▪ The player character does or wants to do something that doesn't
jibe with what we know about her.
▪ The player and player character both want to do the same thing, but
the objective is to do something very different.
▪ The objective or action doesn't make sense from a story perspective
(i.e. nonsensical, unrelated to the conflict, or in contradiction to
higher-level objectives).
▪ The player and player character don't want to do something, but the
mission objective requires that they do so.
A prime (if extreme) example of this last situation is the notorious “No
Russian” mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 , in which the player is