Environments - Video Game: Storytelling - page 176

▪ On the way toward the city, the player gets a glimpse of a Big
Daddy—an enemy type the player will repeatedly battle, and a per-
sona he will briefly take on.
▪ Also during the approach to the city of Rapture, glowing signs for
Cohen's Fine Art, Fleet Hall, Pharaoh's Fortune, Sir Prize Games of
Chance, Robertson's Tobaccoria, and Le Marquis D'Epoque can be
seen—all locations the player can eventually visit during the game.
▪ As the bathysphere prepares to dock, it passes just below a series of
neon signs which all read: “All good things of this earth flow into the
city”—but the last letter of the final word sparks and winks out; one
of the first hints that things may not be so rosy in Ryan's claimed
utopia.
▪ When the player's bathysphere enters the shaft, another ad right in
front of him helps plant the idea of plasmids—this one for telekines-
is.
Now, admittedly, this is a huge blast of narrative information right of the
bat, in a very compressed timeframe! But unlike the exposition dump of
Metal Gear Solid 2 's opening (as covered in chapter 5 ) , none of this is re-
quired information for the player, and none of it is communicated via dia-
logue. Most of it washes over the first-time player, silently and subtly prim-
ing her for what's to come.
Another example of effective, environment-based foreshadowing within
the first few minutes of a gameplay experience can be found in Double
Fine's mind-bending cult classic Psychonauts .
After completing the training level, which takes place within the mind of
the drill sergeant-like Coach Oleander, the player character Razputin is
left to wander into a white corridor. At the end of the hall he glimpses a
blueprint of some kind on the wall, mostly obscured by a red curtain.
As Razputin reaches to pull aside the curtain, Oleander telekinetically
yanks him away, barking: “Just what in the Sam Hill do you think you're
doing in there?!” When Razputin answers that he was just trying to find a
way out, Oleander's mood lightens and he brushes it off. But in fact the
player has stumbled upon something in the back of Oleander's mind that
will become very important later in the story. Ironically, this plant now ex-
ists in the back of the player's mind, just as intended.