Exposition - Video Game: Storytelling - page 71

▪ This op isn't like a previous one called Shadow Moses.
▪ The frequency to reach Otacon is 141.12 .
▪ The frequency to save Snake's progress is 140.96 .
As seen in the chart starting on this page , this is a massive amount of in-
formation to communicate in such a compact time period, and mostly via
dialogue (i.e. telling vs. showing). Expecting the player to retain all or even
most of it is clearly unreasonable.
As you can see, I've placed very little information in the Need to Know
category. If you know that you are Solid Snake, you grasp the very basics
of where you are and why, what you're supposed to be doing and who
your enemies are, in my opinion, from a narrative point of view you're
ready to start playing.
Of course, it may not be long before the developer needs to feed the
player additional bits of information, such as how the gun works. As play
continues, some of the facts in the Could Wait category will graduate to
Need to Know status. But the point is, there is no reason for all the inform-
ation in that chart to be dumped on the player before she actually gets to
play !
In addition to the sin of a massive, front-loaded exposition dump, the
writers of MGS2 also include a number of clumsy, backstory-feeding lines
of dialogue as mentioned in the first section of this chapter. A couple of
choice examples:
OTACON
You know how the technical specs of Metal Gear were sold on
the black market after Shadow Moses?
OTACON
Don't you forget, you're part of PHILANTHROPY now, an anti-
Metal Gear organization and officially recognized by the U.N.
Some of these lines are downright painful. People just don't talk to each
other like that, especially about things they both already know. And when
a character spouts poorly disguised expository dialogue, it doesn't take a
narrative expert to notice … or to cringe.