Writing a Kick-Ass Script 2: The Opening Scene

Keira Peney

Posted on Fri 9 May 2008 by Keira Peney under Design , Other , Theorycraft .
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Mass EffectLast week I told you how to go about making a great character for your future video game masterpiece. If your character is the sword, it is the story is the sheath which makes him (or her) shine.

A good story is practically always about conflict. Conflict comes in many forms. It can be an obvious conflict (humans against undead) or a subtle conflict (son wants to achieve independence, mother wants to keep him a child).

For the most part, your conflict will be born out of your characters situation and motivations. A soldier at odds with his officers will not be suited to a story about teen romance, and a young girl won’t necessarily be the best protagonist to take on zombies. Having said that, sometimes the best stories use characters in unexpected ways and defy conventions. The best heroes can often be the most ordinary people.

The Opening

A good story must hook you from the beginning. Games aren’t just about story, however, they are also about game play. Great controls and an intuitive interface can disguise a bad story, and a terrible interface and poor controls will wreck even the greatest story-line.

However, assuming your programmers and level designers are up to par, the first thing you need to do is establish atmosphere and game-type, as well as introduce your main protagonist(s).

Atmosphere is established through dialogs, narration, location and graphics. Remember that your player ay not have the faintest idea what they are doing - and equally remember that they may be an expert on the genre.

So called ‘training-levels’ should ideally be relevant to the story. Soldiers have it easy - they have real-life training camps. Other characters may require more imagination. Consider Bioshock - your character is talked through the opening sequences by a mysterious ‘voice’, which later gets explained. Alternatively, instead of a mentor figure, you can have random braggarts around who boast about their skills at a certain task. Allowing them to be challenged is another way to teach vital controls. Alternatively you can simply throw players in at the deep end. It all depends on what kind of game you are creating.

Crisis CoreDialog

You might get voice actors. But you might not. The player might have speakers - or they might be playing at night with the sound off. Dialog needs to do two things

  1. Establish character
  2. Advance the story

Long rambling monologues and conversations are not useful. They require long cut scenes, or vast reams of scrolling text to get through. The player might skip them, or do something else whilst they are playing. Brevity is absolutely crucial. Think concise.

Whatever dialog you write, you should always ask yourself: is this needed? Does it establish important things about the character? Does it advance the story? If it’s just filler, then cut it out. If you can say the same thing with less words, then make it shorter.

There are a few things to bear in mind;

Players may need goals reinforced. Players can drop a game at any point, and on picking it back up should not need to struggle to remember what they were supposed to be doing. Having ‘reminder’ characters, such as the Fortune Teller or the Officer in Command is a useful thing.

Some players may want more background information than others. Making back story optional is fairly easy to do. Just give snippets of it to NPC’s, which players can talk to or not, as they choose. Japanese RPG’s do this a lot. Alternatively, you can leave ‘history books’ around the place (somewhat similar to Bioshock’s tape recordings). The most important thing to remember is that they should be integrated into the environment. The more realistic and ‘normal’ they appear, the less jarring it is for the player to discover them.

Finally, dialog should sound natural. Whilst you won’t have every “Ummm, how are you?” of everyday speech, even the most organized and efficient of people doesn’t simply snap out information. Try and shape people’s speech to the type of person they are. Civilians speak differently to the military, people use slang and jargon for all kinds of reasons, and people who have degrees in English speak differently to people who knocked about in the real world.

KISS

Above all, keep your opening simple. You have hours and hours of game time to unfurl your plot. The opening objective should be direct, fairly easy to achieve, and feel worthwhile. Once the player is hooked, then you can start bringing in the extra layers.

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2 Responses to “Writing a Kick-Ass Script 2: The Opening Scene

Write the Game » Writing a Kick-Ass Script 3: The Meat and Potatoes Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

[...] you’ve introduced the characters, trained up your player (if needed), and opened your story, you are faced with a daunting question. How do you progress your story? What is the structure of [...]

Poker Gratuit en Ligne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:01 am

I am doing post graduate diploma in journalism.I am an aspiring writer and want to achieve every possible or impossible success in this field. Hence, above tips are extemely helpful for me. I am motivated now.

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