Feeding the player backstory

[Bridge]

Intro movie, intro voice acting over text or at the very least plain text works. Thief 1 and 2 have briefing videos that are essentially just still drawings and in-game screenshots with a Ken Burns effect applied to them. Very low cost and easy to do (if you can draw). Basically all you need is Flash and a voice actor, and you can tell the player all they need to know before they start playing. However it may not work that well if you have a ton of backstory you need to dump on the player.