Feeding the player backstory

[palistov]

Hey modders, custom story creators, critics, pessimists, players and lurkers!

I'm in the process of trying to design a custom story. At the moment I'm in the earliest of early stages, simply writing the game down on paper, fiddling around with level aesthetics, and drawing up level design layouts.

This story is tale which many people probably know from their childhood, but cast in an Amnesia universe. My problem is trying to prevent (or remedy) players entering the story with the paradigm that it is a direct translation from the original tale into the Amnesia story.

There is quite a bit of background story the player needs to absorb before they can fully understand their situation. Since this story has absolutely nothing to do with memory problems, I'm faced with the task of somehow feeding them story without making it seem like some historian was wandering the scenes and planting random pages of historical text around for the player to conveniently find.

I've considered several ways of doing this

1) Player encounters "Journal nodes". They approach the journal and interact with it, and the player character "writes down and records" their thoughts, conveniently providing the player with information that the player isn't aware of but the player's character would obviously be aware of.


2) Player starts with a whole journal filled with historical text and story tidbits. The player can flip through the pages at will and learn about the story.

Cons:
- Player has no incentive to read the content


3) "Playing the Past" -- the story happens in past-tense. Everything is a flashback; it has already happened and the player character is reliving the events of the story.

Cons:
- Player could feel detached from the story and the character.
- Probably would require voice acting. Want to keep this story as low-key and easy as possible


That's about as much as my brainstorming sessions have yielded. Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated. Story is a very important part of this mod so I want to make sure I'm doing it right!

[Damascus]

I'm sort of taking a similar approach in that there's a lot of backstory in my CS that should be revealed to the player as he goes through the game, and I've decided to take two approaches to it:

1) Journals from different perspectives: I've placed journals around the levels that reveal bits and pieces of the backstory, but from the point of view of whatever character is relevant to the place the player is in. Not only are they often chronologically out of order as the player finds them, but several important details are omitted because of the note's point of view. They will need to find a different character's note to fill in the gaps in the backstory.

2) Loading screens: Through the loading screen texts, I reveal events of the distant past that set the events of the game in motion, in chronological order. But also like the original game, they appear as snippets that appear to be taken out of a much large writing, and thus lack a lot of context. The player has to associate it with the other loading screen texts and journals he finds.

I went about this hoping I could reveal backstory in a realistic way that didn't make things too easy to figure out. Hope this helped a little bit!

[Adny]

I believe the pacing of the information that you give the character is equally as important as the information itself. Honestly it doesn't matter how you present this information, as long as its not too much at once (which, as you said, will most likely deter the player from reading it) or too little. Standard journals, flashback events (ie Daniels encounters at the Farm and the first Orb Chamber), and notes should be plenty to communicate your ideas.

Example, in TDD, the player isn't fully aware of Daniel's past actions (torturing, killing, etc) until nearly the end of the game; this is good pacing.


As to how I'd do this, I feel the technique I had in mind might not be relevant simply because I do not know enough about the story. My idea was the use of what I can best describe as "environmental emotion stones". No, not that strange tube with hieroglyphics on the side that allows Daniel to see Alexander's thoughts, but more so items/areas inside the game relevant to the information given. For example, the player interacts with a weapon of some sort or a heavily damaged environment and gets information about the conflict, presented in the same way as the emotion stone (screen fades to white+black text on screen).

If you try to force all of the back story or prerequisite knowledge on the player in the beginning, they'll either ignore it or won't soak all of it in. If you can pace and synchronize the back story and the real time events (current story), it can have a powerful effect; utilizing such a technique opens up doorways for plenty of "aha!" moments when the player can find the connection between what happened then, and what's happening now. S'good.

[Adrianis]

Good question, I struggled with this as well.

I would vouch for your second point, though perhaps not to start with the journal. Too many games these days place random tidbits of journals in completely rediculous and arbitrary locations, with tiny excerts.
Trying to figure out how and why someone went around ahead of you placing single ripped out pages at random locations... hurts the mind, not to mention the immersion and belief in the world. If that is something you are trying to achieve, just make sure that the placing is done well.
To be honest, I found the placing of entries in Amnesia felt far too arbitrary, too unnatural to be believable (sorry FG!). It made sense for Daniel, because he left entries for himself to find, to help himself, but not for the other characters.

The problem with working too heavily on the pacing of the pages is that often it ends up being too 'video gamey' in terms of it being more about feeding the player info when appropriate to the gameplay, rather than where it is an appropriate part of the story.
In this way, my opinion totally differs to Andyrockin123 (no disrespect my friend). For a game like this, gameplay should be shaped by the story, so pace the story right and the gameplay pace will fall into place, including the players info-drip. Content however is the most important part, doesnt matter where or when its placed, a badly written pointless journal entry will suck no matter when you get it.

For my game, I plan to have several pieces of good, long solid reading for the players, its not for everyone but its a good change from the above. The way to incentivise this is to have what is written in those entries tie directly into the environment the player is exploring, have things referenced that if the player looks for, they can find, clues to extra story content.
Rewarding exploration in this way, by tieing in references from different sources, really adds depth to the world. Problem is, the ways it can tie in have to be very specific, so it won't necessarily work for any given story, which is why I had to go back over reworking plans.

To be honest, the main reason I'm of the opinion that this is superior is purely based off how often the other technique is used. I look at the Elder Scrolls games, and I know that very long pieces of writing CAN be totally valid for video game players. Not all will enjoy the experience, but for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the world, there is no better way to do it. It just has to be done very well, be relevant to the world, to be very well written. Apply other factors like tie in-s to the local environment, and you have a recipe for excellent exploration enjoyment if thats what you want.

TLDR = ERROR: EXCEPTION IN SUMMARY: CANNOT BE PROVIDED FOR TEXT OF THIS LENGTH: DEAL WITH IT

[Acies]

When i get home I could make you a "journal writing animation" and a tome. I'd say mix 1 & 3. Have traggey voiceact the main character describing events as he writes. During crescendos or "peaks" in action show glimpses of scenes or images accompanied with sounds describing the situation.

[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.

[palistov]

Lots of great posts here, thanks for you thoughts guys.

Damascus brought up the point of loading screens -- that had totally slipped my mind. They can definitely provide bits of story that the player can mull over during the loading periods...

Yes pacing is critical. There are fundamental differences between the mod and the original differences, and without the player being aware of them, I doubt he/she will fully enjoy the experience. I guess I'll have to really work on ways to provide this foundation that won't involve long an unnecessary reading.

It dabbles in the supernatural, so perhaps I could do some sort of flashback that I could perhaps play off as magical essence or some pixie dust or whatever black magics are "in" nowadays.