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NEED HELP WITH STORY STRUCTURE
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XBuster
1385
XBuster
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CloseHello everyone, there has been something I've been wanting to discuss regarding a project I'm working on and its been bugging me for days on end. At this point in time, the mapping and mechanics are all pretty much deep in development and many of them are complete. However, the story structure has been bothering me a whole lot because I feel many parts of them would ruin the experience altogether.
The game itself is a crossover in which one of the characters gets lost in a completely different world. The vision I had throughout the years called for that character to cross over to this world only and go home at the ending similar to the structure of the Wizard of Oz or others of its kind. A story that revolves around going to unfamiliar territory, meeting lots of new people, and finally returning to where it all began.
But lately, there have been certain circumstances(not going into detail) and ideas tainting the vision I originally had and turning it into something unnecessary. The game being designed pretty much has all the resources needed to make a variety of stages and content with one world alone. There isn't a need for two ice areas and two water areas and two desert areas and so on. It would just become redundant(at least in my opinion). It seemed like a good idea at first, but the deeper the game went into development, the more I realized, it wasn't.
What story structure do you think would be the most fitting for something like this? One world with a large variety of different areas or both worlds with similar kinds of areas?
The game itself is a crossover in which one of the characters gets lost in a completely different world. The vision I had throughout the years called for that character to cross over to this world only and go home at the ending similar to the structure of the Wizard of Oz or others of its kind. A story that revolves around going to unfamiliar territory, meeting lots of new people, and finally returning to where it all began.
But lately, there have been certain circumstances(not going into detail) and ideas tainting the vision I originally had and turning it into something unnecessary. The game being designed pretty much has all the resources needed to make a variety of stages and content with one world alone. There isn't a need for two ice areas and two water areas and two desert areas and so on. It would just become redundant(at least in my opinion). It seemed like a good idea at first, but the deeper the game went into development, the more I realized, it wasn't.
What story structure do you think would be the most fitting for something like this? One world with a large variety of different areas or both worlds with similar kinds of areas?
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
It's a pretty vague question, but I'll try to answer as well I can, since narratives are my jam.
The intended structure of the gameplay should inform the structure of your narrative. Given how you're describing this, I'm gonna assume you haven't worked that out, either, so this will cover both.
One world with a large variety:
I can see this going two possible ways- either a linear romp, or an open world style sequence of basically mini stories.
The linear romp would be the easiest from a writing standpoint: you just decide what levels go in what order, and then decide why the characters are progressing from level to level. This is the structure of pulp adventure movies like the Indiana Jones series or the final third of Dracula (the novel, though Coppola's film follows it pretty well).
An open world would require you to come up with a framing narrative and then a lot of smaller narratives, one for each level, that can go in any order. Chrono Trigger does this to an extent. The Mega Man series is set up this way (though obviously the narrative is minimal).
Two worlds:
If you have two similar worlds, I'd personally structure things so that they're connected in some way. Any time you have two of something, it's a good idea to work on comparison/contrast stuff. If areas are similar, that's an opportunity to highlight whatever differences there are.
You can also treat similar areas of different worlds as connected, where changing one will change the other. (See: the Light World/Dark World mechanics in A Link to the Past.)
In these cases, whatever structure you go with should involve travel between the worlds to get the player used to thinking about them in relation to one another; we tend to assume things that happen close to one another are related, whereas things that are far from one another aren't.
Is any of this helpful?
The intended structure of the gameplay should inform the structure of your narrative. Given how you're describing this, I'm gonna assume you haven't worked that out, either, so this will cover both.
One world with a large variety:
I can see this going two possible ways- either a linear romp, or an open world style sequence of basically mini stories.
The linear romp would be the easiest from a writing standpoint: you just decide what levels go in what order, and then decide why the characters are progressing from level to level. This is the structure of pulp adventure movies like the Indiana Jones series or the final third of Dracula (the novel, though Coppola's film follows it pretty well).
An open world would require you to come up with a framing narrative and then a lot of smaller narratives, one for each level, that can go in any order. Chrono Trigger does this to an extent. The Mega Man series is set up this way (though obviously the narrative is minimal).
Two worlds:
If you have two similar worlds, I'd personally structure things so that they're connected in some way. Any time you have two of something, it's a good idea to work on comparison/contrast stuff. If areas are similar, that's an opportunity to highlight whatever differences there are.
You can also treat similar areas of different worlds as connected, where changing one will change the other. (See: the Light World/Dark World mechanics in A Link to the Past.)
In these cases, whatever structure you go with should involve travel between the worlds to get the player used to thinking about them in relation to one another; we tend to assume things that happen close to one another are related, whereas things that are far from one another aren't.
Is any of this helpful?
XBuster
1385
I apologize for being too vague. It was kind of hard to word out. I'll try to be more clear in the future. With that said, a lot of this is helpful! The structure of Mega Man or Chrono Trigger is a great point to bring up. Something that is open, but not all the time. I've been wanting that kind of freedom, but with linearity scattered here and there to add some variety.
I like the idea of being able to travel to almost anywhere in the game right off the bat, but only certain power ups, abilities, or characters will allow you to access the secret areas or items. Of course, sometimes this spoils the surprise of seeing what areas are coming up next because you can easily see one area, leave, and then go to another area. But, that is to be expected in that kind of structure. Then again, Mega Man 7 and 8 did something where you could only tackle 4 stages at a time instead of the 8.
You got me thinking a lot here. I'll take everything into consideration :)
I like the idea of being able to travel to almost anywhere in the game right off the bat, but only certain power ups, abilities, or characters will allow you to access the secret areas or items. Of course, sometimes this spoils the surprise of seeing what areas are coming up next because you can easily see one area, leave, and then go to another area. But, that is to be expected in that kind of structure. Then again, Mega Man 7 and 8 did something where you could only tackle 4 stages at a time instead of the 8.
You got me thinking a lot here. I'll take everything into consideration :)
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Great! My main worry was that I answered a question you weren't asking, so I'm super glad I could help you out. Good luck with your gam mak!
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