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Lennon
88
Lennon
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Closepost=207000
A lot of commercial games, i.e. RPGs have long ass intros, and yes, we might be bored of them when we first start playing, but we learn to appreciate those long ass intros later on in the game when we get our acts together.
I have never learned to appreciate a long intro. It makes no sense that you should "learn to appreciate it" later, when they could keep something you have to play to appreciate for later anyways, when you are more involved in the story.
Also, Craze posted like all the stuff I was thinking of when I was reading this topic. Those are some great examples of how to start a game.
sunshinesan
534
post=207038
I have never learned to appreciate a long intro. It makes no sense that you should "learn to appreciate it" later, when they could keep something you have to play to appreciate for later anyways, when you are more involved in the story.
There's this thing called foreshadowing. I get a great feeling in a story when I suddenly realize everything that was told me all make sense; everything clicks even though it didn't make much sense at all when it was initially told to me. But I guess there are some people who like more concrete ways of story telling, in which the story is spoon fed to you in the exact portions you demand depending on the point in the story. We all have our preferences though.
Lennon
88
I enjoy foreshadowing as well, I just don't think it has to happen right at the start, it could happen gradually in the beginning areas or something and it would be better.
Shinan
4314
I don't know man. Why not have that foreshadowing elsewhere than hammered in there in the intro? Having stuff happen in the background that you don't understand (during that awesome action sequence) is a way better way of introducing stuff you'll understand later. Visual cues, characters that pass you by. Mentions of something particular.
Make the foreshadowing playable. It can't be that hard to have stuff happen in the background while you move around on your first map can it?
Make the foreshadowing playable. It can't be that hard to have stuff happen in the background while you move around on your first map can it?
Lennon
88
post=207052
I don't know man. Why not have that foreshadowing elsewhere than hammered in there in the intro? Having stuff happen in the background that you don't understand (during that awesome action sequence) is a way better way of introducing stuff you'll understand later. Visual cues, characters that pass you by. Mentions of something particular.
Make the foreshadowing playable. It can't be that hard to have stuff happen in the background while you move around on your first map can it?
True, although, like Sunshinesan said this is somewhat about personal preference.
Darken
3952
lol yeah I don't think foreshadowing is something separate from INTERESTING ACTION INTRO. Foreshadowing is something you can fill into the cracks.
Another good example of an intro was FFT (provided you skipped the fmv). It starts out with a battle outside a church in the rain, it's very dramatic and intense but you only controlled Ramza, one character. The entire battle was mainly just watching Gaffgarion do cool skills and squires throwing rocks at each other. There wasn't a whole lot of control but it gave the player the general idea of the gameplay without throwing an entire squad at her to manage. Then it jumps into a flashback chapter of some sort, pretty cool!
Another good example of an intro was FFT (provided you skipped the fmv). It starts out with a battle outside a church in the rain, it's very dramatic and intense but you only controlled Ramza, one character. The entire battle was mainly just watching Gaffgarion do cool skills and squires throwing rocks at each other. There wasn't a whole lot of control but it gave the player the general idea of the gameplay without throwing an entire squad at her to manage. Then it jumps into a flashback chapter of some sort, pretty cool!
sunshinesan
534
To call it completely out-of-place is pretty unfair, though I agree with you that the core focus of the discussion is obviously isn't solely on foreshadowing. But I think the issue, as I've stated before, maybe in the YDS LT thread, I don't remember, is the notion of Amateur vs Commercial. Commercial games can afford the lengthy intro, foreshadowing, all that good stuff right from the beginning, whereas amateur games can't. It's an issue with money.
When we are just talking about the overall quality of any game, I honestly don't think lengthy intros have any negative aspects at all, that is if they can be build upon later in the story.
When we are just talking about the overall quality of any game, I honestly don't think lengthy intros have any negative aspects at all, that is if they can be build upon later in the story.
Crystalgate
694
I will never be able to appreciate foreshadowing from the very start.
How excited I become when I spot foreshadowing depends very little on the foreshadowing itself, rather it depends on how competent the author has been so far. With a good author I will assume that when I finally get the missing piece, the whole picture will be grand. However, if the author has been a poor writer there's no reason for me to expect the big reveal to be any better written than anything before. If an author foreshadow events right from the start then I'll have no idea if that's really going to be something to look forward to. I guess you could see that as a mystery, but I consider "does the author know what the heck he's doing?" an enjoyable mystery.
I guess not everyone sees it the same way. Even so, I think foreshadowing is a way to show the player promises. You show that there's a missing element and it is implied that finding it our later will be grander than it will be if it's revealed now. I don't think it's good idea to give the player promises until you have established trust.
How excited I become when I spot foreshadowing depends very little on the foreshadowing itself, rather it depends on how competent the author has been so far. With a good author I will assume that when I finally get the missing piece, the whole picture will be grand. However, if the author has been a poor writer there's no reason for me to expect the big reveal to be any better written than anything before. If an author foreshadow events right from the start then I'll have no idea if that's really going to be something to look forward to. I guess you could see that as a mystery, but I consider "does the author know what the heck he's doing?" an enjoyable mystery.
I guess not everyone sees it the same way. Even so, I think foreshadowing is a way to show the player promises. You show that there's a missing element and it is implied that finding it our later will be grander than it will be if it's revealed now. I don't think it's good idea to give the player promises until you have established trust.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I definitely think that games should start with action. Oh my god, lack of opening action can make a game unbearable, especially for replays. Fuck hometowns forever.
However, starting with action and interesting battles is not the same thing as starting with the player having access to all his abilities and to all the game's complex systems. These are actually terrible ideas. You wouldn't want to start Final Fantasy Tactics with every job unlocked. You wouldn't want to start Chrono Trigger with every accessory, every ability, and all seven party members. These are things that the player should have to progress in the game to obtain.
RPGs are based around a concept that the player gets more options and more abilities as the game goes on. The game's complexity increases over time, and only at the end is the player making full use of all the available tactics in the game.
What this means, necessarily, is that the gameplay at the beginning of the game will be incredibly simplified, and lacking in many options. You won't have all your build options available, you won't have all your abilities. And thus, the combat and customization won't really reach its peak of interestingness until much later.
This isn't a bad thing.
However, starting with action and interesting battles is not the same thing as starting with the player having access to all his abilities and to all the game's complex systems. These are actually terrible ideas. You wouldn't want to start Final Fantasy Tactics with every job unlocked. You wouldn't want to start Chrono Trigger with every accessory, every ability, and all seven party members. These are things that the player should have to progress in the game to obtain.
RPGs are based around a concept that the player gets more options and more abilities as the game goes on. The game's complexity increases over time, and only at the end is the player making full use of all the available tactics in the game.
What this means, necessarily, is that the gameplay at the beginning of the game will be incredibly simplified, and lacking in many options. You won't have all your build options available, you won't have all your abilities. And thus, the combat and customization won't really reach its peak of interestingness until much later.
This isn't a bad thing.
Billwilliams
1159
One very important thing it remember is that if a player has actually spent their own money on a game they are going to be a lot more patient with a slow start then if they just grabbed a free game off of a RM site.
Pacing is good, backstory is nice but if you don't show me something very quickly I might just head back to the internet and download another game. The one hour mark seems to be the key turning point. If you haven't gotten the player involved by then it is very likely they will not even attempt to play farther into your game.
Pacing is good, backstory is nice but if you don't show me something very quickly I might just head back to the internet and download another game. The one hour mark seems to be the key turning point. If you haven't gotten the player involved by then it is very likely they will not even attempt to play farther into your game.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Pacing is good, backstory is nice but if you don't show me something very quickly I might just head back to the internet and download another game. The one hour mark seems to be the key turning point. If you haven't gotten the player involved by then it is very likely they will not even attempt to play farther into your game.
I'm not sure I've never played a single RPG in my life that got the player fully involved in the gameplay before the last 25% of the game. Usually it's the last 5%, as that's when the last sidequests tend to open up, and those sidequests always reward you with some sort of new power ups. Until you have access to every combat ability and every customization option, you're not really playing the full game.
Can the game be just as fun when you don't have access to everything? Well, people enjoy unlocking those things, and that's an aspect of fun that disappears once you have them all. So, I suppose you're trading one aspect of the game for another. Some people will find it more fun when they have the most tactical options, and other people will find it more fun when they have the most goals in front of them.
I guess it would be more accurate to say that combat becomes more fun the further into a game you get.
TheNecromancer
3160
I usually quit an RMN game within the first hour because of overall poor quality. I have no problem sitting through 20 minutes of text as long as it programmed correctly. That means no slow text, no characters walking through walls/trees, no music/chipset errors... After a while of that I will quit.
An example of a RMN game that I thoroughly enjoyed a long intro is Liberty's game Celdran's Curse. It might have had a bit of slow text..don't remember, but the story was somewhat original and the characters had personality, they weren't spitting out one-liners. It wasn't about comedy and it had a good pace. Also, you weren't exactly sure who you were going to start controlling because it was showing both sides. So a successful intro depends on the story telling ability of the writer and the quality of the characters. I wouldn't be impressed by flashy explosions if a lame stereotypical character was behind it.
And about the gameplay side of things, I HATTTTTE starting a game with 0 money and no skills. If I get to level 4 and don't have an ability/magic and have just been spamming attack I will quit without hesitation(probably). About giving the player too much information/skills, it all has to do with experience. If you have been playing RPG's for over 10 years then you are far less likely to feel overwhelmed. I like being given a ton of information and options right from the start. I'm not stupid and I don't need to be eased into something, gimme lots to do so I can experiment with everything right away. To me that's extremely fun and rewarding. I don't mean give me EVERYTHING so there is nothing else to gain. If a game would normally take 40 hours to complete, where the first 10 you only have a handful of skills..I would rather be given more skills earlier and play a 30 hour game. There's tons of games to play out there, commercial/indie .. rpg/non-rgp, I don't want to be slowly fed gameplay. It's preventing me from playing other games. You used to be able to get away with 70+ hour, 4 disc epic RPG's back in the day, but not anymore. Short and sweet, unless you've got a good formula of ever evolving gameplay.
Something I read in another thread which could apply here, is the option to give the player high-end gear or skills at the start, give them a taste of what the power is like and then take it all away (Symphony of the Night). You know what the end result is going to be but still have the fun of starting from scratch.
An example of a RMN game that I thoroughly enjoyed a long intro is Liberty's game Celdran's Curse. It might have had a bit of slow text..don't remember, but the story was somewhat original and the characters had personality, they weren't spitting out one-liners. It wasn't about comedy and it had a good pace. Also, you weren't exactly sure who you were going to start controlling because it was showing both sides. So a successful intro depends on the story telling ability of the writer and the quality of the characters. I wouldn't be impressed by flashy explosions if a lame stereotypical character was behind it.
And about the gameplay side of things, I HATTTTTE starting a game with 0 money and no skills. If I get to level 4 and don't have an ability/magic and have just been spamming attack I will quit without hesitation(probably). About giving the player too much information/skills, it all has to do with experience. If you have been playing RPG's for over 10 years then you are far less likely to feel overwhelmed. I like being given a ton of information and options right from the start. I'm not stupid and I don't need to be eased into something, gimme lots to do so I can experiment with everything right away. To me that's extremely fun and rewarding. I don't mean give me EVERYTHING so there is nothing else to gain. If a game would normally take 40 hours to complete, where the first 10 you only have a handful of skills..I would rather be given more skills earlier and play a 30 hour game. There's tons of games to play out there, commercial/indie .. rpg/non-rgp, I don't want to be slowly fed gameplay. It's preventing me from playing other games. You used to be able to get away with 70+ hour, 4 disc epic RPG's back in the day, but not anymore. Short and sweet, unless you've got a good formula of ever evolving gameplay.
Something I read in another thread which could apply here, is the option to give the player high-end gear or skills at the start, give them a taste of what the power is like and then take it all away (Symphony of the Night). You know what the end result is going to be but still have the fun of starting from scratch.
Watching Let's Try's has been really eye-opening in this aspect. Unfortunately right now I just can't let go of the introduction to the game I have. It's fairly cliche, but I prefer the game to build up momentum as I go. You spend about 15 minutes just getting a grip with the games bearings, which builds up into the game's first battle sequence. When I get to beta-testing phase I will be asking for opinions on the intro- if it is too long and boring, I will ask if they would like an engaging battle sooner, or if that intro should just be cut out completely.
As for intolerably long-ass intros, if they're engaging and give me some grip on the story then it's ok. Especially in replays in terms of fore-shadowing, I like to laugh at a game, story or movie when rewatching it and recognize the foreshadowing. I do that a LOT during the Hulk movie with Eric Bana :3
And, maybe a long ass intros are good, because if the gameplay and battles are horrid then I'll wish that the intro was still playing :/
As for intolerably long-ass intros, if they're engaging and give me some grip on the story then it's ok. Especially in replays in terms of fore-shadowing, I like to laugh at a game, story or movie when rewatching it and recognize the foreshadowing. I do that a LOT during the Hulk movie with Eric Bana :3
And, maybe a long ass intros are good, because if the gameplay and battles are horrid then I'll wish that the intro was still playing :/
If you're gonna make a long intro, make it playable. Otherwise, you should just give the player the main character and what he's doing at the moment. Although long-winded intros can work, shorter intros are almost universally more successful. It doesn't have to be explosive (Chrono Trigger) but it can be (Final Fantasy VII).
A while back my intro was a minute or two long, had a fade into another BGM, a character that wouldn't be introduced for two to three hours speaking, and only gave vague info on something that would be mentioned later on in its own flashback anyway. Frankly, the monologue wasn't even that good. So I said "fuck it" and threw the main character off a building.
Way more fun, imo.
Quintessential article plug: http://rpgmaker.net/articles/9/
A while back my intro was a minute or two long, had a fade into another BGM, a character that wouldn't be introduced for two to three hours speaking, and only gave vague info on something that would be mentioned later on in its own flashback anyway. Frankly, the monologue wasn't even that good. So I said "fuck it" and threw the main character off a building.
Way more fun, imo.
Quintessential article plug: http://rpgmaker.net/articles/9/
