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The Prologue: How to change it so it's better

  • Alex898
  • 12/02/2010 05:26 PM
  • 1405 views
The biggest criticism of the game seems to be the opening is too long and boring, and I have to kind of agree. Since I am almost done with the game, now is the time to completely rehaul the prologue chapter so it is more streamlined and not boring for people. I have come up with a few ideas for approaches but for those of you that have played the demo or beta, what do you think is the best approach?

1. Cut out the first few scenes and instead have a scrolling dialogue explaining what happened/setting up the narrative. IE. A dialogue explaining that a mysterious man showed up in Reins the same night a wounded soldier returned home and their pathes would cross etc. Obviously it would be more detailed and better than that :P

2. Make it more interactive. I was thinking about actaully making the prologue longer, but making it interactive and having the player do more in it. You walk around more, and I was even thinking about including a sequence before Lucian gets injured where he is a higher level and you control him and Zane and fight a few Balkian soldiers while raiding a camp. This would obviously make the intro much longer, but I feel it can add more character development and make the intro less boring.

3. Keep the intro style the same (mostly cutscenes with a few brief interactive sequences) and just reform the pacing of it. My biggest complaint as the designer is that I don't like the pacing of the intro, I feel like it moves too fast and I don't like the music choices I picked for the scenes. This option would pretty much have me start from scratch to design a new intro sequence with better pacing, but not add more interactive sequences or a scrolling font to streamline it.


I'm wondering what you all think is the best approach to take to rehauling the intro sequence to the game?

I also made a few changes to chapter 1 already:
- Lucian now starts out at level 1 with the Eye Poke skill. This way he doesn't start out completely lacking skills (which seems to be a big peeve of the community). I'm considering giving him an additional new skill but in regards to the full skill list I have already made in the database there isn't really any skill I can come up with that wouldn't be redundant later on.
- Updated the Ephilon Road mapping as well as the mapping of the first couple of towns so they look better.

Posts

Pages: 1
Carvonica
1023
12/03/2010 12:21 AM
I suggest making the introduction more interactive. A solid introduction is a great way to begin a game, but not if it's just three or four long cut-scenes with overwhelming dialogue. Provide an interactive tutorial that both: informs the player on how to play and delivers as an introduction.

If it's done right, the length of the introduction won't matter.
LEECH
who am i and how did i get in here
2599
12/03/2010 08:11 AM
author=Carvonica
I suggest making the introduction more interactive. A solid introduction is a great way to begin a game, but not if it's just three or four long cut-scenes with overwhelming dialogue. Provide an interactive tutorial that both: informs the player on how to play and delivers as an introduction.

If it's done right, the length of the introduction won't matter.
Alex898
572
12/14/2010 05:27 AM
YDS's Let's Try has inspired me to start remaking the opening so I'm putting the finishing of the final dungeon on hold for now. I have opted for approach 1, cutting out half of the scenes and adding a scrolling text explaining some things that aren't explicitly clear (like about the nations of Reins, Balkia and Nobungia). It's amazing how much better it is already after 2 years of RPG Maker experience lmfao. I've only finished the font and first scene but it's already 100x better that was already in place and sets a much better tone then the original opening did.

The reason I chose approach one is that Bloodsphere is gonna be a 25+ hour long RPG at this point. I find adding EVEN MORE extra scenes is just going to drag the game out too much so it is instead better to trim where possible.
Pages: 1