Lore And Codex Entries One method of indirect storytelling in games involves finding bits of lore in the world. Examples include notes or voice recordings. Books, journals and emails on computers as well. This lore is not essential to the story, only giving background and additional details. This makes the world seem more real and…
Cutscenes Games have many ways to tell you their stories. Most RPGs and narrative games open with a cutscene to introduce the inciting incident and give some background. Dragon Age Origins opens with the history of the darkspawn and the Blight. Fallout games open by telling us about the bombs and how people survived in…
Beginning at the End – Setting the Scene Welcome to my in-depth review of Episode One of Fallout. The first episode of Fallout on Prime has a lot of heavy lifting to do. Obviously a lot of the audience will be fans of the game, that’s a given. However, there’s going to be a lot…
How To Start A Story Today we’re going to look at Fallout’s inciting incidents, and how to motivate players and characters to follow the plot. The most important part of the beginning is the ‘inciting incident’. An event that sets your protagonist on the road to the main plotline. These can be major or minor…
What is Mary Sue Syndrome? The term ‘Mary Sue’ is one that has been used to describe a character archetype that is too perfect. It originated in the Star Trek fandom in a parody fanfiction. It is an archetype that is especially common in fanfiction. Essentially it is a character, usually the primary protagonist, who…
So, you’ve got your book idea and you’ve started writing it. You’ve produced an outline and set up your plot, you’ve gotten to know your characters and how they are going to develop throughout your story. Great. But for some reason, your characters have developed a mind of their own. What if they decide to…
Introducing Your Characters So you’ve got your characters and you are ready to start introducing them. Great! Where do you start? A lot of newer writers can fall into a trap when it comes to making the first introduction of their characters, especially the main character. Starting off your first page with a huge infodump…
