Exposition Imposition Reposition

"Wir tanzen elektrisch
ganz hektisch"

 

Eisbrecher - Fanatica

 

 

Ruin has come to our family:

Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, had a long and successful monologue detailing the unfamiliar political situation into which players were about to immerse themselves.*

Then he stuck a tadpole in your eye. No, wait, different story. Halfway through Act3 of Baldur's Gate 3, I've been thinking back to what a good first impression the opening cinematic made years ago, wordlessly allowing the Illithids' Lovecraftian creepiness to carry the sinister tension calling you, noble hero, to adventure or reasonable facsimile thereof. Before characters could believably lip-sync, such introductions commonly shared the marketing stage with more nonsensical fare imitating old SF/Fantasy book covers pre-commissioned with generic dragons/rockets. See Diablo, NWN, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc. Even now, opening sequences are arguably the one spot where cinematics still serve a needed role, plus it gives you something to play at conventions for hype.

 

Plot-based cRPGs in particular though can also use that precious first impression to intrigue the player with their... well, intrigue. Too bad the backstory for most of them reads like every damn fantasy paperback to ever grace the dollar bin:

1) Once upon a time everything was groovy. Peasants lived in harmony with their lice and tapeworms, kings only skinned alive whoever deserved it or was ugly enough that nobody cared, and fair unspoiled damsels only cheated on their boyfriends twice a week unless it's a holiday.

2) But then! Smart (therefore evil) vizier/wizard made something clever and therefore evil OR something smart killed the goddess of cuddly puppies and frosted cakes OR stole the queen's favorite eyeliner.

3) Therefore we all now live in Camden, NJ and only YOU, intrinsically better than everyone else for thine pancreas of cosmic justice (as foretold by prophecy 17-A, paragraph 15, footnote λ) can bring back the glory days of assuredly edenic primitivism!

Lining up my next RPG after BG3, I was torn between either getting back into that-game-that-misspelled-my-name-in-the-preorder-credits (a.k.a. Vagrus: The Riven Realms) or Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms, impulse-bought at half price and likely twice what it's worth mostly to see what Chris Avellone's been up to. His influence is certainly not visible in either the standard elves/dwarves/orcs/churchgoinghumans setup or the opening cinematic.

 

the great be-triter

Wow, who could've ever predicted THAT GUY would betray anyone? Seems like such a stand-up feller, real brimstone-of-the-earth type. By the way, if you think the static capture looks goofy, the animation, instead of just shifting superimposed images in the usual contemporary foil-embossed low-budget cinematic technique, tries to tilt and rotate various body parts to suggest movement. You'd get Exorcist flashbacks if it didn't completely clash with its wannabe serious tone. Like one of those toddler storybooks with moving cardboard parts... depicting an orphanage bombing.

 

In broad strokes, both Alaloth's and Vagrus' intros play at the same basic cataclysmic pantheicide boilerplate, by the exact same means. But even with a bad idea, there are more and less dignified ways to pad it out. Show, don't tell, hint at later narrative payoffs, and for the love of all that's hackneyed, you don't need to spend five minutes laboriously explaining to me that you have DRAGONS, DEVILS, ELVES, DWARVES, ORCS and CLERICS.

Everybody and his grandma has dragons, devils, elves, dwarves, orcs and clerics.

Please notify me only if you DON'T have dragons, devils, elves, dwarves, orcs and clerics.

So how might you unfurl that same menacing backdrop of hellfire and damnation without the hopelessly cheesy gimmick of a big red devil standing in a literal fireball growling at the viewer? Or the companion piece of a damsel running from a C-series featured creature:

 

that "jazz hands" thing she's doing really kills me

Well, try maintaining a coherent thread for one thing, and remember you're supposed to be inviting the player to discover the world, not telling him what it is. You're answering the question "is this the type of fantasy story that includes assassins" not "who shot JFK?"

 

Much of Vagrus' introduction was played across a single panel gradually altered to showcase the wealth of old empire, the gods' destructive war, its aftermath and the painstaking partial recovery to current bleak reality. The feeling of loss and catastrophe lies as much in what fades out of each panel as what fades in, the call to adventure inherent in the gradual, cautiously hopeful dawning as you zoom into the end of the montage, only to break into full light again as your own role is introduced. Spot-on work.

 

But only with Alaloth's ridiculous suite of ultra-extreme closeups to otherwise inexpressive, uninformative faces did I look back and notice how aptly Vagrus' cinematic had eschewed direct personification in its figuration. Imperial divine rule old and new is represented by looming stiffly-masked statuesque cohorts. Recognizable bodily shapes are absent or relegated to the background of half the panels. Even when front and center, they DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA, furthering the postapocalyptic feel of alienation.

 

How do you portray incipient hellfire and damnation without casting: fireball? Nothing says terrible glory quite like hefting the sun itself as you perpetrate war crimes, does it?

And yes, much of this difference in subtlety is due to the two games' different target audience. Alaloth appears at first glance a dime-a-dozen, idiot-friendly Diablo-clone Action "R"PG clickfest, whereas Vagrus is a turn-based, squad-strategical, unabashedly verbose, economically complex, managerial sandbox exploration RPG strewn with gratuitous Latin. 

 

However, that in itself begs the question of whether you should want your book judged by its cover. I would argue one of these examples reaps far more intrigue from its first impression. Hint: it's not the one with the bobbleheads.

 

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*Darkest Dungeon and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, respectively