T w e n t y S i d e d

Before we go any further with this series I want to back up and talk about themes. The term “theme” has a couple of different meanings when applied to stories. It can mean an idea that the text brings up again and again, or it can mean something that the author is deliberately trying to say through the workPreferably without saying it explicitly..

We don’t need to draw a hard line between these two. For our purposes a theme can be thought of as a thesis or a message. Perhaps a zombie story tries to show us that “consumers are the real zombies” or perhaps “the survivors are the real monsters”. That’s close enough for our purposes.

Themes Are Critic Bait

George Orwell’s themes were – by design – forceful and obvious, while other stories have proven harder to pin down over the years. James Cameron’s Avatar had a theme that was blunt to the point of being vaguely insulting.

A lit major might jump in here and chastise me for playing fast and loose with the definition of theme and how it applies to fiction. That’s fine, because it doesn’t really matter in this game. Rage 2 is an action adventure power fantasy shooter, and in this realm the rules of fiction are incredibly lax. Like, just having a theme in your game puts you ahead of most shooters, even if that theme is muddled and poorly executed. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rage 2 Part 5: Theme Park”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know the last entry was really negative. If it helps, the worst is over. This story never becomes great, but we’re past the horrendous self-sabotage of the excruciatingly paced opening.

Actually, there’s one last nasty bit:

Once Walker is done with Prowley’s Purgatory of Exposition, Walker has to go outside and explain the situation to Lily. So we need to listen to Walker repeat parts of what we just heard. The only thing worse than overlong needless exposition is doing it twice, so this is a little annoying.

The repetition is actually pretty short – less than 30 seconds – and it’s done over the radio while Walker is walking from the HQ to the gates of the city. That takes the edge off, and maybe it’s worth reiterating the premise of the upcoming adventure to make sure it sticks with the player. Still, after such a long clumsy delivery of information, it feels like salt in the wound.

Obviously this wouldn’t really be a problem if the previous scene was more economical with the player’s time, but you could improve it even more by re-framing the conversation. You could avoid having this feel like a recap by simply having Lily present during the briefing. Then Lily could react to her mother’s briefing, thus doing some character-building stuff. We could get some emotional stuff done so the scene isn’t 100% expositionAnd if you don’t want to waste time on icky emotional stuff, then don’t make Lily the daughter of Prowley. We’re either doing pathos or we aren’t. Pick one.. Walker and Lily could discuss what they’re going to do next to make the player’s goals clear. Even if they’re repeating bits of the briefing, it won’t feel like an expositional re-run if we present it as part of what we’re going to do next. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rage 2 Part 4: Marshall Your Allies”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.