Last time, I mentioned that the game begins with a two-minute expositional monologue from our villain General Cross as he addresses his troops. I skipped over that bit, but let’s back up and analyze it now.<\/p>\n
<\/div>During this monologue, Cross gives exposition for the following:<\/p>\n
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- An asteroid named Apophis hit Earth years ago, transforming it into the wasteland it is today.<\/li>\n
- Cross wanted to use this global cleansing as an opportunity to set up a brutalist techno-fascist state and conquer the world.<\/li>\n
- A lone guy named Nicholas RaineThe player character from the previous game.<\/span> stopped them.<\/li>\n
- Arks emerged and eco-pods fell down (we don’t know what these are yet) which put an end to their plans.<\/li>\n
- The thing with the eco-pods kick-started the regrowth of life, which was a setback for Cross. He wanted to do the same thing himself, presumably using different lifeforms as a starting point. It seems he thinks his society of cybernetic goons is a new species, and he wants to create a world suited for them and not for obsolete humanity.<\/li>\n
- Humans are pitiful, naive, unworthy, etc. They chose to survive rather than allowing Cross to take over with his superior breed.<\/li>\n
- They thought we were defeated. We LET them think that. But actually we moved our operation underground! Since then we’ve watched them fight among each other.<\/li>\n
- We grew strong, doing science and stuff. We’re now re-dedicating to our original purpose to weed out the weak.<\/li>\n
- Now we’re going to kill them, wipe out their settlements, claim the arks, and take over.<\/li>\n
- Our faction is called THE AUTHORITY!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
There’s a lot wrong with this. Most importantly, none<\/b> of this information is needed at this point in the story. I skipped it in the last entry, and everyone was able to get the general gist of the world. Nobody was stuck saying, “Help. I can’t possibly comprehend this monster attack without first knowing what caused this apocalypse and how it changed the political and cultural landscape of the world!”<\/p>\n
Making things worse is the overly verbose dialog.\u00a0Worse still is that the bad guy’s delivery is really grating with many… dramatic… PAUSES! It’s information the audience doesn’t need, doesn’t care about, which is delivered at the worst possible time, as slowly as possible.<\/p>\n
Storytelling Priorities<\/h3>\n
<\/div>I can't help it. Whenever I see pictures of this guy I keep trying to figure out what he transforms into. Spoiler: He doesn't transform into anything.<\/div><\/p>\nEven if this information was interesting, this is the wrong time for it. In an RPG<\/a>, your introduction probably has the following priorities:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Worldbuilding<\/li>\n
- Characters<\/li>\n
- Action<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
But in an action game, these are reversed. We need to get the player into the gameplay as soon as possible, and then we need to engage their emotions by using characters. Once they’re playing the game and they feel a personal attachment to the world, then<\/b> we can sneak in little bits of worldbuilding to explain the asteroid that caused the apocalypse and the events of the previous game. Rage 2<\/i> tries to lead off with worldbuilding and characters, but it also tries to rush through them to get to the action, so we end up with the worst of both worlds.<\/p>\n
Cross is talking to his own soldiers, which means this entire speech is one giant As you know, Bob<\/a>. Cross is telling his troops their entire history and goals, which you’d kind of expect them to know already. Even if we decide we need to begin the game with a bulk info-dump, this is the wrong person to give it and the wrong people to hear it.<\/p>\n
This information could easily be cut here and given organically through dialog over the next half hour of gameplay. I realize this might sound massively hypocritical coming from a guy who front-loaded his novel with brute-force exposition<\/a>. But the needs of a sci-fi novel are very different from the needs of an action shooter. A novel needs to tell you everything in words, but a videogame can use sound, visuals, and animation to reveal the world to the audience. Starting off with a dude delivering a speech is a really boring and inefficient way of conveying this information. To be fair to the cutscene, it does cut away to footage of some of the events Cross is talking about, so the cutscene isn’t entirely his talking head.<\/p>\n
<\/div>We don't know what Eco Pods are or what they do, but the cutscene shows us this image. So at least we know what they look like. That's better than nothing.<\/div><\/p>\nThe player is here to shoot mutants and wreck cars. We have gameplay tutorials that we need to take them through. We need to get them invested and having fun as soon as possible, and this long speech works against that. It would be better to send the player into the game lost and confused than to make them sit through this two and a half minutes of drip-fed backstory, but if we really needed to have this sequence, then we need more showing and less telling.<\/p>\n
\nWe can begin with General Cross knocking over some town or outpost. The locals could exclaim stuff like, “Oh no, it’s General Cross!” and “Impossible, the Authority was destroyed years ago!” to get the obvious exposition out of the way. (This would have the added benefit that we wouldn’t need to cram this information into the already-crowded cutscene where Sgt. Prowley dies.) Then Cross could explain his purpose to the settlers while his army is slaughtering them. Maybe he snatches up one of the city defenders by the neck and delivers his big campaign speech to that<\/strong> guy. If we really want to commit to the comedy vibe, then we could gradually transition from a wide shot of his attack to a tight shot on his face. His face is gradually lit from below with fire and his eyes become more maniacal. Slowly the sounds of screaming and gunfire cease as he builds to a mad crescendo announcing his grandiose plans. Then we cut back to the wide shot and we realize that the settlers are all dead. He’s throttled the city guard, who is now a ragdoll. He falters mid-tirade and there’s a beat where he realizes he’s talking to himself. Embarrassed, he chucks the guard over his shoulder and storms off in a huff.<\/p>\n
We could easily get all of this exposition done in under a minute, particularly if we tighten up his dialog and speed up his delivery. We could slam-cut to the opening credits after his tirade, which means the player will begin the game waiting for the other shoe to drop. They know this guy is out there, and as they meet their friends and family in my rewritten intro, they’ll realize that they’re all at risk of suffering the same fate as those poor idiots Cross just massacred.<\/p>\n
It’s not much, but a tiny measure of empathy and suspense is still way better than zero empathy and suspense.<\/p><\/div>\n
What’s In a Name?<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Like a lot of Authority visuals, this is kind of hard to read. That Y in the beam of light is General Cross, screaming with his arms in the air.<\/div><\/p>\nThe other problem with this monologue is that the writer doesn’t understand the worldbuilding power of names. Cross uses phrases like “those that opposed us” when talking about people outside of The Authority. He calls them “they” and “them”, but he doesn’t seem to have a proper noun for the people he’s talking about. It sounds unnatural and awkward, because in the real world we are really good at coming up with shorthand names for our perceived enemies.<\/p>\n
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