RMMV Synopsis/ Game start advice

[PhxFire]

Alright so this post is a double to get some other opinions on game openings...

My first question is what are some good ways to start a game? Right now my character wakes up, and get's right into the story. It's kinda cliche but also a tried and true method to start a game. What are your thoughts on this method and do you have any advice or suggestions for game beginnings.

Second question, I've got a synopsis written that will play along with a video when a new game is started to give some backstory/ history, and it's okay. However I'm considering hiring a voice actor and I really want it to be great if I gonna pay all that money. Here's the synopsis...

Spoiler: Synopsis

"In the kingdom of Sparowdale mythical creatures, humans, elves, dwarves and all other races live alongside each other... However it wasn't always like that. Long ago the different races constantly fought, vying for land, resources and power. One race however, did not desire to become involved in these petty feuds. The dragons had decided to recluse themselves and avoid getting involved. The battle raged on for many decades and eventually began to threaten the very existence of the races, and of the land itself. Seeing the destruction that the other races had caused, the dragons knew that they could not avoid intervening any longer. They first tried to calm the races and convince them to co-exist, however they refused to heed the warning of the dragons. Seeing now that the other races could not be reasoned with, the dragons defeated all of them in one mighty show of power. The other races, seeing that they did not have the power to defeat them, surrendered to the dragons and agreed to stop their fighting. A few hundred years passed and the races all were able to coexist peacefully. However fear and resentment had continued to build towards the dragons that had subdued all of the races. They began to develop weapons and magic that were powerful enough the defeat the dragons, and one day they declared war. This war raged on for nearly a century but as the dragons numbers decreased, so did their ability to fight back. They eventually were forced into hiding and the other races began searching the earth,hunting down every last one. A few centuries later dragons were believed to have gone extinct and the races began to return to their normal lives, agreeing to live together and end the wars. A few millennia have passed, the tale became legend and eventually, most didn't even know of the legend. However a powerful mage, calling himself Greagon the Avenger now threatens the lives of everyone in order to obtain retribution for the dragons slain so long ago. Greagon has recruited many who agree that the races must be punished and they roam the kingdom calling themselves peacekeepers, bullying and abusing the citizens who are too weak to fight back. "

Any suggestions, grammar mistakes or anything that can be improved would be fantastic![/SPOILER]

 

[Milennin]

Clichés are clichés because they work.

For the synopsis, you're going to need paragraphs to make it not look like a wall.

For voice acting, you do that once your game is done and you know for sure the dialogue isn't going to change, otherwise you're throwing away your money and effort.

 

[PhxFire]

This is for the intro to my game, it's the only thing I plan on having a voice actor for and the lore for my world is already set. It's gonna be similar to this so it isn't just going to be a wall of text obviously, that's just how I have it written currently.

And ya, I suppose that's true about clichés lol

 

[gstv87]

my character wakes up

that's already a red flag, for me.
characters only "wake up" in cheap RPGs.... look at the amount of story works out there, how many of them start with "the character wakes up"?
they usually start with the character in their everyday world.

I've got a synopsis written that will play along with a video when a new game is started

second red flag, same reason.
you can provide the backstory by having NPCs interact with the player.
but, be careful not to fall in the exposition dump trope! make sure the dialogue has a reason to be: the character has to ask for what they want to know.
and, if something is known, don't repeat it.

 

[PhxFire]

@gstv87 Ya I'm really not feeling the waking up start, gotta put some more thought into that.

And for the opening video, it's just the lore/ history of the world that ties into the main plot for the game, the game takes place a few millennia afterwards and the history doesn't really get brought up again... Although I think I'll take out the end there and let the character find out about the main villain along his adventure, thanks for the suggestion!

Which actually gave me an idea for the intro, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it... So it would start out with the lore video and then transitions to show the MC as a child and his mother is reading the book to him before bed time, then he falls asleep and then theres a "12 years" later cut scene and then he wakes up in bed and the story begins.
And I'll reword the synopsis to read more like a fairy tale.
Thoughts?

 

[empresskiova]

It sounds like the poor kid went into a coma!

That’s a bit better sounding intro, though.

 

[bgillisp]

I'd honestly cut the entire video if it is just lore, or make it optional. Most players will not remember 99.9% of that anyways, especially if you tell them that in the year 812 the emperor Bastilla saved us from the Demon Fargoth with the aid of the 7 heroes, who went on to...

Maybe make it an optional item they can read? Or an optional video they can watch from the opening menu?

 

[PhxFire]

@bgillisp Well it's kinda just lore, but its quite important to the overall story, I'm not throwing it in just to have it... and I don't plan on getting specific like the example giving years and names and stuff, it's basically just the history of the world and how dragons went extinct/ became legend which sets up the main story line.

If you have better ideas on how to introduce the history I'm all ears, this was just the best way I could think of

 

[Restart]

Okay, so from what I see, the specific takeaways the player needs to have from this are

1) Society was formerly ruled under the iron claw of an oppressive draconic ethnostate
2) The lower caste races united as one to overthrow it, but upon attaining the freedom they desired, the movement devolved into a genocidal frenzy, and eventually resulted in the systematic extermination of the dragon race.
2) Greagon has found out that the current 'peaceful' society was founded upon horrific atrocities, and is attempting to take down the current leaders who are/were complicit in it.

Based on that, I don't think you need a big title crawl per se. What you probably want instead is start the game with the main character attending a whitewashed festival commemorating the 'peaceful unification' of their nation, and 'honorable defeat' of the dragons, which gets crashed by Greagon's forces, who are trying to interfere and show people the truth.

 

[PhxFire]

@Restart Well kinda, the dragon's did not really rule over them, they were forced to intervene in order to stop the races from destroying themselves... However I may work off of that unification day idea, I think that could be both a great setup and a nice addition to the main story... Thanks for that!

 

[alice_gristle]

what are some good ways to start a game?

If figuring out how to start feels hard (I know it often does to me), I'd suggest working out everything else first. As writers, we really don't need to figure out how to start until we've figured out everything else - what the story is about, how it plays out, how it ends. THEN we can write a beginning.