how to start a story
or, who?
A few quick things:
Been doing a lot of guest posts lately. Not sure how you all feel about this, but I kind of like it. If you want to submit something to me, check out this post.
I’ve mentioned making a Table of Contents page several times. I’m going to hopefully accomplish that this week.
Started playing Triangle Strategy, which really should be called Triangle Tactics, but also should have just about any other name (this is the problem with releasing a name as a placeholder…sometimes the placeholder just becomes the title), and I’m really digging it now that I’m past all the introductory stuff. I love tactics games, more commonly known as Strategy RPGs (SRPGs), even though they really should be called Tactical RPGs (but then everyone would confuse them with TTRPGs, probably). Their gameplay loop is just great. It’s the only kind of RPG where I feel that you really need to puzzle out the combat, and sometimes I’ll puzzle until my puzzler gets sore before everyone I’ve spent hours cultivating and growing dies.
Uh, recommendation for the week: get Into the Breach. This may be relevant later.
But I want to talk only about the first three hours right now. Maybe I’ll write more about tactical RPGS later or do a full review of this one, but I just gotsta say something about this that really grinds my gears.
This game begins with a complex web of geopolitics, which is pretty standard fair for this subgenre of games. I’m indifferent to the ubiquity of it within the genre because tropes are what they are (actually, I can’t help myself: do something new, you fool), but I have BIG QUIBBLES with how we pay out this information.
I would say that the combat is the real show in these games. It’s why we show up, throw down some money, and spend tens of hours fighting a pixelated war in 3D environments. Triangle Strategy seems to understand this, at least a little bit. We’re thrown pretty quickly into a little skirmish, which introduces the combat and gives some indication about characters, allegiances, and so on. I played this first hour pacing around my house with an unsleeping infant strapped to my chest at 3:30am and I was pretty much sold on this game.
Then we run face first into a brickwall of Proper Nouns and Politics that will mean SOMETHING much later in the game. The context of the game certainly matters, especially since the genre is defined by twisty narratives and meaningful choices sending you down different branches of the many possible storylines.
The writers are so desperate for you to understand the political context right away that they flood you with information. Which, of course, actually makes it somewhat confusing. More than that, it makes it all kind of bleed together.
It’s also simply not fun to have two hours of cutscenes. That’s a full length movie in between combat!
Compare this to Final Fantasy IX, which has, perhaps, the most masterful first hour of a narrative game that I can think of.
We begin with a heist but also an attempted escape but also the curious excitement of someone experiencing a city and festival for the first time. Along with that, there are minigames, exploration, and quick little cutscenes of humor.
In a tightly packed hour, the game introduces most of the playable cast along with the antagonist that drives the first third of the game and never once are we confused about any detail or bored by the barrage of information. The characters burst with personality. Within seconds, you could pick out an adjective to sum up every character introduced.
This instant familiarity allows for all the characters to become more complex and interesting later. And its tight focus on a single beautifully constructed setpiece of wacky mayhem, blundering capers, snappy dialogue, and engaging minigames pulls you in so effortlessly. You’re hooked, even if you’re the type of person who thinks RPGs are lame.
This is why Tolkien began both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in the Shire. It’s why George RR Martin began A Song of Ice and Fire in Winterfell.
There’s often a rush to show off all the worldbuilding you did, but, as I’ve said before, you should keep that shit to yourself. Focus, instead, on pulling the reader into a single scenario, even if it means that most of the story doesn’t get introduced until later.
Now, there are different ideas about how worldbuilding and narrative should intersect, but I’d argue that even if you’re a push them in the deep-end kind of writer, you’ll serve yourself better if you focus on one deep-end at a time, rather than introducing multiple deep-ends that are all still ill-understood by the reader/player.
I’ve mentioned the perfect omelette before, but it’s always true that keeping a tight focus on a few things and executing them as well as you’re able will always be more effective than kitchen-sinking your introduction.
As they say, first impressions matter. May as well make a simple, comfortable, and welcoming one rather than a complicated and confusing one.
And so what this game which so willfully rubs raw against your nostalgia bone really achieves is making me wish that I was playing Final Fantasy Tactics. I mean, the game may as well be called Final Fantasy Tactics II, though I’m glad it’s not because it’s actually sort of a poor successor. So much did I want this, that I actually did go back and replay the first hour of FFT and FFT Advance and Tactics Ogre and, man, yeah—I’m always right about this stuff.
Both games begin slow and compact. They introduce as much of the story as is necessary for the single character you’re playing to understand the game. Where Triangle Strategy begins with nobles and royals, these other games begin with people who have much less agency and power.
In this way, they’re pulled into someone else’s narrative. Eventually, a choice is presented that allows your character to become the true protagonist of the game, but not until we’ve moved from the Shire to Rivendell, so to speak.
Anyway, the game is pretty fun. Fun enough to buy? Eh, probably not. Unless you’ve already played all the good tactics games and just need some more. The story is…fine.
But really just go play Into the Breach.
That should be my advice for anyone in any circumstance. Just go play Into the Breach. And watch Pacific Rim again.