Feeding the player backstory

[Adny]

I believe the pacing of the information that you give the character is equally as important as the information itself. Honestly it doesn't matter how you present this information, as long as its not too much at once (which, as you said, will most likely deter the player from reading it) or too little. Standard journals, flashback events (ie Daniels encounters at the Farm and the first Orb Chamber), and notes should be plenty to communicate your ideas.

Example, in TDD, the player isn't fully aware of Daniel's past actions (torturing, killing, etc) until nearly the end of the game; this is good pacing.


As to how I'd do this, I feel the technique I had in mind might not be relevant simply because I do not know enough about the story. My idea was the use of what I can best describe as "environmental emotion stones". No, not that strange tube with hieroglyphics on the side that allows Daniel to see Alexander's thoughts, but more so items/areas inside the game relevant to the information given. For example, the player interacts with a weapon of some sort or a heavily damaged environment and gets information about the conflict, presented in the same way as the emotion stone (screen fades to white+black text on screen).

If you try to force all of the back story or prerequisite knowledge on the player in the beginning, they'll either ignore it or won't soak all of it in. If you can pace and synchronize the back story and the real time events (current story), it can have a powerful effect; utilizing such a technique opens up doorways for plenty of "aha!" moments when the player can find the connection between what happened then, and what's happening now. S'good.