As a video game writer, it’s possible that you’ll be brought in to add narrative to a game that’s almost complete; in which case the structural spine of the game will exist and it will be up to you to flesh it out as best you can.
But if you’re involved with a project from the beginning then you’ll have the chance to shape every aspect of the game, which quickly leads you into narrative decisions that affect the entire development team.
As a result, you’ll need to balance the story you want to tell with the impact your choices will have on the gameplay. Whether to begin your game in medias res is one of the most critical examples of this balance.
When suddenly…
To begin a game ‘in medias res’ (Latin for ‘in the middle of things’) is to cut out ‘once upon a time’ and thrust players straight into the action.
‘Action’ needn’t mean combat, rather that you deliberately omit the traditional setup which tells players who ‘they’ are, where and when the game is set, and the events which led to the current situation, so that you can begin with a bang.
It’s a storytelling technique designed to hook readers / viewers / players right from the beginning by forcing them to ask questions.
Naturally, compelling gameplay is a key ingredient of any game, but a story that grabs from minute one is just as important with video games as it is with other forms of media.
‘Premium’ games costing £70 – £100 have the advantage of ‘sunk cost’ helping to keep new players around, but in our world of subscription services offering as many games as you can try, and free-to-play games that you can download for nothing, an immediately gripping start is essential.
As examples, the Indiana Jones and James Bond movies usually begin in medias res, with our hero instantly engaged in a difficult or dangerous situation (skipping the initial setup of them planning and travelling to wherever the film starts).
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim does the same, beginning the game with you about to be executed then suddenly being attacked by a dragon (skipping initially being captured by Imperial soldiers). Planescape: Torment has you waking up in a morgue alongside a talking skull, while Dordogne has you waking in a Citroen 2CV, on your way to your dead grandmother’s house.
Perhaps the ultimate video game example is Fahrenheit (AKA Indigo Prophecy), which begins in the toilets of a diner, with you standing over someone you’ve just murdered, before a picture-in-picture view shows two police officers walking into the diner. Who are you? Who’s the dead guy and why did you murder them? How are you going to hide the body? These are great questions to begin a game with, and are likely to compel players to keep playing.
The trick is filling in the blanks while avoiding ‘info dumping’, where players are subjected to boring exposition that fills in the backstory.
– Stu Maine
So why not always use it?
If starting a game in medias res is great for grabbing players, why would you ever choose not to do it? One reason is that unlike other forms of media, games have to teach players how to play them at the same time as establishing their story, meaning it can be difficult to balance starting with a bang while ensuring players are learning all the controls and techniques they need to play. If they’re distracted by action or drama then players can easily fail to pick up instructions, or can be snapped out of all the cool events you’ve set up by a sudden tutorial prompt appearing.
A second reason that beginning in medias res might not be appropriate is that you lose the chance to show players what normality looks like before everything kicks off. By having them arrive at work for a normal day, games like Doom 3, Still Wakes the Deep, and Half-Life show players how things are supposed to be before something goes terribly wrong.
How much information to provide?
To dig a little deeper into how in medias res works, ‘normal’ plots establish a situation then gradually raise the stakes and obstacles as we go along until we reach the story’s climax. In medias res stories instead begin with high drama and then swap back and forth between calm and tension.
Both structures can feature the same amount of excitement overall, but in medias res stories simply work out how much of the early setup they can leave until later.
This last point is important, because sooner or later you may need to fill players in with the events that led to the game’s inciting incident (though, to be clear, some games deliberately never clarify this).
The trick is filling in the blanks while avoiding ‘info dumping’, where players are subjected to boring exposition that fills in the backstory (if you ever find your characters saying to each other, “Well, as you know…” then you’ve probably crossed into info dumping).
Look for ways your environment can suggest clues to what already happened (see Unpacking, or Gone Home), or your protagonist’s reactions can hint at what they might have done (BioShock’s opening revolves around this).
Another approach is to include flashbacks which reveal events that happened before the game began, with bonus points if these are actually playable. For example, in Remedy’s Control we enter the Oldest House after the Hiss invasion, then gradually come to understand who ‘we’ are, why we’re there, and who we keep talking to. Or see The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which starts with you waking from the dead a century after events have concluded, and has the option for you to discover memory flashback collectibles scattered across the open world.
Another option is to look at your game’s plot and be brutally honest about which elements players really must be told at the beginning for anything to make sense.
If something’s simply nice to know then consider whether you can push that information back or simply omit it and leave players to work it out for themselves. Rather than starting with ‘this is X’, your goal is to have players asking ‘what is X?’ and then gradually figure out the answer.
If you can hook them with an intriguing plot as well as fun gameplay then you’re giving your game the best possible chance of grabbing players from the very beginning.
– Stu Maine
Conclusion
In medias res is a useful technique to have in your writer’s toolbox because it allows you to look for situations that could be enlivened by having players asking questions rather than simply being told information.
How many questions your players will be happy to hold in their head as they play depends on your game’s intended audience, but if you can hook them with an intriguing plot as well as fun gameplay then you’re giving your game the best possible chance of grabbing players from the very beginning, which, as mentioned is key in our content-saturated world.
Games as disparate as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (hanging out of a crashed train), Coffee Talk (being a barista in a world of werewolves and elves), Love and Pies (a post-divorcee inheriting a cafe your mother may have burned down), Everybody‘s Gone to the Rapture (the world seems to have ended), and Firewatch (your wife has dementia and you’ve run away), all use in medias res to hook players instantly, and make you ask, ‘and what happens next?’ in a way that a traditional opening cannot.
