All Great Journeys: Part One

It's been said more times than I can count that all great journeys start with a single step.  As cliche as the saying is, no one can deny just how true that statement is.  If you want to do something with your life all you have to do is actually start something.  No one is going to come to you with an opportunity unless you start making opportunities for yourself.  All of these are things that apply to real life, but you're not here to get life advice from some twenty year old guy who thinks he knows more about the world than he really does.

If I remember correctly, you came here to read about video games, and that's exactly what I'm here to provide.  When you look at heroes from literature and from movies, you'll notice that a lot of them become great because they are put in extreme circumstances that they couldn't have possibly been prepared for.  Frodo only went on his grand adventure because he received the One Ring and took it upon himself to destroy it despite all his fears.  Harry Potter wouldn't have been anything special if he hadn't been turned into a horcrux by Voldemort when he was a baby, thus tying him to the villain and forcing him into greatness.  Even Bruce Wayne wouldn't have become Batman if he never witnessed his parents' murder, thus spawning his obsession with revenge and almost unhealthy obsession with cleaning the streets of Gotham.

So many great heroes from all forms of media are spawned from circumstances that are often times out of their control, and this phenomenon can often apply to video games.  Creating a hero in a game usually involves placing the player in a situation that seems too large for a single man or woman to handle.  The protagonist is often times placed in this situation in a cutscene or the first few minutes of gameplay.  These first moments of a game are usually referred to as the opening sequence of a game and should be considered the most important part of a story.

The opening to a game is usually what a developer uses to establish the world that you are going to be exploring during the entirety of the game.  Before any characters or plot elements are introduced, a game must first establish that the world you will be saving is something interesting.  No one wants to save a world with no depth.  They want a world with character, a world that tells a story that is almost as epic as the journey that the player is about to have in it.  The lore, the legends, the heroes of old, the mountains, the rivers, the cities and forts, every element of a world needs to be something that creates a sense of wonder for the player.  Of course, the seeds of this interest should be planted as early as possible, which is where the opening sequence comes in.

First Impressions

There are few things in life as important as making a good first impression.  Often times it will all start with a joke or some sort of attention grabber just to get a conversation started.  A couple of lines of banter later and you might be exchanging names and shaking hands.  Once you get to that point you are no longer two strangers having a passing conversation.  Now you're acquaintances, and once you part ways, you will have left an impression on the person you were speaking to.  Now the only question you have to ask yourself is whether or not that first impression was good, or bad.

Now that the attention grabber and the witty banter is out of the way, I'd like to introduce myself.  You can call me One More Credit, and I'm here to write about video games.