Every craft have it’s guidelines, a path that our antecedents trampled thanks to their experimentation and mistakes. For us it’s Hero’s Journey, concept created by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces“. Writing a thrilling story was never easier, just keep your tale as close to Campbell’s structure as possible and that’s it! Your game is awesome, it sells in millions, you become rich, famous, move to the penthouse with hookers and blackjack, right? Wrong. Keeping to instruction will be nice if you want to create good game, better than average B type titles made by people who just had idea and time/money to make it. We don’t want to be an inch above the average, we’re aiming for the top, so remember, those are only guidelines, we can’t follow them blindly, we must exceed the schemes, camouflage our usage of the working cliche by choosing good moments to take a step off the predictable path. Skip some steps, add some, keep story original, but look at Hero’s Journey and use it, but use it your own way.

Call to adventure

Protagonist wakes up in his nice, happy, normal world but this day is different than every other in his hitherto quiet, casual life. Our simple not-yet-hero does what he do everyday and then FREAKING DISASTER happens and what a coincidence, only this ordinary boy can rescue the world, because for some reason HE was the chosen one, not some badass warrior from next house and it’s pretty self-explanatory if you think about it. Because, we are not the badass warriors, we are grey, blending in kids, afraid to do something big, bored with surrounding non-fantastic world, hoping that someday the adventure will come to us like it came to every folk hero. Oh we love this concept, form zero to hero, from tourist to heartless killer destroying pirate empire, from prisoner to king, from man to a god.

Reluctance and the Supernatural Aid

“Why me?” asks little boy. He wants to escape, to hide from all of new problems. He’s just a kid, peasant, weakling, how can he handle cruel, unforgiving, mean and most important, incredibly powerful villain that showed up in his life. Of course he have doubts, doubts create suspense and tell player that now it’s time to get to work and kick some smaller asses before attempting to kick the biggest one.

Conveniently the Old Man appears on the stage. Is it you Obi Wan? Or maybe you Morpheus? Whoever it is only thing that matter is he knows a lot and he is willing to teach our hero. Of course its not always a character but idea stays the same. We need something to convince our guy that he can do this and there’s no going back now. Now it’s time to realise that this simple man is not so simple. He’s the Dragonborn, he’s the Avatar, he can use the Dagger of Time. Whatever happens it must show the hero that he’s more unique than he thought. At this very moment he decides to commit and that’s the real start of his journey.

“You’re a wizard Harry.”

Facing the unknown

After spending his whole life in small village boy finally packs up his things and follow his new teacher into the mythical mysterious woods, on the path to the outside of boy’s narrow world. We get out of the Vault, wellness task is over, simulation ended, now face real world. The gameplay begins. Boy enters enormous city, he’s amazed and terrified at the same time, we get bombarded with minimap tokens as kid faces his new reality. Beginnings are hard. First missions that his mentor gave him were tough, but after some practise boy learned the Hero’s 101. He is starting to get used to this world. Now everyone asks him for help. He’s growing strong, he’s becoming so powerful, he says to himself “my dad would be proud if he was here”, because yeah, of course his dad left long time ago. Boy is more and more popular too, characters are appearing and we all know that they are here for reason, those are the allies, because what is the journey without the diverse awesome but not as awesome as main character team of heroes, that will let some less mainstream players to identify with one of them. Hmm, we have some struggles, quests, some smaller enemies on those quests, progression on becoming powerful hero, allies, what are we lacking?. Oh yeah… The romance.

“When Kliche got his head above water again he saw a very pleasant and attractive girl about half a year younger than him, who seemed very friendly, submissive to men and prone to having romantic ties to all troubled males. She also had pointy ears and a big staff, also a pegacorn (that’s a unicorn with wings, they fart rainbows and shit diamonds and are totally awesome)” – The Linear RPG

All of this combined is the core of the game, something that designerw will spend most time on and it will be most important for player experience, even if ending scene is so intense that people shit themselves from excitement, they won’t ever see it if overall game is not interesting enough, because as they say: It’s all about the journey, not the destination. Better to have fun playing for countless hours and be disappointed by the ending, than to be bored to death by the repetitive sequences or mediocre gameplay just to have some quick mind blow at the end. But don’t fool yourself to make good game we need both.

Inmost Cave

“He is a fighter for justice. He has a quick gun or a quick sword, a big fist, a big mouth, and a soft heart.” – The Key, James Frey

From rats in the basement to legions of undead, every quest was boy’s destiny. The prophecy was true. The power was in him all the time. Ordinary boy becomes true hero. He became so powerful just in time, because the evil guy is hungry for attention and reminds whole world that he still exists, by spreading the seeds of madness all around. Our brand new champion must face the danger. What started, must end. It’s time to go into dragon’s lair. Having in mind mentor’s lessons, equipped with armour that belonged to 2nd strongest guy in the world, legendary big ass sword looking like christmas tree, amulet from his father (that magically appeared just to gave it to his son before his most dangerous mission) and 10 litres of healing potions, Mighty Farm Boy is ready to face the edgy, crazy and incredibly strong guy that can destroy whole city by just giving it an angry look. Battle of good and evil begins. Let’s get ready to rumble!

The Ordeal & The Reward

“Oh this is too easy, something must be wrong” – hero(player) thinks and he is totally right, because that was just first form of the bad guy, it would be too boring if he went with whole arsenal at once right? Oh and also we can’t forget that we’re in the cliche so happy endings are obligatory, but it’s not that moment yet. Crowd demands suspense, crowd demands tension. Give them what they want.

It’s the moment when villain reveals his true strength. Hero is down on his knees, maybe one of his allies dies, maybe he gets thrown on the wall with finger-snap, whatever happens, the champion becomes little scared boy again, he faces death, he faces loose, we can hear the nail biting from the audience.

“How could I be so stupid and ignorant? How could I think I can defeat this mostrosity?” – Boy panics, looses his fighting spirit, bad guy is laughing, slowly getting ready for last swing of his sword, decapitating the protagonist. Hero dies in three… two… one and a half… We all know what happens now. Zero.

“NANI?!”

After series of flashbacks including teacher, dad, mom, friends and his crush, the Chosen One dodges deadly, prolonged attack and puts all strength he has left to destroy the evil guy. This process can repeat few times with shitload of ‘final forms’ on both sides, and plot twists within the plot twists, it’s up to you, just don’t overdo it.

When we make sure the final boss is finally dead, we can collect our reward. Maybe defeating the boss was reward itself, maybe it’s some artefact, maybe rescued friend or solution to the village problems, doesn’t matter, player just have to know he did all of this for a reason(Shout out to Borderlands). World rescued, reward acquired, eternal glory achieved. Boy can go back home.

The Return

If game didn’t end after the boss, this is the grande finale of the journey. More common in movies, in game seen mostly as ending cinematic. This is the reward, but not for the hero, for the player. What a joy it brings to our boring lives, seeing all those artificial smiles of people we helped. How awesome it feels that we changed the imaginary world made up from zeros and ones. So awesome that I want to play this game again, or sequel and prequel, oh and DLC. Please take my money!

PS. I despise happy endings.

Using the Cliche

“There is no escape from the mug, except into another mug” – Ferdydurke, Witold Gombrowicz

This is just rough description of how this works in storytelling. Before you say that some game(that has storyline, dummy) isn’t like that, think again, I’m sure it partially fits, all of them partially fit into this form. Everyone consciously or not uses this idea, so you will do too, don’t try futile attempt to escape it, make it your advantage, but remember, look at it, sometimes follow it, but never hang on to it strictly. Concept is well known so overusing it will create an obvious uninteresting story. Of course it will sell, but if your aim is to just make money with small effort, you’re free to go and create a porn game with bunch of micropayments. I’m sure there are enough people that will pay for some immersive fap material. You can do better, you lazy ass.

Know the pattern, look at the pattern, compare your work with the pattern, modify the pattern and be better than the pattern.