It seemed people liked the post on Theme, so I thought I’d break down other story beats in Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code. Today I’m talking about the opening image.
It’s obvious, right? Every story has what screenplay writers call an “opening image”. Novelists have this, too, but often call it “the hook,” and it's usually found in the first sentence, paragraph, or chapter. Video games have this, too, but it’s more like how screenplay writers see it than how novelists see it.
So, what is an “opening image”? Is it meant to grip your attention? It can. Is it meant to start in media res (in the middle of)? It can. Is it meant to be big explosions? A fight scene? Fireworks? It can.
An opening image is basically the starting point of the hero. It’s the “before” snapshot of our hero. Before he goes on his journey, and before he is transformed by the journey. It also sets up tone, mood, scope, and setting.
I applied this same storytelling technique to Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code. The opening image is the first five minutes of the game, just before the scene where we meet Lamech.
Here’s some screens of it:
What does this opening image tell us? Let’s break it down.
What is the starting point of the hero and what’s his “before” snapshot? Right at the start Joshwa goes down on bended knee and prays to his gods, the Kosmokraters. So it’s obvious from the start that this is a very religious and pious man. We also learn that he wants to be a judge, and that his father was one and is no longer with us (that sets up a bit of a sympathy for the hero…after all, it sucks losing your dad!).
What about the tone, mood, scope, and setting? We’re under a mountain (the game opens up under Mount Sinai), Joshwa is praying, and we know the mountain we are under is called Mount Sinai. It’s underground. The mood is dark and eerie, weird even. And there’s definitely a religious tone and setting here. And religion tends to have quite the epic scope, so that’s communicated as well. It’s also a rather slower opening. There’s no big explosions. It’s not a Michael Bay film. I wanted the player to ease into the game, get comfortable, and realize they are entering a whole other world with its own religion, lore, history, and important historical figures (akin to games like the Elder Scrolls). It's a complex world.
Here's the thing about the opening image: the end of a story should always have a final image and that final image should be the opposite of the opening image. Why is it the opposite? Because your hero has changed and so has his world view. Novelists do this, too, but often call it a mirror. It’s so much like a mirror that novelists (the good ones, at least) will use similar words, paragraph lengths, sentence structure, etc. for the ending as they did for the opening. It creates a sense of closure, as though the cycle of this story is complete.
And that’s the opening image. The opening image is the easiest thing to spot in any story since you can always count on it being the very first thing you see, read, or play. So try and see if you can list all the characteristics of the stories you like.