Why do players who skip 30-second cutscenes in most games hungrily watch 2 hour videos explaining the lore of Hollow Knight or Elden Ring?
It’s not that those 30-second cutscenes are terribly written either.
Simple: “Soulsborne Storytelling” isn’t Storytelling.
Its Archaeology.
Think of the player as an archaeologist exploring the ruins of a lost empire. They piece together the culture and its history from scraps.
They study statues and wonder what they imply about the culture that made them.
They find scrolls and tablets with scraps of writing, and learn about the writers.
All the while the ruins stand impassive, pretending to be uninterested in your comprehension.
That’s right – souls games are Narrative Tsunderes. You can quote me on that.
“It’s not like I care if you understand me… well maybe just a little note, because you’re so insistent… baka…”
It’s the exact same attitude they have to your gameplay.
They feign disinterest in your success or fun… While designing some of the most memorable worlds and adventures in the process.
Soulsborne Storytelling works for the same reason that Return to the Obra Din works. It’s in piecing together the puzzle.
Even if you can’t do it yourself, you become hungry for someone who has.
But I’ve got one big complaint – way too many games think they’re not supposed to be understood by the average player to solve during a normal playthrough. This can work, but it does NOT have to be this way and more games should get excited to bring more players into the experience.
A good puzzle is fun to solve. It doesn’t necessarily have to be hard to solve.
Just like puzzle-games range in difficulty from the ultra-complex to the casual mobile puzzle games, so can Narrative Archaeology.
Instead of hiding key info in item descriptions 3 screens down, which players will never see during normal gameplay unless specifically looking for the info, make key ideas closer to the sruface. Tempt players to read signs and inspect statues. Put key explanations on the critical path.
Design it like a puzzle that wants to be solved, even if it’s pretending otherwise.
I could probably summarize the default recipe like:
- Create a few simple stories at a level of detail you’d normally find in classic Myths. The versions taught to children are usually good models, keeping to the big and simple ideas and distinctive characteristics. Kids books are great at conveying the key details of a big-idea narrative in a few sentences at a time, paired with evocative visuals.
- Establish the key ideas of what the story is about very early, like reading the description on the back of the kids book. This will give players the context to understand what comes next.
- Tear up the book and scatter its pages. Place curiosity-building notes and voicelines that share scraps of this information in very small doses throughout the setting. Each one should be short, high impact, delivering key details. When done through skippable cutscenes, keep these short enough that players usually finish reading the text before remembering they were going to skip it. Players use these to fill in the details in the basic framework they understand about happened, the Why and How
- Do the same for environmental design. Creating things that have no obvious gameplay purpose, they just exist because of what happened in the world previously, or are not aimed directly at the player’s experience, creates a powerful illusion.
- Be a Narrative Tsundere. Pretend you couldn’t care less about if the player understands your lore or world or not. Make them go slightly out of their way to opt into reading your notes or figuring out the implications of your environmental design. This is also what level designers tend to do in these games, pretending we couldn’t care less if you think it’s fair or if you win. Both are lies.
- In addition to the central, overarching “main myth” weave in 3-5 smaller myths based around speific factions, characters, or locations.
- Near the end of the game, give players explicit answers to about 70% of the game’s big questions. If they’ve been working out the answers this will likely confirm their suspiscions and make them feel smart. If they missed or misinterpreted key info, this will help them fill in those gaps with an “aha!” moment.
- If you want a soulsborne vibe in particular, given your darkness a sense of dignity. Too many games forget this.
