Not OP, but I had a similar experience growing up in the '90s. StarCraft in '98 is probably the best example; the original manual is the only source with the backstory explaining how the humans in the game left earth in giant colony ships, got lost, and ended up colonizing the koprulu sector. Without that backstory, the game's story - and especially Brood War's story - are pretty hard to follow.
> Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.
> I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.
Kind of a fun exercise to think how a modern game would be different. I haven’t played StarCraft II so this is just my take on a modern version of this.
Put some more info into cutscenes and really hammer the important stuff home (repeat it), taking advantage of the higher-quality cutscenes we can make these days. Other info goes in the encyclopedia. Make an encyclopedia mechanic—each entry for a unit is unlocked once you destroy a certain number of those units in-game. Unlocking the entry gives you some slight mechanical advantage, like the ability to see which upgrades the unit has or the exact HP values. Once or twice during the game, design a segment of gameplay that requires you to complete an encyclopedia entry in order to pass.
I’m sure the kids in the 2000s could just play games on the bus.
> Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.