I suggest you replay some of your fav RPGs and you'll see how they start very tight (at least the ones I played). I'm from the SNES and first PS era and they were pretty much very straightforward (and with some story sprinkled here and there).
273 days ago(+1)
Ah, I see what you mean! Thanks for clarifying. Yes, in this demo you are not starting at level 1 with a nice intro cutscene, You are starting a bit further into the story for testing purposes.
The testing NPC can explain the "story leading up to now" for those interested, but as for a fancy opening scene, that will not be in testing for a while :)
Cloud starts at lvl 6/7 on Final Fantasy 7. It reflects his narrative point of being a former elite SOLDIER who has become a mercenary. Even though you don't get a long story scene you get something and when you take over control after the intro the first mission is extremely straightforward and linear. You don't have a large open map you walk around forever, multiple directions, multiple skills, etc.
I understand that you want to start your game dev not from the playthru start but it's a bit complicated for the player and the most important parts of a game should be the start and the end so maybe you want to start working on that start.
272 days ago (+1)
Friend, can you do me a favor? Load up the game, and interact with the NPC you start next to, the guy with the silver hair and glasses. And read what he says.
After doing so, are you still confused about the story so far or which direction to go?
If you did not read these instructions previously - Can I ask why? It's a crappy tutorial, but I want to see how crappy XD
Yeah I saw him the first time around, skipped on my second and I'm talking to him a third time since you asked.
Who are Argenti and Aegrit? This is not a decent story introduction. Ideally, you show don't tell but let's say you went with
-Aegrit was a novice angel tasked with guarding a jail where he met and had a crush on Argenti, the last of the demonkind. He decided to break her free and escape with her to a free haven called Edyn.
Now you have a very basic description of your main characters - an angel and a demon; you understand very superficially how they are related - a jailor and a prisoner who fall in love; you have an idea of their objective - find a place to be safe in the city of Edyn; and an idea of their motivation - escaping from persecution.
Additionally, you already start the player with 2 options east or west and even then there is a lot to walk through, and a lot of space to cover. We don't even know if this section of the story has some urgency and so should be tense or if they are just cruising the world for fun. The music seems to be tense but we don't have anything to go by in terms of story.