I Have A Story Beginning, Then How To Do Next ( Finish The Story First ,or Level Design)

I already made up a story. The story is not finished, just beginning. Should I continue finishing the story, or make a level design to test it?
My current plan is to make a new demo. I will study level design, and make a map with game play.
How to extend the story? I want the game has a lot of conversations like fallout 3, is it OK?

The story is about fighting with the bug queen. The bug queen already conquered the earth, humans body (still live) are kept in a scarred flesh room, but humans conscious are in a different world (illusion world). Humans don't know anything about this.

In illusion world (physically exist), humans conscious are planted in Cyborg, but they think they are still human. The queen use humans' power to fight with other bug queens.

The player is a soldier in illusion world. His captain set up a trap to him, and want him dead. The player was rescued by the princess. The prices don't know anything about the human background, and she grows with a human mind.

Real world, humans body here.



The captain set up a trap for the player, and the player is surrounded by the bugs.

The princess is a knight, and she saved the player.

The game play prototype is boring. I plan to make a new map with new game play.

 

You can have different types of writings:
- stand alone story (Banjo Kazooie)
- mid-story crisis (Dragon Age or Halo or Bioshock)
- minimal (Super Mario 64 or Quest 64)
- stand alone with tons of lore (Zelda)

Based on your premise, you'd be "mid-story crisis" type:
You are in the middle of a certain timeline, there was a past, present and future.
If you want a good starting point, write the following:
[Past]
- What society was like before the bugs
-- you can put artifacts in game to describe it
- What triggered the bugs
-- again, artifacts and a good place for a twist
- How it devolved into this
- How people survived
[Present]
- How you were saved
-- you can put a twist in here
- what you need to accomplish and the scope: do you want to save a city? How? Can be linked with the Past
[Future]
- What you do in the game, how is it impactful? Did you defeat the main cause or just pushed back? The matrix movie mentions how this is a continuous and planned struggle pushback every time
- Can the bugs regenerate from this?

Once you built the proper [Past] foundations, you need to figure out what the main present scope is and then once you resolve that, what becomes of it. The future after the game is done is up to you. You can even leave some triggers in the game to have alternate endings.

Hope it helps.

 

Figure what is the theme and what is the stake in order to develop the story,they will give the story natural actions, progression and conclusion. Basically what's a stake here? is it survival, relationship or aspiration (existential in your case), what is theme, is it overcoming oppression (well you don't have a body anymore what does freedom looks like when everything has been robbed from you?), is it accepting the situation (reality vs illusion that parallel each other are really just a skin of the events that is happening to you, it's just a matter of interpretation, what see is different, but the relation you build don't change), is it about the horror of existance (if anything you believe is not true, what fundation do you have to assess the importance of stuff happening around you, what value do you hold on?), etc ... the same setting and events can tell very different thing once developped.

 

I think you should concentrate on some level design now! Try to make a small area fun to play.
Imagine you design almost the complete story and you realize that it kinda plays boring and it is hard to fit the story in actual levels. Sometimes doing levels and even mechanics inspire the story. Also you will get ideas for the story when doing daily stuff like showering etc. The level design on the other hand works perhaps great in your head but you have to play it to tell if it works! After having a nice playable little prototype with which you feel confident that it is actually fun to play you can work further on the story. Also think of what you want to do, not a movie or book, but a game!

 

The past:
There are many alien bug queens, and they work together to fight with the earth, and the current queen is one of the them.
8 Alien queens (different colors) decide to terminate all humans physically, and the red queen betrayed.
The red queen absorbs the knowledge and power of sky net AI, and evove herself to human minds illusion, and she lose breeding capacity. She has to use humans' power (Cyborg) to fight with other queens.
The red queen breeds humans in her way, and humans concious are illusioned. The red queen is an illusion of empire marshall, a human, and the empire is under attack by other bug queens.

There are still some lonely true humans, and they know something but not everything, and the red queen don't want them share infomation with Cyborgs. They are labelled with psycho with some dangerous virus or similar things. A special force is huntting them.

Present:
The player is a normal soldier in illusion world, and he fights with other bug queens' troops.
But the player somehow dropped to a dungeon, the dungeon has many bugs and some true survived humans. A special force is on its way to terminate all of them.

**************
The player knows the past by digging some artifacts in forbidden area.
He has two choices:
1, accept the fact, humans are defeated;
2, fight with the red queen and other queens, but hard.

 

Yes. I will spend time on a level design. Any suggetions on level design?

 

The player don't know the truth at first. Somehow the player found something not right, and danger also come with him. He should survive first, and he even don't know why he was hunted.
Some people accepted the truth, and they are loyal to the bug queen, and some not, and they rebelled. The player has to choose a side.

 

"Stories in games are the same as stories in pornos. They should be there, but they're really not that important."

 

This a quote by Mickael bay by the way. He doesn't even put story in movie.

 

Actually it's John Carmack.

 

I know that's the joke, because it's a rubbish quote. You can tell story with whatever you want, and you can make movie without a story either, story isn't a medium.

 

Is

Is that your game?
I watched some of the vids. The game really looks interesting.
And the graphics look nice too.

 

Yes.
Thanks for your kindness.

 

Work on level design; good gameplay gets priority. I think you've done a great job framing your exposition and saving the details for later, and this is a good time to really dive in to the mechanics.

Some things to think about:

A so-so narrative will not doom a mechanics-based game, but even narrative-driven games will be ruined by neglected mechanics. This is why it's good practice to make something that is fun, and then theme it and drive player progression with your narrative.

Writing a complete story first and then developing a game around it tends to lead to a bad product. This is because the details in the finalized story can't be changed without causing inconsistencies, and so whenever the gameplay mechanics contradict the story, it's the unfinished mechanics that end up being compromised, even though they were originally specified with enjoyment in mind.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make our narratives the highest quality we can manage. This also doesn't mean that we can't use a narrative concept as a starting point and try to decide which type of game to make from that, and it doesn't mean that we should wait to write the story until the rest of the game is done. Working on world building is a great way to motivate other parts of development for small teams, and should be done regularly along a project's timeline along with checks to make sure the narrative is working well with everything else. If it isn't, but the gameplay is fun, then change the story.

I don't consider any interactive films, graphic novels, etc. to be part of this discussion, by the way. They are clear exceptions.