The Hero's Journey: 1 of 12 - The Ordinary World

The beginning of the story. The hero's background is introduced, and the player becomes acquainted with the hero's normal existence.

This serves to provide a contrast with the not-so-mundane world that the hero will enter in the game. The introduction to the ordinary world often uses a prologue. This normally comes in two forms:

• Explains the events that have happened to the hero so far, setting up the context for what is about to happen.
• Provides a snippet of the special world, either by covering past events in the special world that are about to collide with the hero in the ordinary world or by foreshadowing an event to come.

The hero's backstory ideally shouldn't be shown all at once. It is best to reveal their background and motivations gracefully. It is more rewarding for the player if they have to work a bit to figure it out, as the player feels like they have achieved something in uncovering the story.

Foreshadowing is a powerful storytelling technique and therefore, unsurprisingly, is a common occurrence in stories. For example, in Half-Life, when the dimensional rift opens, Gordon gets a glimpse of strange alien landscapes and beings. This serves as a taste of things to come, and one which is unbeknownst to Gordon at the time.

Bosses in games often appear briefly throughout a level, before the big boss fight actually happens. Foreshadowing is so effective because it contrasts the special world against the ordinary world. This confuses the player, which makes the player more susceptible to mental suggestion, which in turn makes it easier for the player to suspend disbelief.

The “Ordinary World” section of the story is where the motivation and reasoning behind the hero being who they are can be introduced. This section is where the hero is introduced to the player. It is crucial that the player can identify with the hero, or the player has no reason to play the game. There are many ways to get the player to identify with the hero, but playing on the player's emotions is perhaps the most effective way to do it. In classical literature, the reader can often empathise with the hero through their flaws, or mental or physical wounds, even if they are not extreme enough to get them admitted to an asylum. A hero's inexperience in a new job is something fairly normal, but something that players can easily identify with.