SC – Origin announcement/advertisement video script proposal
Text, V/O, or both, spoken slowly while montage plays:
“For thousands of years, mankind has reached for the stars.”
(12-15 seconds: Montage of tribals around a fire, pan up to sky filled with stars. Then zoom out from stars, revealing them to be reflected on the lens of a renaissance telescope, pan to blue prints on a desk, one is a rocket. Flesh out the rocket, blasting into space – the SC-O ship)
(SC-O ship flying through an obviously different star system to Sol – peacefully, beautiful)
Overlay text, V/O or both:
“In the year 2XXX, the stars reach back…”
(Sudden disruption per your sketch video, very brief action scene unique to SC-O.)
Fade to/text overlay:
“Star Control – Origin”
Fade out, then back in with:
“Coming 4Q2017”
First 15 minutes of gameplay:
Start w/ship in peril – first view of bridge is with red lights and alarms going off everywhere. Fuel is low, systems are in disrepair, electronics are not responsive. 1st mate says we’re near a star system that may contain the components we need to repair, but they’re on a nearby planet.
Brief player controlled fly-in to a planet (very minimal tutorial or aide steps! That was one of the great things about SC2 – you get hung out to dry right from the start!)
Planet lander sequence along with urgent instruction that we need to land safely and find “X” resource to repair, and “Y” resource to refuel. (Possibly plant a ship part on the planet that can be very quickly installed/upgraded, or make “X” a ship part that was scanned from orbit and looked compatible for repairs once the player returns to the ship.)
Planet landing should be scaled to take 3-5 minutes to complete at most, have some mild but guaranteed-to-occur perils, then launch back to the ship (successfully).
Back on the ship the light and power are back on, but smoke is still in the background on the bridge cutscene. 1st mate congratulates on a job well done, says some systems are usable, but player needs to return to Earth/Starbase to repair and refit.
On the journey to Earth nearby, a small combat/melee occurs, and any number of plot points can be introduced at this point, and this would be the end of the first 15 minutes of play.
Reasoning: Immediate peril is engaging. The main enemy of the first 12 minutes of play will be your own ship [low power/oxygen/fuel] and the environment [the landing itself, whatever the rover encounters, space, time]. A moderate sense of both urgency and helplessness would be reminiscent of SC2. (Have partial systems/UI available for this introductory portion, coming back online as the brief steps are concluded???) Only in the last 3 minutes or so with the first melee combat will an alien ship be an enemy. That’s where it can link up to the main story, or whatever you want it to do.
Please consider something like that for the first 15 minutes of the campaign gameplay. I think it would be instantly engaging, build sympathy and comradery with your ship, and be a natural way to introduce the major features of the game in a short span of time.
OOOH! I just had an epiphany – The intro/commercial that I suggested with the brief action sequence, that could be what damages the ship! That could be the lead-in to the first 15 minutes of game-play! It’s all related [Makes spooky noise]!!!
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