A while back I was enjoying my very first dedicated MMO, such to the point where I would consume ancillary content from the developers, including a monthly stream that consisted of little more than Devs hanging out. It was during these streams that one could get an interesting look behind the curtain of development as creators shared woes and tribulation that they went through on a daily basis, insightful stuff. However, one topic in particular resonated with me as it pertains to the realm of storytelling, something I dabble in myself. This was when one of the lead writers was explaining the lengths that the team go to in order to avoid 'Bookending'.
'Bookending' is a term in storytelling used to describe a dynamic wherein the lionshare of the pertinent story information is exposited at the end or beginning of the story instead of being spread throughout. The obvious effect being that the consumer is less invested in the information and is less likely to pay attention and/or care. This phenomena isn't exclusive to MMO's nor is it to gaming, just look at any horror movie for the past 20 years; each of which harbour some shattering twist that completely repaints everything you just sat through. (Or at least, it ideally does that. In reality the twists usually feel shallow and unearned.) There is nothing inherently wrong with bookending, per se, when it is achieved well it can be a particularly unique way of laying out the narrative, but when it is an unfortunate consequence of the writers not paying enough attention, then it just tends to look lazy.
I think that one of the key reasons why any writer, aspiring or otherwise, would want to avoid bookending is due to one element who's importance I find myself harping on about every other day: Context. Context is the glue that brings together the story of the game, the actions of the player, and why you should care about any of it, and that context works far better when it isn't provided after everything is already said and done. On series of games that seem to have real trouble understanding this is the Assassin's Creed games series. (I know I talk about them a lot but there's a lot of games, cut me some slack.) The vast majority of those games follows the same formula, the Assassin travels to a new area, is introduced to a target and then they kill the target. This works fine throughout the early games when the story was still playing around with who the villains are, but now we know that the targets are all invariably members of the same secret organization it just feels like a huge waste of time and storytelling effort. Why should I spend time remembering this person's name when I'm going to kill them within the hour? Bookending has the same effect but with the entire story, invalidating a lot of the immersion that the quest crafters are attempting for.
In MMO's it can be all to easy to fall into this writing trap due to the way that those games have to sacrifice a lot of the pageantry of dedicated RPG's in order to facilitate for the multiplayer audience. Quests that might have been accompanied with long spouts of exposition and contextualizing in a single player outing become fetch quests in the Online sphere. How many times have you loaded up a new MMO just to be told to kill some goblins or hunt some rats. Follow up question; for how many of those times can you tell me reason for doing it? These are the kind of quests that rule the roost with many MMO's and therefore it can be tempting for a quest designer not to put in the effort of crafting extensive narrative at all, or to fit it all into a lengthy wall of text that pops up the second you take the quest. (On a related note: Dear developers, no one wants to be forced to read a wall of text. please, stop.)
Once again, I will stress that withholding context and information is not an inherent sigh of laziness, some games do it intentionally. Sometimes, Horror games like 'The Evil Within' like to play around with withholding key information for key parts of the late game in order to utilize the sense of confusion that it imbues the player with. Much of that game revolves around jumping the player to different locales and experiencing vastly unique world spaces with no apparent rhyme or reason between these transitions. It is only in the late stages that you provided with the information to discern reality from imagination which still leaves the player with unreliable memories as they try to piece together the early game in their heads. (Or you could just play through it all again, but that's no fun!)
Other games put in significant effort to avoid context spamming but still manage to achieve that peculiar aura of mystique. The Dark Souls franchise famously only really offer two unmissable moments of story, the intro and the end. (And the endings tend to be pretty ambiguous.) Everything else that the game has to tell, from it's context to it's themes, are told through the environment or through legends and tales in item descriptions. Not only does this create one of the most natural narrative environments that I have ever experienced, and one of my favourites, but it ensures that the average inattentive player could miss it all and go through the game having no idea why they did anything. (Although, they may have to look up a guide to tell them when to stick on the Covenant of Artorias.)
So what are the best methods for avoiding bookending? Well, there is no one surefire way beyond ensuring that it is something you take into account whilst crafting the mission. In The Outer Worlds, you'll often find salient info chunks on terminals mid mission, and in games like Borderlands 2 (And, I'd imagine, 3) you'll get updates as you play. The key is simply to spread things out until you have a steady pace throughout the mission. How that feels can differ wildly from game to game, but it's one of those things that you'll know when you achieve it, and notice if you miss it.
Play video games and invest yourself in storytelling for as long or as fervently as I have, and you start to really notice things like these dragging a game back. It goes to show how the greatest games can juggle so many factors with ease whilst remember to space out it's narrative and maintain a steady decent pacing. Most of the parts that make a narrative work are, and should be, invisible to the naked eye, and that's what makes it look so easy and feel so natural. The 'Bookending' lesson is one that is hard to teach without experience, so it'll be interesting to see if this particular issue crops up with the inevitable growing pains that Blizzard can expect when they bring a campaign to the rumored Overwatch 2.
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