Hi, everyone I'm writing a plot for the video game. It's set in the early 1950's Chicago in a parallel reality. The main villain (41 y.o.) is a cold, thinking type kind of person, who's not deeply concerned regarding the cleanliness of his ways - he's a CEO for the large industrial empire. He has a younger brother (31 y.o) - an introvert type young genius scientist. The first one always craved for their father's approval trying to help running the business (a quickly growing company), but it all went to the younger one. His younger brother on the other hand was getting lot's of it for making significant progress in physics and chemistry. Nevertheless the older brother always cared about the younger one, sometimes in a somehow twisted way: though loving him as a brother he also envies the younger one for his sometimes naive view on all the things and tries to convince him that "there's a scary world out there". After their father's death in the explosion at the factory the younger brother started blaming himself for his death: the older one told him that fire that led to explosion originated in the experimental lab section. Being a skillful puppeteer the older brother uses this guilt (as well as a fact that now they only have each other) to pull the younger one strings. He wants his brother to see him as the only savior from the cruel and frightening world outside of the lab. The purpose for all this is keeping younger one mostly in the lab, away from people, inventing all these cutting edge profitable things and technologies. Now for the questions part. I'm currently stuck with defining these leverage points: how can i turn the stuff mentioned above in actual tricks, dialogue pieces and so on without making it look shallow, unbelievable and too obvious? I'm looking for something subtle, barely seen.. and haven't found it yet, so i'm asking for help
You say this is a plot for a video game. Is the plot to be revealed through in game cutscenes or is it written in text in a manual or something? Also where does the player come into this? Are they a character in this story?
The plot will be revealed through the cut scenes, dialogs, in game readings (newspapers, dossiers and such) and MC's background narration. The player steps in as a PI, a neutral/good character in this story. As i wrote earlier the older brother is the main villain
I'm still a little unsure what you're asking for. You could make it so that the player can talk to the younger brother, but to get useful information from him, you have to gain his trust and discredit the brother. For example scientific research that the older brother claimed was stolen could show up on his boat. Or older brother could have cut up a tape with critical information and the player needs to repiece it. I don't know if these are the sorts of suggestions you are after, but normally the most important thing in computer game plots is to give the players things to do.
Thanks for suggestions, but what you've wrote is game mechanics and storytelling engine parts. What i'm looking for is more of the cut scenes elements, dialogs, monologues and overall influence methods which could show players all the stuff, that i've mentioned in my fist message.
I would say the best way to handle the leverage would be weave a web of intricate lies that the elder brother has fed his sibling in a bid to control him. This web will not be immediately obvious to the player, but the younger sibling may perhaps start with one inconsistency (that he, being an intelligent person, has picked up on) for the player to investigate, and from thereon delve deeper into the intricacy, spurred on by regular communication with the younger brother who steadily starts to lose faith in his older brother and encourages the player to dig deeper. Once the full web is revealed then the plot can continue in whatever direction you choose. You state that you are concerned about making the lies seem shallow, but this is often what they are - the brother would not be falling for them if he wasn't already traumatised by previous events, and the overall shallowness only contributes to the players perspective of the older brother as a negative influence.
