Hello fellow designers from Unity. I have a question for you, but first you ought to read my story.
If you haven’t played the The Witcher 3 and you thinking on doing it, Then maybe you shouldn’t read the spoiler. You have being warned.
I was watching youtube videos about The Witcher 3, and I run into the walk through which demonstrates how to beat the werewolf from the quest “Wild at Heart” (AKA the most difficult side quest of the game ¬¬). Well, in the quest, you have to search for Hanna who was lost in the woods. After following her tracks you came up with her sister that insist on quit the quest and in exchange she will give you more money. But you are a Witcher and you want to finish the things that you gave your word for, right? so you decide to finish the quest. So, you will encounter more and more clues that will tell you that she was killed by a werewolf. NOW, at this point I always thought that this part of the quest was a build-up, because you are receiving clues to prepare for an unavoidable battle against the beast. But in the video, the youtuber said that it was a foreshadow of the story for the eery tone of the setting. My question is: As a designer, how to differentiate a build-up for a battle from a forshadowing of a quest? Or are the same things and I’m just mixing the things up?
Eh. I don’t think that’s quite right. But I’d rather not argue semantics.
I think I want to the OP to tell us how he views them differently, and why he thinks they matter.
From what I understood, OP thought the game was leading to a fight, while it was leading to a plot twist (and a fight, if I remember that quest correctly). But I don’t see how that’s a problem either for the player or the game designer.
Wow. I thought it was the other way around. Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t find any problem on this quest for this matter, I just want to know the difference for my RPGs. Thank you
Build up normally refers to increasing tension. A story starts off fairly slow, then increases the stakes until it reaches a climax. There are many techniques involved in build up.
Foreshadowing is a literary device. It literally means ‘a shadow that comes before’. Typically a small event that happens early in the story that reflects the final climax of the story.
Foreshadowing can be used as a technique for build up.
From TV Tropes (surprised no one linked to it), foreshadowing is a clue or allusion embedded in the narrative that predicts some later event or revelation. There are plenty of examples available there too.