First let me open with, this is not my taste, and people judge this story based on their taste. There is nothing wrong with it from that point of view, I’m more interested in the structure.
The basic story “beats”:
Part1
A- You’re a space marine that has been deployed to a colony planet that has gone silent.
B- Once in orbit the ship is attacked by organic xenomorph-esq aliens. The massive ship is in chaos in moments. You put on combat suit and fight your way to the surface of the ship and see that it’s overwhelmed with these aliens.
C- It starts to explode and you enter free-fall. It goes dead silent from the lack of atmosphere. The ship explodes. Cue the title.
D- You hit the atmosphere and the action starts back up and have to shoot your way down and hit the ground hard.
E- The gravity is low enough to survive terminal velocity but are in bad shape. Debris rains all around you and punches holes in the ground. From the holes swarm more aliens.
F- You rush to a door where other survivors have gathered, while picking off aliens as they reach you in small numbers with a river of them close behind. G- The doors are closing and another marine calls for you. Right as you get about fifty feet away enormous bugs break through ground around you, more aliens are spilling over from the top of the structure. The door shuts it’s pitch black. One marine is having a freak out and gets shouted down by another in control of himself. Someone lights a flair.
H- After evaluating the situation you and the other marines journey onward, while one stays behind to watch over an injured one as well as staying in their last known location.
part2
I- You explore a small part of the map trying to figure out what happened. At one point you and your team is scanned. You find logs that tell you that they were working on a major research project when the aliens hit.
J- Then a marine starts to hallucinate and sees something from his past that haunts them. They run in the opposite direction and confusion sets in.
K- Suddenly you see a little girl. You report it and she bolts. You’re told to keep up with her. She runs into a room and there’s an ambush.
You explore and get bits and pieces of what happened and come to find out a few things:
- The aliens are man made and is part of a defense protocol that weaponizes the colony’s terraforming equipment.
- The girl is your dead daughter. And she follows you through the game g-man style.
- There is a clone of you hunting you. You kill it.
part3
4) You go on to kill a nest of those aliens as directed by your commander.
5) You run back into your squad and they freak out and try to kill you. You tell them there was a clone of you, but they don’t listen and have to kill them.
6) You find out the aliens were made to destroy an AI that has gone rogue.
7) You find out that the hallucinations is the AI messing with you.
8) You contact the base commander and he tells you to kill the AI. You kill the AI.
9) It gets REAL trippy and 2001-ish.
end
10) With the AI dead you now have to kill off the rest of the aliens and have to release a virus designed to kill them. You do it.
11) You find the commander and he is horrified of you. Find out that YOU are the AI (DUN! DUN! DUN!!!) and that you are in fact just an empty suit. Take THAT Samus!
L- When you fought your dark self you took control of the evil you and killed the person that you played up to that point. That’s why the marines attacked you. And that nest? It wasn’t a nest! It was people! You don’t except it, but the AI takes over. You kill the commander.
12) The radio crackles. It’s the marines that were left behind at the beginning. “Help has arrived. They’re sending the drop ship now!”. “Headed there now.”
Imho It’s well structured, you have an interesting intro that have a lot of interactivity potential and have clear lead in. Some people don’t like that, some do, you don’t have to please everyone.
Now it’s more of a synopsis than a story, you can implement each beat in various way. That’s IMHO where it can break, because those are general goal.
First part:
- Take A for example, it can be done as gameplay, ie the player move around, interact with character and observe environment, and piece back that he is a soldier, that he is on the ship, and that they are deployed to somewhere. This is also a great place to allow the character run around safely and learn basic control with the environment with no stress, introducing an off hand goal (like go meet the commander on the bridge), the character have enough time to explore a small place with bit of set up for mood and world setting. Think the beginning of half life, or even mass effect.
- B allow to introduce fighting very organically, getting in the suits unlocks new interaction, and you have a clear implicit call to action with a sense of urgency. If you do it in gameplay, you would have to manage the transition to the suit. It can be an opportunity to learn how to move and dodge., then once the suit is put, how to aim and fire. Static enemy can be a good introduction, they can gate place if you have narrow corridor because it’s a space ship, and there might not be gravity once you get out so monster are actually grabbing stuff to hold. It allow the player to control its own pace.
D. Is equally great because now you control the pace with the freefall, so now the player have to aim and dodge on a timing, View should probably be locked in such a way everything happen in view, which teach him how to play. And it’s a great set piece.
- E. It continue the teaching, as the player now can control more of the view, this time he had to learn to turn around to aim (ie learn to control view) as enemy spawn on a timing around him. Teaching him to master spatial awareness.
- F. is great to end the previous sequence by offering a goal that signal a clear transition of state.
- G can serves as local climax, almost a boss fight that test everything the player has learn so far, ie kill enemy with spatial awareness. So it’s a set piece.
Part 2:
HJK is going back to low tension, it’s also great to set up the new atmosphere, where we shift from pure action to thriller. It mirror the early part where you are not alone and explore to learn stuff about the world. It’s a great moment for that, as it’s a down time. JK are great because they forewarn the plot, they set up the new stakes, ie we move from killing alien to sanity problem. 1,2 should be part of the exploration and finding clues. Spatially you are probably in an “open level” probably a hub with branch having part of the lore and small skirmish from the previous attack. The structure is probably a kind of simple parallel lock and key puzzle to control the flow, the hallucination would be based on the absolute number of key trigger you already found, so that the hallucination can happen whatever order you go, and the hub allow you to have these scene be controllable since you have to traverse it every time, which give a controllable environment to place stuff. The order of stuff is key to scan area, hallucination 1, hallucination 2, which is great because it give pacing to the running around and a sense that thing are not static, as it can happen with prolong exploration part. It also end up with a climax with the clone.
- Now an observation, the little girl doesn’t appear back after part 2…
- It does look cheap and there for no reason, BUT you can use that at your advantage and create an emotional throughline, instead of going for something scary ala gman or alma in fear, why not a better of the child in mass effect 3, first you only see her from the back, then at one moment she look at you and we recognize her from a photo at the beginning (and the character say her name). Then you can have monologue. Then the character reunite with his daughter and realize she is just a memory, and make peace with his guilt, each hallucination being metaphorical to his guilt (probably absent father tropes). It also give you enough feedback as gameplay to the player, so he know he is progressing because he unlock new story bit, that’s actually great, they can be in gameplay too, like the girl is close to the next place you need to go, so the player has to move near her, in which some animation can play (she flee, she look back, she get close to him, she fades, whatever), so she double as a lead in.
- Now about the part where the girl disappear from part 3. Maybe the moment the character make peace is the moment where his humanity is “lost”, ie the ai successfully scan and reproduce it to transfer it to a new suits. Which is a nice lead in if executed properly. Having a film “cut” when it happen and the character is in the same general area, probably separated to do some key/trigger/button puzzle from his squad, and we did pass empty suit before that scene happening, and probably have to fight other empty suits before killing the clone.
Part 3.
It’s pretty straightforward, probably unlocking new zones (with lore about the ai) and traversing old zone you now know better (fighting the squad). Story has good lead for gameplay, clear goal, so it wouldn’t stop, the pace probably pick up a bit and have a climax when confronting the ai. The vague part is to define how the player actually learn the ai is messing with him, and what the trippy 2001 space odyssey part really is (probably the ai finishing the initialization and fully breaking free with you as a body instead of remote, so the visual metaphor seems apt, it’s literally downloading into a new existence).
end is straightforward too, clear condition (find virus to release), final boss and L12 is probably non gameplay wrap up.
In term of environment it can be done cheaply as it’s a military theme, you probably just a set of military complex and rocky desert environment stuff on the minimal side, a spaceship and a military base can share elements stylistically. Each zone, area can then be theme further with different micro biomes, and you can ramp complexity to create variety, but that’s more polish than requirement so you have a lot of latitude. You have very few character if you go minimalist, you have at worst 3 types of aliens (early xeno, bugs, people as alien), 2 types of marine (commander and squad) and one mandatory little girl.I kept seeing the game as early 1998 3d, and there wasn’t a real point where it absolutely need more distinction. The hardest would be the actual level design and information pacing, getting the story trigger well executed, and that fricking free fall sequence is a unique sequence, though that’s one thing you can cut and just imply.
IMHO it’s a great plot for a shooter as it keeps things moving, have clear goal, and have clear parts and tension building. I don’t have to like it to say that it’s holding on his own. Execution will matter, but in good hands it can be done very great!