How do you start a game? That is a difficult question. There are many things that a game needs to do for the player at the start; introduce them to the world, teach them how to play and most importantly engage them. We spent a lot of time and effort on the first part of Paradise Killer trying to perfect it. I haven’t done the math on this yet but I do know that the start of the game is the most commonly shared video clip from Paradise Killer on social media, so I guess something worked. !
In Paradise Killer, you play as Lady Love Dies (LD), an investigator sent out of exile to investigate crimes in order to put an end to all crimes on the whimsical Paradise Island. We know that the beginning of the game will depict LD arriving at the island and introducing the player to the world. When we make an open world game, we like to start by showing the player the whole world from the very beginning. The island is pretty big and you can explore it in its entirety, but you often can’t see the scale of what you’re about to explore in games. We hope that giving players a bird’s-eye view of a giant vista ready for them will blow them away and whet their appetite for exploration.
With this in mind, our initial story draft began with LD arriving by plane, allowing players to see the island as they flew over it. It wasn’t very interesting and it didn’t fit our game, so we put the idea aside and worked on something else while we thought about it. In the end, Phil, our technical director, told me, “I wanted the intro to be like the beginning of Bayonetta.” It’s a challenge! For those who haven’t played, the first part of Bayonetta sees players battling a massive army of angels over a ruined cathedral that’s darting through the sky. It’s one of the best game starters anyone has ever made, it really makes an impression. I thought to myself, “how do we make something like that in a first-person narrative game?”
After skipping the intro coming by plane, the story evolved in other ways and we decided that the Exiled Lady would be in a certain prison called the Idle Lands, high on the Island. Heaven. One of the problems we had to deal with was finding a way to get the player down from there early in the game. Our first idea was to have Lydia pick you up in her car. Lydia drives a car that can travel through space so it makes sense for her to find a way to land in the sky in the Empty Lands.
However, we don’t think that’s very exciting. Fortunately, we decided early in development that there wouldn’t be any fall damage in the game because the game is a free exploration game and we didn’t want to punish that. Besides needing to come up with a good intro, we also needed a good way to convey this, so we decided to have the player jump off the Empty Ground at the start of the game. We tried it, and doing a great big jump and dropping into oblivion feels great! As they fall, the player can see the entire island stretching out below them and begin to pick places of interest to investigate. It serves many purposes.
A very early version of the jump and the open world perspective
This fall to the island is great but we know we can make it even more stylish. I like the title card late in the game, so we decided to place the Assassin of Heaven title card when the player lands from their fall. It was a moment of great impact, and bringing the two together worked so well.
The original version of the landing moment
We’re pretty happy with the introduction at this point, but we know we can still push it further.
At the time, we were working on a simple sample library for our music, and we came up with the idea to take one of the short tracks, repeat and remove all the bass elements and percussion to make it a neater, ambient track. you will hear as you explore the Idle Lands prison. We originally planned to drag the remaining layers in when you unlock the prison gate to Paradise Island, but then we had the idea to change it so that it starts converting when you jump off the cliff, with music playing as you plunge into the abyss of crime.
When we purchased the Topping track by composer Barry “Epoch”, he built on this further by providing the original music, as well as creating a great bass rendition that happens when you exit. from life in exile. This ended up being such a powerful moment that people were always talking about us excitedly.
Paradise Killer’s intro took a lot of iterations to get it right but it was more than worth it. The first part of Paradise Killer teaches players the rules of exploration and excites them about the open world, but most importantly it surprises them. One of the main questions we ask ourselves about our games during development is “what can we do here to surprise players”? Surprise is a great emotion that evokes joy and helps players engage with the game.
Thankfully, we seem to have achieved what we set out to be with Paradise Killer’s introduction and have captured the moment just right. Players love the thrill of jumping off Paradise Island and we love seeing them get excited by it!
