Can a narrative exist within 5 minutes?

On this project, the role of our narrative team has been a complicated one. It is important that dialogue and world-building are taken seriously, because the aesthetics and story of the game are what we're relying on to draw in the player. On the other hand, it's hard to tell if this task is comparable to the workload the rest of the team bears—especially those who have to design the levels or make sure Ember's actions work like they're supposed to. We've occasionally found ourselves wondering whether or not there can even be a deep enough dive into narrative when all that exists is a short demo?

What's ended up happening is that the narrative team becomes inundated with work for short amounts of time, but once they pass their work to the rest of the team they have to put on some different hats. Part of our process this semester has been to realize that we really can't just depend on our own skill sets to get us through. We need to have an understanding of what is done in each department—instead of just being masters of 3D animation, AI configuration, or website planning. Since over-scoping went hand-in-hand with too much storytelling, our narrative team tried to expand the story inwards rather than outwards. Rather than having long-winded dialogue telling the player that Ember had indeed visited Peak's Shadow in the past and that she had been revered—we showed it with a faded cave drawing in the ruins. Developing the story through the environment has been invaluable for our game and we hope that it is more enjoyable to witness than reading walls of text. It's not for our writers to make the final call as to whether or not they succeeded in creating the beginnings of a compelling narrative—in the end it really depends on the player.