The Story

The best place to start is at the beginning. Except, Vin isn’t in the prologue, and she’s our main player character. Okay so then we start at chapter 1. Ah but the whole beginning is a little slow, and relies heavily on the choose your own adventure mechanics, but before we actually understand emotional allomancy or how it works. But we can’t exactly exclude this opening, it’s rather core to Vin’s story. Maybe we go back and look at the prologue again. I know we just had a whole section about how we don’t want to be playing as Kelsier, but here it might be valuable.

At first I thought about throwing the player into the deep end and having them control Kelsier as he wreaks havoc upon the manor. But that makes for an awful tutorial. It’s too much to learn all at once, and then when we get to Vin we just take it all back anyway. But Kelsier seems like a key place to start, given his importance in the story and his proclivity towards action and excitement.

The way I would like to start would require a small bit of creative liberty. When Camon leaves the Canton after his “successful” con, he and his crew are unwittingly followed by a Steel Inquisitor. In my mind this turns into a dramatic opening scene. Mists curl around the imposing Canton building, it’s eerie, ominous, and suddenly it’s menacing. A Steel Inquisitor steps out into the mist, spiked eyes searching in the night, face twisted into a sinister grin in anticipation of the hunt. But instead of getting to chase down Vin, the beast is confronted by a much more capable opponent, Kelsier.

This opening cinematic, a brief chase between Kelsier and the Inquisitor as he leads it away from Vin, would provide a perfect opening to the game. It showcases the strength and danger of an inquisitor, as well as Kelsier’s own skill, setting expectations of both the protagonist and the antagonist right out the gate. It also shows off the mists, the powers of the Mistborn, and all inspires an immediate interest in the world and the story. When Kelsier next appears to reunite with Dockson and meet Vin the player should be sufficiently captivated by whatever he has to say.

From this point we can continue with the choose your own adventure style gameplay having thoroughly engaged the player so that introducing key characters and mechanics at a slower pace won’t cause them to lose interest. And from this point on we would keep to the existing story as written. While gameplay might require other small tweaks here or there (Vin will almost certainly get involved in more minor brawls than she does in the book) the overarching narrative remains.