A narrative promise is an expectation the experience teaches the player to hold about what kind of story, agency, fantasy, relationship, mystery, or consequence structure they are entering.
Promises can be explicit or implicit.
Sources of Promises
Inspect:
- title/pitch/store description when provided
- opening hour / prologue
- tutorialized narrative mechanics
- first major choice
- early companion interactions
- inciting mystery
- repeated motifs
- stated player fantasy
- examples of consequences
Promise Categories
Classify promises such as:
- genre/tone
- protagonist fantasy
- agency and consequence
- mystery/investigation
- relationship depth
- political/faction play
- moral ambiguity
- power progression
- survival/horror vulnerability
- comedy
- world reactivity
- systemic freedom
Promise Ledger
| Promise | Evidence establishing it | Strength | Delivery evidence | Status |
|---|
Status:
- Delivered
- Developing
- Transformed intentionally
- Under-supported
- Broken
- Unknown from supplied material
Audit Rules
Do not assume every setup is a promise of a specific payoff.
A promise can be intentionally transformed if the transition is authored and the new contract becomes legible.
Flag especially:
- early agency followed by long stretches of non-reactivity
- mystery framing followed by solution via exposition
- relationship focus with little later relationship content
- political premise resolved mostly through combat
- survival vulnerability invalidated too quickly by progression
- tonal contract changing without transition
- marketing/pitch fantasy absent from actual player verbs
Findings
Include severity and confidence separately.
For broken or weak promises identify:
- what expectation was created
- where it was created
- where delivery diverges
- likely player interpretation
- smallest repair category
Possible repairs:
- deliver more fully
- weaken/remove early promise
- foreshadow transformation
- change player verbs
- add consequence memory
- reposition content
- explicitly establish a new contract
Output
Narrative contract summary
Promise ledger
Strong deliveries
Findings
Highest-risk expectation gaps
Repair priorities
Final Quality Check
Ask: If a player loved the opening for what it seemed to promise, would the middle and end still feel like the same game?