History Main / EasingIntoTheAdventure

!!Examples

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 1}}'', you start with a pleasant monorail ride into work and a few chats with your workmates, before things [[GoneHorriblyWrong Go Horribly Wrong]].

[[folder: Western Animation]]

[[folder: Other]]
* This trope was invoked by [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland]] when it first opened. The "Main Street USA" part of the Magic Kingdom is the first part of the park any guest will see, intended to be familiar and well-recognizable before guests get to the more exotic places like Adventureland and Tomorrowland. It was especially needed when the park first opened since, at the time, nobody had seen anything like Disneyland before.
** Thematically, it can be understood as entering and exploring the world of young WaltDisney before traveling to the places his imagination took him-- the other lands come from a mind that started on Main Street, so your journey into them begins there as well.
[[/folder]]

* In ''StarWars: ANewHope'', while the first scenes after the opening crawl are of stormtroopers and Darth Vader storming the Tantive IV, taking Leia prisoner, the droids jettisoning and wandering and being caught by Jawas, Luke's first scenes are of him complaining, then shutting up and obediently doing his chores, being kind to the droids and seeing the hologram of Leia, establishing his desire to go to the Academy but only when his uncle allows it, and staring at the binary sunset while beautiful music swells. Only then does he get the Call and go in search of the runaway R2 and also Old Ben. Deleted but apparently still-canon scenes set during the Tantive IV events show him trying to show his friends at Tosche Station the space battle and being mocked, and meeting an old friend who'd gone to the Academy and is planning on joining the Rebel Alliance (Biggs, who's actually in the final film, and a bit more in the special edition, hence why Luke is so sad when Biggs dies).

* ''Film/DieHard'' opens with John [=McClane=] flying [[note:he's afraid of flying]] into LA for Christmas and to see his estranged family. The first half hour is dedicated to this, setting up exactly what a New York cop is doing attending this particular Christmas party across the country, before the terrorists attack.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' starts with the player character's birth. It continues showing the [=PC's=] life, introducing different gameplay mechanics. The game teaches you the basic controls and lets you choose the character's statistics. Then it cuts to 9 years later to show you how to shoot guns. It jumps again when the player character is 16 years old and you have to choose your skills. The final sequence of the "tutorial" is when the PC is 19 years old and ecapes the vault.

* ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' begins with the player waking up in an academy for RPG adventurers, and eventually graduating the same day, until [[spoiler:the place is suddenly attacked by assassins.]]
** Likewise, the ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' tutorial starts you out in the harvest festival. It is, however, skippable, and you'll even get the two levels that you would get by playing the the tutorial anyway. You do miss out on a couple of not-bad items if you skip, though.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'', where you start out in a dungeon, and can't even save until you defeat the boss. The remake makes things ''harder'', because you only have 1 party member instead of 4. When you finally kill the boss and leave the dungeon, you're ''still'' easing into the adventure (you don't start the adventure proper until you recruit three more characters, defeat the Djinn and unlock the job system, which takes about an hour or so). In the original however, it's 4 characters from the start, and no easing.

* ''VideoGame/VandalHearts 2'' starts, after a horrific scene of RapePillageAndBurn done by a BlackKnight squad, by introducing your main character trying to catch a butterfly for his sister. The intro continues into what is essentially a childhood's game of adventure (even if they ''do'' wield real weapons), until [[spoiler: you had to kill the possessed remains of your LoveInterest's grandfather]]. After that, it skips several years where ''everything'' has gone twenty shades of wrong.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' goes above and beyond here: it starts with your BIRTH.
** And then with you being able to CHOOSE YOUR OWN FACE (and sex and race).
** And it does not stop there, then you skip ahead.... 1 year. Yes you walk around as a 1 year old, where you decide your SPECIAL stats. Then you skip ahead....9 more years to 10 years old. There you start deciding your personality and learn to use your first weapon. Then you skip ahead to 16 years old where you decide your skills. FINALLY you skip ahead to a Good Morning Crono moment and THEN the game goes through you escaping the vault, which gives you one final chance to change everything you just made up. Fallout 3 is one of the few games where people may end up saving a couple of times before they even finish making their character.
** Even then, the Wasteland Survival Guide quest line is largely there to teach you a few more game mechanics you might have missed and point the way to the NoobCave before you start on your quest proper. This is optional, however.

* ''BaldursGate'' does let you walk around your hometown a bit (and killing rats, ordinary rats)

* ''{{Suikoden}}'' games tend to do this, letting the player get acquainted with (and attached to) the cast and experiencing their normal lives before they start getting caught up in the plot. In particular, ''SuikodenV'' spends its first few ''hours'' developing the Prince, the rest of the royal family, their loyal servants, the noble families, other important people they meet... with a few brief periods of action/combat before getting into the real ''meat'' of the plot. [[TearJerker And it]] ''[[PlayerPunch works]]''.
* Completely averted in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon''. After a brief exposition, we meet our main character. Being chased by a Dragon (In a world where there are only 7). After that, you find your hometown is burned to the ground and your childhood friend kidnapped. Then you break into an imperial prison.
* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'', Ezio's adventure starts with him getting in a minor scuffle with his family's rivals, doing errands for his parents, racing his older brother around Florence, finding eagle feathers, and having sex with a girl he fancies.
** [[spoiler:Carrying the box of paintings for your mother]] is a ChekhovsSkill that doesn't come up again [[SomedayThisWillComeInHandy until near the end of the game]].
** While just before that Desmond was escaping a giant building and bashing security guards in an overall atmosphere of panic and haste. Assassin's Creed is complicated.
** Actually you start by seeing Ezio's birth, and then his first kicks and movements introduce you to the interface, well sorta...yeah, really freaking complicated.

* ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' gives you a feel for your family, all the civilians, and the peaceful, wonderful community... making it far more dramatic and emotional when the plot kicks in
** Well, to some degree. By the time you meet most of the townspeople, [[spoiler: the village is engulfed in flames]] and you have to start fighting enemies.
* ''DiscworldMUD'' has Pumpkin Town, the newbie area for players to get used to the interface and commands in the game and to learn to listen to signs.

* In almost every Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei game, you usually get a bit of gameplay where you can just walk through the city, talk to friends and characters and just generally have a good time. Except that even ''that'' hints up on being a CrapsaccharineWorld, and then things go bad.

->''Yeah! Eat that, flowers! And you, too, patch of dirt! Ooh, now I can pick up the dirt and rearrange it in places. I'm going to make a little pile and leave the flower on top like [[LatinLover a mysterious Spanish gentleman.]] --Hey, why's it gotten so dark all of a sudden? What was that rustling sound? Why are my intestines over there now?''
-->--'''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]]''' encounters his first [[VideoGame/{{Minecraft}} Creeper]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyAdvance'': The only action at the beginning is a slow snowball fight that serves as the combat tutorial.

* ''NeverwinterNights'' begins with the player waking up in an academy for RPG adventurers, and eventually graduating the same day, until [[spoiler:the place is suddenly attacked by assassins.]]
** Likewise The ''NeverwinterNights2'' tutorial starts you out in the harvest festival. It is, however, skippable, and you'll even get the two levels that you would get by playing the the tutorial anyway. You do miss out on a couple of not-bad items if you skip, though.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'', where you start out in a dungeon, and can't even save until you defeat the boss. The remake makes things ''harder'', because you only have 1 party member instead of 4. When you finally kill the boss and leave the dungeon, you're ''still'' easing into the adventure (you don't start the adventure proper until you recruit three more characters, defeat the Djinn and unlock the job system, which takes about an hour or so). In the original, however, it's 4 characters from the start, and no easing.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'', where you start out in a dungeon, and can't even save until you defeat the boss. The remake makes things ''harder'', because you only have 1 party member instead of 4. When you finally kill the boss and leave the dungeon, you're ''still'' easing into the adventure (you don't start the adventure proper until you recruit three more characters, defeat the Djinn and unlock the job system, which takes about an hour or so). In the original however, it's 4 characters from the start, and no easing.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyAdvance'' makes the Roxas section of ''KH2'' look action-packed. The only action is an ''incredibly'' slow snowball fight that serves as the combat tutorial. ''FFA'' is controversial for a couple of reasons. The plot is one, and the easing section is another.

* Robert Jordan admitted to writing an {{homage}} to Tolkien as the beginning of the first book of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series.

* This trope was invoked by [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland]] when it first opened. The "Magic Kingdom" section of the park is intended to be familiar and well-recognizable before guests get to the more exotic places like Adventureland and Tomorrowland. It was especially needed when the park first opened since, at the time, nobody had seen anything like it before.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

While we've SeenItAMillionTimes, [[TropesAreNotBad it's still a classic]].

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts'': Starts on Sora's peaceful island.

* After a brief prologue showing a battle between the homs and Mechon in the past, ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'' goes into this, focusing on the daily lives of Shulk, Reyn, and Fiora before things get ugly. There's a surprisingly large amount of exploration and sidequests available to do before the game's plot kicks off proper, some of which does involve roughing up the local wildlife, though.

* After a brief prologue showing a battle between the homs and Mechon in the past, ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'' goes into this, focusing on the daily lives of Shulk, Reyn, and Fiora before things get ugly. There's a surprisingly large amount of exploration and sidequests available to do before the game's plot kicks off proper.

* ''WesternAnimation/BarbieOfSwanlake'' has about 20 minutes before Odette is turned into a swan.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes; there are those who [[JumpedAtTheCall Jump At The Call]] and those who [[RefusalOfTheCall Refuse The Call]]. Whether reluctant or adventurous, stories with these heroes can start Easing Into The Adventure by introducing the hero well before they get their [[WithThisHerring wooden sword]] and very first FetchQuest in their peaceful hometown; with a young Bob doing chores, playing with friends, having a heart to heart promise with Alice, fighting and losing to the JerkJock who teases them. The usual.

* The ''{{Belgariad}}'' opens with Garion growing up, and things begin to cascade after he gets into his teenage years. Humorously, part of the catalyst is Polgara insisting on getting him out before he ends up in a [[ShotgunWedding "necessary" marriage]].

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes; there are those who [[JumpedAtTheCall Jump At The Call]] and those who [[RefusalOfTheCall Refuse The Call]]. Whether reluctant or adventurous, stories with these heroes can start EasingIntoTheAdventure by introducing the hero well before they get their [[WithThisHerring wooden sword]] and very first FetchQuest in their peaceful hometown; with a young Bob doing chores, playing with friends, having a heart to heart promise with Alice, fighting and losing to the JerkJock who teases them. The usual.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 1}}'', you start with a pleasant monorail ride into work and a few chats with your workmates, before things GoHorriblyWrong.

* ''{{Gothic}}'': Get kicked into the colony, faff around looking at the lovely scenery, try not to get eaten by wild beasts, maybe talk to people and get a good standing with the various groups. It takes a good, long while before anything critical starts to happen.