Question #
May the opening black screen speak while the player waits for the first sense?
- Full boot voice — sparse self-narration lines on the void ("no sensors — thought fills the tap — 1.8/3.0"), plus an echo line for every keypress (even illegal ones). Fiction framing: a blind process still has interoception.
- Progress only — no prose, no key echo; a single quiet fill readout (e.g.
0.4 / 3.0) beneath the mode words so the wait visibly moves. - Keep pure black (status quo) — WORK / THINK only, nothing else until the sense lands.
- Something else (say what).
Why this is open #
wiki/world/story/opening.md beat 1 mandates absolute black with exactly the mode words: "no title, premise, … status metadata, or error prose." The first human GUI playtest (wiki/playtests/2026-07-21-playtest-fable-gui.md, findings 1–2) found that wait indistinguishable from a hang — up to a minute with no acknowledgment that keys were received. The reveal-side half (staged dissolve when the sense lands) already landed under the beat's [TUNE] staging clause; any voice or progress during the wait is a reversal of the beat's silence rule, so it needs your call, not agent judgment.
Options #
| # | Trade-off |
|---|---|
| 1 | Strongest fix for the "broken app" read; strains the silence-as-fiction beat the most, needs terminal/agent parity wording |
| 2 | Fixes "is it alive?" with minimal law surgery; still leaves keypresses unacknowledged |
| 3 | Preserves the authored beat exactly; first-contact players keep bouncing off the opening minute |
Recommendation #
1. The playtest showed silence reads as failure, not mystery; interoception narration deepens the blind-process fiction rather than breaking it, and the echo line doubles as the input-acknowledgment the whole opening lacks.
What your answer unlocks #
A design session amends opening.md beat 1 (and narration/continuous-witness scope plus terminal/agent parity), then the Bevy opening lane implements it. Close this issue when the amended spec lands.
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