13 pages in half as many days, and it does seem that Shar could use some more love to quietly devour in the dark hehe
I think her order of justiciars is a good angle. Shift the crit dialog or Shadowheart reveals until after the player has seen them torch and blight the village in flashback scene. It could be recounted by just about any npc really, but instead of dialog make it cinematic like the other big ins. Where we see a few peeps dressed like Shadowheart roll into town, like Thulsa Doom, and just trash the place while bellicose music plays in the foreground.
Some villagers scream and get torched or kidnapped, while Shar's favored do their thing. And then after that part get's done, it's like you can turn to Shadowheart and give her the side eyed reaction at that point, just have it dished up that way maybe?
Gale does some pretty good exposition at various points, I'd lean on him for the Mystra, but again they could punch it up with some visual montage.
I think first dream could also work well for setting up a brief cosmogony, have the camera pull up to the stars (everyone just want's to look up right in this game right? lol) and then they get some cosmic allegory debrief that highlights the major players.
If the PC goes a bit more off brand, and is playing as Dwarf or a Gith or a Drow say, maybe take that opportunity to highlight in a different direction. So it keys off player input on some level, while still giving the main thrust. PCs choice of race or religion could determine the order in which the information is presented, while still eventually covering all based throughout the course of play.
This thread is about Shar, but in keeping with the Viconia theme, the Spider Queen's Vengeance is also something the PC should be clued into if they elect to play a Lolth sworn or if Seldarine then cover the bit with Eilistraee in the same sequence. That sort of stuff.
I think they could do it more character driven, with the Priests as avatars rather than the Gods in Olympus style form. Even though I dig the Harryhausen, its clearly going to be simpler to convey using some of the tools and models we have. Unless they do a fully legit production like they did for the opener/trailer with the music and all the flourishes, I'd think it would be hard to really do the gods in full form. More likely they'd have to use more of what we see on display as cut scenes in game for narrative delivery. Still I think they could probably pull off something. I really think a better fit though would be to deliver the material somehow in relation to the PC's inputs, to the custom character and whatever they selected during Char creation. That's more complicated than just a quick overall primer, but I think it would feel cooler if the game could somehow take that tact, and deliver it more paced out to spec.
