Think of your "game" as a movie first, then work out your "emotional script" with how you envision it to flow, making storyboards of the emotional sections.
Some people/studios tend to make cut-scenes the norm by injecting "movie-quality acting and voice-overs
convey those emotional states"...
I think doing these things, though a great way to perpetuate and propagate the story, takes something from the player by making him/her sit through hundreds of hours of non-related nuances and character situations the player may not want to delve into.
All too often we see another Final Fantasy or complete a mission arc in Eve Online and get bombarded by these gorgeous cut-scenes and feel as if we're playing and DYING and replaying, just to get to the next one.
Write your story first. Does it allow for conflict, emotional interaction, impending doom, a climactic near-miss, another globe-shaking conflict, an anti-climactic non-event or two, a cataclysmic climactic ending, a follow-up ending to show what happened to the world, then "The End" ending...? If it has mane of these things, can you truly make a game out of it? Something that can truly engage the players and their emotions? If not, write and publish the story! If it does or if it can, then start out with a section of environment with a small cluster of events-- like the introduction of the player into the "new" world-- and help the player to become "one" with the world and it's inhabitants-- not just some cookie cutter misfit sent in to make things right... (I hate games like that!)
Anyway, it's food for thought...