title screen art

Right now I'm working with Moghunter's animated title script and am in the process of putting together my title screen art. Here's the trouble I'm running into:

What sort of art looks better on a title screen? Do players like to see just scenery? The game's characters? Items or scenes from the game?

What do you think?

Best use in my opinion is a title screen that works like the title. That is, it should carry a meaning.

Either an important scene from the game (or a metaphor of something important), or the main characters, even a story-related object can be shown if it's meaningful.

It also depends a lot of the style of the game, both in genre and in art style.

It's difficult to say because there can be so many possibilities. If you can create mockups and explain a bit about your game, we might help you better.

Personally I went with the spellbook that gives the game its name and a couple papers (which have very small text, which is actually magical formulas if you could read it, but it isn't high enough definition to read at that size) for my title screen.
 
*EDIT*
Just took another look at it, it wasn't a spell or formula on those papers. It is actually "Notes on the various schools of magic" from my book and short stories and a magical/summoning circle. :p

Well, the game I'm currently making is a fantasy rpg called "Unwritten : The Hollow Book". Here's a quick rundown of the plot:

Duran is a trainee sage of Libra, goddess of wisdom. The sages of Libra (or "Librarians") are archivists, scholars, teachers and storytellers (Duran is especially fond of the latter). Ages ago, Libra gifted mankind with a book of great power, though no one knows now what it did. When world war broke out, the book broke itself apart, each piece changing into an object and hiding across the globe. To get his full accreditation as a Sage, Duran is sent to retrieve what is believed to be one of these artifacts from some nearby ruins. But what starts out as a simple fetch quest becomes something much bigger. There are lots of literary references throughout the game, from a charitable bandit, to an opera house murderer and king killed by his brother.

The tone is serious & silly, like the Discworld books.

Sounds quite interesting!

On a side-note, I love the Discworld books!

Did you know some of them were made into movies? I have a copy of the movie of "The Hogfather". :p 2-parter and 3 or 4 hours total...been long enough since I last watched it that I'm not entirely sure about the length any more. Death has got to be my favorite Discworld character.

Faces are good. People are more likely to download a game if screenshots show faces/characters. If that means a game seems more inviting/appealing if you can see one/some characters, then the same would be true of the title screen.

@Cadh20000 I've seen Hogfather, but not Going Postal, yet. Yeah, Death is pretty great, but I actually like Tiffany Aching and the Lancre witches better.

@Shaz I thought about that, but I'm a chronic second-guesser (and third and fourth...) and wondered if it might seem wrong, since my art style is different from the RTP style. I suppose, though, that the RTP characters are unique enough they would be recognizable, even if drawn in a different style, wouldn't they? (My own art leans more towards Disney and western comic books than anime )