MEWD'S PROFILE

Admitably, my picks are liable to vary drastically depending on my mood.

Grim Fandango is always liable to be on the list, though.

Alright, fair enough. I know I haven't exactly been putting forth any grand ideas to move forward, and this has spurred activity, though I'm still pretty attached to what we had before. But sparking controversy did get me and it looks like the others to actually wake up.

My main concern about the villain is taking the spotlight away from the villain as a character. I don't want the focus to be on releasing some work wrecking terror, because that's been done to death. I am more open to a third party evil being an influence, manipulator or negative human trait that has spun out of control. Mainly I'd just like to make the villain a character with real motives.

The perception of the villain I have been building is sort of like this: He has control issues, while having misguided good intentions he wants to build a Utopia. He uses manipulation, guile, cruelty and excessive force to bring a fascist domination to reality. Psychologically spurred to do this because he does not, or cannot change some problem within himself, he projects that problem onto the world at large and thus puts all his energy into changing the world rather than himself. He succeeds in taking over the world, but that doesn't change his emotional problems and he is not capable of making the world the Utopia he wanted. The world falls into decay and corruption on account of his methods of ruling, but he is not able to bring himself to begin to reverse what he's done. He is emotionally stuck and cannot let go.

Now, my perception of the villain is debatable, and I can definitely see him being a position where he WANTS the hero to defeat him and would goad him forward. A third party villain is capable of being in the background, preferably abstract (such as a negative human trait personified.) Such a third party could give him inhuman powers and have your typical epic final battle. Essentially saying that he has lost himself to these traits/forces even though he wants desperately to undo what he's done.

I just don't want a bigger villain introduced to be unleashed because, typically, demonic forces don't have much in way of personality. They are destroying because that is what they DO. They're innately evil, and I don't find that as interesting as a character who is driven to do something evil for particular reasons. I'm probably just having a knee-jerk reaction to the insistence on a greater evil, because I'm fine with subtle use of them. I just don't want the third party to be the objective of the villain.

I can see your point about motivation for blank slate characters being a problem. I think one issue is that 'survival' is hard to make a selfish act in an RPG. We could add a food-eating system to maintain stamina, but that sort of thing is always frustrating for the player. We can do something like Fallout, where initially the odds are drastically stacked against you to give you a sense of fragility. Ultimately the player WILL feel like

Okay, about actually making a blank slate story VIABLE. I'd like some feedback on some of our options.

Free Roaming Method: We give the player total freedom at the expense of story telling. We can still have very interesting side characters, but no real story momentum. It would mostly be wandering around, taking quests and such with vague long term goals guiding you.

Story Thread Method: There are quest chains that tell stories, and enable you to move forward with the game. You are given a few branching paths to overcome obstacles, lots of optional stuff. The plot momentum offered by the chain-quests doesn't impede your ability to wander off and do random irrelevant stuff. This will take the most work to realize, but also seems the most promising.

Lenier Method: The plot dictates where you're going from one situation to the next. With this, the characters might as well be pre-defined. You get lots of forward plot momentum but little freedom outside of character customization and side quests. This is the easiest way for me to write for a game, but it probably isn't what we want.


Okay, here's a compromise idea I will just throw out here:

We maintain the original introduction of the game, with the massive war being lost, the fake party being defeated and the concentration camp et cetera. (Wow, that sounds really uncompromising on my part)

Okay, instead of the party just escaping, we have the villain be the one who let them out.

Let's say that the villain has managed to magically/psychically produce a projection of himself that is physically frail. This second self represents what little free will he has left after his inner-demons have pretty much taken control of him. He is disguised, but still uses his place of authority to enter the concentration camp and command the guards to let him have run of the place.

He finds out which inmates have shown the strongest resistance to having their wills broken. He commands the guards to go off duty (This isn't shown, it could be assumed by the heroes that he beat the guards or somehow incapacitated them.)

He releases the chosen character(s), whether they be blank slates or pre-defined. He entreats them to help save the world from dying completely, as it is well on its way to oblivion with the scarcity of food, the horrible living conditions and the general decay of the land. He might give them a quest, that seems like a wild goose chase at first, to find the Fisher King or some other object or figure capable of returning life to the world. This becomes a long term goal, but the player is capable of ignoring it if we aren't using a leniar game method.

The villain equips the heroes with weapons and armor appropriate for their archetype classes. There could still be an escape sequence where they fight their way out, assuming the situation gets out of the villain's control.

Okay, the villain can show up again in other areas of the game to lend a hand of guidance to goad them on. Finding the Fisher King is an arduous ordeal, but they do eventually manage to find him.

What follows could be an anti-climax, as the Fisher King would be fiddling his time away like in the Arthurian tale by fishing. The Fisher King cannot do anything to restore life to the world while there is such rampant death and despair in the world. The goal then becomes to kill the villain so that they can halt the suffering enough that the Fisher King can actually do anything to restore life to the world. At this point though, sieging the castle would not seem so much an impossibility. You'll also have helped enough people that a great many of them will be willing to assist you in some way.

Assuming we still have an evil path option, you may have blown off the Fisher King quest entirely and ultimately just decide to attack the castle to take control. But I'm not sure how that change of direction would be led into.

You siege the evil castle, and have the dramatic reveal that the villain is the same person who released you. He is entreating you to wallop him good but can't keep himself from attacking with devastating force.
You overcome him, and we maybe gets some deathbed plot exposition and his gratitude. Life is slowly able to return to normal thanks to you, or the evil simply finds a new host in your characters and you go on ruling in his stead in a like manner.

How does that sound? This is all up for debate.

About blank slate characters: I still sort of feel that we can have a supporting cast that demonstrates all of the themes we want in-game, it will just take lots of world building. Right now I am trying to brainstorm by writing little short stories in the universe of this game world about the inhabitants.

Still, if I can't demonstrate plausibly that I can come up with meaningful side characters, we may be better off going with pre-defined characters. I shouldn't be all talk.

If you like, you could challenge me to come up with a set number of characters to use as supporting cast. If I can't come up with enough characters you deem interesting enough to warrant making up for blank slate protagonists, than I'll concede and we can go with a pre-defined cast. How about that?

It's not just the sewer though, the beach area in the subway(?) also has serious lag. Not AS bad, but still pretty too much for me to press on.

How far along along is the third demo?

I'm glad I don't have any arcane requirements for when I need to defecate.

Do you have any piles of clothes shed prior to a shower that might conceal the PSP in your bathroom?

I appreciate you thinking up this whole sypnosis here, but I'm frankly just jarred that this is so completely different than everything we've already established about the game. What REALLY bothers me, honestly, is how derivative the whole thing is. No offense, but this seems to rob the plot premise of most of what made it unique and compelling. This feels more like generic fantasy stock. Which is appropriate for the title, but this touches on way too many of my pet peeves about most RPGs.

I'll welcome a second opinion on this, though.

I could be considered biased because I was REALLY attached to what we had going before this. I liked the blank slate characters. I liked the idea of developing them your own way and having them be an avatar for your decisions as opposed to being character based.

I don't mind if the villain is Human, infact I was leaning toward that already, but I REALLY don't want to have a bigger villain in the background. I don't want their to be a focus on defeating or challenging the ultimate evil with the leader of this game being merely a stepping stone. What I really wanted addressed was the MOTIVE of the villain. He could maybe have tried to exploit demonic forces in order to gain super-human abilities, but I'd like to focus to be on HIM and what he is trying to accomplish as a villain.

What I have been imagining at this point, is that the villain has control issues.

Most of what appealed to me about the bleak setting was this was after the fact of the apocalypse, as opposed to having a focus on preventing it. Having the bleakness be on account of the incidental wars and famine seems much less powerful. "The End is Coming" doesn't strike me as interesting as "The End is already here. Why should we go on?"

The plot here suggests a much more lenier game. Which is conceivable,

The cast you've suggested, while not bad, strike me as entirely derivative. I've seen these kinds of characters used in various fantasy media and thus they really don't stand out for me. They could be switched out with any other archetype and I wouldn't feel any more or less attached. I'll cite some equivilants.


Pellehan sounds EXACTLY Ike from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, but with Breath of Fire style 'Freakout' dragon sequences. I'm also reminded of McDohl from Suikoden. If the character were more self-confident and capable, I would compare him to Magnus from Ogre Battle 64.

Gwaelin Sounds EXACTLY like Kid from Chrono Cross, only with a father involved. I'm also reminded of Aika from Skies of Arcadia, and while I haven't played more than the demon of DQVIII, I'm getting a strong Jessica Albert vibe here.

Verin sounds EXACTLY like Aloutte from La Pucelle Tactics. I'll admit that this archetype is less typical in the games I've played, but feels very common in school-themed anime.

Hunt sounds EXACTLY like Khimari from FFX. Also typical of many tribal and noble beast characters.


I don't care for having visions as a driving force in the game, mainly because it's been done to death.

Having the villain be a former faerie deity is interesting, but going with that train of thought will have massive influence on his character motives. The main one appearing to be the theme of religion here.

I don't know if Religion is a theme we want to explore, as I have the sensation that the two of us have conflicting views on the topic. Ideally, that would allow us to come up with balanced observations in-game, but more likely would just result in some unhelpful arguments. I get the impression that you'd like to take a stab at the misteps and misdeeds of Christianity. Which is fair criticism, but if I were to include a theme of religion in a game, I'd want to really address the significance of belief and the difference between being religious and actually being spiritual. Which you may or may not be comfortable with.

The main theme I wanted to really get in this game was about hope: Being able to pick yourself up in spite of whatever life throws at you and pushing forward. This is part of why such a bleak setting appeals to me. I've met a lot of people in life who give up on life completely even when they still have a chance of pressing forward.

Trechery seems like a really minor theme in this outline, since it appears entirely centered on Pellehan and Gwaelen's relationships with their parents.