Story, world and characters
Firstly, this is not just an idea: I did attempt several times now to put it on paper. Latest attempt resulted in several chapters of a book (1 of 13) be written in English and published here - https://www.facebook.com/SimbiatUniverse/posts/1141905585956192 (or more like it has appropriate links to chapters). During this last attempt, I hit another “writer’s block” and came to realization, that what I want to create is too big to be limited by a book. I want to deliver a story and emotions, that need fast pacing. I want to deliver visual stimuli (including gore and hallucinations), that need graphics. I want to deliver “lore” and “philosophy” of the world, that need slower pacing, need context, need time. While all of this are known to be delivered in books (like Frank Herbert’s Dune, Tolkien’s LOTR or even more modern Dark Tower by Stephen King), I also want to deliver a sense of “choice” and consequences deriving from the [potential] choices, which lays perfectly on the concept of the story, that there are infinite worlds, that may sometimes intersect. That requires a game, because otherwise, I’d have to write several versions of each book.
The story is about a boy in 10th grade (Russian school system, 16 years old), who suddenly attains vast powers. Of course, it’s not sudden and is connected to his own past or rather specific episode from it, which he does not remember. And some things that he remembers outside of that episode will turn out to be false, as well, because they were traumatizing and his mind covered them up (essentially his current state of mind is result of PTSD).
It sounds a bit as a clich;, right? Premise is, yes. But not how I approach the acceptance of the power, or rather lack of thereof. You see, the boy is suffering from suppressed depression he does not even realize (which happens quite often in real life), thus when he attains power he… Does not believe it’s real. He believes it’s a dream. This is where the “general choice” lays: one can either live a dream normally or get unhinged. In the currently published chapters I choose the latter. Assumption that this is all a dream is served to deny the things he does. And while in the 1st book he still “clings to his morals” to some extent, in 2nd book… Well, here we have 2 choices, that can’t be realized in purely written form: he can continue to follow older morals or lose it all completely, driven by his darker desires and turning into a psychopath as if from Saints Row 3 (or 4) game, where you just want to destroy the world around you for the heck of it. And this is expected to haunt him later, when he faces despair of death despite being seemingly all-powerful (which he is not, since all powers have a price).
So, he does not become a hero. In fact, he is not and, probably, never will be one. He is just a guy, that loses touch with reality due to inability to comprehend what the hell is going on. Unlike the female character I mentioned above. She accepts what she is – a whore and a murderer, although she does deny the fact, that she was created like that by society, and not by her own choice: the only thing she chooses herself is cling to a hope of acceptance, of… Radiance. And as fate should have it, she notices a glimpse of that in main character, and by becoming a part of a larger scheme sets out on a separate journey, that may or may not end up in a suicide [attempt], which again should be a choice for players. Either way, she is just another important character, whose life interacts with Dmitry’s (the guy, I mentioned).
Of course, they are not alone: there are larger forces at play, including inter-dimensional organization A.E.G.I.S. (like Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D.), demons and… Well, other stuff. And at a point in time, Dmitry is forced by them to search for “special” people, like what Roland did in King’s Dark Tower. All those characters have their own skeletons and choices to make in their new journey. A journey, that spans several universes or worlds and may even require several generations to complete.
Please, do check out the chapters I have so far, to get a taste of what kind of story I can write.
Gameplay
The important part about any game is, well, actual “game”. Like what you can do in it and how. What I have in mind is, generally, like those games by TellTale. But only “generally”. I’ll set 3 examples, one for each of the 1st 3 books. I call them “books” since initially it was planned as such. After realization, that this should be a game, I am not that sure about this concept, but it will be touched upon later.
Example 1
Relatively early in the 1st book Dmitry is at his school, helping with manual labor at the start of summer vacation. He is with his classmate putting away desks and they are talking about Lineage II. Discussion gets heated and Dmitry throws a desk (1st sign of his “power awakening”) and he is also starts hearing voices. Classmate is ok to cover for him, so now he is free. Free to go straight home or walk around school. While this is completely optional, it will allow interacting with stuff and people around school to show that Dmitry is not really that social, has average grades… It will allow to learn more about him. But not only that.
The voices he is hearing are thoughts of other people and they are draining him. Or rather, telepathy is draining him. He is not accustomed to it yet, so depending on how long he will stay there he may collapse, either in school, or on the street, or be able to reach home. Depending on this he may be seen by Besputha (female character I mentioned) before actual encounter or not, and it will affect where next “episode” will start and how it will start. Further down the line he may even get a call from his uncle, giving a chance to get another look on his environment. Furthermore, since telepathy is a 2-sided thing, there can be a chance, that he will, for example, “suggest” someone he does not like to do something… Traumatic. This should affect Dmitry’s (or other character’s in other cases) “sanity meter”.
I estimate, that this free-roam in school and the road to his apartment should have around an hour of content, but have a time limit (for his collapse) of roughly 20 minutes or even less. It may be longer, but general proportion between whole content and portion available in 1 playthrough should be around the same.
Example 2
Early in 2nd book Dmitry is riding a metro train. If during example above he did not stay at school, where he could subconsciously focus his telepathy, now he still does not have much control over it, so he can accidentally hear how some guy is planning to kidnap a girl riding the same train. He can choose not to get involved. Or to get involved in one of 2 ways: warn the girl or follow them. If he is warning the girl, she does not believe him, and then again, he can choose to follow them.
If he chooses to follow them, they end up in an alley, where he can choose to just watch (will decrease sanity slightly), stop the guy or help him. Helping him will increase Dmitry’s “bloodlust” and after, essentially, raping the girl (which he does not consider as such, since he still thinks this is a dream), he gets another choice: kill them both, kill one of them, leave. Each choice affects sanity and bloodlust in different measure. The choice can be done in a QTE-like event, when there is a small scene with button prompts suggesting general “interactions” (no notes about what kind of). You can press them or not.
Now if he chooses to stop the guy, though, he will have a QTE where depending on buttons selected (should not be obvious, too) he may knock the guy out (no change to bloodlust), cripple him (slight increase of bloodlust), kill him (significant increase in bloodlust). In either case, after that he still gets a choice: leave or interact with the girl. Depending on sanity and bloodlust meters he may just ask her, if she is ok or… Kill her.
Back to the metro, though: even if telepathy is under control now, you can still interact with the guy. He should be annoying Dmitry somehow (maybe even just by his looks). There should be a prompt, with no description. If interacted – Dmitry rips his throat out (lower sanity, increase bloodlust). Depending on current parameters of both, Dmitry may go on rampage and kill the whole train (as in Being Human) and then flee the city and eventually “teleport” to next planned destination.
If non-interference is selected – he will just ride the train and enlist in the army (because he is bored). Where there will be another episode, in which he teleports to next destination.
The above allows to push Dmitry closer to or even over the edge, and depending on whether we do this or not – different portions of content are open. Like what we had in Witcher 2, where choice of a side changed half the game. And such moments are the basis of the game I am proposing.
Above choices may seem a bit excessive, perhaps, and unbecoming of the “protagonist”, but that is the point. People with psychological issues are viewed as “bad” people at times, because of their seeming excessiveness, because of their outbursts and violence, disregarding, that these people can be living in a “different world”, and see things differently and it’s not that easy to change them by just yelling at them “Snap out of it!”. Dmitry will eventually come to realization, that what he was living through was not a dream and that will not only help to ground him, but also break him even more, just in a different way. I expect, that in that moment, the disgust accumulated by the player will also start to shatter and will turn into understanding as Dmitry’s character will progress.
Example 3
In the 3rd book (or 4th, still not 100% sure about this) Dmitry (and Besputha) will get involved in a long-going war in a world akin to Tolkien’s LOTR in sense of aesthetics. I mean swords, magic, beautiful scenery and vicious Shadows fighting against humans. While Besputha will be on a separate quest, Dmitry (deemed a savior by his own mistake) will be tasked to lead an army of humans against these Shadows.
When that is asked of him, he will have to choose whether to accept armor and sword. They come in pair, but if desired, he can choose a different weapon: he can ask for a shield as well, for a second sword, for a spear, axe, club, flail, crossbow or longbow. Armor is mainly for aesthetics, but weapons are not, but more on that later.
Before he has ability to accept armor and weapons, he will get a choice, whether to command from afar or delegate this to someone else and go to frontlines. Depending on this choice next episode(s) will be either an RTS-like game or a DMC-like game. That is a slasher (hence the weapons). Armor and weapon are suggested for the second choice.
RTS should not be too deep here, since it’s expected that in this case there will be a period for preparation structures building, forces placement) and then just one huge battle. This mode should not affect his sanity or bloodlust much if at all. The slasher mode though – should.
If slasher is selected, he will be participating in the actual fight with selected weapon (or lack of it). In any case, the more he will be killing, the more blood he will be consuming (read the chapters, they mention this already, partially explaining), the lesser his sanity and larger his bloodlust will be. As the fight progresses, and sanity and bloodlust change the less responsive he should become to player’s commands until (if such a point is reached) he loses control whatsoever going on a rampage. How fast this happens should depend on the weapon selected and on number of multikills (or style in terms of DMC). Fighting system itself should be like Hellblade, but with dependency on movement buttons and number of opponents closest to Dmitry.
Depending on choices and whether Dmitry goes on rampage or not, the way he leaves this world and how he recovers afterwards will change.
So overall this is expected to be like a TellTale game with episodes of different genre, depending on situation we are depicting, where appropriate. Choices of words and (non)actions are accumulated throughout and affect not only the external world but also characters’ stability. Yes, there will be character swaps, where required, meaning you will be controlling different characters, not just Dmitry. Camera should be 1st person one, unless there is a sense in making it 3rd person one (like action scenes, dreams). Or at least it should be as one used in Hellblade, if that will make development a bit easier.
Aesthetics (and programming)
I’d prefer the game to look as realistic as possible, so UE4 seems the best choice. Crytek can provide even better picture, but it seems too expensive in terms of resources in this case, especially since gameplay can change at points. Although this is up to discussion. Point is, it should look real and gritty. Even if something unreal is happening on the screen (like Spawn was or older Berserk anime). The closest in terms of overall mood are Netflix TV series about Marvel characters.
Important thing is lighting and coloring. It should represent current mood of the character we are playing. I’ve noticed, that when I have a manic episode, everything seems a bit brighter even if it’s a cloudy day. Like more contrast. And vice versa, when I am in depression everything seems grayed out.
Every playable character should have a set of “gauges” like mentioned sanity and bloodlust. Most likely these two will be universal ones, while 1 or 2 additional specific to a character may be present (for example, there will be a mage, who will have “mana”). They will change depending on actions and/or choices and will affect available options, where that makes sense.
I expect, that for choices there a large table listing potential action and whether it was done and how it was done (like an actual choice). Furthermore, all of them need to get synced to our side (cloud) and not just for storage, but for analysis as well (more on that later). It may be a good feature to create automatic “save points” near certain choices (can be used for easier replay-ability). Especially since a few choices could end up as “Game Over”.
My aim is for the game to be released to PC as mandatory and consoles as optional (if deemed economically valid). Most likely, release on PC first and then on consoles. Mobile gaming is a possibility, since game mechanics in majority of the game are relatively simple, but that would most likely require reducing quality of the image and implementing support not only for keyboard+mouse and gamepad, but for touch-screen as well. This too should be done only if deemed economically valid.
Monetization
If you are reading this section, I do hope that you read all the above and do think that this idea has potential if refined, but even if not, you should be wondering, what’s in it for you. That is how profitable it can be and how it should be sold even.
Now, I mentioned “books”, so this should be obvious: an episodic game. But not one with 2-3 hours in each episode, that’s why I’d call them “books”. And it’s episodic not just for the heck of it. Firstly, I do understand, that recreating all I have in mind is a lengthy and a risky endeavor, so episodic way of releasing will allow to minimize the risks and splitting the whole long process into smaller chunks. Secondly, time between episodes can be used to analyze what people choose (and comment) and adjust further episodes accordingly, if required, so that amount of content depending on choices could be more balanced, depending on choices generally selected. Or so that some outcomes can be “forced” for the story sake.
I expect, that each episode will take 8 to 10 hours depending on playstyle (free-roaming elements may prolong gameplay), thus each episode should be from $20 to $30 (correct value to be estimated in future) with whole package (like season pass) from $210 to $320 respectively (roughly 20% off).
But there is more. Above I did mention (as examples) RTS and slasher gameplay episodes. They can be extended into separate “game modes” and sold as separate DLCs ($10 each?). Some gameplay episodes can also be extended through the same approach for those who want to explore the world where they happened through the eyes of other (minor) characters. Depending on amount of content they can be anywhere from $5 to $10, I guess.
Based on game’s choices concept and its multiverse set of “What ifs” media can be published as well: comics, mini-games (including mobile), DLCs for original game. Potential is huge.