We thought you loved us.
But we persevered.
Steve walked us through his writing process and talked more about his Voodoo idea. He mentioned we needed a central event to kick off the story, like "I, Robot" or other dystopian movies. He talked more about how to tie in the Voodoo idea.
We all discussed what of Voodoo we would want to use, and talked about making our own Voodoo and bringing in elements from Wiccan as well (apparently, Wiccans and Pagans are the same; the more you know!). We talked a bit about Satanism because fuck white conservative suburban moms who would never buy this game. Our thoughts then moved on from Voodoo to all religions. Each "magic" user in each world has powers derived from that religious theme, and their powers grow by studying their religion.
We suggested the big central event as maybe being a tear in time and space, allowing alternate reality travel and ALTERNATE ENDIIIIIINGS. Gaming staple, y'all. Maybe Deja Vu could be the character experiencing things in different alternate worlds. The main character (X) is a dabbler in magic and X finds this technology that allows X to travel between alternate realities. This action causes all of X's alternate reality clones to be able to travel between alternate realities as well. Each of these alternate realities has a different religious theme, and one of X's clones wants the religion from their world to reign over all the worlds, providing a conflict and an antagonist to X.
Next we briefly discussed whether this was going to be a one-character show, or have a party. We liked the idea of more than one character who are, knowing or unknowing, working together towards one goal.
Madison propositioned a game considering multiple people's lives. The player is an entity who can travel from anybody in the game and play through their story. The stories could be mundane or fantastical. The player could even be an animal for a day. Of course with a bigger, over-arching storyline. We thought it could be interesting if inserted into the idea we talked about before. Universal Consciousness.
The gamer could be a good entity or a bad entity. This could affect the storylines of the people. The entity can fully control certain characters to advance the storyline. We questioned whether the characters would be conscious of being controlled, and if they would welcome it or not. Later on, the characters that were controlled could meet up and start to piece things together, and realize this entity that controlled them is using them for its own purposes, either good or bad.
Games/Movies We Referenced:
Final Fantasy X (game)
Kingdom Hearts (game)
Click (movie)
Final Fantasy X (game)
Kingdom Hearts (game)
Click (movie)
Sliders (1993 TV show)
Portal Runner (game)
Beyond Two Souls (game)
This isn't set in stone, but the four of us would like to go in this direction.
Please comment your thoughts, and maybe we can all meet up in two weeks' time.
Bitches.
Sorry I wasn't at the meeting guys. Job + work + unpaid internship + school + writing stories for fiction workshop + breathing = time constraints. It sounds like you guys are very invested in the idea. What I was really hoping for was actual plot synopsis. I mean mechanics are important but it almost seems like this is far too large. I mean we have space time rifts a la Bioshock infinite, we have alternate world characters of the protagonist to control like spiderman shattered dimensions, or assasins creed, of which will also be the antagonist (?) Like infamous 1. (Which is kinda weird to be able to play as your own antagonist?) Then theres apparent "technology" that the protagonist uses WITH magic to enable time travel, which splits the theme to magic and future tech. Then we are splitting the sympathy with having other featured characters discovering of us, the entity, controlling them, which makes me think are we playing for the characters or for ourselves, cause if I wanted to fuck with people I'd play sims. But hey, I wasn't at the meeting, so my ability to sway opinion is probably minimal. This is just my opinion. Maybe if I was there I would understand it better. But with at least this description, it sounds sort of popcorny, wanting to be everything, and a bit cluttered. Sorry if that's harsh. I really don't mean to be. If we can just start off with a clean story structure, I'd be happy. Right now its cool concepts.
ReplyDeleteI get what you are saying about the idea maybe having too much in it, or that it's trying to do everything at once. I would also like to get a good clean story but that requires more participation from everyone in the group. We wanted to get some basic ideas out, and then build a story off of those. So, if anyone can start making a story/plot maybe based off of what we discussed in that meeting, or even anything new, it is of course welcomed.
DeleteThis is why we have many writers with ideas and opinions to help keep our vision in check. Looking back, yeah we have more elements than we need.
DeleteI think we should attempt another real-life meet up soon with more people. It's hard to work with only 4 out of 15.
Yeah, really sorry I didn't make it to the meeting as well. Fall break was very unenjoyable due to work and studying for two large back to back exams that I took when classes resumed on Wednesday. I do agree with what you said though John. Even though I wasn't at the meeting I personally feel that while these ideas are still in the conceptual stage, we do not need to start off too complex. Start out with a simple concept/character/ability and expand on that. Things should fall into place easier later on down the road if done correctly. Right now it seems like the path branches out too early. I really like the alternate reality/time rift idea, but that could go south quick if the complexity gets out of hand. I also think that a character does not need to possess a multitude of abilities to be considered interesting or badass. I really wanted to go to the meeting, but I had to put a lot of effort to push myself to study once I got off work (and boy am I glad I did). Sounds like you 4 came up a lot of interesting ideas though and I like that!
DeleteJust for the record, we are now going to wait 2 weeks for responses of times people can be available for a meeting. We posted one asking when people were free, but no one commented by the 5th day so we just went ahead and scheduled it. So we tried to give you all time to tell us when you were free or not, but we obviously didn't give enough time. I'm really sorry. :(
ReplyDelete