I don't want to be the guy who disagrees with things and offers nothing. So I did more research on voodoo to get some ideas for story. There is old school and new school voodoo, originating in african culture, more popularly hatian and then there's Louisiana voodoo. We can do one or the other or mix, or make a whole new thing. So here are basic story line concepts, using a variation of that kind of information. It is somewhat difficult to make a story where voodoo is the protagonists ability just because voodoo is typically evil. Most always actually.
#1:
African voodoo. Main character, young girl with little mascot character: zombie bushbaby (also known as a Galago). Young practitioner who uses the necromanced bushbaby as a voodoo doll. She's a prodigy, daughter of the voodoo queen of the old african tribe. The tribe is outstretched and has several other members in small villages. For her training she is to travel to these villages, learn the methods and abilities from these outstretched teachers, and take her crown as voodoo queen. However, an opposing tribe, come in and murders everyone in the protagonists village. She survives, and attempts to find her way to the other villages, garner her training from the surviving voodoo teachers, and decimate the opposing tribe. She must face wild animals, violent strangers, and being chased down by the opposing tribe, all along the way garnering a better grasp of her power.
2#
Louiiiiisianna. FAST. Ok im done. Anyways, so a little more modern, Louisiana, which we can have any time between 1830's to modern.Girl/woman wants to resurrect her brother, who died after both were attacked on the street by a gang of (depending on the time, we can be creative, white supremacists, whatever). So she tries to do it herself, ends up fucking up, and releases a whole to the spirit world, which begins to infiltrate the world. A spirit tries to posses her, but something in her, some spiritual strength, overcomes it, and instead imbues her with some magic. She wants to stop it, she goes to the church. (saints had often been associated with voodoo in history, or at least thought in similar terms power wise). So she goes, receives instructions of the church, uses both those teachings and black magic to try to stop the flow of demons. Basic structure, probably will meet others, probably will face a hierarchy of demons.
3#
So, depending on how evil we want to be, we can fight the catholic church (or whatever religion you want). The concept is definitely not unheard of, like Assassin's Creed. If we play off more as voodoo as close to nature, wanting to heal, and more of the church wanting to eradicate without mercy voodoo in all it's terms. Definitely a very big power, vs small power set up. Think on terms of Legacy of Kain, playing sort of like evil against REAL evil. Story board on this one is far looser, can't think of a good original dropping point for us to fight the church, besides having the protagonist being a survivor from a church raid, which is pretty unoriginal.
4#
If we want to, we can be evil, really or we can do the free choice thing if you guys are set on those (personally Heavy Rain was my favorite game of that year, Beyond 2 Souls does have a lot less freedom when it comes to significant story change). So here we go, time connection, we have the present uprising of voodoo culture, on the verge of allowing the great god of voodoo into the world. A rag tag team on voodoers who see the horrors of what can come from this, offer the protagonist a chance to go back, like way back into the past, where the antagonist, an immortal, has been working toward this goal for a hundred years. Go back, spoil his plans undercover, save the future. Or not, or you can find ways to betray these good people, and allow the god to enter and destroy the world.
That's all I got. Very loose, but all voodoo themed at least.
I don't know. I think there are problems with voodoo, especially if (like was previously said) we want to get all Skyrim with this. From what I can tell, y'all want to enter an action/adventure, adventure, maybe rpg, kind of way with this. I mean voodoo has limitations. Powers are very passive, not like shooting fireballs, or telekinesis or whatever. Having few valid enemies (besides other voodoers and normal humans) there are really not too many. Voodoo is often depicted evilly, so having the protagonist have those powers, we make them either evil, or it ends up like a Devil May Cry or Bayonnette to that degree.
Any feedback is great. Thanks
John
Thank you for investing into some research! These are some good ideas to start with.
ReplyDeleteOne thing we talked about in the meeting (which I forgot to mention in the blog post, I'm terribly sorry) is maybe the magic used by certain characters could have different religious themes, and that's where we could bring the voodoo in. So the whole religion thing moves more to an unspoken aspect. I personally really liked the idea, and it sparked some artistic inspiration in me.
Another thing, yeah Voodoo is depicted evilly a lot, but I think any type of supernatural magic can be evil, depending on who's using it. If we continue with a straightforward Voodoo theme, I think it could be done in a neutral light instead of "this person is using evil magic to do good".
I think #2 and 4 are both potentially interesting ideas. Most ideas have been done before, but if we can do something a little different to them then it will be refreshing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we don't have to call this stuff voodoo: we can always just loosely base the look and feel of it off of voodoo and then add whatever else we want to it. Like for visuals it could just have a voodoo look but not call it voodoo or even have it be voodoo.