I have two things I’d like to say here. First, I don’t know why I said I’d have an update on Monday. Monday’s are horrible days for me at work. Because of what I do, Monday’s tend to be the day where I have the most to do, simply because I’m basically filing everything from the week previous. So yeah, thinking I’d have time to do much of anything was simply a pipe-dream. Second, Tuesday was a holiday, and there was no way in hell I was going to do anything – at all – when I could play Red Alert 3 all day.
That said I found all of my source documents. Which makes the rest of this update quite simple: I’m just going to copy and paste 4 pages of pre-written material. How’s that for simple. So without further ado, I give you the prologue of my “novel.”
Utopian Dreams – Book 1 – Prologue – Where Once There Was Hope…
© 2003 Brett Pedersen
Panting she felt the energy of the spell coursing through her. Thin tendrils of light flowed from her outstretched fingers into an ever-growing sliver of white light. It wouldn’t be much longer, the worst, she knew, was already over. Just a few more inches, there, it was finished. Clenching both her hands into fists she felt the final wisps of power leaving her, and then felt the counter flow of the finished spell lancing out to form a circular portal large enough to pass through, if only just barely.
Breathing a sigh of relief she turned around to face the crowd of people behind her. She was standing in the middle of a small valley nestled between two hills. The hills themselves weren’t very large, but the valley that lay between was large enough to hold a few hundred people. It had been chosen partially because of its size, but also because of its ease of defensibility. A single path snaked up one of the hills and down its other side. To either side of the paths were littered anything from rocks the size of pony to thorny Boka bushes with thorns as long as a finger. Someone could walk down the hill between the stones and bushes, but doing so would allow the watchers below ample time to deal with them. No, the path was the only real way down into the valley, and unfortunately this acted as a double edged sword. Both attacker and fleers would find it difficult to enter or leave the valley, but it was a risk they were all willing to take.
So they had fled, gathering what few remained from all corners of the world. Many had been in the valley for months before the last would arrive, but they were all there now, most down in the valley, but a few were still standing in wait on the path, waiting for those nearest the portal to enter. Everything had gone according to plan until that morning. Skywatchers had brought warning of the Templar forces coming in fleets of crimson to their tiny island. Somehow their forces had learned of their attempt to flee. No one was able to figure out how though. Most believed that the Templar’s network of spies had been disrupted after The Breaking six months ago, but either the Templars had several contingency plans, or they were better organized and informed than anyone thought. They had been forced to accelerate their plans for leaving. Everyone had hoped they would have more time to prepare, more time to leave. In fact many people were now still hurriedly repacking everything, having not been prepared for such a rapid flight. But none of that mattered now, all that mattered was everyone passing through the portal before the Templar forces broke through their defensive wards.
Breaking from her reverie she looked around at her companions. Worry was plain on all their faces, but there was something else there too: resolve. All of them knew what was expected; they had all agreed to this and were going to follow the path now before them to its final destination – whatever that may be.
“My friends,” she spoke breaking the tense silence that had befallen them once the portal had opened. “We must go through the portal. Even now I can feel the Templars trying to break through our defenses and I do not know how much longer they will hold.”
Pausing, she took a deep breath to steady herself. She was still weak from the casting, it would do no good to collapse now in front of everyone, and they needed her strength. “I’m afraid that we won’t be able to take everything with us, there isn’t enough time now. Take only what you have packed, leave the rest.”
A murmur of disapproval rose up from the gathered crowd. She had been afraid this would happen. There were still people who thought they would be able to pick up their lives right where they left them. People didn’t believe, or more likely, chose not to believe what their flight entailed. The young in particular seemed the most vocal about her announcement. As often happened to those still young, they had grown attached to their belongings, and were loathe leaving them behind. But this sentiment was also shared by the old, many of them had lost family and kin during the many wars and battles, and their mementos were all they had left. Sadly none of this could be helped; there was just no more time.
“Most of the things that you will leave behind can be found on the other side. We will be going someplace that is yet unspoiled. The land will offer all that we need; there is no need to fear.” That seemed to console the crowd, at least enough for them to cease their complaints and do as she said.
The crowd began to slowly make its way towards the portal. The first ones to approached seemed weary at first, pausing to take a deep breath before stepping through, but once they had made it through, those that followed did through more willingly. Suddenly a massive explosion shook the earth, causing a few of the elderly and young to fall to the ground, unable to hold themselves upright. She was afraid of this, though it had happened sooner than she had thought. Apparently the Templars had brought more forces than the Skywatchers thought. This was no good, not now, only a few people had gone through the portal, and there were still people on the path leading up the hill. Casting about for what to do, she came to the only decision that remained to her. Turning around, she stepped away from the portal, and began making her way away from the crowd.
“Ca’rinn!” a voice called to her as she left the edge of the crowd.
Turning, she looked behind her, to see her young apprentice pushing his way towards her through the crowd, jostled from side to side as the crowd thronged around him trying to reach the portal in time. Inaudibly she groaned; she didn’t have time for this. Dougan wasn’t the strongest of students, but he had potential, and what he lack in ability he made up in youthful exuberance, but youthful exuberance was not what she needed right now. Stopping where she was, she waited for Dougan to catch up with her.
“What is it Dougan?” she inquired once he had reached her.
“Where are you going?” Dougan inquired curiosity and unease on his face.
“I’m going to stop the Templars, Dougan; they’ve broken through our defenses,” she said.
“But…how will you make it through the portal in time?” asked Dougan.
“I don’t know Dougan.” Ca’rinn said.
A gamut of emotions flashed across Dougan’s face before he could calm himself, “but Ca’rinn, we need you.” He seemed to be wrestling with something inside him as he paused before continuing. “I need you; I still haven’t completed my training.”
Ca’rinn’s hardened face softened slightly at this admission, she knew the real reason that Dougan wanted her there, though she would never tell him she knew. “Dougan, you know I must, I’m the only one who can hold the Templars off long enough for everyone to make it through. What happens to me doesn’t matter so long as most of us survive.”
Dougan appeared to still be struggling with his inner demons as he did not respond to her immediately. Visibly shaking from who knew what, he seemed to be willing himself to not lash out at her. This would always be his problem Ca’rinn thought to herself. He always had trouble controlling his temper. He had massive potential, but until he could control himself emotionally, he would never reach his full potential. She probed his eyes, trying to read him. Sadly Dougan still carried his emotions on his sleeve and Ca’rinn knew his response probably before he did. Sighing to herself, she patiently awaited his response.
“Ca’rinn,” Dougan said, his voice shaking with anger, rage, sadness or all of the above, “you do matter to us, we need you, how will we make it on our own in this new world without you there to help us?”
“You will survive,” Ca’rinn replied plainly, her voice devoid of emotions. “You have lasted this long without me; I know you will make it even I don’t survive.” Her eyes flashed at this last remark. They had gone steely grey, she had no time for this, and Dougan must learn to stand on his own two feet.
“But Ca’rinn…” he trailed off, seeing the look in her eyes. Sighing he resigned himself to his fate. He knew better than to argue with her once she was like this. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few I suppose,” he finished wistfully.
“Make sure everyone gets through the portal,” Ca’rinn said, suddenly all business again. “Once they have all gotten through, wait for me at the entrance to the portal. I will send you a message, you will obey it. No, you will obey it,” she repeated seeing him about to interrupt. “I do not need the thought of you trying to be noble to get in the way of what I must do.”
Staring back hotly at her, Dougan seemed once again on the verge of saying something, but she did not back down, she took his gaze unflinchingly. He opened his mouth, but being unable to think of anything to say, he shut it again, and then averted his eyes. “It shall be as you say Ca’rinn,” and then he turned and began walking back to the throng that was passing through the portal.
Ca’rinn watched him as he made his way back. He shoulders were hunched, and he had the look of a defeated man about him. He will survive, Ca’rinn reassured herself – they all would. Once again she turned towards where the sounds of explosions were still lingering beyond the hill. Focusing, she felt the magic flow from the ground into her body. She concentrated on a point beyond the hill only for a moment, before she cast the spell to teleport herself to where she would make her last stand.
“Goodbye, Dougan,” she whispered, and then she was gone.
~*~
She felt the magic teleport her from the valley and over the hill to where a small dilapidated temple stood marking the beginning of the small trail that would eventually lead into the valley where she had just come. This temple was their last line of defense. She personally had placed the defensive wards around its entrance, and already could feel the Templars trying to break free. She knew that her shield wouldn’t stay in place for much longer, but it would be enough for her to erect once last shield behind her, just in case…
She tried not to think of that, any thought of failure would just cloud her judgment, what she needed now was to find her center, and focus on the job at hand. Once again she opened herself to the magic and felt it flowing through her. It felt almost like a lover’s embrace, almost as if the earth beneath her knew what she was about to ask and was trying to comfort her in her last moments. Focusing her thoughts she willed the magic inside her into a wall, one that would block out anything that was cast against one. She felt the magic taking shape inside her, felt it flowing out of her – moving to where she willed it. She was part of the magic; she cast herself across the path and around the bass of the hill, guarding her friends from the people who wished to harm them. Feeling the wall take hold, she withdrew herself from the casting, allowing it to settle into place and stand on its own. She felt the subtle pop of the magic as it released her and snapped into place. It had taken but a few seconds, but to Ca’rinn it felt like an eternity. They would make it on their own she reassured herself once again.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Random Mutterings Part 4
So, I’ve touched on story, and touched on characters. I’m not really sure what’s left to really talk about. I honestly think I’m just postponing the inevitable here simply because I’m getting cold feet again. As a general rule, my self-confidence in my own abilities varies depending on how well I think I’m going. This, I suppose, is common for everybody.
Anyway, I think the only thing really left to touch upon is art work. I’ll preface this by saying that I have no artistic talent whatsoever. Well, at least not in terms of pretty graphics and drawings. I worked for about a year and a half as a web developer, but the majority of my time was spent editing the works of somebody else, or making buttons. I’m really good at buttons…because the graphics program we used (Macromedia Adobe Fireworks) had built in button templates. I developed a single template on my own that I used for a while on my own personal web page that looked surprisingly decent, but that was probably the extent of my skills. I just don’t have the eye for it.
So, obviously, since art work is such an important part of a game, we were going to have to find somebody to help do it for us. I was fortunate enough to have a good friend who was quite capable of drawing in the style we were looking for. While she’ll never agree to it, I felt she was quite talented. But this gave us the opportunity to put pictures to the people we were creating.
As I’ve said previously I believe that graphics can help drive a story because you suddenly know what you’re really looking at, and that in turn can help you better develop it. It’s amazingly freeing to suddenly know what your character looks like, because then you can better interact with them. When you know who they are, you really write better for them. While everybody may have a mental image in their mind about what a character they’re creating looks like, that image will always change. It’s an enjoyable feeling to have your character out there on paper. Your own imagination will be less likely to run away form you when you have a more physical manifestation staring you back in the face.
So with an artist in place, we set to work on creating our characters. And characters were all we really got around to completing. Again, much of the focus was on the characters from act 1 because they were the people I was actively working on. I’m sure real studios would have done it a lot different and worked on all of the characters. But, as we’ve covered already, what we were doing was hardly the same as a large development studio. We liked to do things our own way, whether that was the best choice or not.
There was some talk about development of landscape, monsters, weapons, and the like, but that never really happened. It’s amazing how a project that began as one thing can really morph into another. I think subconsciously this was becoming less and less of a “game project” for me, and more something else. Having spent most of my formative years reading fantasy and science fiction I was probably influenced in one way or another into becoming something of an author. It’s probably the dream of readers to write their own story, so I doubt I’m alone here. But, I don’t think that many people actually sit down and think of the logistics of the whole affair.
“Real” writers make it look easy because they already have the book out, but I expect they all go through the same thing as I am. Frustration, fear, mental blocks, whatever, it all just piles up, and for your first book, it’s probably even worse than later on. I expect that the real difference between and author and the next wannabe is that the author actually summoned up the courage to write the book and kept going even when it got hard. I suppose that’s what’s going to happen here. Either I actually get the story written down here and maybe go somewhere with it, or this blog just fade into oblivion like every other blog project I’ve started.
Anyway, as I don’t believe in doing anything even remotely like work over the weekend I doubt there will be another update here until Monday. Perhaps in the time between now and then I’ll dig up my source material and try to post the introduction I already wrote a few years back, and then perhaps I’ll get to write the rest of the story. Time will tell; I’ve got a lot written down, I’m hoping it will be a fairly simple thing to update what’s already there into a more…useful format.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Random Mutterings Part 3
As a bit of a side hobby, I’ve enjoyed teaching myself how to program in various computer languages. I hardly call myself an expert by any measure, nor is my portfolio particularly large. I’ve focused primarily on ASP, ASP.NET, VB, VB.NET, and VBA. My knowledge of any said language varies at any given time, and as things currently stand right now, I can only competently speak VBA because it’s what I use all the time at work as I tinker around in Access.
However, back when I was working extremely hard on this little RPG project, I was well versed in ASP. I was working as a web developer and was using it to maintain an internal departmental website; but, prior to that, I had put my knowledge to building a webpage specifically for our game. It featured things such as character databases, quest databases, image repositories, and god knows what else (I’ve honestly forgotten everything I put in there). It let me access things remotely so that I could tinker around with my stuff when I probably should have been doing more productive things (like working). So it is with some consternation that I am unable to access large portions of my data simply because I’m too lazy to bother setting up a web server within my home network. With that in mind, you’ll have to bear with me as I try to remember things that I haven’t really touched in well over 6 years.
So with all this I’m going to touch a bit on our character development. I’m hazarding a guess here, because I really can’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe we had around 16 different characters. We introduced 3 within the first chapter, and then two more in each subsequent chapter to bring the total introduced up to 10 (11 maybe?). It would be with this initial group that people would begin their quest. There would be a maximum of 5 people available within a “group” at any given time. The remaining 6 (or more?) would be introduced after certain conditions had been met. We figured that each chapter would take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to complete, so we figured that after about 10 hours all of the party members would have been introduced.
We fully expected this game to be many, many hours long. Potentially it could even become multiple games, so we weren’t specifically concerned with the amount of time it took to meet everybody. The whole idea of chapters and acts was something that really appealed to the both of us, and while the game was divided into chapters, there was also a larger, more reaching, story that would have been divided up into separate acts. Act 1 was essentially the introduction of the first 10 characters. I suppose this could have become its own game because the way I constructed it, there was a beginning, middle, and end to the act. Act 1 was also the only part of the game I really only ever finished. I have some 400 pages of word documents floating around on my hard drive with this act – 400 pages that will become much larger if I go back and insert/rewrite dialogue for the parts that don’t have it.
As I stated before, magic was essentially gone from the world. Not that people were incapable of using magic, just that nobody remained who knew how. The main character was the first, in many hundred years, to appear who had access to magical spells. Consequently, the thought of how we were supposed to keep people alive during combat was somewhat high on our list of things. The majority of healing was going to be done via a “medicine” system. Things like bandages, potions, tonics, and the like would have been primarily used until sometime in Act 2 or 3 (depending on what actually became of Act 2, again, I never got around to developing it). At that point, all of the characters in the party would have had access to magic. This would allow for the use of the stereotypical “white mage” to help augment the medicine system.
It was with this challenge that we had to figure out a magic system that made sure each character continued to remain unique. Now, I am of two minds when it comes to characters in RPGs. First, I believe it is absolutely necessary for a story to be character driven and the majority of focus should be spent making each character come to life and allow people to become attached to them. Pursuant to this, however, brings up my second thought. Far too often characters are made extremely generic in terms of how they fight. It becomes extremely easy to just throw whomever you want into a party and not have it make a difference. This is something I wanted to avoid. I wanted people to specifically pick people in their party because of who they were – in terms of characterization – and how they fought. We didn’t want to set up a situation where you could bring either character A or B because they both did the same thing. At the same time, we didn’t want to punish people who chose to bring in certain characters and later decided to change. Thus, combat experience would have been divided among the entire party – even those who weren’t in the active combat group. I don’t believe we ever decided if it was going to be 100% or if it would be some other percentage, but one thing I always hated in RPGs was suddenly having to go back and spend several hours in lower level zones leveling up somebody because I decided I wanted them in my group or was forced to because of something that happened in the story. Moreover, we didn’t want to become gimmicky where we would force the player to pick certain characters. We didn’t want to make it so they had to have characters A, B, E, F, and I and ONLY A, B, E, F and I in order to make it past a certain encounter. Far too often, in a game, you’ll find a zone where every monster is vulnerable to, say, fire magic and you happen to have a character that uses ice magic. The game has just forced you to stop using a certain character, which I feel is unforgivable in terms of game design.
I think a large part, really, of what motivated us to do this was a horrible trend we began observing at the time. In order to give you a good perspective, the big genre names at the time were Final Fantasy 7 and 8. I will not lie; I am not a big fan of these games, 8 least of all. I felt the choice in game play made the characters far too generic. Suddenly everybody could wear each others clothes, cast the same spells, and that connection – which I feel is necessary – in combat was no longer there. Xenogears had come out shortly before all this started and that game holds a large place in my gamer heart. To this day, I still compare games to it. The graphics weren’t very amazing – realize here the game came out concurrently with FF8 and look at what they did with that. But the story, the characters, everything…was just amazing. I remember writing an ‘about us’ section for our “company’s” website and putting down Xenogears and Chrono Trigger as my two biggest source of inspiration and favorite games. So with that in mind you can probably understand why I felt like I did regarding 7 and 8. I know everybody views these games – 7 in particular – as somehow being watershed moments for the RPG genre in that it somehow made it more mainstream, but I think that was more because they were in the right place at the right time. I cannot give so much credit to games that, in my opinion, were less than previous outings in the same series. But I realize I’m in the minority here.
So with all of this in mind we set about to creating unique characters with unique fighting styles and unique magic abilities. It was a monumental undertaking looking back. As this project developed, I began to understand more and more how much of a huge undertaking it was. And I think that’s part of the reason why it never went anywhere. You just can’t expect to get very far very fast with only 2 people really working on the project (well, 1 person really, as I’ve explained).
Anyway, eventually what would happen was that the remaining 6 (or so) would have their own act devoted to them as well – or at least a large portion of one. There story is unrelated to the original 10, but only at first, and with all stories theirs too, must start with a beginning. Eventually certain circumstances would draw these two groups together. These circumstances were largely as a result of the end of act 1. What would probably happen, were I to start writing again, was that act 2 would be devoted to these remaining characters, and act 3 would cover these two groups meeting up. I can probably imagine this being a 5 act type of a thing. I’m of the opinion that there is such a thing as “too long” and for some reason, “5” has always struck me as a nice number of “things” to be together.
What will probably be the hardest part for me during all of this will be to come up with acts 2-5 (or whatever) because act 1 is all fairly clear to me simply because it has already been written, I think I just felt too overwhelmed to make it beyond the first act. By that point, it was just me doing everything, and my desire to keep it a game probably washed over me. Maybe it will work better as a novel.
I guess we’ll see where this all goes.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Random Mutterings Part 2
In a bit of a continuing history lesson I feel I must continue somewhere with that random spattering of coherent thought that I started yesterday.
For a good while my friend and I put in a fair chunk of work on the project. Apparently I had all the talent for writing between the two of us (I highly doubt that's evident from this work, but, as usual, I digress) and consequently began work on the bulk of what would be the game proper.
Initially speaking the project had no dialogue, it was written more as a sort of narration than an actual "story" [in the strictest sense of the word]. We described what the player would see, where the player would go, and what the player was expected to do in terms of interaction with the environment and in any given scenario. To an extent this worked, I suppose. It gave a rough sense of a game and freed us from trying to sound impressive vis-à-vis dialogue, but at the same time it was also quite limiting because it was harder to get to know the characters simply because they weren't talking.
We had an extremely large cast of characters for the game. I believe that inspiration came from Final Fantasy VI (3 for you silly people who didn't bother paying attention to the series) because that game has a MASSIVE cast of characters, but at any given time you only played a handful of them in your party. Developing that many characters in such a way that each felt unique was a task unto itself and one I'll probably tackle another day. We're talking story here people!
So with such a large cast of characters we had to develop the initial outline of how we were going to introduce them. This was where we went back to the whole chapter system that I touched upon yesterday. We found a good way of dividing up each of the characters into each of the chapters, and I think we had 6 or 7 distinct chapters where we introduced at least 2 characters per chapter. At some point I'm sure I'll go back and begin revisiting all this because I want to eventually put more of the story here. If nothing else I want the story to get told in some form.
We had already designed our world map by the time we go around to introducing more than the initial 3 characters. The map was both the product and the reason for our storyline. In a sense we built the map based on what we had written as well as written what the map shaped the world to be. It's extremely useful to have a visual picture of where your characters came from and where they are all going. It allows you to look ahead and see where you want people to meet up with each other. I can honestly see now why every fantasy author I read always has a map of their world at the beginning. You think it's just there as something cool and to be a perk for the reader, but I personally believe the author did it for themselves just so they'd know where the hell everybody is at any given time.
The first chapter was the largest; we introduced 3 characters in it! The first, of course, was the main character. After wandering through the desert for a time, and being close to collapse, she would stumble upon a caravan of traders [and the like]. From there you would meet the second character who would join your party. Essentially she was the medic of the caravan and was the first person the main character would see upon opening her eyes after passing out in the desert. The caravan, you would later learn, was on its way to a nearby town with goods and supplies. Along the way you would meet the third person who would join the party: a rather eccentric individual who seemed to know a bit too much about technology for his own good. Together, the three of them would reach the town with the caravan only to find it burned to the ground and occupied by imperial soldiers on the look out for...something. That something you would later learn was the main character. Fleeing for her life, the main character would leave with the medic and scientist and escape, and thus the first chapter would end.
All of the chapters were similar to this, each person who joined would have one reason or another to leave their lives behind and go someplace else. Eventually all of these characters would meet up and realize they all shared a common foe. It's stereotypical, I know, but there are only so many contrived devices you can come up with to provide a reason as to why people would want to get together.
At some point two things happened. First, the project became largely my own. Up to a certain point the storyline had been largely a cooperative venture between my friend and me, but after we moved to different places the corroboration mostly ceased and I was left to do the majority of the work. The second thing that happened was that I realized that I needed to start including dialogue in all of this. I believe it was around the fourth chapter that I decided to start including dialogue. All of a sudden the page count of my word documents ballooned into a much larger beast and it began to feel like I was writing more of a novel than a video game.
I suppose, at some point, it became more of a novel to me than a video game. Being that I was largely on my own at this point, it was hard to keep motivated in terms of writing a complete game. Which is why, for obvious reasons, all progress came to a stop. I tried to resurrect it later on and started turning it kind of into a novel. I had the prologue written that covered the escape from this world into another and the death of the main character, but that was it. My hard drive is littered with failed starts of stories. It's a failing that, as I said last time, I find it difficult to finish what I start many times. Perhaps that's because I haven't really found something I truly enjoy, and maybe at some point I will, but for now, I'm hoping that this "project" will encourage me to go back and revisit things and perhaps expand upon it. For my own part, I've never really envisioned something this large before, and perhaps that's indicative of something important.
As I'm fond of saying it lately: time will tell.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Hells yes
While this blog really has little to do with politics, I feel this must be noted: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html
I might put my thoughts in to words later regarding this whole affair, but again, I'm not sure if that's something I want to put in this blog, we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.
Random mutterings
I've come to the conclusion that, generally speaking, I can never complete a project that I begin. While I have no delusions that this is a habit unique to me, it does lead to rather large amounts of frustration on my part.
Like most warm blooded humans I have dreams and aspirations that I would like to achieve, yet find increasingly fewer blocks of time in which to accomplish them. Things such as books to read, games to play, and shows to watch, whatever, it all tends to pile up. My interest tends to be rather free flowing at times, and what interests me at one moment will probably not interest me in the next, yet, being the slightly obsessive compulsive person that I am, I devout large amounts of time pursuing said interest, which of course takes time away from other leisurely activities I could be following.
Such is life.
I have grand dreams that this blog will at some point turn into a running novel. It's an idea that I've batted around for close to 10 years (the novel, not the blog, shit I still remember times when the word "blog" didn't even exist...does that make me old or something?).
First a bit of a history lesson is in order.
I met one of my best friends in my junior year of high school. Now, high school, to me, was one of my most trying periods of life. Generally speaking public education grades K-12 are a hellish experience [in my experience]. Too much emphasis is placed upon rote memorization instead of critical thought. Drones are churned out in alarmingly high numbers ready to become happy productive members of society through our public education system, and all of them know the exact same thing, because if they didn't, they couldn't pass all those standardized tests that are SO important to development *cough*. But I digress.
So, my high school experience was quite miserable. I was getting headaches of near migraine proportions probably 3 or 4 times a week (for those counting at home, that's 60%-75% of my high school experience) and had my poor parents trying desperately to find some new head ache medication for me practically weekly (I'm allergic to Tylenol, so that was out, and having downed ibuprofen in such large quantities my body had probably built up a tolerance level for it), so it was this feeling of dread that led me to school each and every day. As such, I tended to be extremely miserable all the time and didn't like to socialize with people. It was under such wonderful conditions that I met Scott. He too understood my hatred of both people and school and we formed a close bond because, well, we were smarter than everybody else (cuz we got it dammit! [Lordy I was a pretentious twit]).
Fast forward a couple years and we were spending most of our free time together - video games, movies, TV, whatever, we had many common interests - as well as time at work, because we were both working at the same call center (another hellish experience that I'll spare you). It was under these conditions that Utopian Dreams was born.
We were both avid gamers, and our genre of choice was RPG. Having played entries from the genre dating back to the NES days we both felt like we were experts on the subject (ha!) and were destined to make the next big game.
The initial idea of the game came from my friend. He had come up with a rough outline of the game as well as some game play ideas. He was somewhat inspired by Chrono Trigger (copyright Squaresoft...though I guess I should say Square Enix here, but whatever, it was Squaresoft!), in that there was the option of beating the game literally within about 30 minutes of loading the game proper. The initial idea was that the player would find themselves in a room with several doors immediately upon entering a new game. One door would lead them to the beginning of the story, another would let them exit completely, and yet another would lead them directly to the final boss. There would be no pretense given, people would just walk in and find themselves surrounded by several other party members, with no back-story given, and suddenly find themselves being given the final few lines of what was going to be a lengthy exposition (something along the lines of: "and now your time is up, let us finish this" or the like) and they would immediately start the fight.
It would be entirely possible to win this fight, that was the point, but you'd get a substandard ending, and you'd get one of those "The End?" messages at the end of the game credits and something prompting you to go back and see how the whole thing started, which would essentially be our way of encouraging them to go and play the story so they could find out just who those people were and why you were all doing what you were doing.
Upon entering the game proper, you'd essentially find yourself entering the shoes of the main character. Without getting into too much detail, the general idea was that "an indeterminate amount of time in the past" the world was full of magic. Great wielders of power flourished and prospered. But not everyone could use magic, and thus, concurrently, great technology evolved. As with all great powers, the desire for more will always eventually arise, and, of course, these 2 powers eventually went to war against each other. The course of the war went back and forth between the two sides for several years, and many great generals and leaders arose on both sides. One of these great leaders was to have been the main character.
At some point during all the fighting the tide would eventually turn against the magic users and the technology users would gain the upper hand. Eventually only one great city of magic would remain - their capital. Knowing that it was only a matter of time before they were wiped out completely, your character would come up with a plan that all considered their last chance for hope. She [the main character] would open a portal into another dimension, and all the surviving magic users would travel through it and live in peace, away from everybody else.
The portal was opened and the survivors began their exodus to their new homes. But all was not to go as planned. Having learned of their plans via spies, the technology empire descended upon the capital and began their final push. Forced to escalate their plans, people began fleeing, and the main character - being the most powerful wielder of magic volunteered to go to the back of the line to defend the last people passing through the portal and then come through herself. Using all of her powers she shielded and attacked until all had gone through. However, she had been drained of almost all her power and the enemy was closing in. Knowing that she could not save herself, and close the portal behind her, she made the ultimate sacrifice, and, with the last of her power, closed the portal before being overwhelmed.
Now, this is of course the back-story. The general idea was that the player would find themselves thrown into all of this in a large prologue. The player, however, would only see the final leg of the exodus. The city would be under siege and the magic wielders would all be fleeing while the main (and nameless) character would be coordinating the defensive. They would see her volunteer to stay behind and defend the portal, at which point the player would actually enter into the game play and start playing the part of this person. They would have access to many high level spells and summons and would fight off wave after wave of enemies. After a certain amount of time - or number of fights (whichever balanced out better) - the player would stop playing and go back to watching and view the final scene where the heroine gives up her life to seal the portal behind her.
Inspired by Final Fantasy (the first game, not the series) (again copyright Square Enix). The player would only now get to see the game title and opening credits. There would be some sweeping FMV against the backdrop of some mountains and the like and would eventually pass into a dry and barren desert. The camera would circle around for a while until eventually coming across a small patch of green seen from overhead or at a distance. The camera would pan in and we would see that there was a woman lying prone upon this patch of green. The focus of the camera would change and zoom out and we would see that it lay at the bottom of a large crater of unknown origins. There would be a close up of her face and then the screen would go dark. Next we would see the screen start to get lighter and whiter and then details would appear, the blue sky, some clouds, a few desert birds flying over head as the player essentially saw what the girl saw as she opened her eyes. The camera would zoom back out to the standard "camera view" of video games and the text would appear (or voice over, whatever) with the girl confused and asking where she was and who she was. And then the character would gain control as they set out into the desert.
The game would go on from there and the player would meet more of their party as time went on. Taking a book from Dragon Quest IV (again copyright Square Enix), the party members would all be introduced via chapters. Each chapter would let the player play the different characters and all would end up in the same place and meet up with each other until finally the whole party was together.
Anyway, making a game is a bit larger of a thing than the two of us could logically put together, and so it just kind of ended, which is a nice segue way back into my original topic (see how smart I am!).
Anyway, I'll ramble on more about this later, I've already blathered on far too long as is.
Monday, November 3, 2008
The Legend of the Seeker
As a general rule, I tend to think that all novels => "visual media" are bad ideas. I usually run into the problem of disagreeing with the director's/writer's/actor's/whatever's visual ideal of the universe because - like all readers - I have very specific images in my head as to what things should look like [and what the characters look/think/feel/speak]. So when it was announced that there was going to be a TV production created based upon Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series, I felt some understandable trepidation about the whole affair.
Ok, we need to talk about the Book of Counted Shadows here. In the book, a copy of this was brought with Richard when he was young and given to the Ciphers. Richard's father made him memorize this book word for word and then burn it, thus what happens at the end makes a whole heck of a lot more sense. What they're doing now with the book however just leaves me scratching my head. Richard glanced at the first page...and then burned it...
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