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.