Over the last term and Christmas I have been working on an RPG game that is based on things that i would like to see in an RPG, it is inspired by all kinds of fanstasy roleplaying and online RPGs. I based the story on what the inspiration I found from playing final fantasy 7 and studying other games of that kind like Runescape. Throughout all this time I, along with a number of people who also want to help make it have designed the island where its based, the starting storyline and other certain parts in detail. the rest of the story is drafted also. On top of this I'm currently working on detailed character profiles, their development and interaction, some of the first things I did was draw images I had in my head to help get the ball rolling for further ideas. The following pictures are what I first drafted to people.
This next part is an example of a few first ideas for the opening and a recent draft of the first part of the game where the player learns how to play parts of the game in due process.
First draft for RPG
Opening Video- Part 1
The opening video fades from black and shows a large mildly Victorian age styled room with an easel centred in the middle facing the wall there is a thick closed book on it, also there is soothing saxophone music playing in the background that fades in also (but it is distorted as it fades in and takes a few seconds to recover.) As the shot pans left it shows all kinds of paintings and ornaments, but there are no windows other than a row of port holes with big bolts holding them shut which are lined along one wall, 5 spaced out, its pitch black outside. As it progresses it shows another wall coming up the left and out of the shot, there is a small rectangle space into the wall with a candle on each side, and in this space is a man who is chained to the wall with cuffs on his wrists and ankles which are holding his legs and arms spread, suspended up the wall away from the floor, he is unconscious and wearing dirty grey torn clothes with big blood stains all over them (most prudently over his chest,) and a grey hood that darkens out his face and blood stained bandages which cover his mouth and neck (those being the only things seen from the hood). The shot stops here and a big black dirty boot steps into shot from the right and walks to the man, he is wearing a standard full English army camouflage uniform for a private, and he has a round black cap with a flat base and a thick dark blonde moustache. He walks up to the man looks him square in his slouched head, chin resting against his right shoulder. The shot changes at this point to both their heads filling the screen from the side so it seems as though the private is looking into the grey hood. (But the unknown man’s face is never seen from the hood other than perhaps the parts covered in bandages.)
Private: You don’t get angry do you? (pause) You just CALCULATE! (As he shouts “calculate” spit flies from his mouth at the man.)
The man begins to slowly lift his head and open his eyes to look him square in the face.
Man: (Calmly) I am anger, you should be afraid.
Private: (Chuckles) Ha! (Looks closely into his face and snarls) That’d be like fearing a caged animal, wouldn’t it.
The private stands up straight and makes a sharp 180 degree turn, half way through this the shot changes to facing the wall with the man behind him as he finishes his turn and he begins to march off the shot to the right. But just as he is nearly out of the shot he stops with his face in clear view, he does this because at this moment in the background he hears (and can be seen in shot) the chains loosen and fall off the wall and his body, the man falls to his knees and stands up carefully but fairly quickly, examining his wrists in a calm but surprised manor. All this time the private is showing a gradually daunting look on his face and finishes by closing his eyes and looking down.
Private: (Whispers) No.
The shot changes to show one of the cuffs and chain on the floor close up, his knee falls down to the right and his dirty scratched hand comes from the top of the shot and picks it up. Now we see it from behind him from where he once hung as he walks away sharply towards the private who doesn’t move (still faced away from him, hands holding each other behind his back.) The man grabs both ends of the chain and cuff and immediately puts it over the private’s head and pulls it tight around his neck. The shot changes to a very low angle along the floor; there is a sound of the snap of his neck and a loud angry grunt from the unknown man, the private’s body falls to the floor faced away (head, neck and shoulders fills the view,) the chain falls after, dropped on his head and neck carelessly. He walks along the room in the background towards the easel.
The shot now changes to behind the easel at eye level, he is already in the shot, he walks further in and turns to face the book which is resting centred and closed on the easel.
Man: (Starts to take angry deep breaths) Its time I set things right, its time I took things into my own hands.
He raises his left arm above his head and a thick curved dagger materialises in his hand, his fingers slowly wrap around it, the blade is emitting a green glow which becomes the main source of light, still his face is never seen past the bandaged area. The shot cuts to facing the book, it’s dusty and brown with a simple faded brass border pattern. He drives the dagger into the book and slices a hole down it and pulls the blade out again. There is a pause before the lighting in the room begins to change, a blood red light starts to shine through the port holes behind him and light the room with direct beams of light, the various candles in the room change colour to red also, and a number of still and moving shots cover all this. The room begins to shake furiously, the man leans forward and holds onto the easel to stay up, a bright white light shines out of the slice in the book and consumes him. As the camera moves away from him the light gets brighter until all that there is left is whiteness. It fades from the whiteness to reveal the shot is looking at him from behind through one of the port holes from outside, as the white light goes away into the hole it reveals him burning with black flames in places and he collapses, slumping to the side onto the floor, and as the camera moves away ghost like spirits and arms begin to claw out of the hole in the book. The shot continues to come away from the port hole and turn about 60 degrees left whilst continuing to move backwards, all this time the 5 port holes are in shot getting further and further away, the shot shows the room is embedded halfway down a giant rock face in a tight valley, almost like a huge crack in the earth, its night time and eventually the bottom is seen which is filled with rough sea water and in the distance is the horizon and the ocean (seen through the end of the valley.) As the shot stops the room explodes outwards into the valley and debris falls slowly down to the sea, immediately in the blown out room can be seen monsters climbing out onto the rock face and dark spirits flying away some flying past the camera to be seen clearly. Music fades in (unknown at this point) and at a certain beat or note the scene cuts quickly to black.
Opening Video- Part 2
The sun is shining brightly down onto some gardens behind a row of 5 old brick houses separated from each other by narrow pathways; each garden has a lush green hedge bordering it except from the back end of the each garden which has a low white picket fence so to show the ocean. These gardens are on a cliff edge and 30 ft below that are small grassy hills that are suffering from erosion, the waves of sea water can be heard crashing up against these from a distance. The shot begins from the black screen where the previous scene left off; it fades to white and then fades away to show the bright 12 o’clock sun in the blue sky and various small clouds, the camera rotates diagonally right and down to gradually show the garden and stops on a young lad aged 18 lounged on a garden chair and looking into his laptop which is on his legs, he is wearing dark green combats and a thick blue belt with a white zigzag line going all the way around it and a silver buckle holding it together. His t-shirt is black and there is a 5 inch thick silver stripe going around the breast of the shirt, he is also wearing big combat boots and has a short military haircut. The camera is angled low and almost from behind him. The garden is filled with various objects of leisure like footballs, a goal post, a hose pipe left leaking water into the grass, a swing ball post and bats left on the ground, a broken basketball hoop, a spade and half planted shrubbery, also there is a small white table next to the chair on the left the lad is using to keep a cold drink, a magazine and some sun glasses on. The young lad looks up to the sun and casually shields his eyes from the light with his right hand and puts a thin pair of sunglasses over his eyes with his left. He puts both his hands back down to his laptop and continues look up, he takes a deep breath. The wind blows gently and makes the grass rustle.
Lad: I can’t just do this every day... (Long Pause, looks around, notes the waves and wind)... maybe I should join the army.
There is another long pause and eventually the wind stops blowing and the sound of the crashing waves begins to get louder. He takes his laptop and holds it away from him as he gets up and places it on his seat, he takes a quick mouthful of his drink and starts to walk towards the end of the garden. The angle changes to looking at him from the cliff edge of the garden as he walks towards the fence slowly, looking at the sky. From here we can clearly see the 3 floor house he lives in. As he reaches the fence and stops moving thunder can be heard beginning to rumble and the sun starts to fade and turn red. Now we see the sky from over his left shoulder as he looks up to the sun. Further down the sky closer to the horizon there is a giant thick cloud illuminated red from the sunlight, a bright white light tears through the centre and the entire cloud spirals around it for a second and stops. The massive beam almost seems to be directed towards him.
Lad: What the fu...?
Just as this is said a long spear like object comes rocketing towards him from the bright hole in the cloud at a phenomenal speed, the camera angle changes to a side view of his upper body and his speech is cut short by the speeding object driving its way through his right shoulder and sending him flying backwards as blood quickly squirts from the wound, the entire object makes it through his body and the shot changes to an extreme close-up of the blade stabbing into the ground out of sight and forcing up a lump of grass, the rest of the object relaxes to the ground as some kind of strip of material which is attached to the unknown blade like a long ribbon. As this happens you can see in the background just out of focus the lad collapse to the ground, hard. There can be seen smoke rising from his wound. The camera starts to move away from focusing on the blade in the ground and begins to move backwards and higher up keeping both it and the lad in the shot, the picture blurs out of focus to white again, all that is left is the continuing sound of the waves out at sea.
The whiteness begins to fade and we see his closed right eye which is mostly filling the shot as he lay unconscious on the ground, the camera is turned so it seems as though he is upright and he is leaning against a wall of grass, all seems well the waves of the sea can be heard and the sun is making everything about the image look healthy. His eye opens quickly, the pupil adjusts itself, he blinks and at that instant everything goes back to how it was when he was struck down, everything about him is tinted red from the bloody sun and sky. The camera begins to zoom out of his eye to slowly show his whole face, there is no sound of waves just a gentle breeze; almost as if the sea stopped, it was a sound he wasn’t used to, silence, living on a small island the only constant sound was the waves of the sea. He sits up with immediate alarm, we see this from his right his whole body is in shot and the garden hedge is in the background. The sky can be seen in this shot, the clouds have all disappeared, the sky itself is like a sunset that has lit everything alight with a blood red colour and the horizon is a yellow almost like the placenta separating from it.
He quickly checks his wound where he finds nothing but a hole in his shirt, he takes a quick look around from left to right and loudly lets out a panicked and confused breath of fear, then looks over his shoulder and feels for the other side, the angle of the camera also changes to looking at him from where the unknown blade is stuck in the ground as he notices it. The lad crawls across to look at it but before he does his attention is drawn to the right of it, a thick leather bound book lay there with a simple square border made of very well maintained silver and a silver clad buckle keeping it closed, it looks like it was just made, fresh from the hands of a skilled craftsman. We see it from over his left shoulder as he goes to pick it up from the ground; his hand reaches for the buckle of the book. Now we see it from waist height, looking up at him reaching to unlock the book. The buckle is loosened, the camera switches to looking square at the hedge to his left, something pushes against it, and the view switches back. He opens the front cover, entrapped into the mission of discovering its contents; the first page is simply titled “The Way”. He turns for the second page after a long look at the title, again the camera looks away to his right this time and we see a harder shove from the other side of the hedge. The camera looks back and we see as he settles the page turned against the other side of the book, a look of confusion develops on his face as he scans the two new pages. Suddenly a flash of white light escapes the pages and consumes his upper body but then disappears within seconds; he is left looking wide eyed at the book, his pupils large and white themselves.
The look on his face begins to weaken and he starts to feel ill, the book turns to black ash in his hands, his eyes examine it with a weary look, he starts to foam at the mouth and falls to his knees in front of our view of him. Then we look at the hedge to his left which is struck from the other side again, this time a top portion of it is pushed in a clump into the garden and something starts to claw its way over, grunts can now be heard, we look at his right side now and the same thing happens to the other hedge. The lad himself is too preoccupied with tending to his sick and weakened state as we see from his right side with the clambering things in the background, he slowly looks to the left at what is going on, we can start to hear his heartbeat over all the audio, he sees the pushed over hedge, then turns his head to the right still hunched over, everything starts to slow down and his heartbeat get faster and louder, the expression on his face drops from a look of pain to a look of panic as he spots in clear view one of those things which had made it over to his garden. We see it panning from the bottom upwards slowly still his heart racing as the main audio, its humanoid or at least it used to be, the skin has become bruised over 100% of the body, all of the flesh is covered in yellow and black swellings, the clothes it is wearing are like rags, faded of almost all colour and torn to the point they are not practical anymore, this one in particular has lost its whole bottom lip, by the looks of the skin left it was just torn off the face. But the teeth are all pointed and from the expression alone he could tell it is hostile. He snaps out of it and we see him from the location of the blade which is in the ground, he dives for it and grabs it by the ribbon attached to it and pulls it from the soil. He gets up and stands ready to fight with the blade in one hand and the ribbon bundled in the other, we see him from between two of these bruised enemies, there are 4 surrounding him from all corners, one lunges at him and without a second thought he immediately attacks, the heartbeat sound stops and the camera starts to rotate slowly around the attack group, he shifts all his weight and rotates his whole body 360 degrees twice and on the second turn he is low to the ground and the blade extended with the reach of some of the length of ribbon, the sharp blade slices all four enemies in the circle formation around the belly area as it swings around him. They all fall back and blood mixed with all kinds of infection and puss leaks from their bodies and runs down them until they fall to the ground one by one, it seems they had nearly no blood pressure for any serious bloodshed.
Storyline, first draft
After the opening sequence our main character is left in the long back garden against the cliffs, if the player takes time to explore through one of the holes created by the monsters he would find an item on the floor which should be some kind of basic recovery. The first objective is to enter the house through the back door and look for his mother inside, every time he enters a room a sound should play of him calling out for her. The player may take the time here to examine things in the house which give clues as to the background of the place and other clues made sense later. Once a note is found that tells him that she is at the local shop the player must leave the house through the front door, when he opens it more of the strange badly infected are outside and force their way in, this introduces the player to the first battle in a constrained area (corridor, and rest of house if player chooses). After this battle the player is left free to explore the village but the only trigger point is at the shop and the player is not allowed to leave the village somehow, all this time there are more of those Puss-heads wandering around some even killing NPC’s. Once you reach the shop a frightened cashier from behind the counter tells you she was on her way back when this happened, also it is obvious that someone has robbed the place of certain supplies.
Mc: (Wide eyed and panicked) She must have taken the back way! (He gets up to leave right away)
Cashier: Wait! Something... (Calmly) something crashed right through that way and blocked it off, take the back way out of here and you should be fine.
Mc: Thanks mate. (Runs off immediately)
The cashier is left looking slightly lost and appears like he could have done with his help, he goes about hiding himself even more when a background scream is heard. The next part presents the first puzzle for the player, this is simply for the player to find the back door and then figure out a way to get out of the loading area by going over the wall and into the back way home. This is done by finding objects lying around then pushing and pulling them so they stack in order to make steps over the wall, there could even be many ways to solve this puzzle other than the obvious one. Once in the back ally the player is introduced to the spawning feature this game includes. As he is running down the back ally Puss-heads are making their way over the walls, crashing through windows and so forth, these become fightable enemies once properly spawned. This leaves further choice whether to fight for a while of keep moving, the game would of course at this point restrict the amount of random fighting you can initiate in because of current level and available health resources.
