paralistalon 2 Posted February 15, 2014 (edited) I have put together a script/game progression outline for my first major RPG Maker project. I am going to share it here to get some first impressions on how it's received. How excited would you be to play such a game in its current form? Is the plot or plot twist too cliche'? I felt the story should begin feeling like it was playing off the tropes of 1) OMG powerful suit granting superhuman powers and 2) X-Men danger room/Star Trek holodeck. The story would then transition into a "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" plot twist that was heavily influenced by Total Recall (the original!) and Vanilla Sky. Speaking of which, I really hope I can find a way to hide a three-breasted woman into the game as a nod to Total Recall's campiness. And finally, please do not copy, redistribute, or plagerize any part of the story. The story is copyright me, Steven Walker. That doesn't mean you can't use my story for inspiration, just don't blatantly steal it as-is and say you made it! Another important note on the battle system. The player's gagues are divided into HP, Ammo, and Temp. The characters use modern weaponry divided into either guns (pistols, shotguns, bazookas) or melee (swords, metal fists, chainsaws). Guns have a maximum ammo number and must be "reloaded" in battle when the chamber runs empty, but ammo is unlimited and completely refills after battle. Special attacks may consume more ammo than normal or may also increase the player's suit temperature, which starts at 0 and maxes out at 100. The higher the suit's temperature gets, the more negative effects the player will suffer, including taking damage and even self-destructing! Prologue: The protagonist wakes up in his bedroom, aboard the SS Narwhalus, a giant submarine. The character is free to explore the submarine’s main deck and is given the chance to get a feel for the game’s setting. When the character is ready, he must assemble with the three other main characters at the entry to the ship’s massive VR training bay. The protagonist will first be instructed to go back to his room and “suit up.†You see, the four main characters each have a special power suit that increases their combat efficiency. Back at the training bay, the ship’s captain delivers the mission briefing. He states that the VR training sim is operational again, and they’re pretty sure the issue that put it out of commission has been worked out. He warns them that, while the training sim is designed to be non-lethal, they need to be careful because the number of deaths in its recorded history “isn’t zero.†The captain gives one final, cryptic comment about how it is important for the team to learn each other’s strengths… and each other’s weaknesses. Main Characters- Lora- (class: Sniper, prefers long-range, one-shot weapons like rifles and bows). Lora is the captain's neice and leader of the team. She is aggressive, judgmental, and confident. She isn't sure if the newbie has what it takes to be a valuable addition to the team and makes it known that the player has to earn her trust and respect. Lora is a driven woman who has an almost obsessional grudge against a rival nation for war crimes that resulted in her father's death. Her desire for revenge sustains her and motivates her to build the team into a force to be reckoned with. Maxi- (class: Engineer, prefers cutting edge weaponry and flashy weapons that create large explosions, has some skills that require or benefit from having a higher suit temperature). Maxi is a computer whiz and is mechanically and scientifically inclined. He has never been one to take life seriously and is very nonchalant and is a bit of a jokester. He is also a ladies' man but has a secret crush on Lora. His personality resembles that of Tony Stark/Iron Man in some ways. He is driven by reckless technological advancement with no real end goal other than the challenge of making something bigger and more dangerous. He eagerly enters into the training sim to collect more data for his "project," a giant mech suit that he has been building with the hopes that, with the suit's power, a human could sit inside and pilot the giant instrument of destruction. Serge- (class: Soldier, prefers melee weapons and close, personal combat). Serge, despite his youthful appearance, is a seasoned military veteran and war hero, having served in one of the more prominent wars in recent history in the treacherous jungles of a foreign country. He is tough but gentle and spends most of his free time training or reading philosophy. If anything, Serge is reliable to a fault and puts his personal feelings aside when there is an objective for him to complete. He is obsessed with the warrior's code and the culture of a distant past. He values conformity above all else. Chapter 1- Training Day: The protagonist is assigned to the front of the party and leads the way into the VR sim. As the party walks forward into a long stretch of complete blackness, every dozen steps or so, the last member of the party mysteriously vanishes. Eventually, the main character is the only one left. He walks forward until he hits a wall and can’t go forward any more. The lights turn on to reveal that he walked right inside a jail cell, and the door behind him has locked shut. The player must look around the room for a way to escape the cell. He then exits out onto the top of a skyscraper in the middle of a large city (think New York City). The player will now encounter random battles as he/she navigates the maps. Eventually, he will come across a mysterious man locked in a prison cell who will ask the player for assistance in breaking him out, promising that he would be a very useful companion. After breaking him out, the character will be accompanied by this dark figure, who introduces himself as Vante, who will use strong vampiric attacks to shred and devour enemies. At a certain point, the player will walk through a door and appear in a wild jungle (enemies include tigers, giant snakes, and dangerous plants). Vante is no longer with the player. The protagonist eventually stumbles upon Maxi, who is stuck in a net trap. After freeing him, Maxi joins the party, and they continue until they reach the next stage of the sim and must free the next member of the party. Each stage will feature a dramatically different setting and will highlight the fact that there is no real continuity of space in the environment, acting much like a dream. During the sim, the party will encounter the mysterious dark man several times, each time making cryptic comments about how he was once part of the team but was trapped inside the training sim by the captain. He alludes to the notion that the captain is keeping secrets from the crew and warns them not to trust him. Flashback: After the VR mission, the player has a flashback to before he was on the sub. As a child, he always dreamed of going on fantastical adventures. Later, as a young man, he hears rumors of a special program in the military that has started using VR training. The program promises that volunteers who complete their training will be able to wield untold power. The ultimate goal of the program is to create a team of elite, specialized troops who can defend against the world’s greatest threats. The protagonist is shown signing up, and then the scene fades out. Chapter 2- S.O.S. The captain informs the crew that they have been called to provide emergency assistance to an underwater mining facility that has suffered severe damage as the result of seismic activity. Enemies here mostly consist of malfunctioning robots. The party is transported to the facility and is left to discover what went wrong and how to fix it. The crew quickly realizes that something is strange with the inhabitants. They discover that the inhabitants lack basic emotional responses. This is because the workers were genetically modified to lack these emotions. The government concluded that emotions were a liability, especially in stressful, underwater living conditions. This facility was one of the first to be staffed by fully modified people, and still serves the dual role of an ongoing research project. At the conclusion of this chapter, as the SS Narwhalus leaves the base, one of the inhabitants is seen communicating with the mysterious dark man from last chapter via a computer screen. He says, “I understand,†and launches a missile at the Narwhal, which scores a direct hit. Chapter 3- Ghosts of the Past: The protagonist is startled by the large blast and subsequent emergency sirens. He leaves a small room in the upper deck to find the ship’s crew scrambling to repair the damage. Of additional concern, the ship’s crew is reporting sightings of strange apparitions that some have even called ghosts (yep, these are the monsters!). As the player navigates the ship, helps the crew, and reassembles the party, it is eventually revealed that most of the disturbances are coming from the main deck, around the VR training bay. The closer they get, they see that the VR bay has sustained a direct hit, and the program’s reality-warping field has bled out into the ship itself, creating a strange hybrid of ship and nightmare! They must reach the center and shut down the power core, but along the way, they will encounter the mysterious dark figure again, who makes eerie comments about “being freed.†Chapter 4+? I'm leaving room here for an additional chapter if I have a good idea or think the game needs to be a bit longer. Finale: In the final chapter, it is time for the truth about the ship and the dark figure to be revealed. The captain reveals that he isn’t really Lora’s uncle, but he is instead her father, but not in the traditional sense. Before clarifying this, the main character will be given a clear choice to either turn to the ship’s captain for answers or to consult with Vante himself. They both have slightly different stories to tell, with Vante believing he was trapped in the program because he became too strong and uncontrollable and wants the player to help free him for good, and the captain talking about the true nature of the ship’s mission. Regardless of who is chosen to side with, they will give a final directive that the player must kill the three other characters! In confronting each character individually, it is important for the player to find that character’s weakness and how to exploit it. For Maxi, who has all but finished his super mech, the protagonist must use the “provoke†command in battle to make him lose his temper and continue to attack the player without stopping to release his suit’s heat. Eventually, his suit overloads and causes him to explode. Next, the player must confront Serge. Upon revealing his intentions, the player exchanges philosophical musings with Serge. Serge will eventually ask for the player to hand him a sword, so that he can at least be granted an honorable final battle. If the player refuses to arm Serge and instead launches a surprise attack, Serge will respond, “Fool! I do not need weapons; my very body is a weapon!†and a very tough battle will ensue. If he is handed a sword, he will take his own life in the final, ultimate act of a warrior. Epilogue- There are three endings planned based on whether the player sides with the captain, the shadowy figure, or decides to spare the crew. Good ending: The player sides with the captain who reveals that Lora, Maxi, and Serge are all aspects of himself that were separated out of his being, as is Vante. He states that the true purpose of the ship’s training is to refine a person’s consciousness to allow them to defeat the deepest held flaws of the human condition. He says that the player is his blank slate and potential for growth, the neutral form between light and emptiness (what the captain is now after giving up all other forms) and dark and attachment to material gain (what Vante represents). He admits that Vante, first spawned as a form of his personal ambition, had quickly grown stronger than the rest and had even taken to absorbing the other forms’ power for his own, even if he didn’t realize this himself. The captain felt he had no choice but to deal with Vante. He created a test for Vante, disguised as a routine VR training sim mission. In it, Vante was directed to a power source that he was led to believe would amplify his telekinetic powers even more. The captain gave him a direct order not to touch the source, as it was too dangerous for any person to wield such power. When Vante succumbed to his desires and touched the source, he triggered the trap that held him captive in the program, and all access to this section of the sim’s memory was destroyed. By this point, each of the characters should have hinted to their own personal downfall, and it is up to the player now to complete this process. After defeating the rest of the team, the player will notice a dramatic increase in his stats and abilities, preparing him for the final showdown with Vante. After this, the player “wakes up†in a lab. The player finally comes to realize that the entire story has played out in a VR training sim and that the ship and crew were never real. The player will have an interesting moment where he sees Lora, Maxi, and Serge as the lab workers who have created the characters in the sim using their own image. The player wakes up feeling stronger and more free than he has ever felt, having conquered all his demons, and he is told that he was being trained for a leadership position… as the head of the entire nation’s military might! In his wisdom, the world enters a new golden age. Dark ending (a.k.a. the TETSUUOOOOO!!! ending): The player sides with Vante, who reveals that he signed up for the Narwhalus suit training initiative, just like the player, because he was promised great power. He quickly learned how to harness and focus the power of his suit and grew stronger than any candidate in the history of the program. He reveled in his power and successfully completed every mission he led. However, the captain often disagreed with Vante’s methods and feared his growing power, particularly his unique ability to warp physical matter with his mind alone. One day, during a routine VR training exercise, The captain trapped him in the system, and all exits out of the program were quickly sealed. Vante recalls his anger and frustration, having so much power and no way to escape. He considered erasing himself on several occasions; afterall, what is the use of power if you have no one to rule? But a small part of him kept hope that he could find a weakness in the trap and escape. He retreated into study and grew his knowledge, until finally it hit him like a ton of bricks, and everything made sense. He came to understand that the SS Narwhalus itself was a giant VR training sim! A sim within a sim, how clever! This explained how he could manipulate the physical world with his thoughts alone. This understanding helped him find holes in the system’s security, and when he sensed the player’s presence, he immediately felt a kinship with him, another unfortunate soul yearning for power, doomed to grow too strong and be trapped away, sealed off by a man who could not accept the inevitability that this power would be unleashed into the world in one person’s hands or another. Vante says that now that he has escaped the first layer, he is ready for the player to help them both escape the VR world for good and get back to the real world. He states that the player must discard the rest of his team, whose minds are not yet ready to leave, and then deal with the captain himself. After this, Vante says he will descend to the innermost part of the ship and cause enough havoc that the illusion won’t be able to sustain itself any more, and they should both wake up from this crazy dream. After carrying out this mission, the player wakes up in a lab, like Vante said. He overhears the people in lab coats, running around, excited by the abnormal brain activity on the scanners. The player gets up, throws off the sensors attached to his body, and destroys the lab workers with strong telekinetic powers and flames. He searched half-heartedly for Vante’s body but never did find it. The player feels the fire in his blood and, for the first time, feels ready to take on anything. After demonstrating his power, it doesn’t take long for the populace to confer to him the position of the leader of the nation’s military. Under his rule, peace is secured, if violently. But the player can’t help but wonder, from time to time, whether he is still trapped in yet another VR sim or not. Neutral ending (a.k.a. the Narnia ending): Regardless of who reveals the truth, the player is instructed to kill his teammates. The player can’t make peace with this act because he has never felt such strong friendship as from his team. He loves the Narwhalus and its crew and hates that this burden had to be placed on his shoulders. Things were going so well, and he was just starting to feel that he belonged to something. Ignoring the warnings of the captain and Vante, the player sets off, determined, to save his team’s lives. As he meets each teammate, he warns them of the pending threat and convinces them to help him deal with both Vante and the captain for good. The player must first defeat Vante, but at least he has the support of an entire team! The captain is easy, as he accepts his fate and doesn’t put up a fight. Many years later, the player, Lora, Maxi, and Serge all sit around retelling great stories of their adventures in the past. Lora and Maxi have kids who sit on uncle Serge’s lap as they listen with wide-eyed wonder. The team continued their adventures on the SS Narwhalus with the protagonist as its new captain. They visited many exotic places. They tell the kids of an ancient civilization that left behind great buildings and monuments, the people’s disappearance a complete mystery. They left behind a calendar that ended on a certain date, and Lora explains how many people felt this final day would mark the end of the world in a giant fireball. All of a sudden, in the middle of this story, there is a bright flash of light in the distance followed up a loud boom. The flashes continue. The children start screaming that it’s the end of the world! The flashes continue as the screen fades out and the team screams each others’ names. The player wakes up in a strange lab, his body young again. He screams frantically about what happened to his crew. People in lab coats try to calm him. They say that the others are all right. After he calms himself, it is explained that the player signed for the VR training program many years ago. They state that the program was only designed to last a month, but around the time they tried to wake the player up, his mind did not respond and he persisted to accept the VR program as reality. They figured they couldn’t just pull the plug, so they kept him alive, hooked up to the machine. One scientist even jokes that the interns have taken to referring to the player as “The Dreamer,†and have all sorts of tall tales and office rituals surrounding him. When the player doesn’t exactly find the image of his body being used as a beer pong table amusing, the scientist apologizes. The scientist goes on to say that the world has changed in the time since the player went under. Nations couldn’t put their differences aside and waged brutal wars against each other. However, many new technological advances were made during this period, and the world as the player knew it has changed drastically since then. The scientist offers to help the player in any way he can. The scene changes to the player sitting outside a café. A woman walks by at sits at the table next to him; a woman who looks exactly like Lora. The screen fades out. Link to the game's first map in this topic: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/21914-new-sci-fimodern-project-1st-map-large-submarine-interior/ Edited February 15, 2014 by paralistalon Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
piggybankcowboy 13 Posted February 15, 2014 Ooh, a competing story with a VR sim element. I'll be curious to see what you do with it in yours. We should trade notes sometime, just to avoid too much overlap, haha. If you want to see what I'm doing with mine, I left a post in the Lit, Art & Music forum, which may have been the wrong spot. I purposely did not read your endings, because I like your story, so I want to see how it plays it when your game is done. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
