Project Pathfinder: Revisiting an old game idea I had.
So I've been noodling this idea for a video game for ages. I've got a rather lengthy writeup on my hard drive, mostly revolving around game mechanics and stuff. And I've been thinking about it lately, and how I view it now, being more open and aware of the societal influences that guided my writing at the time. Breakdown ahead, beneath the read more.
Thing is, I wrote it back in the halcyon days of about three years ago when I didn't have a single fucking clue about the diversity of the world. It wasn't your stereotypical "boy saves world, boy gets girl" story, but dear god was it flat. The main characters were:
White Cis Dude 1, bishie snarkmonster badass wannabe. Destined to fuck up everything between games 1 and 2, get his ass handed to him by White Cis Dude 2 at the end of game 2, and play the anti-hero foil in the co-op. (I planned a trilogy, with co-op introduced by game three, when I would theoretically be awesome enough at coding to handle that sort of thing.) Imagine if Bass from the Mega Man series starred in his own adventure, you're about set.
White Cis Dude 2, The Short and Plucky Hero with a heart of gold and a height complex. MIA after the tutorial level regardless of the outcome. Think Mega Man X, helpful to everyone, but pessimistic as all hell.
Lady Cisblonde McLoveinterest, White Cis Dude 2's girlfriend / operator / backup. Story-wise, as skilled as or better than both of the other two, yet sidelined anyway. Stuck helping White Cis Dude 1 through the first game. Fate undecided for the third game, presumably still playing operator. Rationalized as sidelined despite her skill because it meant if WCD1 or 2 fucked up, she'd be good enough to get them out of there. The "Zero" of the game, to keep the Mega Man references going.
Nebulous Older White Cishet Brother Dude, star of the flashback moments that WCD2 would have whenever a new game mechanic came in. Proto Man. Just... basically, Proto Man.
Yeah, you can see where I'm going with this. Basically, post-post-apocalyptic-future, war between two formerly peaceful nations when one locates the Magical MacGuffin of +10 Evil, Brother Dude goes missing/presumed dead as of start of game, Dude 2 (fresh out of training with Lady McLoveinterest) gets all paranoid and goes over his training verbatim as he's on his first mission, shit happens, AND NOW FOR SOMEONE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and then Dude 1 shows up and steals the plot for the game, then pulls an A God Am I once he has the MacGuffin at the end.
Pretty bland.
Now, I had seen to it that the world would be ~diverse~ with ~unique characters~ that had yet to be determined; there were three distinct geopolitical groups in the story, with wildly different races manning them:
Humans, from the kingdom of Iselholdt, which spanned three continents (cold in the north, humid in the south, temperate in the middle): The side from which the entire main story group comes from. Vaguely Nordic in nature, but subject to the whims of a genetic color wheel: any color skin, any color hair, any color eyes, so long as they are humanly possible in the real world. (And yet, the main characters were white/blond, white/redhead, white/blonde, white/brunet, in order from the top. Hmmm.)
Toruvians, freaky alien fish people from a massive archipelago: I think I planned for them to be Generically Asian to some degree. The only big defining characteristics I had come up with originally were that they had technicolor skin tones, scaly bodies, large eyes with secondary lids (vertical, like the cephalopoid runner at the beginning of MIB), and spo-ke wi-th shar-p in-fle-c-tion. (Also, a pain in the ass to write for.) Likely would've not been common in the first game, since it took place on the Human continent. Or the second game, since it took place on the Human continent when Hero Dude 2 is fighting his way back through the corruption caused by Hero Dude 1. But the third game would be all about their homeland! Sorta. Maybe. I never wrote that far.
Felgrim, the inhabitants of The Dark Continent (called Grimdark by the inhabitants of Toruvia and Hendevald by scholars and those who know of it from before the big fuckup. Yes, I intended it to be called that, mostly as a middle finger to needlessly complex names, but also because I got a chuckle out of it and shut up. Generic shadow-beasty things.
At the time, I thought I was being pretty diverse with my-race-is-human-and-that-is-all humans and The Amazing Technicolor Fishfolk. That said, everything in the story was written as fluff on top of the combat, dialogue, and randomization system; I had quite literally planned out almost all of the mechanical aspects of the game before I'd even thought up a character or a name. It still suffered from monochromatic characterization, base representation, and when I started writing the "prequel" story leading up to the beginning of the game, it was a whole lot of characterization and very little plot movement. Briefly, in those days, I had a Tumblr, and I posted it on a separate story-blog, but got (as far as I could tell) absolutely NO views, for which I am rather grateful. Disheartened, I'd pulled it all down.
I was basically writing sappy romance fanfiction about Karten (Dude 2) and Delia (McLoveinterest) going to boot camp and falling for each other, which kinda sorta really doesn't have much to do with the game other than that it shared a universe and two main characters. To be fair, looking back at that point in my life I don't think I was writing ANYTHING that wasn't sappy romance fanfiction in some form. I drafted a book trilogy plot around the same time-- unrelated-- that reads like a bad teen romance novel with hints of HARD HITTING ACTION sprinkled throughout. I was also in the midst of about three or four Homestuck fanfictions of the romance variety, and the trolls weren't even all named yet at that point. (I have a bad habit of shipping everything under the sun.)
Now ultimately, I do want to eventually make this game. That said, I know that there's no way I could live with myself if I scratched it out with the characters and plot as they are now. So, in my next post about this topic, I'm going to go into depth about what I intend to change.
Tune in next time for Project Pathfinder Revisited.