So I was thinking some more, and I got around to toying with an idea o' mine. It's not a fully formed idea though, but I feel the need to devote it to paper for posterity.
One game that I really liked, and I mean REALLY liked was Shadow of the Colossus. While I never finished the game (due to my copy being damaged), I always felt it captured such an epic feeling that very few games attempt to inspire in their players.
Another oft-forgotten game these days is Panzer Dragoon Orta. I played and LOVED that game. Flying around, shooting stuff, and being awesome was basically the premise of the game. I wish I still had it.
Anyway, I was thinking, and I imagined up (yet another) game using these ideas in cohesion, and I came up with a game I call "Cowboy of the Colossus" for lack of a better naming schema.
This game takes places on a hostile world characterized almost exclusively by scorching deserts, harsh mountains, scenic prairies, and violent oceans. In this world, humanity has lived in peace, slowing expanding to all the corners of the world and forming large pockets of civilization. However, nature isn't going to take mankind's conquest over it lying down, and thus humanity's disturbing the natural order has awakened many colossal creatures.
These creatures take many forms, be it just giant golems to aquatic serpents, but they're all hellbent on Mankind's downfall. However, it should be noted that these creatures aren't creatures at all, but giant tools. The colossi are piloted by millennia old immortal warlocks who, while having magically warped and altered bodies, still seem human in general shape, in that they can speak, they have their own personalities, and are still very much in control of their actions. The warlocks don't pilot the monstrosities from inside the colossi, but more like they ride ontop and guide it's actions.
Your character, a dashing cowboy, rides his stallion into a town that has been recently devastated by an attack of one of the monstrosities. He's confronted by the Mayor, and being one of the only fit able men around that isn't horribly injured, is jobbed into the task of taking down the monstrosities once and for all.
The world that he lives in is not a technologically advanced one. If I had to put a name on it, I'd have to say that this game would take place in a steampunk world with lots and lots of 1800-1900's era devices like trains and boats, occasionally taken to their logical extreme in the form of giant steam ferries and whatnot.
However, your main character isn't alone in this quest, he's given a companion in the form of a woman that has been working on the latest technology, a biplane! This woman will help you by piloting the biplane with you riding on the wings.
Basically, the Cowboy's journey revolves around his modes of transportation. These would include his trusty steed, and the biplane, and then eventually a flotilla of ships which act as a makeshift aircraft carrier, and then a crazy fast steam-powered
hydrofoil to tackle seaborne monstrosities.
It'd be best to describe these one at a time. The horse is entirely land-based, of course. Would probably act very much like that in SotC, with the added benefit that it can traverse shallow bodies of water as well. Can run at very fast speeds, turn with much alacrity, and do cool jumps over stuff. The horse, differing from the other modes of transport, is actually controlled by you. You can shoot your revolver (explained later) from the house and swing for melee at close range targets.
The biplane is controlled through partnership with your AI pilot. While leaving her alone will cause her to not make dumb mistakes, she'll just pursue whatever she thinks is best and leave you to focus on aiming. However, if you think that the plane could do better, then you could shout hurried vague orders like "Go up!" or "Back off!" and that would change her AI routine to accomodate.
The flotilla you have no control over, they shuttle you from place to place, operate as your personal entourage and they can line up and put planks down to form an impromptu sea-based airstrip so that you can use your biplane in the middle of the ocean.
The hydrofoil is also operated by the AI, and has you as a passenger manning the guns. It goes very fast and can't turn very quickly.
Alright, about combat. There's two types: on-vehicle combat and on-foot combat. In both, you have your lucky revolver + infinite ammo. From all the vehicles, you need to carefully aim your revolver to hit the monstrosity's weakpoints, stop it from attacking, and to shoot projectiles out of the air so that they don't hit you.
Then there's on-foot combat, which involves running, jumping, rolling, ducking, punching, and, of course, shooting. I'm still working this out in my head as to what would be the ideal 'feel' that I'd want, but I know that I'd want it in the game, most definitely.
It should be mentioned, that in the case of the horse, biplane, and hydrofoil, their hit bars are independant of yours. So that you have your own hit bar and your vehicle has it's own hit bar. You vehicle running out of life will exit the battle for a time and then return, however, this will very likely result in your death depending on what stage of the fight you're in.
Now, by stages of the fights, what I mean is that fighting the monstrosities on the vehicles is just one part of the battle. When you've dealt with the monstrosity's attacks and gained access to the part of the monstrosity that the warlock is riding, then you can jump off onto the monstrosity and do battle with him. I think it would be pretty cool if, upon meeting each Warlock, they give you a small cutscene with a really pompous speech or something.
Now, I should probably elaborate on the 'jumping from your vehicle' mechanic. Fighting the monstrosities would entirely be all shooting from the vehicle, it would also be advantageous to jump from the vehicle and onto the monstrosity in order to gain better access to it's weak points and such. However, when you jump from the vehicle, it becomes autonomous and follows the monstrosity around instead of waiting for you. You'd have a special item, like a really loud whistle, that you could blow into and it would attact the the vehicle to come back to you so you could jump back onto it.
NEW: To aid in the jumping on and off vehicles bit, it might be prudent to have a special feature, where your character can reach out, and stick his arm out and grab a ledge or groove, and then just hold onto it as the vehicle whisks away. This would make departing from the vehicle easier, so that you don't have to risk jumping from dangerous heights at even more dangerous speeds in order to get onto a monstrosity. Of course, your character would be completely immune to silly things like dislocated shoulders and whiplash.
All the fights would be really fast-paced, to make the best use of these vehicles. To give you an idea of what I'm thinking of when I talk about the 'jumping on and off the monstrosity' mechanic, I'll give some examples:
After fighting and arduous battle atop the wings of the biplane, you gain access to the top of a hundred story tall golem that's wondering around a big desert. You jump to the head, and do battle with the warlock. Once you've defeated him, the golem would start crumbling, so you have to act fast! You blow the whistle, and the biplane circles around and flies over you. You have to act quickly, jump up to grab the wing, and then the plane carries you as you watch as the golem collapses, leaving giant plumes of dust and it's hundred thousand tonne body slams into the ground.
Or another example: You're riding your house through some open plains, in pursuit of a 1000 metre long centipede-shaped monstrosity. You jump onto one of it's fast moving legs, progress up it's body, and then hit a vital weak point, and then you work your way over to the other side, blow the whistle, and the horse will respond and approach where you air, where you can then continue to the next part of the battle.
Continued from where I left off:It should be noted, for the purposes of the comparisons to SotC that not ALL the monstrosities are colossi. The warlocks are the main threat, and they come in more forms than just giant things. For example, one of the monstrosities actually take the form of a giant roving pack of faceless homogeneous horsemen which are all part of a magical hivemind, with the Warlock sitting on his own magic horse in the middle them all, doubly protected by his own forcefield. For a different Warlock, he'd have a flying castle fortress, with giant birds that resemble
Zuus flying around it as protection. The Warlock is inside manning the operation. So there'd be more variety than just a collection of different giant stone creatures.
At this point, I feel it's important to talk about our hero's weapons. In short, he has a very small and rudimentary lineup of weapons in order to maintain simpicity and ensure that flow between and in battles. In the beginning of the game, you have your revolver and your dagger. The revolver works as you'd think it would, just aim and shoot, and occasionally reload. The revolver is your weapon of choice most of the time, having it's faster rate of fire to shoot at things from whichever vehicle willy-nilly. Then you have your dagger, which is of course your melee weapon of choice. The dagger, while having it's short range, has much higher attack power than the revolver and, ideally, would have the highest DPS in the game by far when used skillfully. The dagger is also special in that it can block and parry melee attacks. Also, the dagger is not limited to on-foot combat, it can also be swung when close to an enemy whilst on a vehicle. Later in the game, you'd obtain a double-barreled shotgun. The advantages of the shotgun would be that it would be very damaging, and have more stopping power than the revolver. Also, the shotgun would require less aiming due to the spread of the pellets, and would be a better choice for enemies which move quickly and haphazardly. However, the downside is that you can only fire it twice (one shot for each barrel) and then you have to reload, which not only damages your DPS, but may be entirely unmanageable in a fast-paced battle. Of course, all weapons have infinite ammo, so managing that won't be an issue.
Rilder was asking about the story, so I guess I'll just divulge what I had in mind. It would be a linear game, with the events and consequences of each monstrosity's defeat sending you hurtling towards the next one.
I'll be explaining the story to the best of my ability, but it's somewhat hard to give the whole picture since ALOT of my game ideas are actually a very small part of a very large story, spanning several games and many, many characters and changes to the world. I'll do my best to describe it so that it atleast makes sense in this case.
The Warlocks, the ones controlling the monstrosities, while astoundingly violent and prodigiously arrogant, are not completely malevolent. They're a sect of warriors from civilizations long fallen that had their souls forcibly adhered to magical power by an Evil God that is intertwined very closely to the physical world.
To give you the gist of the situation, the Dark God is literally trapped in the center of the world by the elemental gods outlined in my
original Magic Systems thread. The Dark God wants vengeance against these gods, and so bides his time. Humans have discovered his presence however, and the Dark God can't trust them to not bother him, and so he threatens to end the world if they don't obey him. However, humans aren't so quick to bow down, even to a world destroyer. While ending all human life is easily within his ability, he doesn't want to because doing so would expend some of his power that he's been slowly building for millenia, and doing such a rash action might excite the elemental gods into launching a preemptive attack before he's prepared to take them on. So, to get them to leave him alone, he forcefully infuses some humans with insane magical power, and these humans become the Warlocks mentioned earlier. With these magical powers unlike anything anyone has every seen before, the countries of the world clash against eachother furiously until most of humanity is reduced to rubble. The Dark God then contacts those humans and advises them to pick a spot, and go into hibernation until humanity builds itself up again, and then re-awaken to pound it back into the stone age, or else he'll 'punish' the humans for their murderous ways and end the world. It must be noted that humans have NO idea who he is or what his intentions are, so they can't in good coscious call his bluff.
Now, in-game, upon defeating each of the Warlocks, you get a small cutscene with them explaining a little bit of their backstory and how they came to be. With their defeat, you get a small shard which is all that remains of their magical power. Upon collecting all the shards, they combine to form the Heart of Evil, a paragon of magical power. However, it's not nearly enough to rebel against the Dark God.
Due to the amount of time that has elapsed between the Warlock's hibernation and the current time, the Dark God is almost ready to actually wage war against the elemental gods, and so after the last Warlock is killed, he booms his voice to every human in the world, warning them that they have 200 years to surrender the Heart of Evil to him and receive his protection when the Godly War occurs. At this point, the game ends, setting up the story for the sequal, which I've been thinking about for some time and actually already have a thread for, called
Action Hero. I should really dig it up and update the info so all this makes sense atleast.
Gosh, I feel like I'm forgetting to elaborate on something. I'll have to think some more.
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Topic: Game Idea: Cowboy of the Colossus (Read 2475 times)