Is this story cliche?

soggie · Aug 22, 2009

Background

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world in some unknown little peninsula, where the rest of the world had been consumed by fatal viruses and a huge chunk of the world's elites have taken off into space, leaving the entire world leaderless overnight.

The game takes place 400 years after the apocalypse and by then nobody remembered what actually happened at that time. Many technologies were lost, and only basic techs relevant to survival had been retained - construction, basic engineering, metallurgy, gunnery, ammunition production and stuff like that.

Game Plot

In the beginning, your village is scorched and you are sold into slavery. Lucky you though, the city that you have been sold to was coincidently caught in the crossfire of two armies, and you manage to escape into the wasteland.

With nowhere to go and no home to go back to, you remember a tale about a legendary sanctuary in the wasteland called Gauntlet. Having nothing more to lose, you decide to journey to this legendary city and leave all the chaos behind, hopefully finding a better life there.

But it's not that simple. Nobody knows where Gauntlet is. Everybody has a different idea of what it is and where it is. Your journey involves finding out where the city is, through various trials and failures and wild-goose chases. And even getting there is not that simple, because the piece of land you're on had been turned into a battlefield between warring factions.

That's the basic premise for the first installment of a trilogy that I'm producing right now. What do you guys think? Cliche?

Haba · Aug 22, 2009

Cliche? Well, naturally to some extent (post-apocalyptic, village burned down in the beginning)

"Finding a legendary city" as the ultimate goal of the game is somewhat fresh take though. But what will be the player's motivation for going for it? Will the player be an active participant, or more of an observer travelling though the wastes (storytelling wise)?

soggie · Aug 22, 2009

I'm thinking of a more open-ended approach to it. The player can choose to be an active participant, or just a bystander in all the conflicts that is happening around the wasteland.

However, the choices that the player makes (or doesn't), would have far reaching consequences, both in the current game and also in the next two games.

It's ultimately up to the player to decide his participation level. He can run through the whole game without talking to anybody and still being able to find the city's location by sneaking into libraries, hacking into terminals, eavesdrop on NPCs and so on, or he can actively participate in events in the towns and locations to acquire the information.

I'm thinking of adopting a fallout-style storytelling mechanic in this aspect.

crazy_dave · Aug 22, 2009

Sounds cool. It's not too cliche.

Double Ogre · Aug 22, 2009

Another Fallout rip-off?

soggie · Aug 22, 2009

OgreOgre said:
Another Fallout rip-off?

Yes. Replace nukes with virus, replace mutants with infected dudes, replace 50s theme with present, take away lasers and all those sci-fi stuff and slot in real world weapons, and replace the "find waterchip quest" with "find the legendary city".

Oh, and improve the turn-based combat system, turn the world into full 3D complete with structures with destructible walls and rotatable camera, replace the SPECIAL system with another system, and do away with the talking heads.

Yeah, it's a Fallout rip-off.

Emotional Vampire · Aug 22, 2009

All stories are cliche, the trick is just to write it well.

Talby · Aug 22, 2009

The only obvious cliche is the village being destroyed and the PC being sold into slavery. Other than that, sounds neato.

Clockwork Knight · Aug 22, 2009

In the beginning, your village is scorched

JRPGs use it, so it's incredibly cliche. But since it's just an excuse to have your character setting out to find adventures, I suppose it's ok.

I'd suggest changing it into something else, for example:

You could change it to him being a soldier of one of the armies, and he's now a deserter!

Would also give you something to do with his past instead of getting it out of the way (a burned village basically doesn't exist anymore, and finding another person that lived there with you would feel contrived, but your friends / enemies army would still be there and would have a reason to go around and eventually find you). Would also give you an excuse to have a PC with reasonable survival skills, since it's more believable an ex-soldier knows how to handle guns than a regular villager.

etc, etc. This is a basic example, but I feel it's important to have the backstory influence the character (not railroad him, mind you), rather than just be an excuse for having your party drinking at a tavern, and they know each other for a long time, and they are waiting for a quest, and an old man comes in and asks if they are adventurers, etc.

soggie · Aug 22, 2009

Ok lemme expand on that concept.

The theme in razing the village is actually much deeper than just simple destruction.

The theme in the trilogy is about inaction, and how the world had become so static, so engulfed in its own petty quarrels that they fail to see the big picture - survival of mankind as a species.

The PC is unique because he wasn't raised in an environment that encourages such thought. He will be the one who changes the world, not because he has some special skills, genetic advantage or anything but because he wasn't raised to be indifferent.

He had the will to change himself, and eventually find the heart to raise above petty quarrels and inspire the entire wasteland into true unity, and away from total extinction.

The destruction of the village is meant to give the player a "clean state" by wiping out all attachment he has towards anything in the world. I hope it would be able to encourage the fact that the player would have nothing else to do other than to get out of this hell hole, and the destruction of his village had given him the perfect reason.

No ties, no attachments, just a singular objective to find a better life. And that's the theme of the first game.

Of course, the village being razed doesn't mean that everybody is dead... and as the reputation of the PC grows in the wasteland (through changing the fate of the towns and following the main storyline) the survivors might reunite with him somewhere along the line, which I hope would provide the game with some emotional moments. Or I might just scrap all that and keep everybody dead.

Now to explore the suggestion of a war veteran that deserted his troops... it is also possible to fit something in. Lemme sleep on that a little... it sounds interesting.

Andyman Messiah · Aug 22, 2009

Can't you just give the player amnesia and be done with it?

Clockwork Knight · Aug 22, 2009

no

because

it's

cliche

,okay?

soggie · Aug 22, 2009

Andyman Messiah said:
Can't you just give the player amnesia and be done with it?

Nope. Amnesia is not a good enough story device in the game, in my setting. I don't want the character to have any unnecessary background baggage. He's supposed to be a nobody, a pariah and a stranger, and due to that he's different. He thinks differently than the typical wastelander and because of that, he can become the "chosen one" to save (or destroy) the wasteland.

The reason behind me coming up with this idea and my insistence on keeping it this way is because of my personal philosophy. I believe that famous people like Nelson Mandala, Gandhi, Genghis Khan, etc are famous not because they possess special powers. They are famous because they think differently, have a different mindset. In a world where everybody strives to fit in and are resistant to change even when change is required for their eventual survival, they stand out as shining beacons over the ordinary. Where others are satisfied with inaction and indifference, they take action and make things happen. That's the basic philosophy behind it.

Lord Sudaca · Aug 22, 2009

The story is ok if its well written.
All rpg will be cliches in a way that is always an epic story, and epic stories are always similar sinc the beggining of time. When they were created it didint matter that the story was a cliche or not, the meaning of epic stories were to teach the history of a place or someone related to a place with some morals in in and stuff, so if you have to make a rpg you have to do something big, and hats were all stuff tends to look familiar.

I would make an rpg with the main character being massive pot smoker with amnesia who later dicovers he is actually a lawyer working for his dad, or something like that

Hobo Elf · Aug 23, 2009

Of course it's cliche. What did you expect? But never mind that. Just write the story well and it'll be interesting.

ghostdog · Aug 23, 2009

It's how you write the story and how you twist it, that matters. It's about how interesting the charaqcters and the situations you put them in, are. And how well written are the dialogs. Just be sure to give the player many different and interesting options during the game.

The_scorpion · Aug 23, 2009

the "clean slate" idea always needs some sort of cliche start. Be it losing your parents/ village somehow, be it amnesia, be it cast out or lost or renegade or whatever other plot device. It just needs to fit the theme of it all.

Khor1255 · Aug 23, 2009

I don't think it is too cliche. As a matter of fact I like a lot of this but you are going to have to carefully think out which technology survives and what is lost. You are on the right track but make sure no nonsensical uber technologies exist in common with your regular technology level This is the thing that makes most of these things ring with an utter note of falseness. Using a model from one of Earth's past technological eras is a good start but then you have to remember that superior tech once existed regularly and might still exist but in a rather uncommon sense (either 'gauntlet' tech 'elite' tech or whatever).

But I like the basic premise. Plenty of room for multilayered storylines and even a sci fi option.

soggie · Aug 23, 2009

The only two "futuristic" technologies would be exoskeletons and railguns.

Both powered by pre-apocalypse hydroplasma canisters that are basically magnetically suspended plasma. And that's only used by a secret faction of people who dedicated themselves to reverse engineering all pre-apoc tech and turn them into military implementations.

Khor1255 · Aug 23, 2009

That's sort of what I had in mind. Any common technology should follow the rules of technology trees well known or they don't ring true. It sounds like you have this pretty well thought out.

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