Today, I was assigned a task in Writing for Video Games.

Actually, two tasks. One was to take that classic game of Werewolf and come up with an original spin on it, with a new variation.

The second was to come up with a pitch for my video game, which I invented on the spot while everyone else was telling us theirs. I hadn’t come up with one yet,even though I knew I would need one for the course. I guess it took the stress of worrying that I would be the only one without a concept to make me stop dithering and face the infinite possibilities come up with something.

After class, I did something that impressed the heck out of me : I got my Subway lunch, then sat down at one of the school’s computers and worked all through lunch on the assignment that I had just been given.

I had to get my lunch first, because I knew if I didn’t, I would forget.

Anyhow, that produced this little document :
Re-skin for Werewolf :

Idea : It’s medieval France and the battle for the souls of the peasants has reached a fever pitch. In a small village on the south coast of France, the battle is very real. Both an angel and a devil have possessed simple villagers, and the two circle each other to decide : who will win? Good, or evil?

Villagers : Peasants – simple folk who farm and fish in the sunny South of France.
Werewolf : Demon – A slavering beast with an innocent face. Thrives on violence, pain, and woe. He knows he must kill the Angel
Tanner : Martyr – burns with a passion to sacrifice herself in the name of God
Seer : Inquisitor – He will find and kill the Demon no matter what it takes.
Angel : new class. Wakes at night, can Bless a player making them unkillable until the following evening. Also can resurrect one person per game.
Note : if the Angel blesses the Demon, the demon dies and good wins.
But if the Demon kills the Angel, the Angel is corrupted and evil wins.

My video game ideas : America has been taken over by a Christian Fascist movement, and is now ruled by an oppressive government that controls every aspect of people’s

And so forth and so on. You can read the whole thing by clicking MORE.

Now I will admit right here that, without meaning to, I lifted this idea from the Heinlein short(ish) story, “If this goes on…” , which is a terrible title that is almost, but not quite, completely unrelated to the content of the story.

But I digress.

The story also takes place in a Christian Fascist version of America, and involves a person  who goes from true believer to part of the revolution that topples the regime.

But there the similarity ends. My regime will be both more fascist and more oppressive than Heinlein’s, with a visual style based entirely on the need to terrify citizens into submission. There is absolutely nothing gentle or kind in this government. It is a tank tread rolling over a protester’s head in Tianamen Square over and over again forever.

And my hero is a cop, not a simple soldier like in the Heinlein story. He’s a cop because I want the player to get a taste of what it is like to be the oppressor at first. That way, when the hero makes his journey from true believer to revolutionary, the player feels what he feels and understands his spiritual transformation.

I haven’t decided on the exact genre yet. I am not sure where I want there to be loads of side quests or one central powerful story.

I am leaning toward the latter. But there is room for flexibility. I don’t think I want to go full open world because my story has a progression of events that have to happen in a certain order and I don’t want to dilute that with distractions.

Then again,  it might be fun to have the possibility of little side quests where the hero can help the oppressed citizenry of the USA in ways both big and small.

Oh, and this regime is strictly American. America is now a belligerent fortress state that almost never interacts with the rest of the world. The government, in fact,  claims that the rest of the world was destroyed in Armageddon but America was spared because it, amongst all nations, was the most pious and pure.

And specifically because the great Holy Fathers intervened to save America by giving their own lives so that America could be saved.

I suppose I should be writing this in some kind of note file. Oh well.  I will copy and paste it into something when I am done.

I am not sure about how much combat I want there to be in the game. I mean, I love to fight in video games, and there has to be a fair bit of something or other to keep this from being the first film-length cutscene ever.

I think I would want it to be like Arkham City in the sense that there is straight up brawling as well as stealth elements. I would also want there to be investigation elements too. And ways to use your police training to get information out of people.

And I’d want the gameplay to be fast paced and exciting, with twists and turns and some high visual impact scenes like in a summer blockbuster.

The trick is to put the character in serious fucking peril which is relatively easy to escape. That way, they get the excitement and the feeling of being a badass survivor who can take on the world without a lot of actual risk of failure.

Of course, this must be done very subtly or they will catch on.

The idea is to deliver this excitement to as many people as possible.

Plus my plotline, once the main character quits his cop job, fakes his death, and goes underground, is one of rising triumph with a very strong moral and spiritual core, and that should be pretty damned exciting too.

These games, alas, are unlikely to be made.

But we might be able to use them to get jobs writing in video games!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.