AuthorTopic: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?  (Read 3950 times)

Offline TheSilentRoomate

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 49
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

on: April 15, 2010, 08:47:56 pm
I've been working on a platform shooter game influenced heavily by cave story and mother 3 for quite a while now and I just realized I don't really have much of a plot figured out! So I was hoping people on here would be able to help me flesh this one out!

Here's what I have as a backstory so far:

A long time ago an enormous monster appeared on the earth. It began a rampage across the surface, destroying cities, leveling mountains. The humans, peaceful in nature and caught off guard by this sudden destruction, were unable to fight back. As the monster continued its rampage a board of the humans most acclaimed scientists, architects and engineers assembled to construct something to fight off the monster. What they created were 4 very large, self sufficient robots. These robots were programed to consume any non living matter and convert it into littler robots used for fighting off the monster. They functioned sort of like a bee hive, with the 4 large robots acting like queens.  They were programmed to do this until the monster had been destroyed.

Eventually the robots won the fight, scattering pieces of the monster across the earth, but not without heavy human casualties. Not needing the protection of the robots and figuring that the program that would cause the robots to stop multiplying had taken effect, the humans buried them deep in the earth along with all the other waste caused by the monster's rampage.

Unknown to the humans the robots did not stop multiplying. The monster had not been completely destroyed because pieces of it, capable of still secreting its 'children' still existed and therefore the robots still had work to do and the program to stop them was not yet in effect. The monster had as well been spread so finely and so widely throughout that it was impossible for the robots to locate every piece. They continued to live underground, eating away the rock and minerals until enormous caves and tunnels wound throughout the earth. So much so that parts of the surface were beginning to collapse into the caves. These caves are filled with many different inhabitants

This is where you come in. Walking one day through hills, the ground begins to shake and collapse beneath you. You fall down and down until eventually landing unconscious upon a bed of leaves at the bottom of a cave. Your initial goal being to escape from the cave back onto the surface, you begin searching for a way up. On your way you encounter a robot who when you get near becomes scared and runs away from you.


Things I know youll have to do througout the game: destroy the robots so they stop reproducing and eating away at the earth.
Find out about the robots
There will be primitive underground races that you will run into and be your "home town" sort of thing? I want to have the underground races very primitive at first, but when the earth begins collapsing things like tvs and other modern things fall in, in a cartoony sort of way
Things I need:
a plot-in a very mother 3 esq way
a villain
how you discover you need to destroy the robots
quirky characters

I'm looking to avoid having the monster come back in any sort of way, except that you may have to destroy some of his left over pieces or something

Anyways if anyone would want to give me their opinions on this so far it'd be greatly appreciated!
« Last Edit: April 15, 2010, 08:53:21 pm by TheSilentRoomate »

Offline Gil

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1543
  • Karma: +1/-0
  • Too square to be hip
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/475.htm
    • View Profile
    • My Portfolio

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #1 on: April 15, 2010, 10:10:58 pm
I like story lines that start off very mundane. The SNES Earthbound was a very awesome example, though literature, movies and games have done it millions of time (Lord of the Rings being the classic example of course).

The epic end of the story is only epic when put in comparison to the tame beginning of the story. It's also fun to have the story come full circle halfway through. For example:

The hero wins the big battle, returns home to the quiet village. It's then that the real story starts and the small town is destroyed in a dramatic twist. The hero has to do it all over again. The final evil is revealed.

The evil from the first half can also be contrasted to the final evil. You can make the first half's evil absolute. This guy is bent on destruction and destroying him is obvious. The second half's evil is more gray, but grander in scale. Maybe the hero's best friend throughout the story is corrupted.

The other way round is more traditionally "epic". The first villain is gray in values, he's still protecting something, he is misunderstood. The final evil is the absolute evil. The first villain may even join the fight.

Offline TheSilentRoomate

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 49
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #2 on: April 15, 2010, 10:49:20 pm
I really like that! I was planning on having you begin with the only knowledge of the plot being "you fell into a hole, try to get out" and no knowledge of the whole backstory that you would discover later on in a lord of the rings sort of way! I could have it so that you have to confront the "definite evil or villain" first and then realize that the robots who you thought earlier were harmless are really the main problem! I'm really unsure of how to write that into the plot though..

gotta love you

Offline EyeCraft

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 597
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • What are you scared of?
    • View Profile
    • Death By Dev

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #3 on: April 16, 2010, 01:46:17 am
Interesting, but take time to think about the setting. What kind of place would have been built by peaceful humans? The only way (I can see) humans coexisting without war is if there are abundant resources for everyone. No money, no classes, no crime, etc. It really alters the human history to such a dramatic extent, and what does it add to the story? The humans have innocence? All that really does is make the monster "look like a dick" for coming in and wrecking everything. I would suggest removing the peaceful in nature part, because it releases the huge burden of trying to imagine a completely different human history and the social structure it would lead to.

Not to mention if all the humans are peaceful by nature... you've destroyed your ability to create conflict between humans. Which means human villains are out the window.

As for the humans burying the robots, would the worlds leading scientists and engineers design something that uses massive quantities of material only to be dumped when its finished? It's wasteful; doesn't make sense to me. It would make sense that the robots would disassemble themselves once their directive was complete. As soon as the humans notice the robots aren't doing that, they'd know the directive was still going. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea of a vast underground cave network filled with robots and the monster children hunted by them. I. Love. It. But the story you've used to establish does not compute.

Have humans that are bad. Maybe bad people took advantage of the attack to do things. Maybe they messed with the robot design. Maybe they made the queens go underground while the minions/drones disassembled on the surface to make everyone think it was over. Once you make humans nasty, villains appear everywhere. Maybe the bad people intend to take control of the robots and use them to hold the world to ransom. Thus you must destroy the robots.

I would suggest that you don't think of what you want your story to be in terms of other creative works that inspire you. That's an exercise in derivation. Think about aspects of reality, of your life, social patterns, patterns in nature, etc. Use these things as focus points of your story. For instance, the suggestions I've made relate to greed, society's trust in authority and persecution. Then you just need some conflict, and of course characters.  :)

Offline TheSilentRoomate

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 49
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #4 on: April 18, 2010, 03:51:40 am
Yeah thats true... Ugh i hate trying to think of a plot haha I do want to keep the robots and their whole thing as I've planned some pretty big boss fights for them and the underground caves being fleshed out by them, but asides from that i can pretty much move around or even scrap the rest.

Youre right it wouldnt make sense if they just burried them even though they hadnt finished their mission thing. Do you have any idea of a reason i could use for the robots to be underground?

Yeah I'll change the part about humans being peaceful by nature, it wasn't going to be a big part of the plot because you would never return to the surface and would have very little contact with other people

Offline 7321551

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 121
  • Karma: +1/-0
  • a.k.a. Jarrad
    • View Profile

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #5 on: April 18, 2010, 06:41:05 am
First, the good: The scenario you've picked has a lot of potential for visual charm. I can imagine the underground environment, containing some human artifact being illuminated by small shafts of light, & some primitive subterranean creatures warily puzzling over it. & it's neat. I'd play it.

But the backstory might be a bit unwieldy. The more elaborate a backstory is, the more it tends to burden the narrative. It forces you to violate the storytelling principle of "show, don't tell".

The pacing is important - How are you going to tell the audience about these past events? You'll need to parcel out the events in the backstory in an intriguing way, & make sure you don't resort to dull exposition sequences, ie. wizened old sages blathering on, or an intro text crawl. Even the most thoughtful background information won't be compelling if it brings the current narrative to a halt too frequently.

Streamline the exposition & omit unnecessary details - for instance, if the fact that there happened to be 4 original robots never emerges as a significant plot point in the current narrative, then omit it - it's a red herring. Eyecraft addressed this with the innocent-human element.

Finally - this might be at odds with what you're trying to accomplish, but do you have to have a backstory at all? Really: what if the story began with the Monster Dilemma, on through the Robo Solution, & then progressed to the Sub-Terrain Mystery - now you've got a three-act structure!
Just a thought.

Also: the robots' role seems to take a sudden shift in the plot outline - they aid humanity by destroying the monster (good thing), & the first one you find runs away from you (cue sympathy), & then suddenly you have to destroy them! I know they're hollowing out the Earth & all, but by that point I'd already been primed to like them!

End.

Offline Tuna Unleashed

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 471
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #6 on: April 18, 2010, 02:04:25 pm
Also: the robots' role seems to take a sudden shift in the plot outline - they aid humanity by destroying the monster (good thing), & the first one you find runs away from you (cue sympathy), & then suddenly you have to destroy them! I know they're hollowing out the Earth & all, but by that point I'd already been primed to like them!

End.
this so much. at first i wasn't sure who the baddies were because making sentient robots is never a good idea but when you said the main objective was to kill the robots it seemed pretty sudden and oddly black and white.

Offline TheSilentRoomate

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 49
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: anyone up for some plot brainstorming?

Reply #7 on: April 19, 2010, 02:44:22 am
Thanks a bunch for all these critiques and suggestions! :)
mm thats true, i was planning on letting the player piece together the backstory through what people are saying as to avoid a big cut scene explaining it.
Yeah the robots were intended to be sort of good bad enemies, like you feel bad for killing them in a shadow of the collosus sort of way, but after talking to my partner in this game we realized it wouldnt be a very fun big fight if you were sad to kill them so we're going to think of a way to change that and probably rework most of our plot if not change it completely
« Last Edit: April 19, 2010, 02:46:06 am by TheSilentRoomate »