Quote:Original post by Estok
just going to add on to the ideas.

For the geography I don't think that it should be too much like earth, I would favor more exotic landscape such as floating waterfalls, crystallized forests, vast cold deserts, natural landscapes that are surreallingly spectacular. Behind the beautiful landscape would lie the scars of the planet, resulting from natural and man-made catastrophies. On one side of the coin is the seeming recuring tragedies that ended each civilization on earth due to their own selfishness, but on the other side of the coin is the never ending hope and reincarnation that brings out the best in mankind.

:/

is this what you meant by environmentalism? what you don't want?

I kind of like the idea of how earth endured many catastropies, and how every time it reincarnates into something more beautiful and meaningful, how tragedies and mistakes are not meant to be forgotten or be regreted, but be transcended to strengthen one's spirit.

By environmentalism I mean the idea that technology is bad and people will selfishly destroy themselves and/or the earth. I personally believe that tragedies and mistakes are meant to be learned from, fixex, and in future avoided, not endured and transcended; humans are meant to be both spiritual(in more of a new age/philosophical way than an organized religion way) and technological. I'm all for an exotic landscape as long as nobody suggests it would be more beautiful without humans - beauty is in the eye of the beholder,the earth wouldn't be beautiful if there weren't any intelligent beings here to appreciate it.

That's why I want to see these two races we're developing presented as equal (not one greedy and aggressive) and living together in communities that have a blend of magical and scientific technologies. Although I do like 5minutegaming's idea that the two races could meet during the story and the player could shape the relationship between them maybe by matchmaking an interspecies couple?

I personally like the third setting better than the other two. But, I think that the other two options do have an interesting twist that could be thrown into the story.

What about this though as an idea.
Planet: Spiritual's homeworld
Human: Human's who were abducted by the Techno race and brought to this planet
Spiritual: Evolved humans (caused by the planet)
Techno: Abducted the humans originally and after a long past war with the Spiritual race they co-exist peacefully


About the human characters. I like the idea that they should experience amnesia, but here's something that could sort of add to the players learning about the past of the planet. That the cryogenically frozen humans had memories imbedded before they were frozen about what had happened in the past (that causes an overload for their brains which is the reason for their amnesia). They can slowly regain their *memories* and that will cause the player to see more about the planet.

Well, as far as the enviromental it seems we have a little disagreement as to which planet that we're on. I don't like the idea of a culturally advanced civilization clinging to any specific planet as their homeworld. The homeworld would be that of the individual and where that individual was born so I think that it should be the former planet Earth completely changed as far as geography is concerned there will be either underwater remnants of human civilization or burried artifacts or both.

It should no longer be called earth and the player should be given as little hints as possible that it could be earth. One of the main features of the game is the mystery coupled with the romance. I think that we could also add in what Terlenth suggested about stored memories although we should keep the memory implants to a minimum or make it so you have to find the other humans who have been put in cryostasis in order to trigger the memory. Or have it so that the memories are triggered by touching human artifacts. And of course we make this all unknown to the user so that they have to figure out that they even have flashbacks. One thing about amnesia is that you really don't know that your missing anything its just simply not accessible by your brain and the links are just cut off.

Further about the aliens history the more spiritual race we have astablished as being evolved from humanity in some way. I like the wings idea. I have drawn a conceptual art piece merging a human with wings an tail and a neck that look similar to those in 'Star Wars' Episode II. Hehehehe its a pretty hilarious picture I'll post it once I can get it scanned in. However, the technological race I think should have a completely different evolutionary path. And thus have an alien body. There should also be a number of creatures that each alien race has brought to this 'new planet'.

I'm more for the fact that these two races settled the planet about the same time and they have colonized many other planets before this one. The aliens themselves come from many different planets and worlds and have decided to travel and colonize the planet. They could possibly bring with them ways of terreforming that involve such things as graden cities in the sky underwater towns, cities in a volcano etc.

I agree that earth should be where the story takes place. Hints to where it takes place should come in a few forms with no single find reveling where it is. Hints would include:

Buildings:
Part of the dome on the capitial building
The Clock from big ben
parts from other great monuments that if you saw them, you would never think of them comming from their respecive monuments, however upon the relization that your on earth you would know where they came from. (So know finding the statue of liberty)

Artifacts:
Common items desk, beds, lighting nothing one would thing would not exist on another planet.

The idea that the Spiritual race came from hummans is an insteresting one, however I don't think that they should simply evolved to have wings, tails, ect. When born telling them apeart from a humman should be imposible however through their spiritual training gain wings, possibly a third eye and other markings.

I think both the spiritual and technological races should be evolved from humans. Having them be born looking like humans but differ as they grow up is a interesting idea, this is how I did things in the design of _Gimmie Those Wings_, but in this case it might be counter-productive to making the human pc seem isolated and alone.


How about themes, does anyone have any ideas for what themes we want to explore in this game? I should have had that as a category on the survey, I suppose, but it was getting long enough as it was...

[Edited by - sunandshadow on September 2, 2004 12:57:15 PM]

Sorry, that last one was me!

I agree with you Estok about having one truth and the different humans being awoken to have a different take on that truth giving the player an exra thought process after the game is completed such as adding all the different endings together to get the full truth of the past.

Also about the theme, well I think that the theme should be how the human race is not completely everlasting and that if there was something to come after humanity I(the player) would want a legacy would want something to be said about us to be remembered.

Also there should be a theme which I have been thinking about for a while. The theme that humans with their technology and learning ability could gain enough knowledge to spawn other races and to be like and elder race. And that not all that humans have done to earth was completely wasteful. Also that the human race can be noble with a lot of suffereing and hardwork humans could put right all that they have wronged.

Such as the killing of their own kind could be put right by giving millions of different species a chance to live and breath and uncover the endless secrets of the universe.

Thats just an idea let me know what you all think about it!