If I were to protoype a game

Verbal diarrhoea much?
I usually was against more than one entry a day or too many entries in succession, until I realised I didn’t care.

This will sound very much like such games as ICO, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus and Prince of Persia 2008, largely because it is. The slight differences though will be in the themes, or perhaps how far they extend beyond half-hearted subtext.

A game in three movements (no, not three games. Make it one game, keep each movement just the right length and polish them all rather than just rush bits of them).

– The Grand Directive.
– Refusal and Consequences.
– Separation and Reunion.

The Grand Directive
This will play quite similarly to Prince of Persia 2008 in some respects, though possibly with a tiny little bit more combat. Don’t get me wrong, I love how sparse the combat is in PoP 2008, but for the purposes of this game there may be just a little more. We have two main characters, a male and female, brought together by a common purpose or at least with one agreeing to assist the other one, much a la PoP ’08. We subtly reveal much ICO/PoP ’08 dynamics between the two characters while at the same time building a gentle relationship between the two. I really do like all the dialogue between the Prince and Elika in PoP, constantly challenging each-other and offering different perspectives on the same issues. Of-course in this game, we would want to take that a step farther. Perhaps less comedy, or perhaps more mature, developed and complex comedy, and much more complex issues to be questioned. Don’t hold back – if the kids don’t get it, the kids shouldn’t play it.
The directive is in some measure some perceived notion of saving the world, to which we would work towards supplanting in the second movement. You know how much I don’t like saving the world, so one of the main themes in the game would be challenging this premise. The directive movement would feature lively platforming and combat as well as dialogue.

Refusal and Consequences
One or both of the protagonists decide that no, actually, they don’t want to sacrifice themselves to save the world, or whatever the alleged solution was. They either take the other character with them by force or by virtue of the fact that they have been physically incapacitated, or they convince the other to run away with them.
In a reversal of Zelda: TP, Okami and PoP, the world begins to turn to shit. At the same time for whatever reason, your motivations are brought under question and the relationship between the main protagonists that seemed so strong begins to fracture. You talk less, you become distant with each-other. Perhaps the health of one of the characters begins to deteriorate. Dialogue and scripted events would have to be extremely well written to make it believable. If you hadn’t noticed, this game would be solidly working towards shifting the focus from the world at large to the protagonists themselves. We no longer care about the fate of the world, we only care about these two people and their well-being. After feelings of elation in the first movement, we work to emotionally manipulate the player so that they begin to sense uncertainty, possibly regret, and a fear of impending grief and loss. We may mirror actions from the first movement but change them to achieve this; a good example would be in PoP ’08, where Elika usually embraces you while you climb, that perhaps now she wouldn’t want to touch you. Imagine how you would feel the first time your character did its routine animation and extended its arm, only to have the other character leap right past you. Subtleties like this would have to be all over the second movement.
You would be forced to traverse an increasingly desolate landscape with a growing sense of loneliness, think of how Shadow of the Colossus feels when you’re just riding across the land. Ambient sounds, no music, no combat, just time to reflect. Your companion wouldn’t make spontaneous remarks about the beauty of the land or a flower or your behaviour any-more. More stark than the landscape would be the growing rift between you.
The final part of this movement would bring you to separation.

Separation and Reunion
If I put enough time and effort into it, I could probably come up with a fairly decent premise as to why the two protagonists end up separating and what led them to this juncture. Ultimately though, the last movement would be all about one thing; the desire to be reunited. At this point through delicate writing and scripted events, we would have well and truly abandoned saving the world. Our main protagonist cares for only one thing, to be reunited at whatever cost, even if only for a moment before the world ended. Every action, every encounter be it combat or NPC interaction, would reflect on the time you were together, both happily adventuring in the first movement and desperately escaping in the second. Perhaps there would be small short-cuts across the landscape that you can no-longer take without the assistance of your companion, so you have to take a slightly longer and more arduous route. Your character yearns for that reunion, and so to do you as the player. Along the way there are things that may indicate his or her death, and more that show signs of his or her life. Some may indicate that they are seeking to right wrongs, some may indicate that they are seeking you out as much as you are seeking them. This is a cannon love-story, plain and simple. We have no pretences now, nothing hidden beneath saving the world or achieving the Grand Directive, simply reunion and the expression of love. Even as the world may fall down around them, they strive to be reunited. I would love a scene towards the end where you’re running and jumping around a constantly decaying open-labyrinthine environment where at certain times the other character can be seen in the background striving just as hard as you are to reach you, where they stop and yell out to you, encouraging you, and scripted moments where you stop and do the same.
Ultimately we bring the two together again, having shed their defences, bravado and prejudices, and openly declare their love. If this isn’t a reward to the player, they’re clearly missing the point, either that or the designers haven’t crafted the game enough to lead to this conclusion.

Would the world be saved? I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe we would end on an ambiguous note where we don’t know the destiny of the world, perhaps it’s unimportant. Of perhaps if a writer were skilled enough, we could work it so that the destiny of the world actually depended more on them establishing a lovers’ relationship rather than executing some grand-action. That would be a difficult thing to write, you couldn’t just say so at the end of the game, it would take a little premise-building throughout the game to indicate that this might be the solution to the problem rather than sword-swinging or self-sacrifice. Who knows. Sometimes I don’t think we should be so afraid of ambiguity. Some of the best games like ICO and SotC (yes I know, both Team ICO games) keep almost the entire thing ambiguous, and I think they’re all the better for it. The game lets you have your own unique perceptions as to why the characters are doing whatthey’re doing and what it means to them. While this prototype would be firmly heading towards bringing these two people together, beyond that, I think it could be anyone’s guess. As long as it didn’t end up being something like Assassin’s Creed where it’s some dude in the future reliving historical events, even if they did kill that whole idea right at the very start of the game. I just wouldn’t want the whole experience to be cheapened by turning the entire affair into some psychological metaphor for something in a parallel or different reality. The only way to half-intelligently build this is to drop hints of it throughout the game like Assassin’s Creed, and it’s an extremely difficult thing to do with tact and finesse without it just being straight-out hammy.

Is it too much to ask for a game that doesn’t have a Grand Directive as its main theme? Can we possibly make a game that is themed around people achieving emotional triumphs in their lives? We can still have all the running and jumping and fighting, but it might be for a different reason, something more real, something that means more to us, and I couldn’t think of a better theme than a love-story.

Oh and a final word on Prince of Persia 2008 for the purposes of this prototype, this game would be just as easy and fluid. It’s not about the player conquering the game-mechanics. Clearly PoP tries to be as transparent as possible so that you are wholly focussed primarily on Elika, and secondarily on the way she interacts with the Prince. This is how I would want my game to be, with as transparent controls as possible so that absolutely nothing gets in the way of immersing yourself in these characters. The entire experience is craft around them. I would borrow elements from ICO and take them a step farther; when you stand idle, Yoruda often wanders about and looks at things, chases butterflies etc. I would love it if in my game, were you to stand at a cliff and remain idle, that your partner would walk slowly up to you from behind, then put their hand on your shoulder so that you share the moment together. These things would all be written into the idle animations scripts, so that no matter what you did in this world, you were reminded that it’s about these two people. In the third movement if you left your character idle, he or she may eventually just sit down and lean against something, then take out a trinket that belonged to the other character and look at it. They may even bitterly cast it aside on the ground, so that when you woke your character up, they would actually reach over and pick it up before you resumed control.

I know – it seems like a lot of dense coding, but we seem to be heading in that direction. I know I’ve been going on and on about it, and Rocke will definitely be sick to death of me talking about it (I was chatting to him on Messenger last-night while I played), but I just love how in Prince of Persia, the two of you do everything together. Like holding Yoruda’s hand in ICO, like bearing Midna to Hyrule Castle when she’s been weakened in Twilight Princess, like visiting the mysterious woman back at the temple in Shadow of the Colossus, these connections between characters are simply beautiful. Even opening a door in Prince of Persia is an amazing animation – he runs up the wall and takes hold of a large metal ring, then extends his arm and waits for Elika to run, leap and take his hand. Together their combined weight is sufficient enough to pull the lever and the door is opened. It’s just a door, but it’s so subtle yet so powerful a way to indicate that you cannot achieve anything without Elika. The gameplay mechanic tells you that you need the collection of animated polygons to progress, but in your heart you hopefully understand that it’s much more than that. Opening that door, climbing on vines with her embracing your back, talking to her makes you feel that regardless of grand directive there is, you’re really doing it for her, and that you’re doing it with her. I want to amplify these elements in gaming. I want that reward you get when Midna reveals herself to you after being your constant companion for so long, to be totally about the two of you rather than an aside to the fate of the world, hence in my prototype, we would totally subvert the theme in the very first movement.

Blah blah blah, it’s long and it’s just basically more self-indulgence. I’m just as much a fanboy who wants everything to be his way as all the other raving lunatics, just with better grammar.

Between ICO, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and now Prince of Persia 2008, I essentially have the game I want, just fractured in three and stuffed with other stuff that while pleasant enough, only works to slightly diminish the things I enjoy most.

By the end of PoP ’08, Elika may just have to join Alex Roivas, April Ryan and the others as one of the all-time best game characters ever.