Re: Who is the storyteller?

[IGNORE the HYPE]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Morbus Iff wrote:

> I see your point, but myself, I think the camera angles are redundant to a
<snip>
> first place, what makes us think that we'll improve the story by allowing
> the player to control the view?

I agree with this. As I said before the camera angle thing seems to be
more of a gimick or a toy thingy. And the story is going to have to stand
up on it's own, regardless of camera angles, if it to be successful.

> What about animation with a bit of still life? Think the closeup of the

And animation & still life mixed with some photorealism as well. Some of
Dave McKean's art mixed drawing and photorealistic stuff and it is
incredibly strong imagery. As well something along the lines of the anime
flick Ghost in the Shell. Some of the backgrounds to the animation are
just stunning. And these can be rendered "web friendly" now with proggies
like ImageReady.

> With females, we had fallen into the stereotype roll, which as I look on it
> now, was probably going to be our first error. 

I agree that that would be the first error. The overall idea is great but
I think stereotypes of any kind should be avoided if only just to set this
idea apart from what's out there already.

> Before I go on, I'll assert that the questions wouldn't be as blunt as
> that. They would more be based upon a personality test. 

I think that idea would work really well. People would be inclinded to
answer scenario questions rather than "have you ever..." type of
intrusions. These scenario type of questions could also be built upon as
the person advances through the world. After getting to a certain pivitol 
point there could another questionairre to which the answers would build
upon the initial "avatar" which would aid in more realistic character
development.  

> In our game, we had a core set of characters. Say 10. Each of these 10
> closely linked to major personality that could be devised from the
> questions. 

And linking to what I said above you have multiple sets of those same core
characters with further personality enhancement/detractions at various
stages of the game. i.e. kid who was beat up by the neighbourhood bully
gains/loses more selfconfidence, beats others as he grows/becomes more
victimized, etc.

> There was the business like woman, or the raped female. 

I think you should have the raped male as well.

> Those were our basic ideas. Comments?

Is there a set beginning, middle, end type of theme to your original idea
or could it be an open ended thing that would obviously have some
predefined ending for certain characters, or ongoing story lines that
didn't end at any predictable point? (seems like a coding nightmare)

How tailored to the scenario questions would the individal's perception
within the game world be? i.e. really depressed/dark/introspective
characters' world could actually be darker (backgrounds and whatnot could
all be the same with difference lighting/contrast settings?) than someone
who registered as a self confident/positive person.

Just a few thoughts from a non-gamer...

Regards,
neil

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