Chronicles of The Four

[Chronostasis]

I like having a plan before starting this. Yes, it seems very typical at first. Bare with me, you won't be dissapointed. :]

First Few Moments:

You play 16 year old Laklo. Strange name for the towns messengerboy, or rather, do-it-all guy. Laklo's parents are unheard of, and he lives with his love interest who shares the same feelings for him, Mina, and her very strict, religious, troubling parents.

However it may seem to be in this town, just off of it is a serious drought plaguing the Jadelands, the most populated of the continents on Aye'dine, the planet you live on.

Mina, as an acolyte of Mira (You can see where she got her name), the goddess of Life, is sent on a duty with a caravan of other priests and priestesses from her church. Naturally her devoted parents worry, then shove and push and force Laklo into following her, despite her father knowing about their growing love interest.

As they reach the nearest city of Polent, the church staff come together and try and aid the ruined crops, only to come to the conclusion that their divine powers have left, and even the Church Minister cannot muster any form of healing. Realising that the gods have left them, they cower, all the while Laklo is discluded from the healing ceremony, and being introduced by a smart talker and thief of sorts in the bazaar....


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Very much like Final Fantasy, the story line build up and tension rises higher and higher through out the game, hopefully I will be able to leave you in shock once and a while, or make you go 'NO, WHAT? HOLY CRAP!' every now and then.

PLOT:

In the midst of a global drought, the divine powers that form all churches have left the planet for death, except no one is able to truly die, no one is able to give birth to a living being, and so those who should be dead lie suffering, those pregnant give birth to a slab of soulless meat. In these troubled times, new leaders take up ranking in the heiarchy of the provinces, the churches are blamed for all suffering, and soon enough any servant of any god is captured and jailed, starved, and so forth, as they cannot die. You play Laklo, a 16 year old boy who, on a trip with his love interest and church, must escape the people, the army, the corrupt church trying to survive as a family, and multiple radical anti-religious groups, bounty hunters, and not to mention the huge uprise of creatures that have come. The world is lost without rules, ethics, and their governors of life and death, good and evil, and you must fight to survive, stuck between two sides.

What you can expect:

- Original, welcoming, easy to like characters with full back story, plot twists and arks involving that character especially, focusing in deep, profound detail upon every main character you come across, as well as in depth backstory and an always lingering threat derived from the past of each party character.

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- Jaw dropping developpement and different arks.

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- Land, villages, areas, cities, governments, empires, all with some back story as well.

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- Original homebrew classes and races, also including story behind each and every one of them, and how they came to be, where are they taught, etc.

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- All original spells and abilities relating to the class's deity, or principle ideal.

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- The world is against you; creatures sent from the abyss to exact what is not right in the natural cycle of life, orginazations wishing to hunt down and kill your party's kin, religion, family. Many, many adventures await you, as well as a boss battle that'll feel a little heart warming :]

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-The game will happen over the span of 10 years, Laklo, the main character, being 26 by the time it ends. There will be some time skips.

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I hope you guys are anticipating this, I'll need a lot of help, time, and resource to do this, but i'm fully capable and intend on making this a 100%, don't think i'm giving you false hope.

End of July I leave for Japan to start grade 12 Japanese high school (No, I have no family there, not even oriental.), I'll have to adjust, so i'd have to put it off for a bit till I adjust.

If you can lend me a hand with battlesets or original music you'd like to see in the game (depending if it can fit anywhere) or anything I can make use of, it'd be gladly appreciated, and credits would be listed of course!

Thanks, and I hope you all get a chance to play when it's finished.

WARNING:
This game has mature topics for older-teen to mature audiences, including sex, abuse, religion, politics, corruption, or any of these in possible combination. Discretion is advised.

[Phayre]

Some hint of larger conflict would be nice. Because right now it seems neither deep nor unique. Even the deepest plot can be summarized or teased at.

[psy_wombats]

Hm... So far the game seems somewhat unoriginal, no offense. For one thing, the primary hero cliches remain intact, strange long-haired guys, 16-year-old protagonist, love interest, no parents to speak of, monsters from the abyss, weird religions, FF-like... All of these things are fine as long as your game develops properly and gains a unique plot. So far, it does not have that.

If you want to impress, you must be creative. The beginning strikes me as somewhat typical, so you will need to progress fast to shake any air of unoriginality. Even if your plot has some of the greatest twists around, is anyone going to stick to your game enough to see them? You'll need fast movement if this is how you intend to start the game.

And it would be nice to get an overall outline of the plot. Trust me, you want to revise here, not once the game is half-done. (Happened to me. Sucked.) Do you feel too lazy to write down the plot, think no one will read a huge summary, or just don't know the plot? I have the patience to read whatever wall of text you come up with... As generally I post them... As evidenced in this post... Somewhat ironic.

[Moosetroop11]

I dunno, seems okay to me. Looks like the game's got potential.

You're being a little too professional about this, however. You're expecting everyone to start guessing and stuff. You really need to give us something to be interested about - got any screenshots? Don't tell me you've made a thread before you've even started making the maps.

[Chronostasis]

I understand where you're all coming from, I did  write  this at 3 AM, and yes, it seems very typical, which generally isn't my style, but I found most that go out of lines of a few set stories are for the most part uneventful and such.

I see you all see it from the '16 year old embarks on an adventure to save the world with a love interest, the rogue, no parents' archetype, much like Eragon (Apparently?), Star wars and so on. All I can say to you is that you'd have to play to see how it is. It will be much more than just Backdrop religion, and typicalness in game.

Moose: I hate starting something without a plan that I can look back on.

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EDIT:

First Post Editted. Look there. :] Thanks everyone for your comments, it's all part of correcting yourself that makes your work that much better.

[aboutasoandthis]

Relax, this plot is excellent.

[Chronostasis]

Thank you ^-, though,

Don't worry, I re read my first post and I seriously see how they took it. YES, The first few moments of the game of actually playing Laklo and such will not be completely exciting, mostly character and first stage plot developpement, most of the time that isn't at all exciting. I HATE to start things like Golden sun did. Boom, something started, no build up, it was just tedious and boring, I am making this game in my own image after all. I can guarentee a large audience will like this though. :]

[aboutasoandthis]

I was focusing mostly on the post you just made, but yes what you posted above is still nice. It may not be original but it feels consistent.

The first few moments of the game of actually playing Laklo and such will not be completely exciting, mostly character and first stage plot development,

This is never a good idea unless the content is optional. With a game, and RPG games especially, the best intro is the one that uses the least amount of text as possible. This is the number one complaint as far as RPG Maker games, and even professional games, go.

It isn't so much that something should immediately happen. Golden Sun was kind of a bad intro. A real intro uses the graphics and the gameplay to tell the story, at least for the first 5 minutes. You also want to get the player to a battle screen as soon as possible. THAT will keep them hooked.

I really like the immortality concept. I think your intro should focus on that.

How will Game Overs in the game work though?

[Ben]

Dont take the critique to heart.

Honestly, I think people tend to react with more cynicism when no screenshots have been posted.

Personally, My plan for project threads is to not post anything until I either have a demo relesed, Or pending release within a few days. The number of projects I started, and then rallied some intrest for, and then hit a large scale bug in scripting, or had a computer crash, or decided to rework the entire graphics, and had to restart completly...

People will recieve it better when that have something tangible to reference, like screenshots, Some images, Or a demo


Good luck with your project man. Hope to see some screenies soon

[Chronostasis]

To Respond to About:

I see. Thank you for the advice, I think I'll keep that in mind. :]
Obviously there are save points. When you 'die', you fall unconcious, and in a Prince of persia-esque way, it'll go something like 'Wait, that's now how it happened...' and you'll revert back to your original save point. That's just something I drew up for now. I might change it up if I find out anything better.

Gemini: No no, I understand them, and I agree, it was typical, even if I didn't mean it to be entirely. And thank you.

Anyway, enough talk, seriously, time to start working on the project again. :]

[psy_wombats]

That's much better now... Agree with Gemini. When the project is only a plot summary, and the summary doesn't carry weight, then there is nothing to judge. I mean, this game looks like it would be excellent if you carry it through as intended. (Difficult but doable) The problem occurs when you sell the game as 'epic' without any material.

But as for what you have now, that seems to work better. Although it's more  of a premise than a plot. You may want to consider redoing the intro to put the hero right into the action. It works better that way. In any case, you need to have some reason for the player to keep playing before you can start trying to make them care about the characters. That stuff takes time.

But screenshots much anticipated. This game really could be good!

[Dominicy]

This game has mature topics for older-teen to mature audiences, including sex, abuse, religion, politics, corruption, or any of these in possible combination. Discretion is advised.

Now, is this to say that every other word's going to be '****', every ten minutes people explode in a mushroom cloud of blood, the main character'd drop on the floor for sex if offered, and every other scene is some kind of crucifixion? >.>

I've seen a game very similar to that, actually.  Well, of what I could bear to play.  It was an RPG maker game, that's all I remember completely.  But my point being that game was an overdone piece of *** XD

Dark settings are fun and all, as long as you don't over do it.  I like how this is going (Just the fact that no one can die or whatever confuses me O.o), but if this game ends up like you're trying to force it, it's only going to make it look immature and bad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to insult the game before I see it, I'm just giving you some advice/reminding you that forcing a 'this game be mature, doodz' thing only makes it worse.  I'll reserve the rest of my judgement until I actually play it.

[Chronostasis]

Thanks Psy

Dom:

No, it's not a lot of cussing and such. Maybe damnit or something along the way; really nothing there. People get fussy when religion is bashed in video games. Same with some form of politics. Sex part you'll have to wait and see for, but no, there isn't any actual scenes, and even then it won't be crudely done. Thank you for your question.

[Chronostasis]

Sneak peak at a character and his custom sprite, half ice dragon of sorts, and half human being.  Though I believe the hair was taken from somewhere.

I currently have 3 spriters working with me, and perhaps one artist, who has done the picture of the two brothers in my thread in the requests section. Keeping it up to date; this'll be done by the time I come back from Japan. :]

[Ben]

That sprite....

You need to make the skin tone a bit more distinguishable from the scarfs stripes...
And if you pick a less saturated red, the eyes will be easier to look at. A bit of Shading in the face would do wonders. That is my advice for the day.