Hi,
I completely agree. Dark has raised some extremely valid points about
this game idea.
I don't have a problem with the general plot per say, but as Dark has
pointed out it is just a little too stereo typical and there has to be
something more to it. If we look at this from a historical point of
view for centuries women were thought of as week, infurior, and the
majority of the romance stories from the middle ages onward put the
female lead character in the roll of maiden in distress while the male
character was cast in the roll of hero, her knight in shining armor,
and the man sent to rescue her from the evil villain. We see this time
and time again in movies, video games, books, etc and that kind of
plot line is beginning to fall out of fassion with script writers.
Many people, men included, are becoming aware of the fact women can be
just as heroic, inteligent, and independant as their male
counterparts.
For example, as Dark pointed out over the last 50 years or so we have
seen several women leading characters like Wonder Woman, Lara Croft,
Valary Irons, Supergirl, Xena Warrior Princess, etc who have
completely reversed and over turned the classic man rescues girl plot
line. In many cases it is the women doing the rescuing, or simply
pretending to be rescued by the male hero in order to stroke his ego.
For example, in the 1970's Wonder Woman television series there were a
number of episodes were Diana Prince, AKA Wonder Woman in disguise,
pretended to be helpless in order to lore the bad guys into kidnapping
her for information. Unfortunately for them she would use her capture
in order to gather inteligence about the enemy's activities. Once she
knew enough she'd spin around in a circle a few times, transform into
Wonder Woman, and kick butt and take names. By the time her boy
friend, Steve Trevor, showed up to rescue Diana Prince he'd find her
safely sitting in her cell acting as though nothing had happened. Good
old Steve would pat himself on the back for a job well done when the
woman he is suppose to be rescuing did all the real inteligence work,
cleaned the enemy's clock, and is just relaxing waiting for the boys
to catch up and figure it all out. It is worth a good laugh now and
then.
In another case a few years back Pamela Anderson played the roll of a
top notch P.I. named Valary Irons on the hit television series V.I.P.
In terms of the TV show Valary Irons was suppose to be extremely
inteligent, an expert in martial arts, and an expert at fire arms etc.
However, when Valary Irons would interview a suspect etc she'd play
the dumb blond act, and make the male suspects think she was just
another female air head in a man's job or something like that. By the
end of the show Valary Irons would drop the dumb blond act and
confront the crooks face to face. She'd kick their buts, they'd go to
jail or whatever, and it was case closed.
My point is if you want to use the man rescues girl idea that is
alright, but I just think you could be more creative with the plot
line. Women really aren't that helpless, and public attitudes about
women are radically changing. There are video game series like Tomb
Raider where the lead character, Lara Croft, is as equally popular
with fans as a similar male character like Indiana Jones. So rather
than having this evil wizard capture April how about some other plot
device where this wizard has to be challenged for some other reason.
Here is an example of what I mean. In the RPG game Srith an evil
wizard has taken up residents in Daggerspire, and has created a
sandstorm that blows night and day over the nearby city. You, the
adventuring hero, must travel to Daggerspire to slay the evil wizard
and put an end to the sandstorm. While I'm not suggestting to use this
exact storyline I am pointing out that there might be other good and
compelling reasons to confront your evil wizard other than a simple
kidnapping story. After all, if we are talking about an evil wizard he
must have some motive for the kidnap and have some bigger and more
evil plans in mind.
As for helping you with the game itself we need to know more about it.
Saying you are creating a game with such and a story isn't really that
helpful. As Dark stated there are plenty of game formats and genres
like FPS, side-scroller, RPG, whatever and it helps to know where you
are heading with it.
Cheers!
On 1/16/11, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote:
Hi.
Interesting to here your working on a game. The problem is while you have
given us an idea of the plot and setting here, you've not given us any idea
of what sort of gameplay your thinking of.
The plot and description, kidnapped girl, rescue mission, evil wizard,
haunted mantion could apply equally to a side scroller like Q9, a first
person action game, a puzle game like chillingham or even an interactive
fiction text adventure (many of the old infocom games had similar plots), a
set of arcade games where you progress through different games in different
environments, space in vaders bat shooting in the forest, ghost
busting in a
cave with bopit commands, timed run past bursts of lava etc, this is
afterall how Hunter works.
I'm afraid unless you give us an idea of what type! of game your
planning on
creating, not merely it's story line, it's a litle hard to give
suggestions.
In fact the only suggestion i might make is that kidnapped girl plots are a
litle sterriotypical. This is afterall the age of Princess Laya,
LAra croft,
Zena warrior princess, Samas from the Metroid series and probably
a good few
more examples that I could think of if I had more time.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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