[CONCEPT] for a souls-like story

 Returning back to familiar waters, i am tackling once again the souls-like i have been cooking up for about a month now. This concept has been swimming in my brain for a while now and it has officially passed the Lars Christiansen test: it resurfaces again and again, like a phantom, to haunt me. Honestly if it didn't take a massive amount of resources, i'd tackle development of this game. But let us put annoying things like production aside- today we tackle the setting and the story.

Honestly the story has been present in my mind ever since i wrote the first blogpost about this concept. I didn't write the story down because writing a story down is not game design, it's writing. Yesterday however i got a pretty nice idea about the setting, which ties to gameplay, so i can fit the story as a little bonus present to anyone keeping up with this concept and is interested to learn more. I might even tie the three posts together into a light little design document and toss it into my portfolio. There's no telling what i will do. I am crazy! Nuts even!

Let us start off with the setting. The eagle-eyed reader has already seen similarities between the design of the map (a giant sinkhole, culminating in a single point) and Hell from the Divine Comedy. It's a pretty easy comparison to draw and getting inspired from Dante's hell is pretty cool, if a bit played out at this point. While having my usual talk-to-myself sessions while washing my face however, i stumbled upon a concept loosely inspired by the christian roots of the Divine Comedy specifically. 

To cut a very long lecture in Theology short, modern Christianity is a layer, standing ontop of many other layers of Christianity, in the past, leading into Christianity's roots like Judaism and palestinian Paganism. Modern Christianity is built ontop of the written and verbal tradition of millennia and the philosophical and theological deliberation of many scholars. We currently live in an age where Christianity is a cascade of different belief systems, ranging from Spirituality to Christian Moralism to belief in Christian cosmology, or rather Christian cosmologies, as there are many. Turning the clock back however reveals a more and more different spectrum of Christianity, passing through the Occultism of the Victorian Age, the Protestant reforms, Christianity's relationship with alchemy and greco-roman paganism during the Rennaisance, western Christianity distancing itself from Germanic Paganism and eastern Christianity doing the same for its greco-roman pagan population, all the way to Christianity's inception and beyond. During that entire journey, Christians changed what god, christ, the saints, the angels, belief, morality, heaven, hell, life, death and the life that comes after that mean specifically. Evidence of that can easily be found in the collection of sacred texts the Christian canon contains: God is painted as a much more present and authoritarian figure in the Bible than anything post-gospel. This also applies to anything related to Christian cosmology, like heaven, hell, demons and angels. Another example is the many names that the Devil has, with the names of Lucifer, Asmodeus, Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, Ba'al, the Behemoth etc being different entities in the past, all taking the role of the Devil at some point. Even God herself has multiple identities, with Yahweh being a bronze-age pagan god. Those different stages of evolution for Christianity is the layers that i would like to draw inspiration from for the setting of the game and the aesthetics of each level of the sinkhole.

The first layer is based on the Rennaisance. A dominant church finds itself opposed by a new wave of ancient and once-forgotten ideas, now resurfaced. Fanatics and heretics battle each other. New cathedrals being decorated with scandalous depictions of familiar figures with older cathedrals being more reserved and less lavish. The enemies depict a range of holy, demonic and pagan characters of many kinds. The second level of the sinkhole will depict a high medieval society, drawing inspiration from 15th and 16th century west europe, with inquisitions and witches and all that jazz. Masses of pious believers gather around a powerful church, worshipping a supreme god, with holy orders, warrior-monks and crusaders roaming halls of massive cathedrals, with opposing warriors dressing themselves up in outfits based upon demons from the Dictionnaire Infernal. The third layer draws inspiration from the early middle ages, with the new religion being currently in the process of replacing the old. Axe-wielding warriors in chainmail brutally hack each other, with one side fighting for a newly established church and the other for their old, familiar pagan beliefs. A rich pastiche of places and people are on display, with pagan beliefs being subsumed into the new church and creating small differences based on local beliefs. Old pagan legends and creatures finding a new home in the canon of the new religion and enemies depicting that through their design. The fifth layer draws inspiration from christian rome, a previous empire that fought a brutal war against an inexorable horde, bent on the empire's destruction. Of course that means legionaries but it also means warriors based on the many flavors of Goths, the Alans, the Sarranids and of course the Huns. Tightly-packed groups of legionaries, carrying an excess of religious symbols in the forms of banners and little details on their outfit and wild, tribal warriors populate this layer, whose stone brick structures starkly contrast expanses of space based on tribal settlements and land. The sixth layer goes all the way back to the new religion's conception, with things beginning to break down and become more abstract and conceptual, with the seventh and final layer depicting the beginning of all and the creation of the world. 

This article sure is getting long, huh. It's time to tackle the story.

The story's goal is to of course invoke the same moody notes that any elden soulsborne: dies twice does, but my personal way of writing stories is through character. As such, while the playable character is a large part of the story, arguably the protagonist would be this concept's equivalent of a "fire keeper". 

In the kingdom of [insert name here because it really doesn't matter apart from aesthetics], a long golden age is coming to a close. The royal family's light and brilliance shines across the realm, bringing long-lasting peace and prosperity to the land, but the king is nearing the end of his life and per custom, his son shall be coronated at the bottom of the Grand Mausoleum, a giant sinkhole, meticulously preserved over the ages and used as a burial site for kings since millenia ago. However, the king deems his son unworthy of inheriting the title and has him executed, casting a terrible curse across the land. Undeath, like a plague, sweeps across the land as shambling husks of the dead roam it. The Grand Mausoleum's millenia of resting souls are brought back with the king himself clutching the crown and the sword of ceremony at the bottom of the Mausoleum. Many adventurers take the precarious plunge with the help of magic to try and slay the king and bring the curse to an end, with the player character being one. Unfortunately, the player character fails and is slain by the king's undead guard.

This story is a story about being. Being who you are and the pressures and contradictions that come with identity. It's important to lay out the central theme of the story because every character will have some kind of struggle with identity and also because even from the beginning of the game, identity is tackled. In a nebulous mist, the player hears a voice call out to them. They have a choice: to enjoy the stillness of death, or to answer a call for help. Someone needs their aid, and should they answer the call, they will be reborn as the person they always wished to be. Should the player answer yes, they are taken to the character creation screen and they create their character. After they are finished, a cutscene plays from the player character's POV. They are laying on an old dusty bed, in an dark, damp room. Slowly looking around, they see their body missing its bottom half, with a mysterious figure building the PC's body from clay and water. After that the PC closes their eyes and some time passes, after which they open their eyes again and find the figure laying beside them in bed (cuddling, important detail). Sensing them move, the figure turns to face them and their soft face, with pale skin, golden hair and deep blue eyes is revealed. The figure introduces itself as [name, again, not important], son of [the king lol] and heir to the kingdom of [you know the drill by now]. 

This is the introduction to the son of the king and to the game. From that point onward, the player character launches expeditions down the mausoleum until they are finally strong enough to tackle the main path and reach the bottom, where the king is waiting. The son of the king is a kind, soft-spoken and frankly enchanting person. He was rejected by the king for being unfit to rule, but the son himself does not want the mantle of king; he does not care for politics or for ruling the masses. He could've accepted his and the kingdom's fate, but his kind-hearted nature has driven him to recruit undead to help him usurp the throne and end the anguish the kingdom has to bear. The player character is not the first undead that was recruited, but all the rest thus far have failed and either lost their mind in the mausoleum, betrayed the prince or had their undeath snuffed out of them, after begging the prince to do so. Adventuring across the mausoleum and talking with various characters, the player character comes to find out that the kingdom also does not view the prince in a positive light. Nobody accepts the prince as king and all have accepted the curse as a new age for the kingdom. Whether or not that will hold true is up to the player. 

I am sure you have noticed the prince's rather effeminate design. What i would like to achieve with the story is a proper relationship between the prince and the player character. The player character (and by extension, the player) comes to sympathize with the prince's plight. While the player character is trying to defeat the king, the prince supports and encourages them. I have spent a long time envisioning moments of understanding and even intimacy between the player and the prince. The prince spends a lot of time within the "hub area"'s mansion, tending to other NPCs the player might accrue or simply loitering around. Whenever the player dies, the prince pain-stakingly recreates their body on the bed and breathes life into it through intimacy. Whenever the player wants to level up, they join the prince in bed or embrace him. Every time the player returns from death or whenever the player catches the prince looking over at the sinkhole or tending to another NPC, the prince strikes up a conversation about something related to the situation. All of that serves to attach the player to the prince, like the game slowly putting its hands around the player. And once the game gets enough of a grip, it can use that to move the player in any direction it wishes.

The game also features NPCs. Those NPCs can be found scattered across the mausoleum. Some are helpful, others are judgemental, some are outright hostile. Some visit the hub area, some simply explore the mausoleum. All of them however, all of their stories serve to further deliberate on the themes of the story and relate to the prince is some fashion. Here are some examples:

Exploring the mausoleum, the player character stumbles upon a person in peril. After electing to rescue them, the person thanks them whole-heartedly and introduces themself. He is a jolly man, confident and reassuring. He says he is on a very special mission but can't share exactly why. After a heartfelt thanks, the man leaves. Over the course of the game, the player character encounters the man multiple times, always fighting together and helping each other. Towards the end, the man is stumped for not finding what he is looking for. The player character can choose to recommend searching higher, which prompts the man to climb all the way to the hub area. There, next time the player character levels up, he finds his target: the young prince he swore an oath to the king to slay. With pain in his voice he pleads with the player character to step aside and let him strike down the prince, with the player character having to kill the man.

Exploring the mausoleum, the player character happens upon a pair of twins. They introduce themselves and one of them stalwartly says they are on a mission to slay the king, with the other twin being reserved about the mission. After failing, they are brought to life by the prince in the mansion. The first twin storms off after seeing the prince because she thinks the prince is a failure and plunges to slay the king, asking the second twin to join her, who refuses and says he wants to remain in the mansion, much to the first twin's ire. She calls him a coward and leaves him to be. Spending time with the prince, the second twin recounts how he wishes his sister and he were closer, how much he loves her, but also a terrible secret he has been keeping all of his life. He loves his sister more than anything in the world and believes that they should've been born as twin girls, just that he was born in the wrong body and how he would prefer the role of a maiden over one of a warrior. He fears however that expressing that desire to his sister will lead to his sister to shun him, but the prince calms him down and says that he should try regardless; his sister should love him not matter what he feels inside. Persuaded by the prince, the second twin sets off to find his sister. Eventually, the player character stumbles upon the pair in a horrifying scene: the second twin slain by his sister and the sister, raving mad, accusing the damned prince for putting heresy in her brother's mind. She accuses the player character of conspiring with the prince as well, charging him to tear him down and move on to slay the prince next.

Apart from drama, the NPCs' stories also serve another purpose. They serve to reflect the society at large and how it views both the prince and what he is, with each completed story chipping away at the prince's resolve of trying to give up on himself to save the kingdom. At the end of the game, after the king is slain, the player character hands the crown to the prince, who hesitantly takes it and is coroned king. The kingdom however is devastated unrepairably from the curse of undeath, which is not expelled after the prince's coronation. As king, the prince lives through a reign that is hailed as a final whimper of a crumbling empire, as a different man than who he would like to be, to better fit the role of king. If the player however has finished all of the NPC sidequests, a new ending is unlocked. The prince, having re-thought his purpose, asks the player character to kill him and end the kingdom right then and there. Hesitantly picking up the ceremonial sword and after a moment's pause, the PC thrusts the sword into the prince's abdomen. He falls into the player's arms, with his final words thanking the PC for being the only one to accept him. After the prince passes away, the player character's life is snuffed out and both prince and PC lay motionless, at the bottom of the sinkhole, in each other's arms.

And that's all i got for now. Needless to say, this is a pretty heavy story. But i like it. It obviously has a theme that resonates with me and my desire to make the player fall in love with the prince obviously comes from me falling in love with that character in my head. Miyazaki gets to have enough feet in his games to measure a football field. So i get to have my twink, god damn it!