I mentioned a while ago that I've started an RPG Maker MZ project in April.
Previous thread for context: https://furry.engineer/@soatok/114575239618481331
I should have a demo out eventually, but for now, I'd like to share a (very early development) preview of the intro scene of the game.
In the final cut, I want to pace it out a bit better with visuals.
But for now, this should serve a good intro to the world I'm building, and the story that's being told.
The narration is a bit too long for alt text, so I'm going to include it in the next three posts for people with visual impairments:
Our history is one of capitalist excess. The wealthy have ravaged the climate for their own ambitions. They plunder nations for sport.
Eighty years ago, they pushed the envelope with nanotechnology to conquer death, trading their natural blood for an artificial copper-based substance that enhances their command over machines.
Thus, they became the Blue Bloods; effectively immortal.
But their appetite could not be sated by accomplishment alone.
Immortality bred stagnation. Control became their obsession. The Blue Bloods no longer craved wealth or luxury. They craved dominion.
Part 2:
They turned their technologies (nanotech and artificial intelligence) against the living. With them, they could overwrite thought, override instinct, and repurpose entire populations.
This wasn't about obedience. It was about productivity. They didn’t just want loyal workers. They wanted unpaid, skilled laborers: engineers, artists, doctors, coders. Minds they could hollow out and reprogram. Tools with memories.
But the process broke bodies. Nanites degraded flesh. Minds shattered under algorithmic strain. The vessels failed.
So they reached beyond science. Into the old, forbidden arts, long suppressed by the governments of the world. Magic. Necromancy.
Their goal was a fusion of dead magic and living code to keep the husks upright; to let the AI puppeteer their corpses.
Keep the skills intact, the pain endless, and the rebellion silent. The eternal unpaid workforce.
However, a wrinkle emerged in their plot.
The old ways of magic were incompatible with synthetic blood.
Their weakness is our only opportunity.
So begins the war of Copper and Ember.
The video continues with some dialogue introducing some of the main characters.
You play as Ash, a member of a street gang who sacrificed her own academic prospects to provide for her younger brother after their parents both died from illness.
Your gang, The Strays, provides security services to the local merchants trying to scrape by in the underground of Westveil City. This is the closest thing to community protection anyone except the super-rich can afford.
Each of the six Citadels of the city houses its own gang that has competing interests, but one of your rivals was just wiped out by law enforcement. Allegedly, for seizing firearms. (Wall Enforcement takes disarming the populace very seriously.)
What's currently implemented accounts for about 25 minutes of gameplay (if you rush), or 35 minutes (if you try to exhaust every NPC's dialogue tree).
Shit's going to get off the rails (hopefully in a fun way) right after the part I'm currently working on. :D
To be completely clear: Part of why I'm making this story is because I'm so bored by the kind of bad writing that AAA studios keep shitting out.
So I'm doing something about it. :3
> Part of why I'm making this story is because I'm so bored by the kind of bad writing that AAA studios keep shitting out.
I've been saying for 15 years that AAA games are not what I'm looking for in games... both because the gameplay is bad, the user is typically corralled within the limits of what the game authors want to do, games are tailored towards reviewing well (as opposed to being good), and the stories are created to be sufficient, not good.
Your world sounds like a great story, can't wait!
Heh. Flashback to reading blurbs on the back of paperbacks. I'd read that.
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