Oni2:Slaves of War/Impressions
Impressions of the Future
Glimpses at scenes, tones, and settings and general neat stuff that could appear in Oni 2 or Oni 3.
Deadly rain
Mai is standing in the rain in the ruins of a city. Everything is quiet. Suddenly she hears a filtered voice calling out, “Oh, oh God! You, get out of the rain! It’s acid, you’ll…” The suited figure realizes that Mai is not being harmed, as she gazes at him. “What… you… ahh!” He runs away, incoherent with fear, calling out on radio to his base, “There’s a monster out here!”
Previous to this, the player has not realized that they are standing in acid rain.
The Daodan within
Mai is struggling with an opponent in the dark. He suddenly realizes that he can see Mai's organs glowing in the dark as she powers up and overpowers him.
Daodan dreams
Mai is sleeping fitfully. Her fears about the Daodan are churning inside. She sees herself walking along the ground on her arms and legs in a forest. She looks up and sees a small marsupial of unknown species eating something. It looks at her with round eyes, at her level, while chewing quickly on some unidentified food. Mai starts awake, breathing quickly as she realizes it was just a dream. (Meaning: She is afraid she is becoming an animal.) With the right music, this could be disturbing.
The Cricket
When the player presses a certain button, or the Cricket reaches its destination, it plays a randomly-selected noise. The Cricket does recognize when it’s outside versus inside and can choose sounds appropriately in that regard, such as trash cans falling over in an alley or a car crash when outside, or a bottle falling over or someone sneezing when inside. Nearby enemies will run to investigate. This allows Mai to sneak up on enemies, or to avoid detection in situations with difficult patrol paths.
However, if the Cricket is spotted, the enemy may know what is going on, and general alert levels will be raised. If Mai were the one spotted, she might be able to take out the guard before he reports her, but the Cricket has no offensive capabilities, thus use of the Cricket has some risk.
The Cricket can also be a source of mild humor in a generally serious game. It may show some quirky behavior in cutscenes, and its choice of an “appropriate” distraction sound may be rather odd. Another bit of humor can come from the use of more creative alts for bad guys. Instead of “Huh, what was that?”, we can get more specific based on the sound that the Cricket plays: “Was that a car crash?”, or “Hey, this isn’t garbage day!”.
Depending on how much Mai gets to use the Cricket, she may name it. “In Caraguatatuba, Brazil, a black cricket in a room is said to portend illness; a gray one, money; and a green one, hope” -- perhaps she names it Hope, as in “I hope this thing works”. It may be an experimental gadget made by a member of her resistance group.
Phase-shifting
- Enemies with unseen limbs
- Mai cloaking at will, perhaps with lead-in time (for MP’s sake as well as SP balance)
Mai is angry
When something happens that justifies Mai losing her temper and perhaps unleashing her powers, she might start speaking in a lowered voice in a creepy way; see the scene in Battle Angel Alita where she is screaming at the cyborg as she kills him, as well as this short VA clip which has a completely different tone and context, but actually creates the same ominous feeling that I’m looking for.