User:Iritscen/BGI/Level Plan

BGI has many subsidiaries, and this level takes place in the headquarters of daughter company Zero Liability Logistics. They are an international shipping company, so they have the ability to transport large objects long distances. The general structure of the HQ is an office building connected to a warehouse. The original level that BWest had planned apparently was going to feature Konoko blowing up the main HQ of BGI, which I consider to be too large-scale and ambitious for this mod; I would rather take on the central entity of BGI in an Oni 2.

Rooms

Security room
This would be where ZLL's security service monitors the building from. Normally an office wouldn't have quite this much security (although logistics is definitely an area where security matters), but BGI is a bit paranoid as a company since they're not exactly above-board in their wheelings and dealings.

Offices
This is a chance to make the detailed kind of office spaces that Bungie once planned (see 1999 trailer). But people won't just be sitting at their desks when Konoko barges in; an announcement is made over loudspeakers at some point early on to evacuate the employees. From some vantage point, Konoko can see the employees streaming out the exits. By the time Konoko gets to the offices, there’s only a couple stragglers who didn’t get the warning or chose not to heed it. This is an opportunity for some more of Oni’s civilian humor. Perhaps one guy is in the bathroom, oblivious to the danger. Another is at his desk, and says, “Please don’t hurt me, I really need to finish these expense reports!” He's a very motivated accountant.

Besides the usual cubicle farm for workers, the offices also need at least one swanky conference room, and some nice executive offices. Like TCTF HQ, most of the areas can be off the beaten path, for those who want to encounter more enemies but also find some goodies.

Warehouse
The warehouse has a two-door hatch in the roof for a cargo copter to pass through in order to land on the indoor helipad. We also need to allow room in the warehouse areas for large machines (or mechs!) to be moved and stored.

Armory & Barracks
A secret space near the warehouse that troops can gather in before being mobilized. This should be a makeshift area because ZLL doesn’t usually transport soldiers. It needs to be somewhere employees don't generally see, like a maintenance area of some kind. I'm picturing an underground service corridor that leads to a storage area being used for the makeshift barracks. This is where the weapons are kept as well, including the rocket launcher.

Lobby
The lobby is the centerpiece of the company's showcase of wealth: large-tiled marble floors, and a large statuary with a large plaque behind the secretary's large desk. The lobby is three stories high, with a front entrance composed of multiple parallel sets of doors.

Misc.
Additional spaces that are necessary just to give the feeling of a real building: bathrooms, a kitchen/break room, etc. On the exterior, the warehouse has a generous road system for trucks to enter and and exit the property, as well as loading docks.

Future concepts

Let’s work in planned future features in a way that allows the level to improve as Oni improves. The idea is that the level will gain replay value when people get to try out new features as they are announced. At the same time, we don't want these ideas to burden us too much in the design phase, and we don't want to go back later and re-design the level as new features appear.  Therefore, we should make these "future concepts" non-mission critical.

• Alternative paths via new mobility features: duct-crawling, hand-over-hand, ledge-grabbing. These may simply lead to goodies or shortcuts, not totally new paths for the level.
• Taking advantage of dynamic lighting, such as in an ambush where the lights go out and only the light in the open doorways can be used to orient yourself. Before we have this feature, the room will simply be lit normally.
• An optional use of moveable objects would be allowing Konoko to push an object somewhere to access a new path or block a door.

Gameplay concepts

Obtaining items
Preferably we won't have random items and weapons lying around; that design notion just seems too dated. Anything the player gets can be dropped by enemies or retrieved from a first aid station or the armory.

Opening doors
Using consoles to open doors is such a tired mechanic, and not even logical in many places. Yet BGI is sure to lock some doors that we need to get through. How can we unlock these doors in a more original way?

Mid-boss: Jubei and Akane
What abilities or weapons do Jubei and Akane have? Where does this fight take place? I think they should be guarding the warehouse.

Final boss: Iron Demon
Ideas for the Iron Demon's weapons are machine guns, a top-mounted heat-seeking missile launcher, and a gas grenade launcher.

The machine guns are the long-range weapon of choice when the Iron Demon can see you. It's probably necessary to allow the mech's arms to point inward, because otherwise it will be firing streams of bullets on parallel paths which are farther apart than Konoko is wide! If we can't allow the arms to change their angle, we should fix them pointed slightly inward. The Iron Demon also needs to be able to turn its torso and aim upward/downward, which even BWest's original version was probably not able to do.

The Iron Demon would make short work of Konoko if there wasn't plenty of cover. However, it does need to have some recourse for when its targets take cover. Walking around the obstacle is not feasible if the surroundings are tight, and it will probably be easy to run to other cover while the Iron Demon tries to navigate around your current hiding place. That's where the missiles and gas grenades come in.

The heat-seeking missiles are supposed to fire upwards, then descend on you, driving you out of cover. I picture the missile as being fairly slow-moving, but maneuverable in flight like the Screaming Cell. Perhaps Konoko can shoot it to detonate it, but it should take a number of bullets to destroy if it's slow-moving.

The gas grenades are supposed to be launched besides the object you're hiding behind, so that they push you out of cover as the gas cloud expands. If this is too difficult to implement, we can stick with just the missile, or maybe even create gas-dispensing rockets as well as explosive ones.

Design concepts

Stylistically, the keywords I want to employ in the design of the level are “wealth” and “coldness”. Spaces should feel expensive and ostentatious, as if the company cares about their image but not making their employees feel comfortable. I need to list here architectural concepts that convey these feelings. I also want ZLL to convey the size of BGI as an ambitious, world-spanning company.

It would be an interesting contrast if the office area that Konoko starts in is empty, having been evacuated, but when she gets into the warehouse, it's teeming with activity — workers running to and fro, lots of engines running, etc. We can hit on this note with a cutscene as she gets her first look at the warehouse, panning the camera around to show the activity.

Functionally, this company is all about logistics, so it mostly consists of warehouses, transportation and handling equipment, and offices. The key is how to make this into an interesting space for a game, and also how to differentiate it from Syndicate Warehouse and Airport Cargo Hangars. I think a lot of interest will come just from the detail in the new environment compared with Oni’s existing levels. Better vertex lighting can make a big difference as well.

But a key factor is interactivity. The more Konoko can affect even a “boring” space like a warehouse, the better (think of the crane at the end of Chapter 1, but more of that). In fact, Syndicate Warehouse shows little understanding of what warehouses actually look like. Simply making an authentic space would allow lots of cover and provide some interesting possibilities if we add movable objects.

I had originally planned on Konoko landing on a helipad and descending through ZLL, but the TCTF levels already cover the concept of ascending and descending through a tall building; in fact, the very next level is the one where you descend through TCTF. Ultimately a logistics facility is supposed to be low and wide anyway, which will hopefully be a refreshing change from the endless stairs of TCTF. Nevertheless, the HQ building should be tall enough to be somewhat impressive and also to be able to have a helipad on top of it.

Level plan

Entrance

As Konoko lands the BGI dropship on the ZLL helipad and gets out, an executive is ready for her. BGI is going to play dumb and try to get her out of their hair, to fight her somewhere less inconvenient another time. So he pretends not to know her, but is appropriately outraged that, whoever she is, she stole one of their executive aircraft! Konoko is not about to be fooled by this act; she is certain already that this building belongs to BGI, even though she has little evidence (she gets hunches, remember?). She easily overwhelms the guards on the roof (your basic low-level hired security, not unlike the guards in Regional State) and barges in to investigate.

At first everything looks normal, and occasionally another security guard or two shows up, who she easily brushes off. BGI is not eager to fight her inside a somewhat legitimate business property, nor to call in the police or TCTF; the WCG will only turn a blind eye to so much, and they would be very interested in what ZLL is up to at the moment.

As Konoko begins to read terminals with revealing information, she starts to encounter serious opposition in the form of cloaked BGI troops. Konoko can take their weapons. When she defeats them, they might silently self-destruct. She continues into a warehouse with a large two-piece sliding hatch in the roof for industrial-size helicopters that have to haul heavy products to other locations.

Console tidbits

The consoles can't tell Konoko anything solid that would conflict with how she later learns Muro's plot. But that needn't stop us from hinting at what BGI and Muro are planning. The consoles can drop hints about such things as:

• BGI's awareness of Sturmanderung and that it's about to deploy (without revealing what "Sturmanderung" is).
• The BGI troops being products of Bertram Navarre's work.
• A very veiled reference to the recovery of Mukade's broken body and the fact that he's still alive (setting up for Oni 2).
• A rueful note about how Muro used one of their facilities as a diversion for the TCTF team (referring to Musashi Manufacturing), and how the TCTF shut them down before they could finish assembling something… important, and how this leaves them with only one remaining unit for a certain mission.
• A reference to the Deadly Brain being used to remotely pilot something.
• Some reference to the Iron Demon (by a more technical name) and how it has a perfect defense against heavy weaponry, except for one problem….

Stopping the helicopter

In the adjacent warehouse, Konoko discovers a large helicopter onto which is being loaded armed troops… and the Iron Demon! She doesn't know what they're up to, but she's going to stop it. The player must prevent the lift-off by taking over a console or two that control the roof hatch. Standard Oni gameplay on a timer here.

Once Konoko is successful, we see a cutscene where the copter collides with the hatch as it closes. Damaged, it lands forcefully, and its back door opens up to unload its contents. We see the troops cloak before leaving the copter, and clear out while invisible. The Iron Demon lumbers out and takes up a guard position, looking for Konoko.

At some point prior to this, Konoko found a weapons room which had a rocket launcher, among other goodies. At that time, Konoko cannot take the rocket launcher because it's locked in some sort of case, but she now realizes that she needs it to take on the Iron Demon. She must find the key to access the case, get back to that room and retrieve it now. (Since visiting that room, she may have already encountered the information she needs to open the case with the rocket launcher.)

To get there, she has to pass by the watchful mech. Fortunately, there are lots of things to hide behind — crates, other vehicles, etc. This gives the player a chance to learn the Iron Demon's attack patterns and to confirm that normal weapons have no effect on it (a mission objective or voiceover from Konoko would state that she's not having any effect on the mech).

She finds out where some of the cloaked troops have gone when she gets into the hallways outside the warehouse. She fights her way to the weapons room and slings the rocket launcher over her shoulder. She has no ammo for it yet; that's back in the warehouse with the Iron Demon, where there's crates full of the stuff (which also gives us a little ominous foreshadowing). She makes her way past more troops, back to the warehouse. The BGI troops wisely choose to stay out of the warehouse during this fight, so it's just her and the mech now. Konoko must load the launcher with rockets found in crates while taking cover from the Iron Demon (I need to work out the exact mechanic of how she extracts rockets from crates; are they broken open during the fight?).

Fighting the Iron Demon

The first time Konoko shoots the Iron Demon with a rocket, she sees that it has an energy field which briefly activates in order to detonate the rocket early and deflect much of the explosion's energy. The rocket launcher will not be enough to defeat the mech, though perhaps it stuns it for a while. Konoko realizes that she needs to find a way to destroy the field generator first. Small arms fire does not activate the field because the mech is considered to be bulletproof, but sufficient fire concentrated on the generator will disable it. We can convey this by dialogue and/or a mission objective, so the player has clear direction on what to do.

Once the generator is disabled and sparking, Konoko can shoot the Iron Demon with the rocket launcher once or twice to destroy it, as an easy reward for the work she's done so far. The final destruction sequence of the mech is lengthy and satisfying.

Escaping ZLL

BGI is in a precarious position, but they concoct a scheme while Konoko is fighting their prized mech. The scheme will be briefly revealed in the epilogue, but first there is a cutscene after Konoko has just destroyed the Iron Demon which explains how she will later arrive at Muro's compound:

An engineer, desperate and uncaring, runs up to her.
Engineer: Why?! What have you done?
Konoko: I put your little toy out of commission.
Engineer: That was our last chance against Muro!
Konoko: Muro?!
Engineer: Yes, we were sending a force to his compound to stop him!
Konoko: What do you know about Muro? Where's this compound?
Engineer: The So-and-so Mountains!
Konoko: Where in the So-and-so Mountains?!
Engineer: I don't know!

They both suddenly notice that the exploded Iron Demon set some of the crates in the warehouse on fire... and they're filled with ammo. The engineer runs away in fear. Konoko realizes that the cargo copter must have had a course set for Muro's base, but the copter and maybe the whole building are going to be destroyed any minute.

In a timed segment, Konoko must now steal the waypoint info for Muro's base from the damaged cargo copter (this simply requires running inside the copter through the back bay door and using a computer) and get back to her dropship before everything explodes. She can't go back the way she came (why? I'm not sure yet, I just want to avoid backtracking along the same path), so she finds an alternate route to the roof, where she finds snipers lying in wait around the ship. She must take out at least some of them before running to the dropship.

Epilogue

As she lifts off, we see the BGI executives watching her on a screen, and one comments that they might have been overzealous in making it look like they didn't want her to escape, since she could have been killed and ended up being no use to them after all. Another comments that if she couldn't survive that little test, she definitely wouldn't be able to take down Muro. A third asks if she's really their only hope. A fourth responds that without their Iron Demons, she might very well be.

Project requirements

The above plan requires the following assets and abilities:

• A new level, naturally.
• A stealth dropship model.
• A large, military-type cargo helicopter model (see this article and also here for references).
• An Iron Demon that can navigate, aim, and use its weapons intelligently.
• A way to register shots that hit the Iron Demon's field generator.
• Animated particles for the field activating, for it overloading, and for the sparking dynamo.
• Voiceovers for the characters.

This last point is the most difficult, as we will need a couple new cutscenes and incidental VOs, and even if random community members supply the voices for the other characters, we don't know how Konoko is supposed to speak. We basically have three options:

• Use subtitles. This is how we always do it in our script mods, but of course it would be jarring to suddenly have Konoko go mute during this part of the game's story.
• Use a sound-alike. We would need to find a female VA who could sound like Konoko. Not necessarily impossible, but a tall order. We could look at the women involved with dubbing animated YouTube videos for channels such as HISHE and Team Four Star.
• Approach Amanda Winn-Lee herself. She might be open to reprising an old role of hers for a modest fee (a day's work shouldn't cost too much).