Oni2:Slaves of War/Design

Bits and pieces of design.

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Show, don't tell — Story isn’t meant to just be told during cutscenes. Put the story into the world in bits and pieces: consoles, posters….

Independent world — Stuff happens without being driven by you. Even bystanders have their own lives and personalities.

Experiment with emergence — Play with different rule sets that can lead to unexpected results; let the system express itself.

Possible key features:

• Alternate pathing, exploration, and optional powers. Allows player to make game their own. Optional equipment and AI allies change flow of level (e.g., a character could get captured by the enemy and held hostage, and you have to rescue them or they actually die; this would not be scripted, but dynamic).
• Realistic AI. Enemies are unpredictable and inventive, understand your intentions, and react to your situation in battle.
• Levels change with time of day. Security in level differs, use of cover is altered; requires truly dynamic lighting.
• Memorable boss fights. Every fight is an event with stages, set pieces, and distinct style.
• Totally interactive (no non-interactive cutscenes). The trick here is thinking of everything the player can do and responding accordingly; lots of dialogue is needed. NPCs feel more real because nothing is strictly scripted and the same scene can play out differently based on player actions. AI allies talk to you in battle and protect you when you’re hurt.
• Procedural outlying world. This would allow us to avoid worrying about invisible walls or real walls which only serve to pen in the player.
  

It might be interesting to build on the notion of Mai’s intuition by allowing her to predict opponents’ behaviors or combat moves. It could be that her intuition is only at 100% once she has transformed, because her Imago form will have much keener senses. Until then, she can only form conclusions based on the data that her limited senses are taking in. Perhaps a character who knows how the Daodan works points this out to her during a fight where she is starting to predict his attacks.

If we’re going to emphasize the importance of trust or cooperation in the story, and even if we’re not, we should probably open the game with Mai in ruins or wilderness. The levels are empty at first and gradually she encounters people. We can use bad weather to make things feel lonely and oppressive at the beginning.

How will we deal with the cognition limit?

Can we use infrasound to affect the player’s mood?

Design levels with the current amount of tension in the story and mission in mind. Tension can alter the openness of a space, the music and sounds, the number of civilians present, and even enemy types. Which is not to say that open spaces are automatically less tense; a clearing in the forest is pleasant in the daytime, but a campfire in a clearing at night is tense because you can’t see what’s in the darkness around you.

Set to music like BG&E’s “Return Double HH’!”, picture a stealth level from a top-down view with a camera that auto-zooms and auto-centers to show you the nearest enemies, and shows their vision cones like flashlight beams. Go here for info on human vision.

AIs are people too. Let them be distracted by things near them while walking casually (Oni already has AIs look in random directions when not alert). Make them react to sounds after a short delay while they think, “Did I just hear something?” and slowly stop walking, then turning to look thoughtfully at the source of the sound, or around in general. Make sure to restore the idle-to-alert loading-weapon animations.

Crowd actions can be scary when they’re hostile or unexplainable. They will also be unexpected in a game that rarely has many people on-screen at once. Imagine something like a zombie parade or The Big O’s March of the Foreigners while they sing their national anthem.

There should be times when the player is impressed by scale. What emotions can we evoke with scale? Awe, at the size of a level. Loneliness, at the emptiness of a space. Fear, at the number of enemies. Imagine a line of enemies, giving off a light of some kind, winding their way down a hill towards the player. Imagine hordes of enemies rushing over a hilltop at you (we don’t have to be able to draw hundreds of enemies; we can use simple box models as stand-ins for distant ones).

Allow exploration — Don't want world to feel linear, even if it is. See this famous pic about FPS level design -- we want to avoid that feeling.

Create a feeling of anticipation in players to get to the next level. This can be done through making a plot that they want to advance, as well as by providing thumbnails for future levels. These thumbnails would be large, vivid and carefully composed. They could be a fading slideshow of different parts of the level, or even a short, seamlessly looping movie with ambient sounds from the level.

Allow veteran players to do more or find more stuff in a level. Allow players who train more to unlock moves earlier. See this article for reference points.

The training level can start with the ABCs from Oni, perhaps even the same level, and if the player plays it, she hears Mai reminiscing about Shinatama. But she can also skip straight to later “lessons”; these lessons can be taken in-between any mission. If there is a voice guiding Mai and instructing the player how to throw, it would be a great moment if they tell the player that you cannot throw someone who is facing you unless you knock them off-balance first, and then the player is instructed to try it, just to see that it’s not possible. Mai then successfully throws the person, surprising the voice in your ear. She’s strong enough to do this, but the average character class used in MP cannot (see “throw spamming” notes below). Shapeshifter should be allowed in VR training. The premise can be that Mai can see through the eyes of her opponents to better understand how they fight. A message can be displayed at the bottom of the screen saying “Shapeshifter enabled. Press F6 to cycle back, F8 to cycle forward, and F7 to return to Mai.” Later on, we only have to say “Shapeshifter enabled" to remind the player that they can do this.

Difficulty should oscillate — An enemy gets easier as the player's ability or Mai's power progresses, then you introduce harder enemies, then the player gradually gets better and those enemies become easier.... This allows the player to sometimes feel powerful and sometimes feel challenged.

Don’t forget that Oni made a point of putting Konoko in different outfits. It would be a glaring oversight not to do the same in Oni 2. Perhaps the costume changes can be more justifiable this time around. Maybe armor actually armors her this time around?

Music can add a tremendous amount of mood to the setting, and speak some of the emotion for the characters. Introduce unique scores when they are most effective, such as boss fights.

Expressive characters — VG characters that are supposed to look real simply don’t — the technology isn’t there yet — but realistic characters always look their worst when they’re in cutscenes, because (1) there are close-ups, and (2) they are supposed to be “acting”, and it brings out the uncanny valley. Let’s find a way to make characters expressive in a way that feels real even if it’s not realistic.

Motion should be our emphasis. Comic books are great for depicting framed poses and also detailed art. Live-action is great for depicting actors’ nuanced expressions. Third-person video games can’t do those things because they have to control fluidly (so poses are a hindrance) and they’re mostly shot from far away (no close-ups to show off detail or expressions). So rather than focus on rich textures and detailed characters, why not go for stylized, simple designs and focus on really smooth and interesting animations instead? One example would be to have differing styles of walking and running depending on whether the player is in attack mode, is alert, is relaxed, etc.

One of the biggest problems with video games is interaction with soft bodies. Hugging is practically impossible to depict decently; even if you have two mo-capped actors, the animations will require fine-tuning, and you’ll still see either a little clipping or a case of “hover hands”. Showing someone putting on a coat seemingly requires a multi-million dollar budget. The result is that the default state of a VG char. is to stand still and move his head around and hope the VA’s emotion makes the char. feel lifelike. And yet those kinds of interactive and lifelike motions can add so much life to a char. if we can figure out how to do them. Maybe animated cutscenes are the most practical way, but if they happen in realtime (like Konoko’s yawn), they can be so much more effective.

Can we figure out a way to smoothly change a character’s speed without the use of extra keys or double-tapping? Player should be able to walk, run and dash freely according to how she is feeling about the space she is in. The analog thumbstick, when accurate, is a good example of superior speed control. The scroll-wheel can probably substitute for that on PC (see Intel Mac build, where this is an optional feature).

When movement is mapped to ESDF or RDFG instead of WASD, it gives us more keys to the left (in addition to those on the right) for the player to use. It may feel foreign to a WASD gamer at first, but the tactile bump usually found on the ‘F’ key can be used as an anchor. Of course, controls will be customizable, unlike a certain other game….

Remember to vary the tone, pace, and mood of a level.

One way to emphasize the usefulness of a group is to have them move together in coordinated ways, and perhaps create combination attacks with Mai that make the player feel like she is glad to be part of a group.

Your allies can show personality, especially the named characters, by the AI showing initiative -- attacking the enemy proactively, recommending a plan, laying their hand on Mai’s shoulder, etc.

Getting to know your allies so you can choose them for missions requires having an off-mission space where you can freely interact with the NPCs, like in Deus Ex, but better. This picture is a great reference for changing to a fixed POV that allows you to better see the NPCs while off-mission. It might be a good idea to give a player a reason to choose an ally that has to do with that character’s interests (they want to go on that mission for personal reasons, they need to get away from the base for a while to do a secret errand, etc.). That opens up the player’s ability to grow attached to the characters.

Taking along allies should make the mission easier, but could also come with a warning that the enemy is more likely to detect a group and respond accordingly, whereas going solo will allow stealth play.

The player needs to feel powerful when controlling Mai — more so than in the first game. Daodan overpower mode in particular needs to have a palpable degree of power to it. We may want to ramp up her strength over time, throwing enemies further back with final blows.

The player should feel connected to Mai — it’s problematic that the camera is always over Mai’s shoulder; you never see her face except in cutscenes. We should find a way to counteract this — maybe move the camera during special moves so we can see her face, or move the camera from over her shoulder to in front of her during cutscenes, then move it back (as opposed to cutting). It would be even better if somehow we can show her face during gameplay, but that seems impossible.

Systematize the abilities of characters who use the Chrysalis, etc. like shounen series systematize their "jutsu", "kido", "Devil Fruits", etc. Take time to reveal and extrapolate on these abilities in order to intrigue the fans, but also remember to plan ahead enough to insert certain techniques into the early game which will later be explained (e.g. look at how Naruto’s summoning technique, Shadow Clones, and Rasengan are later explained or built upon). We can also reveal that abilities that were previously ultimate-seeming actually lead to, or set up for, greater abilities (like Rurouni Kenshin’s Kuzu Ryu Sen).

Leave some mystery — Resist the urge to spell everything out in the game.

Make callbacks to Oni, even if obscure ones — sneezing, for instance (perhaps during a scene with a cyber-connection being opened, to reference the Flatline bug).

Occasional moments of quiet, especially when entering a new area, can be welcome. The point where you are going to enter a building, for instance, with the night wind blowing leaves through the parking lot; or a tower wreathed in fog with the sun shining from behind it, casting a diffuse shadow through the air around you. Those moments actually add life to the world because they feel like more than just invisible backgrounds for fight scenes.

Variety in combat is essential, both within fights and also throughout the game. Unlocking new moves over the course of the game doesn’t always make sense when your character is experienced from the start. We could introduce new Daodan abilities over the game, but that makes game replays annoying for the player who was used to having all the end-of-game abilities. We can either take the simple approach and offer a New Game Plus, or else we can give the player most of their abilities up front and try to create changing environments or sets of enemies over time that require different kinds of skills to be put into play. All this being said, new content over time is probably less important than just making sure that the basic mechanics are fun enough that the player still enjoys them after dozens of hours.

We should have some new moves, of course; not just different punches, but new specials. If Oni’s signature move was the Lariat, what would Oni 2’s be? Maybe something like this (that’s a crucifix head scissor-to-backbreaker combo, in case the link dies).

Special attacks can end with a cool flourish, unlike regular animations. But if the character misses with such an attack, or there are other enemies around, they shouldn’t do the flourish.

Alternately we could implement a stamina system where bigger moves are more tiring. This could also be used to prevent players from using annoying “runaround” tactics in MP. Throw spamming can be prevented by requiring an opponent to be worn down before throwing them (the equivalent in MMA of getting inside someone’s striking range to grapple with them), which could use the same stamina gauge.

Alternately, throw spamming can be prevented by simply requiring one or two stunning moves to be landed first. This is only realistic, as a person cannot be thrown when they’re standing still and are balanced. Back throws can still be allowed without a preliminary move.

Some characters knocked onto the ground may be able to defend against a ground attack by raising their arms to defend their torso. Others may be nimble enough to roll out of the way. Bigger characters just get the wind knocked out of them and remain vulnerable.

Remember to preserve Oni's fun interactions with civilians and the entertaining VOs they have.

The use of color should express emotions or some kind of ascending ranks. We should look to Japan for our color sense.