The Osaka Case of Helianthus Annuus Narrative

The games initial narrative is very in depth. As it is too much to put into the final design document I am writing the full detailed story on the side as a bonus. Enjoy !

Narrative

Storyline

Jason Ross is a private supernatural detective for the Vegas Crime Unit. After ten years in the service, he begins to feel his life has hit a dead end, which begins to affect his marriage. Difficult disputes break out between him and his wife Susan. Eventually they both agree they need a fresh start to create a better life for their daughter, Lily. They decide to move to Osaka, a city in Japan. Jason picks up the culture and language very quickly and finds himself a job as a detective for the Osaka Crime Investigation Unit. He is partnered up with the department’s chief investigator, San Sokhumi. Two years into his employment he gets a call from his partner, San to investigate a house for a mysterious disappearance of a mother and her daughter. Arriving on the scene, Jason realizes that this investigation is more personal than professional, after realizing that the missing mother and daughter are friends of his family and San. Escalated by the coincidental case, Jason and San begin searching the house. Jason’s search lures him into the parent’s bedroom where he finds some crucial evidence. One item being a group photo, with the missing family members in it and another family he doesn’t recognize. However, there is no trace of the missing family’s husband. At the bottom of the picture Jason see’s the photo’s date and location. This leads him and San to a large, mysterious house, owned by the Kasumi Family. On his first visit to the house, Jason and San speak with the family’s mother and father about the photograph and the mysterious people within it. He is not convinced at their regularities and cluelessness in the matter, and is eager to investigate further. San hesitates and tries to convince Jason it is a dead end. Jason ignores San advice and later that day, returns to the house. He finds the house is empty. He now knows this can’t be a coincidence and searches the house for clues. During his search he finds a locked toy chest in the children’s downstairs bedroom. Beside the chest is what appears to be a semi circle engraved into the floorboards. He notices one of the grazed floorboards is loose, so he removes it, and finds a key, which opens the chest. Once the chest is unlocked, it triggers a mechanism, causing the wall behind the chest to rotate revealing a secret passageway. As the door opens a strange man in a blood stained, black cloak falls at Jason’s feet. Without hesitation, Jason grabs and handcuffs the demented cloaked man to the bed, and proceeds into the passageway. He follows a candle lit spiral staircase into a pitch black room, which to his guesses is a basement. Seeing no sign of a light switch anywhere he grabs his torch from his utility belt and shines it in front of him. He sees a light switch over by what appears to be an altar. He carefully treads over to the switch, gently tripping on something making him nearly lose his footing. He picks himself up again and flicks the lights on. The room lights up to reveal a storage room, filled with piles of boxes and old furniture.

Jason leaves the house and heads for the police station taking the demented man with him. Jason calls ahead informing San of his arrival and the man he has found. San is not convinced that this man suddenly appeared through some form of secret doorway in a simple family home. Jason is determined to prove San otherwise and locks the man up ready for interrogation. Jason returns home and tells Susan he has to live away from home for a while, for the sake of the investigation. He doesn’t tell Susan anything else, and leaves the house with a box under one arm and dragging a large suitcase in the other. He arrives back at the Kasumi house and makes his way up to their refurbished attic. Too tired to unpack everything Jason gets ready for bed. While he’s cleaning his teeth he sees in the mirror a dark figure dash past him. He drops his toothbrush and grabs his gun and slowly walks out of the bathroom, keeping the lights on as he goes. He walks up the corridor, towards the stairs and sees the shadow again, sweeping off into the children’s bedroom across the hallway, slamming the door behind it. Jason quickly creeps down the stairs up to the bedroom door. He carefully prides it open and hits the light switch, pointing his gun across the room to where the toy chest is. In that moment he see’s the shadow disappear under the toy chest. As from before he uses the key he found to activate the door. He runs down the candle lit staircase into the pitch-black basement and hastily locates the light switch. He trips on something on the way over, but figures it to be one of the many boxes scattered around the room. Jason reaches the switch, and flicks it on. An electric spark dashes along the walls of the basement and dissipates at the far end of the room. It goes dark again for a second. A faint glow appears from a number of lights, trailing along the walls, getting brighter and brighter. Jason looks back at where he tripped, only to find a horrific display of dead bodies, piled up and trailing around to the other side of the alter, opposite where Jason is standing. Terrified with what he sees, he looks around at the walls and sees blood drawn symbols dotted all over the walls. He steps around the pile of bodies to have a closer look at the symbols. They match the symbol engraved on the toy chest’s key. He looks over to where the electrical sparks dissipated and saw three bodies pinned to the wall. He walks over to them, creating a single file line around the room, making sure he doesn’t cover the entire blood stained floor in his footprints. As he gets closer to the bodies he begins to feel woozy. He grabs a handkerchief from his belt and covers his mouth and nose. He looks up at the pinned bodies and notices that two of them match the identities of the missing mother and her young daughter. The third body was covered up in a black cloak, matching the one worn by the demented person he arrested earlier. Hanging from his neck was some form of journal. Still holding the handkerchief in one hand Jason reaches up and carefully removes the book from the cloaked stranger. Before he can analyse the book there is a loud bang behind him. He quickly pockets the journal, grabs his gun and turns around, checking all the corners of the room. He slowly moves back towards the stairs remaining vigilant. A sudden low roar echoes across the room, knocking Jason to his knees and sweeping the handkerchief from his face. Jason’s wooziness worsens, drowning him into a state of panic and confusion. He frantically drags himself closer and closer towards the stairs. Just as he reaches the stairs he attempts to get back on his feet, only to realize he has lost all strength in his legs and slumps back down. He looks back up and sees a tall, dark figure standing before him. Jason asks who it is. He gets no reply. The figure just stands there staring at him, until Jason blacks out.

Jason wakes up the next morning in the police station. San is sitting across from him.

To be continued

Design Document Research and Concept Ideas

First day back means new project.  Our task is to get into teams and choose from a list of 5 different games, each of their own specific genre, style and date of release. 

Medal of Honor

The Portopia Serial Murder Case

FlOw

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

Moshi Monsters

Research
First stage of any project was the research stage, to understand what kind of game we were working around and what is expected in our own game treatment.


Influences and Ideas

As a team, we had the idea of including a sub horror genre to make the game unique, in compassion to the bog standard crime dramas and games you find in modern society. Also, with the horror genre, there are a number of directions we can go in to really create an in depth, immersible game.

We thought the game should mainly be set in a normal, large family home. Looking completely normal to the naked eye, it hides a series of dark secrets, which you as the player must reveal to solve the case. From this standard narrative concept the ideas came flowing in, from games we have played or are aware of and movies that share relations to the narrative, environments and character profiles.

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Amnesia is set in a dark castle. We really liked the setting of this game. The environment played an important role in setting the scene for the game. Poorly lit areas and limited lighting supplies kept the player on their toes, paranoid about falling into darkness and going insane.

• LA. Noire - Mafia style crime game. The concept of interacting with the surrounding environment, picking up and examining objects to obtain as evidence really appeals to us and is something to consider in our crime game.

• Heavy Rain - In reference to the use of drama and third person view, as well as investigation. It shares similar concepts to LA Noire but is a lot more engaging and personal to the player.

• LOST The Game - In the game you find photographs, which trigger flashbacks used to gain clues and additional content about characters to expand the story.

• The Walking Dead - Episodic game, graphic novel art style, third person point and click adventure. We want to integrate the point and click, cross-hair game play into our game. The idea of the player being able to pick up an object and then use it in response to something else like picking up a key and then looking over at a locked door and selecting it. The game then animates the player going to the door and unlocking the door. 

• Resident Evil 5 - The game is set in third person, we like the idea of a third person camera. Gives the player an extended line of visibility. 

• Slender - Uses a torch as a light source, creating minimal visibility, making the player feel isolated and vulnerable. We thought it would be a good idea that when its night time not only does the houses characteristics change so does the player's visibility, creating the ideal horror setting. 

• Alan Wake - We liked how the game changes night and day. Evil at night and good during the day. The game also uses the torchlight mechanic. 

• Limbo -  We love the art style of this game, its simplistic, creepy and creates a shroud of loneliness. During in game flashbacks we were thinking of using the creepy black and white look to show a contrast of reality to false reality.

• Silent Hill - We like the survival horror style in this game. Want to use a horror style sub genre to make the game unique. It also uses the torchlight mechanic. A popular function in most horror/survival horror games.

• Borderlands - Uses a concept art visual style, making it look like its gone from painting to paper. Like cell shading. We like this concept because its crisp and unique to the realistic visuals of 99% of games on the market.

We also looked into films that share similar characteristics that we want to express in our game with characters, narrative, setting and genre.

• Memento - Character suffers from short term memory loss. Jason (in game character) or his partner Shaun might suffer from minor amnesia effecting his work performance. But he doesn't let it get in the way.

• Flight Plan - Mothers daughter disappears on the plane. The passengers deny the kidnapping, unraveling a massive plot twist. In game: Jason's daughter; Lilly goes missing.

• Wicker man - The use of crime investigation, real life cults and human sacrifices.

• The Woman in Black - Has a very dark mood and is set in an old mansion. Supernatural/ghost like events occur. The type of evil at night concept we want to use in our game idea.

Feedback & Additional Ideas

No feedback is more important than your friends, teachers. We had a short drop in session with a small group of students and lecturers to tell them our idea. The concept itself is solid, but there were a number of plot holes in our understanding of how to construct a solid/believable  narrative.

I had written up some notes, just brainstorming ideas. After the feedback session things did get a little messy.

In a nutshell we want to design a point and click third person perspective horror crime game.

You play as a detective called Jason Ross going through a difficult divorce, with a daughter, Lilly stuck in the middle. One night, Susan, his ex wife and Lilly go out for the evening and don't return that night. The next morning Jason gets a call from his partner, Shaun requesting him to attend an investigation. When arriving at the scene, he finds that the mystery, him and Shaun must solve is more complicated than first anticipated.

After watching CSI for years and years, what I learnt was dead prostitutes, married murders and people with gambling problems were all that was going on in American Crime dramas, so we thought to go with something a little more interesting. Here is a tidier version of the page scanned below:

• Cult based murder/narrative (investigation horror genre)
• Horror elements (Amnesia, Silent Hill, Alan Wake)
• Flash backs activated when interacting with objects/clues found in the game (e.g. picks up a photograph, activates a flashback. Flashback visuals disoriented and grainy
• Visuals: Dark, creepy (makes it harder to find things, intimidating atmosphere, environment changes day and night; during the day everything is normal but at night new objects/clues appear and out of the ordinary events occur. Crackdown 2, zombie freaks come out at night and hide in the day. Minecraft: All the monsters: creepers, zombies and spiders come out at night.
• Settings: Family mansion, modern home (suburbia), dungeon, castle, generic working class house (makes it realistic and relatable) to the audience.
• Investigation: Missing people, supernatural murder
• Crime is a setup for the detectives
• Character memory loss
• Player can choose gender/back story of their character (all back stories are pre made; like Mass Effect)
• Game's initial story perhaps isn't about solving the actual crime. Could be detective trying to find himself and start a fresh life. Makes player feel empathy for the character and have a personal/relatable connection (LA Noire; personal flashbacks).
• Back story is the same for either gender player chooses
• Family character
• Child kidnapped by cult family
• Personal vendetta
• Personal kidnapping linked to the case
• Dark, gritty, deep story - makes it scary
• Daemonic cult/supernatural
• Human Sacrifice (The Wicker man movie 2006)
•  Third/first person point and click (Amnesia game play)
• Detectives partner could be possessed by the cult, undercover cultist. Possible kidnapper
• South episode: City Sushi; character has multiple personalities. Partner could have multiple personalities and be behind the whole crime. The Walking Dead: Main characters best friend betrays him by sleeping with his wife.
• Detectives wife has a secret back story, she hides everything from him and their family lives in a false reality.
• Sin City: Has a series of short stories in a random order that interlink and come together at the end. Keeps the audience guessing. The art style is mostly black and white, only revealing the bright colours: greens, red, yellows.

As a sum up we were told to investigate in depth to cults, work on character profiles and work on a solid narrative, covering every aspect possible regarding characters back stories, plot twists, continuity and make it convincing in a realistic sense. Research into other supernatural crime films, games and TV shows. It is important to gain an understanding of how other games, TV shows and films were able to express the horror/crime genre so well and become successful. E.g. The X files, CSI, Alan Wake (examples of a film, TV show and game).


Cult Research

http://www.elistmania.com/juice/10_of_the_world_s_most_bizarre_cults/

Additional link and cult to check out:

Jonestown

listuerse.com/2007/09/15/top_10_cults/ 

Ordo Templi Orientis

Also known as the Order of the Temple of the East and Order of Oriental Templers, is a fraternal international and religious group which was created in the beginning of the 20th century. Aleister Crowley, an English author and a known Satanist occultist is one of the most renowned members of the order.

Initially the cult was anticipated to be modeled after and connected to Freemasonry, a form of a Gnostic Order, however, under the headship of Aleister Crowley; O.T.O has been documented around the Law of Thelma as its fundamental religious principal. This law is expressed as “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will”. These laws for the cult were promulgated in 1904 with the dictation of The Book of the Law.

The O.T.O is well known for practicing Black Magic. The creepy cult is branded to include sexual rituals that are both heterosexual and homosexual in nature. Many of the practices that O.T.O teaches are related to magical orders which enlighten the system of Masonic style of sexual magic. However, the O.T.O still restricts access to its “inner secrets”. The controversial book,Secret Rituals of the O.T.O, was withdrawn from print by the publisher after receiving a threat of legal action by the O.T.O. Nevertheless, as there has been a growing interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley, his work has been reprinted due to which various new societies have come into existence and have modeled themselves as the new generation of O.T.O.

Aghori

The Aghori or Aghouri is a Hindu cult that is considered to have split off from the Kapalika order in the fourteenth century AD. Many Hindus condemn the Aghorias non-Hindu due to their cannibalistic rituals. The streets of northern Indian cities are littered with followers of this cult carrying a kapala, which is a cup made from a skull! These bizarre people will eat anything from rotten food to animal faeces. In order to achieve the highest citadel of enlightenment, the Aghori will perform horrendously crude rituals. The finality of their rituals is attained from eating the decaying flesh of a human. 

According to Hindu mythology and practiced beliefs, everything emanates from “Brahman". Therefore, there is no evil. The Aghori believe everything to be god itself and to abandon anything would be equivalent of abandoning god. This is the bizarre philosophy followed by theAghori Babas.

The roots of the Aghori date back to ancient times. An Aghori ascetic who went by the name of Kinaram is responsible for the present-day rituals and beliefs of the cult. Since the Aghori worship lord Shiva with all their fervor, they believe that Kinaram was a reincarnation of lord Shiva.

The Aghori cult dwells on cremation grounds, daubing themselves with the ashes of the corpses and eating from a cranial begging bowl or a kapala. Many Aghori opt to roam around baring all. This is their representation of their detachment from the ways of life that normal people abide by. A strong belief which surrounds them is that by doing so they are above and beyond the normal worldly emotions of human beings.

The Body of Christ

The Body of Christ is a diminutive authoritarian group that focuses on “direct revelation” and not the Bible for its direction. As of late this cult has been in the news as two children have died pointlessly. Samuel, the ten month old baby of the founder’s son, Jacques, died of malnutrition. The little baby was not fed, because the cult believed that they were going to get a sign from God to feed him. The other child who died was Jeremiah, son of Rebecca Corneau. The baby died shortly after the mother gave birth. The reason for the death of the baby has been attributed to the lack of medical care provided.

Ten years ago, Dennis Mingo a former member of the cult, left the group. He gave a diary to the police in which he described the deaths of the two babies in depth. Regardless of the effort the police has put into finding the bodies of the children, they have remained to be unsuccessful.

The cult denounces the “seven systems” of a conventional society. These primarily, include: education, government, banking, religion, medicine, science and entertainment. The members of the group have consistently denied any cooperation with civil and governmental authorities. They have also refused any forms of legal counsel. They have constantly been refusing to assert their primary constitutional right against self-incrimination. This bizarre cult expects that the world will soon erupt in outrageous violence and turmoil, and that they alone will be the sole survivors of the disaster that they predict.

Art Style (Artist Research)

Kane and Lynch 2

The game's concept art was very graphic novel based. I really liked the thick lines used to create that comic book/ cartoon visual style. It really gives the game some personality.

Images from Kane and Lynch 2. The artwork in this game shares the same art style as '300', 'Sin City' and the artwork of Shane Davis; (found below). The colours are a lot less bold and have a water colour effect to them, which really brings out the black lining surrounding the images and bringing out the important areas of character detail.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/81694/kane-amp-lynch-2-the-arts-in-the-game/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Miller_(comics)

• Frank Miller - graphic novel artist
• Worked for Epic Comics, Marvel Comics and Dark Horse
• 1991 started work on his first Sin City story for Dark Horse comics. He did them in black and white to emphasize its film noir origins
• 300 was influenced by 1962's 300 Spartans. It was eventually adapted into a successful movie in 2007

Frank Miller's 300 graphic novel. All originally pencil drawn and then water coloured by Lynn Varley. 

The colours are very bright and warm, which I believe expresses the authenticity of the time period the novel was set in, influenced from the original 1962 movie. 

Below is a screenshot from the novel and the adaptation of it into the 2007 movie '300'. The visualization is the complete opposite. In the novel image it has a very retro feel, still influenced from the original movie. But in Frank's own adaptation of the movie he creates a dark atmosphere, which increasingly emphasizes the cold weather conditions and the dingy path the film is following.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588340/bio
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/frank-miller
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/24/frank-miller-hollywood-fascism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/06/alan-moore-frank-miller-clash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/nov/15/frank-miller-politics-visible-comics

Sin City: (Graphic Novel 1991-2000) Film: 2005

Sin City is a crime comic, which was developed into a graphic novel, wirrten and illustrated by Frank Miller. As found in the '300' graphic novel he uses a smilier art style by pencil drawing and then either painting or using inks at different levels to create dark impressionist lines or light weight ones. The entire novel series is literally published in black and white. This was done because Frank wants to express the dark noir atmosphere, to strongly back up the narrative's dark impact it has on the reader.

Some colours such as yellow and red are used to express certain characters and environments to tell the audience that this is something they have to focus on.

In 2005 the graphic novel was developed into a comic book crime thriller called 'Sin City'. It followed the personal lives of a selection of key characters from the graphic novel, bringing it to life. The film was filmed in black and white, with the same style as the novel had, using a small selection of colours to represent a true sense of colourful dominance to get the audience's attention.

Reds and yellows were again strongly used, but in some scenes (middle image below) you can see that all the colours are there, but not fully visible. This was done, to point out reference to two important characters and to hint a climax is occurring in the next scene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_City
http://www.megacitycomics.co.uk/acatalog/Sin_City_Graphic_Novels.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/

http://moebiusgraphics.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Davis
http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=433
http://www.theartistschoice.com/sdavis.html

Shane Davis - Superman Comic Book Art

Shane Davis was another artists I had a look at. As our game is influenced round a graphic novel art style, Shanes comic books are another perfect example. Each comic book features ink lined drawings, with each line being thicker than the other to define important areas in the drawings and the use of bold abstract colours to really bring the superhero stories to life.

I am making a start on the first draft of the game design document. While Sophie is working on the artwork for the book. I am working on the text material. for starters we structured out a rough copy of the document and its up to me to fill in the gaps. Everything added below isn't in the order that the document is going to be structured but its all there, to give you an idea of what is going into it.
Here is the first draft of our design document. As I focused on the written side of the document there are no images available. Sophie's blog will include all the artwork.


3D Models

I started some work on some 3D items that the player finds in the game.

The toy box, the wall behind the box rotates when the box is opened. The box sinks into the floor and covers up the gap it left as the door opens

The book is found in the basement, contains a variety of clues and photographs, which trigger character flashbacks.

The knife that is found in the house.