Concept Inspiration
After being informed that the game that each group will be creating will be a space pirate themed game, I decided to look for some existing media for some influence.
During this time I found a novel, being Revenger (Alistair Reynolds, 2016), as was somewhat inspired by the plot of the story.
The main part of this story that gave me inspiration for my concept was how the story makes use of a number of different planets that are travelled to by the crew to try and obtain the different relics and technologies of said worlds.
This influenced me when developing one of my first more detailed concepts. This concept was for the sci-fi/space pirate theme to be shown by making use of the story occurring in space, with the protagonist travelling to
different worlds (sections of different worlds) to obtain some sort of treasure, or with the intent to find the missing father.
Although we decided to take more of a pirate/sea approach to our game, with the events taking place on one world, the concept I went with was still influenced by this, as I wanted to make use of different islands for the levels.
I continued to create concepts for the game, ad then I stumbled upon some other sources of inspiration that had an influence on my concepts.
These ideas/concepts were thanks to some existing novels and movies that I had taken influence from. These items of media were the novel, Mortal Engines (Phillip Reeve, 2001), and movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge (Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg, 2017).
The projects outline stated that the antagonist of our game/story was required to be a shark, so therefore I created some concepts that included this, but also some that made a slight change to this concept basis.
The main two concepts that I thought of was as follows:
The mecha shark consumes the ships it finds failing the seas as its source of food. As the shark is mechanical, it doesn't live from eating other creatures (like an actual shark), but instead by consuming resources (from other ships).
The mecha shark is the ship of the antagonist, who in this concept was the protagonist's father. The shark ship consumes other ships to make use of their onboard supplies and break the ships down for their resources.
These two concepts were heavily influenced by Mortal Engines (Phillip Reeve, 2001) as it makes use of a similar plot point.
The general outline of Mortal Engines is that the cities, such as London, have had engines and wheels built on them to avoid the geological instabilities. Major cities (London) would then hunt down smaller cities to 'eat' them for their resources and fuel.
The inspiration I took from this was the whole 'eating other settlements' element, with it changing to eating other ships for my concept, but keeping the reason being for resources. However, the method of how this would be carried out would change, as for my concept(s) it would be via the shark physically eating ships, or if they're small enough (and depending on the size of the mecha shark ship), consuming the ships whole and trapping them inside, to then scrap down.
I also had some additional influence for this concept from Pirate of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge. During the movie, the ghostly ship, captained by the character 'Captain Salazar', hunts down and destroys other ships (pirate and privateer ships) by using his own cursed ship. His ship, The Silent Mary destroys other ships during the movie by raising itself up from the sea, and 'opening up' it's hull to engulf other ships, before 'closing' and breaking down these ships.
Although this wasn't quite what my concept ended up being like, I still like the idea of the ship itself consuming others ships.
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In addition to books, I was also influenced and inspired by games, as the aim of the project was to have a playable section of a game to show at the exhibition.
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There were two games in particular that influenced me this project. These two games are Mario Odyssey (Nintendo, 2017) and Sea of Thieves (Rare, 2018).
Mario Odyssey was a big influence for me as I enjoy how there are a number of different levels which all make use of a unique theme. This is something that I decided to go onto look into further, as this ended up being something that I wanted for my own game concept.
Additionally, I also enjoyed how the levels took more of an open world style, where the player could pretty much do what they wanted and go where they wanted in the level, and so this was something else my group and I wanted to achieve for our game.
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Another way Mario Odyssey is influenced me, is how the game is rather gameplay focused, but still has an apparent story that links to the levels/locations that you travel to. This inspired me when creating or concept, as I decided for their to be set amounts of story at certain points in the game, but in between the game would make use of gameplay focused sections (such as finding/completing puzzles or fighting enemies).
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Sea of thieves was a big influence for my group and I, as it is quite a recent games that focus on a pirate theme. In addition to this, one of the main activities of the game, being the whole ship combat, was a similar mechanic/event that we had hoped to implement into our own game (well, a more simple version of this).
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In addition to this, I also had a number of influences when planning and creating the concepts for my characters and world.
From the concept basis, I knew that I needed to fit sci-fi elements into the game/world. To begin with, the concept was for the game to be more of a space pirates game, with the setting actually being in space. However, we (my group and I) quickly moved away from this idea, as we had other concepts that we preferred, and becuase of this, I needed to find other ways to fit the sci-fi theme into the game.
I then soon created the concept, which in the end I decided to use, being how this theme would be shown with mechanical enemies (which would link to the Mecha Shark due to the mechanical aspect), but also some of the characters around the game would have mechanical prosthetics. My hopes here were to have the world show a steampunk-like feel (which would work well as it makes use of fantasy and sci-fi elements), with the ships, people (clothing/prosthetics), and enemies being the areas of the game that portrayed the sci-fi (steampunk) element. But there were a number of media pieces that inspired my concept for this.
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When creating the concepts for the game's enemies, one of my main influences was the Sonic series, especially Sonic Mania (Sega, 2017) as that had been the latest Sonic game that I had played somewhat recently and thoroughly enjoyed.
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However, there was one main area from the sonic game that inspired me and ended up influencing my concept, and this was the enemies of the game.
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(Store.steampowered.com, 2019)
In the original games (the first/early Sonic games, as well as Sonic Mania) the enemies of the game were all mechanical versions of actual animals/creatures. These robots are powered by animals that have been trapped inside the robots (as the power source). When the player defeats these robot enemies, the animals are released and run away.
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For my own concept, I knew that I wanted all of the enemies to make use of the mechanical theme, as the main antagonist, the Mecha Shark, was required to be as stated, and so I thought it was a fitting theme to use to connect the game's enemies together. Soon after this, I arrived at the concept of having the game's enemies all being mechanical sea creatures, as this would once again show the link between the enemy (lower class enemies) and the main antagonist. This is then where I began to realise how the concept was quite similar to the basic enemies in the sonic games, and so I decided to look into them a bit more (although the reason was mainly to make sure that my concept wasn't the same).
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Upon briefly looking through the different types of basic enemies/creature robots that the game included, I found my main inspiration for my enemy concepts. This was the crab enemy commonly seen in the Sonic games, Crabmeat.
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This enemy is a robot enemy that has been apparent since the very first Sonic game. The enemies appearance takes the form of a red robotic crab, with abnormally larger pincers.
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After seeing this enemy, I thought about how an enemy with a similar concept/design, with a crab as it's inspiration, could work pretty well for our game, and so, the mechanical sea creatures concept set in
(Sonic News Network, 2015)
motion and I began my research into some sea creatures I could make mechanical variations for.
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Moving on to my next area of inspiration, I also found inspiration in an anime/manga that I had watched/read a number of years prior to the project. This was the series called Fullmetal Alchemist (Arakawa, 2002).
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This series is about a world where alchemy was quite apparent in the world, with a number of people being able to use/carry it out. The main protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric were capable of using alchemy and were taught by their mother from a young age. However, upon her death, the two try to bring her back to life using alchemy. This backfires on them, with Edward losing an arm and a leg, and his brother Alphonse losing his whole body, and in return, instead of their mother, a homunculus, is created (ends up being one of the antagonists). Neither of the boys dies, but Alphonse, who lost his whole body, ends up with his soul being sealed
inside a suit of armour (as he lost his whole body), and Edward losing an arm and a leg. Later on in the story/lives of the character, Edward receives what is called 'automail' to replace his missing limbs. This is what my main inspiration from this series was.
Anime-Planet. (n.d.)
I already had the concept that I wanted some characters to have mechanical limbs, but I wasn't sure how I wanted this to actually be shown in the world. To begin with, the concept was for the mechanical aspect, enemies and prosthetics alike, to be a futuristic take on robotics, but this soon changed to more of a steampunk styled mechanical concept.​
Fullmetal Alchemist Wiki. (n.d.)
Upon looking into this series once again, I realized how much of an inspiration this could be, and so I looked into what automail actually was and how it worked. The simple explanation to this is that automail is a mechanical prosthetic that connects to the nervous system of the person it's attached to.
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This ended up being my main inspiration for the mechanical prosthetic concept, which I was then able to link to the protagonist and his father in a number of ways (strengthening their character stories). The image shown above was also shown in a character moodboard for the protagonist, just to explain and show the idea I had for the game's characters.
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However, I didn't just decide on this concept just becasue I liked it (although I did like the concept), but also due to the fact I felt this type of prosthetic could work well in a world where the technology of humanity is extremely advanced (apart from the mechanical limbs).
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