Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Burden

Time for a new game concept! "Burden" (working title) is my oldest and my detailed concept, so I might be able to spread this out in two or three posts, hehehhe. So the setting takes place in this universe about 500 years into the future. Earth's diplomacy has changed allot. A century into the future China is one of the most powerful powers in the world rivaling the US and growing whilst American economies and strength has stagnated. China begins to flex its muscles and begins territorial expansion. Starting the Imperial war China conquers all of Asia up to the end of Turkey and Ural Mountains. After the war Europe was completely ravaged and all most every government lost power relative to the chaos in modern Africa. The American economy finally collapses and fuses together with Mexico and Canada to synergistically  support the government and forms the United Nations of North America, or UNNA. After years of recovery Europe is joined together again under one flag as the Roman Republic, harkening back to the original rise of Europe, and eventually becomes one of the most advanced Superpower. By the 26th century the "Universal Engine" (working name), which allows ships to open a portal to another dimension, dubbed the "Jump Dimension", and then jump back to this dimension at any point in this universe so the distances of any point is irrelevant in respect of travel time (I know this interferes with relativity and could possibly allow travel back in time, but shut up it's a video game).

Eventually a colonizable binary planet system is discovered (instead of a moon orbiting a planet it's two equally massive planets orbiting each other), called Pollox and Castor. The sentient species is quite humanoid but with a few distinctive features, I actually havn't figured out what these features would be yet. The technological level of the Descourian species is at the level humanity was at in the 14th-15th century, high middle ages. The Descourians have the ability to shape energy into different forms allowing them to appear to be able to do magic (cause lets face it if the don't have any biological advantage humans would completely decimate them, being a mellenia more advanced). They also have a naturally occurring alloy that's harder than any metal on Earth allowing them to make almost indestructible armour and Weapons that can pierce through a inches of steel (again more balancing). The planets are also tidally linked so the same faces are always facing each other. And the sides that face each other have points where the energy that powers the Descourian abilities pools together and allows the inhabitants to travel between its surfaces.

Their are three main powers on the Descourian planets; Ledia, Avor, and Doraia. Etymology time! Ledia came from lead, I'm not sure why I just remember that it is. Avor came from the good god of Fable "Avo" and I just put an 'r' in the back, and Avor is a theocracy. And Doraia came from the word Doric which is a type of Greek column, mostly cause they are based off of Roman and Greek civilizations. Also Pollux and Castor are twins that came from either Greek or Roman mythology. Descouria, I actually don't remember how I came up with that name.

Anyways, The largest of the three, Doraia is the most Isolated and the other two Ledia and Avor are religiously uncomfortable with each other as the Ledian kicked the Avorian converts out of their lands and banished them to the nearby continent (I do have a map for both planets but not on this computer, I might remake it for another post). Recently (past hundred years or so) the Descourians began colonizing the opposite planet, Pollux.

So the UNNA and the Roman Republic decided to split the Planet of Castor, UNNA would get the two smaller continents which ended up being populated with the Descourians and quickly allies with the Avorians who see the UNNA military as the angelic army of their god. The Romans colonize the larger uninhabited continent but then begins having trouble dealing with the deadly wildlife. Soon the Chinese Empire (before the Imperial war China had a regime change giving rise to the now called Chinese Empire giving the war its name) colonizes the unclaimed planet of Pollux. To counter American diplomacy, the ally with the Ledians.

Eventually the Avorians see the coming of humanity as a sign from their god to begin their long planned crusade to reclaim their homeland from the Ledians and launches an attack against them. Quickly China helps their new allies and fights the Avorians. Since tensions where building due to colonization claims and no one in the west has yet to forgive China the UNNA declares war on both Ledia and the Chinese Empire. As this war is going on Eventually an new Alien Civilization lands on Pollux called the Third Race, Humanity being the first race and the Descourians being the second (at first me and my friend didn't have a name for them just referring them as that and then it just stuck). A completely organic race they alter the genes of its members to form different classes and even technologies such as ships and mounted guns and creatures that would serve the purpose of vacuums and stuff like that. They travel the galaxy in huge ships that travel at sub-light speed slowly but patiently wiping any sentient civilization out that uses mechanical technology, they have reasons for which I'll explain another time. Quickly they become a force to great to ignore and the Humans and the Descourians declare a temporary alliance to fight this force. Eventually the Third Race finds one of the largest pools of energy and use it to increase the speed they can produce troops tenfold. Eventually they completely over run Pollux.

The UNNA is forced to play its hand and use the Anti-Matter Bomb, a weapon they where producing to finish off the Chinese. It opens another gateway to a different dimension which if very chaotic and filled with antimatter and when it pours out of the bomb and comes in contact with normal matter it explodes with exponentially more power than a Hydrogen Bomb. When they drop the bomb on the overran planet it is even more powerful than expected and rips the planet apart. While the threat of the Third Race is over a meteor shower decimates the Descourian population on Castor and a small asteroid belt forms a ring around the planet. The Descourians universally banish the Humans off of their last planet blaming them for the most deadly war in their history.

And that is pretty much the end of the first Game, I do have some general ideas for a trilogy if I do make this game and it becomes popular enough to have sequels. I plan to have this to be an RTS, mostly similar to the Total War series (which is my favorite RTS series ever, I highly recommend it). I was thinking of having it as a FPS/RTS mix, but I feel it would be to clunky so I dropped the FPS part. There are, obviously, three Races; Humans, Descourians, and the Third Race. And each race is split into three factions. Humanity has the UNNA, Roman Republic, and Chinese Empire. Descouria has Ledia, Avor and Doraia. And the Third race has the Bubonians (from the Bubonic plague), Stygia (from the word Stygian), and the Kroatoans (from the Roanoke colony).

The campaign would be split up into three campaigns. Starting off as the Humans, the player chooses to play as one of the Human factions and each faction's story happens simultaneously. Act two begins when the Third Race lands on the Descourian planets, where the player plays as one of the Three Third Race factions. The end of Act two is when the Third Race takes over the energy pool. After that the player chooses a Descourian faction and obviously ends when the bomb is dropped on Pollux.

Good example of this point of view. 
The name "Burden" comes from the 19th century term "The white man's burden," where Europeans, mainly the British, felt that they were "obviously" "superior" to the other races of the world and that is was their responsibility to help lift up the other races of the world to be civilized. While from there point of view it was a nice thing to do, but since they felt they were superior in every way it ended up in the spread of Western culture at the cost of native culture and ended up being detrimental on a global scale.

Even though I did used to do art in high school I can only do well when I can see the what I'm drawing and I'm quite Horrendous when it comes to drawing from purely from my head including concept art, so even in future posts I probably won't have much pictures for Burden, which I apologize for, cause I know it's nice to have pictures to break up text.

I'm pretty good with this overall story for Burden. Later I could do posts on the pregame history of Humanity, Descouria and the Third Race and go more in depth into Campaign story. I could also go into more depth about human technology, and Descourian lifestyles. So if y'all like it I shall keep on posting stuff about Burden. And as always if you guys have any opinions or think something should be changed or tweaked leave a comment in the comment section and I shall decide whether I approve or not. And my current plan for the the next couple of posts is to talk about Schrodinger's cat and then finish my Western Hegemony by talking about the rise of America and compare its rule over the world over European's reign. 

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