Your input on fictional characters

[WarxePB]

Those who have known me for a long time may know of my Iseo System mythos - a collection of my own fictional work which is, according to my overinflated ego, relatively 'original'. However, in the early days of my game-making career, I utilized the freedoms of RPG Maker somewhat liberally; at one point, Zero from the Mega Man series was a canon (and relatively important) character within one of my projects, and another character in another project was originally going to be Kratos Aurion (Tales of Symphonia, not God of War) in disguise. Of course, both characters have been replaced by more original counterparts since then, but this hasn't changed one of my projects: ReIncarnation.

ReIncarnation is the sort of game that can only be done on RPG Maker. The very first version, called The Final Battle, was nothing more than a bunch of video game characters (about 30) teaming up for no apparent reason and fighting an evil force that only mattered in the last bit of the game. TFB was very far along, and in fact was completed at one point (whether you'd want to play it is another matter), but as I began developing my own ideas, it eventually morphed into ReIncarnation: a game where the video game heroes are reincarnated on a spatially-f**ked up world called eDriTh, and they team up with the more important original heroes to take out a combined force of original and non-original villains.
I had high ambitions for ReIncarnation; I originally wanted it to have an SSB-style combat system (in RPG Maker), but both the difficulty of such a system in a tile-based engine as well as my own sheer laziness contributed in never finishing the battle system, and without that, pretty much the entire plot fell apart.

Fast forward to now. We all know about the imminent release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. One of its features is Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary, an original storyline with characters old and new fighting in an original world. I won't go into details about the storyline, but after looking through nearly all the spoilers I could lay my hands on, I've come up with a conclusion about it. For your guys' sake, I'll put it in spoiler tags.
[SPOILER]The plot is exactly what one would expect - the characters team up somewhat randomly, and the plot is functional enough to send the characters where they need to go, but not much else.[/SPOILER]
Another big complaint I had with it (I'm not putting this in spoiler tags, as it's important to this thread) is that, other than the characters, the rich history of Nintendo isn't utilized very often. The Subspace Army is completely original, which isn't a bad thing, and there are Nintendo-related bad guys, but all of the generic Subspace baddies could've been replaced with enemies from Nintendo games.


Now, on to the point of this thread. I've been concepting some ideas for a Smash Bros. RPG for a long time. I was hoping SSE would negate the need for that, but obviously that didn't happen. So, if and when I get the motivation, I want to make a storyline-driven Smash Bros. game. However, seeing how SSE turned out, I'm not too sure if I should use my own ideas (ala ReIncarnation): a good storyline and characterization would help to define the new characters against the recognizable veterans, but by putting too much original content in there, the point of having recognizable characters is defeated - why have Link when an original swordsman with better abilities would be much better for the plot?
At the same time, though. I could make a "true" Smash Bros. RPG by only including things from Nintendo games - only the plot would be original, and even it would most likely be cobbled together from various other plot ideas (princesses getting kidnapped, mute characters, eight new robot masters terrorizing the world). This is, of course, a fangame of the highest degree, and would probably be shunned by the community (though it could also be a nerdgasm-inducing experience if done right - need I say anything more than "Mecha-Bowser powered by Chaos Emeralds and Robot Master AI").


Such is my dilemna - do I use an original plot and characters and make the non-original characters little more than fanservice, or do I take (read: steal) characters, items and ideas and combine them into one giant rehash? I can't really decide. What do you guys think?

[Prpl_Mage]

Well, I'd stick to a original game actually. I believe that you are more than capable of succeding in making an awesome game like described above.

Mixing videogame characters such as A LOT of video game characters from different companies could prove quite difficult as reality doesn't really attend to most Nintendo games while Leon S Kennedy(RE4) strolls around with a gun and shoot peoples' heads will there is a pool of blood underneath him.

But if you really want a videogame-character-based game then people would probably want Cloud, Dane and all those characters who are cool: and this could perhaps force you to make battlecharacters and all that for just those characters wich might result in you losing the interest once more.

But you could give it a try, although something super smash-Kingdom hearts-stylish battlesystem could work really, really well even with original(and supposeby) cool characters. Hell it might be way better.

But my oppinion is divided as an orange, I can' give you any real advice. (and I'm late for school. just by writing this....)

[aboutasoandthis]

KINGDOM HEARTS. DONE.

[Prpl_Mage]

Well, back again and just sayin that you could mix most thing with most things as long as you have the resources and "whatever the opposite to lazyness could be..."(darn... Brain freeze).

But, try to not mix the generic plotlines of each games; especially not the chaos emeralds since they've been in every sonic game so far... And it's horrible.

[Moosetroop11]

On the other hand, I think the idea of mixing classic plotlines would be really, really cool, if you finished it and it was good quality.

[Grandy]

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis
KINGDOM HEARTS. DONE.

 A-HA!

[aboutasoandthis]

You killed it...

[Grandy]

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis
You killed it...

 It was never alive to begin with.

[aboutasoandthis]

Originally posted by Grandy

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis
You killed it...

 It was never alive to begin with.[/B]

I was going to say it was funny. That hurts.  

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

Originally posted by Grandy

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis
KINGDOM HEARTS. DONE.

<img src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/GrandyGuy/nxc.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">

 A-HA![/B]

Awesome game is awesome.

[WarxePB]

So, no consensus yet?


I'd like to think of myself as a somewhat decent writer - or at the very least, I'm capable of writing an RPG storyline. Sure, original ideas are cool (and I have plenty of them), but ReIncarnation is and always was about the video game heroes, and how I could take pre-existing plot devices and elements and twist them into something new; for example, the Chaos-powered Bowser Man example in my first post is something that you don't see very often (except in bad fanfics). And that's just one example of how I could use pre-existing licenses.

I'll give you an example from ReIncarnation. The first world you start out in, called Alraise, is a pretty generic medieval fantasy setting - including things like the North Island (with elements from the Lost Woods and Viridian Forest), the island-continent of Libra (with notable landmarks as the Green Hills and the Goombantlion's Cave), and the ruling city of New Hyrule (which is inhabited by the water-spirit Undine and ruled by King Harkinian).

That's the kind of stuff I could do with a Smash Bros. RPG. Yet, at the same time, all of those places and people could be replaced by more original characters and places. I just can't decide which extreme I want.

[Grandy]

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis

Originally posted by Grandy

Originally posted by aboutasoandthis
You killed it...

 It was never alive to begin with.[/B]

I was going to say it was funny. That hurts.   [/B]

Eh, sorry, I was hurt so I decided to hurt someone in turn.

[Rayonius]

I think that, if you do it right, you can use old characters and cities, their original personalities, and create a completely new and yet nostalgic game. Don't use too many of the original story lines and cliches though, because then, not only will your game be predictable, but boring and/or unoriginal.

[Red Fox]

Please don't topic kick.