Ahsamed of myself! ...writer's block... any help?

[LRH]

Okay, so my game that has been in production for quite a while has hit a bit of a halt. The problem lies in the story... I can't decide how it should end! I have a few ideas but I would like input as well.

So far the feel of the story is somewhat of a dark comedy, leaning a bit more towards comedy.

Here's the story thus far:

Massive Spoilers, by the way. Don't look if for some reason you really care that much about finding the story for yourself when I'm done with the game.

Spoiler

Okay, the story goes like this:

You are Eric Connors, an investigator who has apparently lost his touch after several years in the field. The game starts as Eric describes who he is and what he does (he's somewhat of a smart-ass and has a drinking problem too...). Apparently Eric has just been demoted quite a bit for falsely accusing someone of murder, obviously a huge mistake. Eric goes on to tell the player that his biggest rival (named Layne) has taken the latest biggest case, since none would be so foolish as to hand it to Eric with his new terrible PR.

Eric decides he needs to steal the case, (a triple homicide) but unfortunately all the info he managed to snag about the case is minimal at best, and so he takes some drastic measures to get more information on the case.

(I can't decide if I want to keep this following bit in the game or not...) As Eric is walking to the elevator at the end of his office building, there is a power surge and he hears one of the neighbors on his floor making quite a commotion. When Eric asks to see if she's alright from outside her office door, she very uncharacteristically yells at him to leave.

Puzzles ensue.

Eric finds that a wealthy business man who works at a building down the street is the owner of the shabby apartment building where the homicides took place. Eric manages to weasel his into this man's office and questions him. The man seems VERY unstable and keeps claiming it's because he's "tired". Funny enough, for being a man of such great stature, he's wearing street clothes and not a suit. After some arguing the man gives in to Eric and gives him the key to the apartment building, but not the keys to any individual apartments.

Eric begins to leave the office when he hears a loud crash. Eric turns around to see that the man has apparently jumped out of the window. However, when Eric looks out through the hole in the window, there is no body below.

In a bit of a cut-away sequence, Eric recalls a part of the story we didn't know: the man he falsely accused of murder was killed in prison, and Eric holds himself responsible for this. As Eric leaves the building, he hears yet another crash, and then finds that the man from earlier is present this time, his body laying lifeless on the ground. Eric rushes up in a desperate attempt to help, but things quickly (and literally) become nightmarish. The man comes to life in a sort of possessed manner frantically asking Eric to "Give him credit for what he's done..."

Eric sharply wakes up in his office, apparently passed out on the floor. The woman from earlier (Mrs.Saunders is her name, by the way) who yelled at him to go away is now calling for him outside of his office door. She wants to make sure that he is alright. Upon opening the door, Eric finds that Mrs.Saunders now possesses blood-red eyes as well as a bloody knife in one hand and a rope in the other. She begins to force him back into the corner of his office and lifts the knife high into the air....and Eric wakes up again, in his office.

At this point Eric is, of course, very startled. He begins to try to regain his composure and walks out of his office once more. At the end of the hallway stands Layne. Eric suspects that Layne knows what has been going on....and he's right. Layne confronts Eric about taking the case, but is actually quite nice. Layne let's Eric know that he won't give up the case either, and so they'll both just have to try to solve it first. Upon Eric's exit though, Layne's final words haunt him: "Oh, but if you DO happen to solve the case before me...just...give me....some credit. Okay?"


Eric then heads over to his only lead, the apartment building...


That's all I really have!

I was thinking some possible endings are these, but to me they all seem too cliche'...

Ending choice 1.)A ghost of an artist from long ago is the culprit. The artist had one day painted a beautiful portrait which his superiors refused to believe he had painted. In fact, one of the superiors actually stole the painting and took credit for it, and became world famous for "painting" it. This drove the artist mad, running all through his village that HE had been the true artist. Of course in his position, nobody believes him. The artist demands credit from everyone. He finally breaks, he kills his artist superiors and demands credit for killing them, he starts to have a psychological need for recognition, no matter positive or negative.

He runs to the authorities to tell them that he has murdered the other artists, but the authorities think that he is a madman, since no logical thinking person would so happily turn themselves in for murder. He must not have done it, but he still seems a hazard to society. The crazy artist was then locked up in a mental hospital until his death, and now haunts the living, killing mercilessly still demanding credit for his actions.

Ending Choice 2.)Eric is a crazy, drunken idiot. The whole game up till now has been his messed-up drunken vision inspired by a newspaper headline he had read earlier in the day. In reality, nobody has died, really nothing has happened. Eric is arrested for being drunk in public. (Obviously the more humorous ending...)

[close]

Sorry this post is gigantic, but I would love crits or help!

[Krysis]

Umm, Ending number 1 seems predictable, Ending number 2 is a classic cop-out - people hate the "dream" thing.

I'd say, get wild, get crazy. If you want a supernatural explanation, the world is full of supernatural creatures. But ghosts and vampires are way overused. Get a monster people don't hear from that often, make it believable. Or maybe one of the victims turns out to be a monster in human skin and from there your protagonist uncovers a nasty conspiracy, I don't know.

But in the end of the day, it's all about the story you want to tell. Make sure you have something to say to the player, add some drama, some action and you have a game.

[Jim Reed]

The bum is an ex convict. He is also husband of Mrs.Saunders. They kill the bussiness man (for his money or something) and try to set up Eric, by throwing the buissiness man's body through the window while he is at the scene of the crime. Unfortunately a truck passes by, and the body lands on top of it. The ex convict is impersonating the buissiness man btw. The rival detective is in it for the money, and he is the perfect man to pin the murder on Eric.

[Kastchey]

By the way, your ending no. 2 sounds much like this type of bonus (usually joke) ending triggered by a special course of actions during the game. For example, if the player tries to make Eric drink ALL the alcohol that appears throughout the game (glass of wine in somebody's appartment, whiskey bottles on display, a nearly empty beer can near a bus stop etc., they will get ending no. 2 instead of the default one.

[Atelier]

Eric could be secretly racing Layne (great name for a rival by the way) to discover the killer. But as the game progresses you gradually learn Eric is the killer, who got angry in one of his drunken states (for whatever reason). Therefore Eric has a choice - frame somebody else for it, or try to cover up what he discovered and leave Layne stumped.

That way the player gets to choose which path they want to take half way through, after Eric has discovered the truth through interrogations etc. It's just a thought, and I prefer ending number 2 to 1. I think that it might be good if Eric goes out on this wild goose chase, and then in the end it turns out to be none of the suspects (i.e. the ghost). This could be quite comic but also quite infuriating to the player after all their hard work.

EDIT: I made an application with AGS that was built to remedy writer's block... but I wouldn't prescribe it.

[LRH]

You're all FREAKING BRILLIANT!!!

I love these ideas! They've sparked all sorts of inspiration. Now I've almost got too much to work with...

I may just make multiple endings and include several of these.

@Kastchey I really like that idea, especially since [secret] already programmed in the game is a bottle of whiskey hidden away in Eric's office as an easter egg, but now can become part of this whole alternate ending.[/secret]

@AtelierGames Fantastic suggestions as well, although I'm not sure how to incorporate them at this point, but I would like to use some of these ideas as an alternate end.

@Krysis Yeah, that's kind of what I feared about those endings.

@Jim Reed Really clever idea... but what bum? o.O If you mean the business man, I plan to actually make that the business man, the guy in the shabby clothes. This is partly to show how distressed he is.

[Jim Reed]

Yes, I meant that the bum (ex-convict in shabby clothes) is impersonating the bussinessman (implying that the real bussinessman is allready dead, hidden in the office somwhere, ready to be thrown out through the window) in order to lure the main character into the office, so he can frame him, in cooperation with his wife and the rival detective.