Warriors' Heaven

This assignment had me take the class system from a student in the same class and add some more gameplay and story to make it a full concept.

class system by Xaiver Kircher

Premise:

A great evil has returned and it wants revenge on the world that cursed it so many years ago. You will embark on many quests and learn battle skills from veterans who fought this evil. Team up with friends in this action/RPG as you rise up against the evil that plagues the world.

Features:

- Learn Skills through training – The way to gain more abilities in this world is to embark on quests. Your character will gain skills after they complete quests. These quests will be given to you by the eight great legendary warriors of old and other NPCs..
- Work with others to get stronger – Quests can be done alone or with other players. Cooperation with up to three others will help all players reach their goal in the quest. These will be online coop missions.
- No class system – This is an action RPG where you don't choose your job class. Your growth has to do specifically with the abilities you seek after and obtain.
- Ultimate Freedom – From the get-go, you are able to pursue what ever training you would like, whether it's sorcery, swordsmanship, archery, stealth, etc. All four corners of the world are free for you to explore.

Player Motivation:

You will feel like an apprentice of great masters. From the beginning of the game there will be legendary heroes that will teach you the various ways of battle within their own discipline. Disciplines such as archery and magic for example. You will go on quests and complete training exercises to learn the abilities as if you are being challenged by your teacher. Some of these abilities will be taught by some NPCs outside of the legendary warrior circle. The true strength in Warrior's Heaven is to obtain the perfect set of abilities for your play-style.

Alongside the ability hunting, you will have vast world to explore with many ancient secrets to uncover. Many enemies will arise with their own unique talents to combat you. The vast variety of enemies will give players an interesting challenge as they trek through the world. These different enemies require different tactics to defeat.

The world will be free to explore, but only if you posses the skills to advance. For example, some areas may be too high for your character to reach, unless you have the ability to jump higher. This will give players the chance to choose what abilities to get alongside just gaining abilities for combat. To complete the main story though the player will not need to learn special abilities to go through obstacles.

Genre:

Warrior's Heaven will be an action/RPG that is heavy on the action gameplay. Even though there will be multiplayer this will not be an MMO. More like a cooperative action/RPG like Borderlands. Players can embark on quests in groups of up to four at a time. The action portion will involve rich combat mechanics with the abilities that you learn throughout your adventure. The combat will feel like an action game more than an RPG. The gaining of abilities will be the majority of the RPG elements. Raising stats like most RPGs when you level up will also be part of the RPGness as well. This game can either be played in the first or third person perspective.

Gameplay Highlights:

- Building Your Hero - The game will be largely about building your ultimate warrior. You will receive quests from the great masters that will challenge you into getting new abilities. NPCs will give you quests as well. You will also level up to increase your stats, such as max HP, strength, agility, and more. The abilities you choose to acquire will have stat boosts tacked onto them for every time you level up. Say you have learned the ability to run twice as fast. Tact onto that skill is an agility +2 so every time you level up your agility raises that much more. You will not be able to learn every skill that is found in the game. Players need to make interesting choices and if they are proficient in everything, then the excitement of gameplay has left.
- Combat - Huge beasts and powerful enemies will plague your path. Some of these enemies have unique ways of being defeated and their own unique ways of fighting. Playing more like an action game, enemies will react from the blows you deal to them. There will be plenty of powerful bosses to fight throughout the story portion of the game and during some of the side quests.
- Exploring the World – A large open world will be at your disposal. This world will have many towns and cities with NPCs to interact with. Also within this world, there will be many obstacles to overcome. Roadblocks and challenges to face. Many caves and labyrinths will test your mind with puzzles to solve.

Technology Highlights:

- The game will feature a lot of animation because of the many different enemies and abilities enemies and players have. For this it is important to have a very powerful machine. The textures and lighting may be toned down just a little to make room for all of these animations.
- Being an action game, 60 FPS is a goal that we are trying to hit. This is so that the player can have a smooth play session.

Art and Audio Highlights:

Art:

- The art style will lean towards a darker and serious mood, but have a hint of fun with a bit of humor.
- The game will have realistic shading and textures.
- Character models will look more like 3D anime models. Not completely anime, but more like Final Fantasy type character models if you need an example. This is to set the mood for the humor. We want the mood to be dark and serious, but with some humor in it too break the ice.
- The art will look similar to Final Fantasy games where the armor and clothing are heavily stylized. Weapons have crazy designs and the architecture will look different. If you look at Yoshitaka Amano's art that's the style that will inspire the look. It won't be exactly like it, because that's his style.

Sound:

- The Audio will have a modern twist to it.
- Because of the art style and this game will be a darker theme for teenagers, there will be some modern style music to dominate the soundtrack.
- Some tunes will be orchestrated tracks while there will be some rock themed tunes.
- Sound effects used for bladed weapons and magic sounds will be used.

Game Summary:

At the very beginning you will create your character. This will be only the appearance though. No skills or points will be allocated and no race selection. You will be a human. This is so that everyone starts off equally strong. After this the story starts with you being confronted with danger. You will have to fight for your survival, but you have no fighting experience or weapons. You will be forced to fight with your fists and determination to stay alive, which aren't very powerful at the start. You will then be saved by some mysterious people who will later take you to some ancient warriors. These ancient warriors are a diverse set of masters in the art of combat and they will be your primary teachers throughout the game.

Each teacher will teach you some primary skills in their fighting disciplines and will also give you your first weapon(s). After you have received your initial training, from as many of these teachers as you would like, these very same masters will then challenge you to embark on quests. These quests will have a dual-purpose: to rid evil from the world, and to teach you new abilities. Some of these quests will have an impact on the main story. Main story quests will not teach you any skills, but will just move the story along. For some really unique skills, you will have to seek out some hidden NPCs.

The world is set in a fantasy medieval setting. Kings govern lands, bandits plague the world, and pirates bring trouble to all at sea. The entire planet is yours to roam. There will be a diverse set of landscapes, from icy tundra to desert wastelands to thick forests. Monsters reside in their own habitat so you will know what monsters you will encounter in certain areas. There will be many modes of transportation from riding on horseback on land to riding dragons in the sky.

You will also be able to embark on quests with your friends online. Players will be able to cooperate in the game whenever they would like. There will be certain sections in the world for players to meet up and quest together. If you complete a quest with your team members, you will split the spoils found and the experience gained, but the skill is given to everyone.

Backstory and Game World:

Centuries ago there was a great military commander by the name of Karion. Karion had lost everything to a selfish emperor. His family, his riches, his way of life, all taken away. Karion sought revenge and rose up to assassinate the emperor. He was successful. This evil emperor had consumed the souls of many who he had defeated, thus gaining their power and strength. When Karion killed the emperor the souls transferred to Karion, including the emperor himself. Karion was consumed with the power and it transformed him into a completely new man. Like the emperor he had assassinated, Karion sought to consume even more power. Endless killing and plundering had given more power to Karion, and it seemed he was becoming unstoppable. Even though he did not claim a kingdom of his own, because he believed that was too boring, he commanded many. Some say the only kindness Karion had shown was to send his underlings to do his bidding and not to lay waste to the living himself. Karion grew ferocious and people feared the things he would do.

Then, when the world seemed like it had no hope left, a light shined upon it. A group of eight warriors with unique combat skills and talents emerged. They rose up to Karion and his forces and defeated them. Aware of the souls that had been passed on to Karion, and fearing that the same fate would fall upon them, they sealed Karion up in a cocoon and sent it far above the heavens, never to be seen again. However, prophets began to prophecy and soothsayers began to speak. Karion would return and he would return with greater power. Some claiming to be messengers of the great Karion said that Karion would come back and dominate the world. They also said the will of men and women would dwindle and all would become Karion's slaves. Karion will have an army to defeat all who opposed him.

The eight warriors knew that the time Karion would return would be many years in the future. They knew that this time, they would not be the ones destined to face Karion. So they had prayed to the gods, requesting that chambers be built for their thousand year slumber. When Karion would return to the planet, and establish his new forces, they would awaken and find new warriors to fight against Karion. They would raise a force strong enough to fight Karion and his armies, and eliminate Karion and his forces from the universe FOREVER!

During your adventure, everyone does not know about the tale of Karion and the eight great warriors. While you will explore a world with various cultures and creeds, some will be oblivious to the danger that lies ahead. You may even see some of the world's population dwindle in their will to survive and be overcome by the power of the great Lord Karion. Part of your adventure will be to free these people and instill the will to survive and stand strong against Karion. You will do this also by completing certain quests. These of course are some of the story quests. Some of these people that you free may be NPCs that give you quests to expand your abilities.

Gameplay and Mechanics:

- The Abilities – You will receive quests from the eight warriors and other NPCs, that much is known already. At the end of each quest you will be asked if you would like to acquire the skill or leave it. You can't acquire all skills in the game in one play-through. There will be a cap on how many skills you can acquire. This is so that players that choose to replay the game will choose different skills to learn. How you will perform these abilities will depend on what they are. Combat abilities will be controlled like fighting game inputs. Navigational abilities will be controlled differently than combat abilities, but will be like action game abilities. Magic will be described below. Each ability you acquire will be marked as magic, combat, or navigational.
- Leveling Up – This is also an RPG so character growth is important. This will be independent of the ability gaining system to a certain extent. The players will reach new levels of strength through experience points like traditional RPGs. The link it has with the ability system is that the stats will raise depending on what abilities you choose to acquire. Say you want to keep some sword arts but also some sneaking arts. Thus you will have strength and stealth stats raise more rapidly than the rest.
- Perks – There will be perks that are tied to the abilities. Some of these perks will be the reward for completing some quests. These perks may include things like the ability to dual wield swords. These perks will not be limited like the abilities gained and will not have any impact on manipulating stats.
- Controls – Warriors' Heaven is a first and third person action/RPG. All the action buttons that will be needed for combat such as attacking, defending, jumping, and sprinting will be on the shoulder buttons. This is so that the player can move with the left analog stick and look around with the right stick. Most of the abilities you will learn will have different button inputs. Like if you learn a powerful thrust you may have to move the left analog stick forward two times quickly and then press the attack button. The face buttons will have the character menu, a stealth button, the standard action button, and the magic button.
- Magic – The magic will be cast by having the players input their ability through a glyph with the right analog stick. The more complex the spell, the more inputs are needed to cast the spell. It works like this: the player presses the magic button, the glyph pops up, the player uses the right analog stick to input a sequence of directions for the spell, the player than presses the magic button again to confirm the magic spell, the player then takes aim and uses the attack button to deploy the spell on the target. This will work for healing magic, status change magic, and attacking magic. If you are healing yourself, you just need to aim at your own feet.
- The Action Menu – The menu will be transparent so you will still be able to see the action in the game, but not too transparent. You need to see what you're doing in the menu of course. You will use the Dpad to navigate the menu and the confirm button to select things. The menu button will be used as the back button. To completely close the menu, you will hold the menu button for a couple seconds. All other buttons will perform their functions. You can move and fight while the menu is being displayed. In this menu you can look at the map, get items to use, check the players abilities, and stats. Think of this in-game menu kind of like the one found in the action horror game Dead Space.
- Winning and Losing – You will have HP for health and MP for magic. The MP will charge up over time when not being used, and the HP will charge back up after not being attacked for a long while. Of course you can speed up the HP healing process by using potions or casting a healing spell. MP can also be quickly rejuvenated by drinking potions for returning magic power. When you lose all HP, it's game over. If you are victorious in defeating the enemy you are rewarded with experience points for leveling up and an occasional treasure. If you complete a quest you are of course rewarded with an ability to learn, if you desire. If you complete a story event, well then the legend continues.
- Enemies – Simply put, there will be enemies everywhere trying to kill you. When they attack you successfully they will hurt you, taking away HP. If you hit them, you hurt them. The enemy will be defeated when their HP is drained to zero.

Mission and Story Progression:

We don't have that many story elements planned yet. You play as a teenager in this game. The game starts with you waking up at school. You are woken up by the teacher and sent to the cellar, where all delinquents go. While sitting there you hear a the noise of heavy breathing. You go to check who is making that noise. You see a smaller dragon sniffing around. It looks rather large to you, but it's small compared to other dragons. It turns and looks at you. In a panic you run the opposite way and it follows. Running towards the top of the stairs to escape you try and open the locked door. You weren't that big of a delinquent. You just fell asleep in class. Out of nowhere a flash appears before your eyes. When your eyes adjust you see three warriors. They leap and vanquish the dragon. They tell you to come with them as the flash appears again. You find yourself in a large room with many other teenagers. A man appears and presents eight warriors. These warriors are said to be the great ancient warriors that vanquished a great evil many years ago. They have been awakened in this age to teach you to fight. You are the new force to rid the evil forever.

I made your character appear in the room with many others, because the game has a multiplayer feature. I felt that if there are other potential warriors with you, you could imagine the other players in the room with you. For this segment they are all just generic character models. They aren't actual players.

From this point you are free to roam the world and get stronger. The majority of the game will be about getting stronger through questing, however there will be a lengthy story that will move forward as you complete story events. You can go as fast as you'd like through the story and quests. Quests for abilities will sometimes lead to other quests for abilities. These will not always be tied into the story. The major story events will always point you in the direction of the next story event. Thus the story will be a linear one.

The only plot twist (if it's a plot twist at all) is that you will find out that you're a direct descendant of the evil Lord Karion. That is why you were selected to become a warrior to take him down. Only direct descendants of Karion can defeat him.

Character Descriptions:

- Karion – His backstory has already been explained. He is back and ready for revenge.

The Eight Guardians:

- Gunther – A powerful mage who wields deadly magic. Gunther is rather young for the power he has gained as a magic user. Gunther likes to party though, frequently drinking himself into a stupor. He is fun loving and cracks corny jokes. How is he a mage when he acts like this? One of this worlds finest mysteries.
- Kenji – A ninja who hides in the shadows waiting to pounce on his victims. Kenji is the most talented ninja from his village. However, Kenji likes to pull pranks. Something nobody is fond of. He is hard to read since you can't ever see his face. He's always hiding it. If you want to become a troublemaker for your enemies, he is the guy to learn from. He will also teach you great stealthy moves.
- Sheeya – Finally someone who doesn't waste time. Sheeya is cold and calculated. She takes her job as a combatant seriously. She hardly ever cracks a smile and never shows any emotion. At least no one has lived to tell about it. She is a dragoon that has learned how to command the mythical fire breathing beasts. She is also a master of aerial combat.
- Lina – A master of the healing arts. Lina is caring and compassionate. In her day she made an effort to help every living soul, no matter how they treated her. She is very religious though and always speaks about the will of the gods. Her preaching does seem to get annoying though.
- Hong Fo – The philosophical martial arts expert. He always has words of wisdom for anything the group talks about. Sometimes it can get annoying. But don't get on his bad side because he is brilliant with his fists.
- Larson – A former knight of the holy order. Larson is an expert of weapons and tactics. He fights with dignity and expert skill. He is a fine leader that gives just orders to those he leads. He cares for his team's well being and isn't afraid to resolve problems.
- Karla – A young woman who is an expert marksman. Optimistic and encouraging, Karla will not allow anybody to look down on any situation. She chooses to cheer up anyone who may dampen the mood. She is an honest soul, but sometimes honest to a fault.
- Kash – A keeper of animals. He has commanded many beasts throughout the world. Everyone is amazed at how many animal languages this guy can speak. He is also able to call these animals to his aid from far distances. He really doesn't know how to talk to people though.

Those are all of the main NPCs we have so far. The story will have some more. There will even be some significant characters under Lord Karion's command.

User Interface:

- Menus – The action menu will be a seamless transparent menu for you to access while playing the game. The start button will be used for pausing the game. You will be able to also access the same action menu while pausing the game for those players that need to stop the game to look through the menu. The menu will have tabs at the top to switch between the item select, map, and ability screen. The menu borders will be decorated with fine ornaments. The game is a medieval theme, so the menus will show decorations on the borders reflecting that theme.
- HUD – There will not be too much on screen. You will be able to take away elements from the HUD if you desire to show a screen with nothing. At the top left corner, will be the HP and MP meters with numerical values under each meter. At the top right there will be a mini-map that will turn with the direction you are facing. A compass will be the border around this mini-map that will also turn.
- Feedback – How will you know if you are effectively attacking the enemy? Well HP will jump out with each successful attack on the enemy. These numbers will be white. Green numbers will pop out if the enemy is being healed. The same goes for you and fellow players except when you lose HP the numbers will be red. This is a standard color format for HP change in RPGs. If you have an item to view the total HP and MP of the enemy or you have a spell to see this information, you will see the two bars hovering just over the enemy.

Platform:

The platforms for Warrior's Heaven will be the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The reason for this is the great online support these machines have. They are also very powerful machines capable of processing all the animation due to the diverse set of abilities. Also action games have been the highest selling video game genre on consoles for the past two years. Since Warrior's Heaven is primarily an action game, these machines will be perfect.

Team, Budget, Schedule:

As you can see from the top, Xaiver and I will be two of the leading designers for this game. A large team of animators and artists will be needed to create all of the diverse art and animations.

But to be exact, here is the number of employees we'll need for this project:

- 25 programmers
- 20 artists
- 40 animators
- 20 engineers

We plan on taking about three to three and a half years to complete this project. Here are some suggested milestones for you to gauge out progress:

- 1st digital prototype of the game – 5 months
- 1st build with much of the world built and many quests implemented – 8 months
- 2nd build with most of the story implemented – 8 months
- Alpha build – 5 months
- Beta build – 4 months
- Final testing towards Gold – 3 months

For this project we will need a sum of $50 million to complete this project. The cost will be evenly distributed across the milestones.

We look forward to working with you on this project.

TIM BENITEZ

HELLO I'M TIM

I LOVE CREATING GAMES

Warriors' Heaven