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Help wanted: events on a reactor city breaking apart
Author
Good morning. I'm one of the 'flooders' wanting feedback on sone game idea they had. What I have is the following:
The Place:
The gameworld is a metropolis-sized power plant named "Cookie Reactor". It consists of several oddly-named clusters (classified as districts, suburbs, neighborhoods and the likes), each one housing a power plant and its personnel. The whole city has one function -- power the entire planet, or so they say.
As you expected, as a whole it has a kinda industrial look. Lots of pipes, buildings, metal, warehouses, dirt, signs, yellow-and-black striped paintings and lights around, with the occasional residential tower or skyscraper here and there.
The Plot:
For some reason, the Macrothing Discrit alarms goes off, pointing a dangerous reactor breach. You, as one of the heroes, must find a way to stop this crisis with minimal casualities and save the District, thus saving the whole Reactor.
(This cliché would be much simpler to solve if the heroes weren't a hyperactive trainee, a serene scientist and a mysterious bureaucrat, but that's not the point).
My Problem:
I'm outta ideas of what kinds of "crisis situations" could be going on in Macrothing District, since it started to go awry. It's reactor is actually powered by a trapped radioactive thing, but that's not something anyone knows. Most people doesn' knows how most of the districts are powered anyway.
My plan is to take whatever input I get here, and make a branched plot, where the results in the different parts of the game can lead both to a ending or to the gameover. If I ever get a final storyline, I'll release it here too.
So, any ideas?
This idea sounds an awful lot like how FF7 started... but, for the sake of the discussion, here are a few ideas on what could be going wrong with the reactor:
Sabotage is an obvious one. Some guy (or gal) doesn't quite like the idea of this super-reactor that powers the whole world because he thinks that it strips other cities of their independence. Or maybe he doesn't like conglomerate corporations who take advantage of people's trust and misguided needs (*cough* *cough* wal-mart *cough*). Either way, this guy's determined to bring the place down one way or another, and has chosen to plant a bomb on some chamber that houses the stored energy or whatever, which would cause a mighty-fine explosion. He would probably have to have some sort of inside contact in order to pull this off, so maybe that's another road you could travel: have the main character eventually catch the saboteur only to find out that there are other conspirators who have the same views for destruction and have to be stopped as well.
On the same lines of sabotage, perhaps the man who placed the bomb is the main character. From what I gather from your post, it seems to me that the protagonist is in somewhat of an authoritative position, a cop or secret agent of sorts. The cover of his job would be perfect for him to bypass security and place that bomb, then once the warning signal goes off he plays coy and does his "duty" to hunt down the perpetrator (i.e., he frames someone else). His motive for doing so is up for grabs; there are plenty of reasons out there.
Another thing wrong with the reactor could be that there's maybe some underground creatures just a ways beneath one of the reactors (or the entire reactor complex itself) and aren't very happy about the radiation leaking into their homes (assuming the reactors involve some sort of radioactive or harmful substance). And so, these creatures come to the surface and attack the reactors on occasion in self-defense. One way to take this would be to have the main character get to the reactor to see these creatures, fight and kill them, then upon investigating the matter he finds the reason for the attacks and takes the side of the innocent creatures. He could then lead assaults on the reactors using his Rambo-like tactics or help the creatures flee. Either way...
I can think of a few more "problems," but I'll leave that open for other posters. I hope that was helpful.
Sabotage is an obvious one. Some guy (or gal) doesn't quite like the idea of this super-reactor that powers the whole world because he thinks that it strips other cities of their independence. Or maybe he doesn't like conglomerate corporations who take advantage of people's trust and misguided needs (*cough* *cough* wal-mart *cough*). Either way, this guy's determined to bring the place down one way or another, and has chosen to plant a bomb on some chamber that houses the stored energy or whatever, which would cause a mighty-fine explosion. He would probably have to have some sort of inside contact in order to pull this off, so maybe that's another road you could travel: have the main character eventually catch the saboteur only to find out that there are other conspirators who have the same views for destruction and have to be stopped as well.
On the same lines of sabotage, perhaps the man who placed the bomb is the main character. From what I gather from your post, it seems to me that the protagonist is in somewhat of an authoritative position, a cop or secret agent of sorts. The cover of his job would be perfect for him to bypass security and place that bomb, then once the warning signal goes off he plays coy and does his "duty" to hunt down the perpetrator (i.e., he frames someone else). His motive for doing so is up for grabs; there are plenty of reasons out there.
Another thing wrong with the reactor could be that there's maybe some underground creatures just a ways beneath one of the reactors (or the entire reactor complex itself) and aren't very happy about the radiation leaking into their homes (assuming the reactors involve some sort of radioactive or harmful substance). And so, these creatures come to the surface and attack the reactors on occasion in self-defense. One way to take this would be to have the main character get to the reactor to see these creatures, fight and kill them, then upon investigating the matter he finds the reason for the attacks and takes the side of the innocent creatures. He could then lead assaults on the reactors using his Rambo-like tactics or help the creatures flee. Either way...
I can think of a few more "problems," but I'll leave that open for other posters. I hope that was helpful.
Author
Wow, someone actually posted. Ahem.
Hmm, I liked the point about creatures underground, but maybe I'll use a more obvious version of it: the Macrothing District being powered by some sort of trapped radioactive creature.
Not that everyone knows, of course, one of the mysteries about Cookie is, there are several plant clusters, each one powered in a different manner, and no one knows exactly how some are powered. Ahem.
Well, when I posted I was aiming more for the after than the before. I mean, the kinda thing that may happen when the things are already going down.
To no one say I'm just leeching ideas, here's the handful I could think of:
- Structural problems: Regular consequence of explosions and systems overloads. People trapped under collapsed rooms and corridors, paths blocked (or at least disencouraged) by busted colums and the like.
- Fire: Eletricity, sparks, paper, smoke, fire. Metal doors stuck because they expanded, or just too hot to touch (fire on the other room). Sprinkler system + loosen powerlines touching the floor = wet eletrified floor = fried character. Rooms so hot or smokey, you can't spend much time without passing out or catching on fire.
- Power loss: Prolly easily compensable (only causing fluctuations) or not (district blackouts). Power peaks may have conveniently fried important stuff, like communications. And so on!
As I said, I'm outta ideas. That's really all I could think of. And there's all the stuff that may happen outside buildings, like power line problems and the such.
One of the points is having to travel to other districts too, but the how and why is still to be written.
Hmm, I liked the point about creatures underground, but maybe I'll use a more obvious version of it: the Macrothing District being powered by some sort of trapped radioactive creature.
Not that everyone knows, of course, one of the mysteries about Cookie is, there are several plant clusters, each one powered in a different manner, and no one knows exactly how some are powered. Ahem.
Well, when I posted I was aiming more for the after than the before. I mean, the kinda thing that may happen when the things are already going down.
To no one say I'm just leeching ideas, here's the handful I could think of:
- Structural problems: Regular consequence of explosions and systems overloads. People trapped under collapsed rooms and corridors, paths blocked (or at least disencouraged) by busted colums and the like.
- Fire: Eletricity, sparks, paper, smoke, fire. Metal doors stuck because they expanded, or just too hot to touch (fire on the other room). Sprinkler system + loosen powerlines touching the floor = wet eletrified floor = fried character. Rooms so hot or smokey, you can't spend much time without passing out or catching on fire.
- Power loss: Prolly easily compensable (only causing fluctuations) or not (district blackouts). Power peaks may have conveniently fried important stuff, like communications. And so on!
As I said, I'm outta ideas. That's really all I could think of. And there's all the stuff that may happen outside buildings, like power line problems and the such.
One of the points is having to travel to other districts too, but the how and why is still to be written.
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