Grab a sandwich folks, this is going to be a long one.
For those who may not be in the know I have a very long standing love affair with the game Elite: Dangerous.
Elite: Dangerous has story elements in it but there is no story campaign. The idea is that you write your own story and I've been wanting to do just that. I even have a character in mind. Her names is Isabella "Izzy" Antonia.
For the longest time I have been struggling with how I want to present this story. My first concept was to write a story line, record a whole shit load of game play that can fit into it and based on what happened add in necessary details in the form of comic pages. Once all that was done I would then edit the comics into the video and post it on Youtube. This was a great idea EXCEPT that the footage took up a quarter of my hard drive space and the pages needed at least a month of time to create and well... yeah it just wasn't feasible for me to do. So now I'm thinking about doing this on an episodal basis where I post about 30-60 minutes of gameplay with some kind of dialogue and a few images thrown in. So instead of full on comic pages I would only be drawing a few panels. I'm also thinking of drawing cockpit only scenes for in game interactions like pirate hunts, mission updates and exploration. This is a much smaller project but in the end I think would be a much better way of telling the story. I can add in whatever dialogue I like about Izzy's motivations and even create my own side characters. Certain stories like picking up, dropping off mission objectives will be handled with barely a page of dialogue and I can even bookend the video with a page to start and a page to finish.
What will be the over arching story you might ask? I have no fucking idea and that's what makes this project so cool! This is literally a story that writes itself. I'll be taking in game cues from the missions I receive as well as community goals and of course the Galnet news stories. I will place myself in the role of Izzy and try and decide based on what information is available how she would decide to move forward. I can even decide at random points whether or not certain encounters have anything to do with her past. All of this will be done on the fly with no pre-planning whatsoever. This gives me a tremendous amount of freedom to create an entire narrative around one character and I can't wait to get started.
However, like any good story this one needs a set of guidelines. I can't just put together completely random events and expect it to form a cohesive story. I need to tie it all together somehow and that's going to be tough. In game missions aren't exactly organized with any real narrative in mind. It's entirely possible that I'll end up with a set of missions and events that I just can't do anything with, nothing that makes sense at any rate. So with that in mind I've decided to set up the following rules.
1. All gameplay will be in solo mode. Nothing worse than some dick CMDR deciding to ruin my story by killing me in order to brag to his buddies about his new, bigger bounty.
2. Izzy's character role must be decided in advance. She isn't just some slot flying around for the view. She has a purpose and that purpose has a defined role that will define how she makes her choices.
3. Absolutely NO endgame. This is the story that never ends. Even if I give up on it at some point in the future I'm not going to create any kind of ending that I will then try and force into being. That's what almost killed this project in the first place.
4. No in game bulletin boards (except for Galnet news pages) and all missions have to be shown being accepted/completed in person. No in game stats either like progress towards ranks or standing with factions. All of that will be handled with dialogue. In fact this will likely be the "meat" of the overall story.
5. Izzy MUST have the same ship throughout. It can be any ship in game but she can not change it. Like Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon the ship is as much a part of Izzy's identity as her hair and her spacesuit.
So why am I telling this to the whole world? Aren't I afraid someone will steal it? No, because I'm giving this away. I hope some random CMDR sees this and thinks: "That's a great idea, I should try that!" If you do, go with my blessing. Maybe we'll someday meet in the void and share some truly incredible stories.