12-15-2006, 04:55 AM
Finally, I got something pretty solid and substantial to work with. I've actually been planning to write one of these fics for quite a while now, but I never got around to actually starting. This upcoming Christmas break should do this stalled project something good. I'm excited and all because this is my first fic, and the plot's something that really interests me (even though I may not know a whole lot about it).
Basically, it's about a revolution, set in a gritty fictional country much like Panama or Cuba, circa 2170 and sometime before the Great Destruction. There's a typically abusive overlord/government, and an equally typical guerilla/resistance group moving in the shadows trying to take the beauracracy down and restore balance to things. The technology that'll be used in the story will borrow mostly from the AC series. That means Armored Cores, Muscle Tracers, highly destructive weapons and the lot. None of that super futuristic and highfaluting Pulverizer stuff though; I'll base this one closer to the ground, maybe use the beginnings of AC technology. I might also bring in some concepts from the Front Mission series, including the Wanzer-type mechs and some other things. Pretty basic stuff, but from there I could always get more creative with the characters and settings and whatnot. The refreshing Hispanic/tropical rainforest locales can guarantee that much, hehe.
What really dries out Armored Core's usual storylines in my opinion is the lack of the human element. Most of populace of the planet is almost always dead, or forced underground or into drab, gray cities because of the Great Destruction. Human bodies don't even show themselves in almost all of the games in the series. It's always through ACs and AC battles that the story is told. Now while that is pretty much how things should be from a gameplay standpoint (as ACs are the whole point of the game), it's not terribly exciting to write about. One can only go so far with explosions and fireworks after all. What this project needs is an injection of human emotions, thoughts, wills, etcetera, not cold voices speaking over communication links in their war machines. So what I'll set out to do here is to always incorporate the characters in the glorious mecha battles. It should be fun.
About the characters themselves, I'll try to steer away from the very scratched and used profile of a teenage Raven prodigy or something like that, no offense to those who find that appealing (coincidentally, I won't really call them Ravens, rather something else, I just haven't figured it out yet). Maybe a gruff 40something war veteran who's at the end of his useful life in the resistance or something like that. And a band of crazy and kooky mercenaries to back him up. Love interests will most likely be in there as well, maybe as a part of the aforementioned mercenary crew. Or I could do a whole gender reversal and let a female take the lead for once, but that'll be doubly hard since I'm not a female myself, and I'll mostly be writing this from my own conceptions of what the character should be like. Bad guys may come in the form of either super-fit and battled-tested biological experiments or really fat dictators smoking cigars. Lolz I don't know. I'm having fun just thinking and brainstorming ideas up.
As I said earlier, I don't know a whole lot about this setting yet. The sights, the sounds, the smells of that specific setting are a bit unknown to me, and they'll need some researching on my part. I'm not entirely proficient on weapon science either, like guns and rifles and all other sorts of conventional human weaponry. Reading up on the histories of such figures such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro might help a lot though, haha. But you know, that's the thing with writing fiction: when things take a turn to something you're not entirely embedded in, you can always invent, and no one will be the wiser.
Some of this stuff was really inspired by playing games like Front Mission 4 (which I've not finished, Mr. Hellraiser) and Just Cause, among other things. The rest came from my imagination, hehe.
Again, I may have the time to start on this sometime this Christmas break, but even that's not set in stone yet. I'll see.
So... what do you guys think?
Basically, it's about a revolution, set in a gritty fictional country much like Panama or Cuba, circa 2170 and sometime before the Great Destruction. There's a typically abusive overlord/government, and an equally typical guerilla/resistance group moving in the shadows trying to take the beauracracy down and restore balance to things. The technology that'll be used in the story will borrow mostly from the AC series. That means Armored Cores, Muscle Tracers, highly destructive weapons and the lot. None of that super futuristic and highfaluting Pulverizer stuff though; I'll base this one closer to the ground, maybe use the beginnings of AC technology. I might also bring in some concepts from the Front Mission series, including the Wanzer-type mechs and some other things. Pretty basic stuff, but from there I could always get more creative with the characters and settings and whatnot. The refreshing Hispanic/tropical rainforest locales can guarantee that much, hehe.
What really dries out Armored Core's usual storylines in my opinion is the lack of the human element. Most of populace of the planet is almost always dead, or forced underground or into drab, gray cities because of the Great Destruction. Human bodies don't even show themselves in almost all of the games in the series. It's always through ACs and AC battles that the story is told. Now while that is pretty much how things should be from a gameplay standpoint (as ACs are the whole point of the game), it's not terribly exciting to write about. One can only go so far with explosions and fireworks after all. What this project needs is an injection of human emotions, thoughts, wills, etcetera, not cold voices speaking over communication links in their war machines. So what I'll set out to do here is to always incorporate the characters in the glorious mecha battles. It should be fun.
About the characters themselves, I'll try to steer away from the very scratched and used profile of a teenage Raven prodigy or something like that, no offense to those who find that appealing (coincidentally, I won't really call them Ravens, rather something else, I just haven't figured it out yet). Maybe a gruff 40something war veteran who's at the end of his useful life in the resistance or something like that. And a band of crazy and kooky mercenaries to back him up. Love interests will most likely be in there as well, maybe as a part of the aforementioned mercenary crew. Or I could do a whole gender reversal and let a female take the lead for once, but that'll be doubly hard since I'm not a female myself, and I'll mostly be writing this from my own conceptions of what the character should be like. Bad guys may come in the form of either super-fit and battled-tested biological experiments or really fat dictators smoking cigars. Lolz I don't know. I'm having fun just thinking and brainstorming ideas up.
As I said earlier, I don't know a whole lot about this setting yet. The sights, the sounds, the smells of that specific setting are a bit unknown to me, and they'll need some researching on my part. I'm not entirely proficient on weapon science either, like guns and rifles and all other sorts of conventional human weaponry. Reading up on the histories of such figures such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro might help a lot though, haha. But you know, that's the thing with writing fiction: when things take a turn to something you're not entirely embedded in, you can always invent, and no one will be the wiser.
Some of this stuff was really inspired by playing games like Front Mission 4 (which I've not finished, Mr. Hellraiser) and Just Cause, among other things. The rest came from my imagination, hehe.
Again, I may have the time to start on this sometime this Christmas break, but even that's not set in stone yet. I'll see.
So... what do you guys think?
"Let's fight... like gentlemen." - Dudley, SF3
