DEVBLOG №1: Gods, men and bureaucracy

In today's devblog post, let's talk about a side of development that is of little interest, but no less important - one that is as essential to any element of the creative process as oxygen is to a living organism. It will be about bureaucracy, the formation of visions and ideas, and the ways in which they are regulated. We'll touch briefly on the plot, without predictions or spoilers, and for dessert we'll present brief images of the protagonist and antagonist of our story.

Vision

Story is one of the most important components in the development of any game. Even if it doesn't involve a direct presentation of the story, a good game always has a background story.

This story, with its vision, idea and morals, carries an entire worldview through which the reader or player will perceive not only the story, but also their own experience. A universe of this nature tends to convey a unique philosophy upon which each story is based. Everything has its own “center”, which, sooner or later, connects all the facts and elements of the “domino” into a single chain of narrative.

https://www.vg247.com/nier-automata-reviews-round-up-all-the-scores

The genre of this universe is almost impossible to define - at least for humans, since it has as many stories as it can hold on its own. AI*, for example, sees this shared worldview as philosophical action, and perhaps there's something to that. I, on the other hand, prefer to call the genre “philosophical grimdark”, which is what most of the stories in this world are based on.

*- The ChatGPT-4 model from OpenAI is used (the neural network was given the plot, a list of characters with their brief histories, and general technical documentation of the project).

Terms of references

A story with such goals and vision requires extremely careful thought, to one degree or another. At a minimum, one must first “understand” what is required, how it is to be done and, most importantly, for what and why. Fundamental questions had to be answered. Unfortunately, these questions were addressed well after the world and story development process itself had begun.

The Terms of Reference in this context became not just a collection of dry facts, but a full-fledged manifesto that proclaims how and in what format history should be written. This turned the “Terms of Reference” into a voluminous philosophical document covering the principles of information arrangement and distribution. However, it gave the necessary result - now there is not just a vision, it is fixed, and there is an understanding of how to transform this vision into something more: a story and a plot.

First of all, the answers to the questions of how to turn large-scale ideas into compact text formats were determined, how to compress thought to the necessary volume so that one would not have to write multi-million texts about complex things in simple language. It was decided to use complex language for complex purposes. At the same time, the idea of how to group such texts, how to categorize them, and how these categories are defined at all.

Secondly, documents were drawn up to support these ideas, representing a kind of ideological “infrastructure” for the future “dry” specification. This helped in understanding how ideas should be vetted before being added or used, and how they should be vetted for realization in this world and its stories.

The final point of completing the “bureaucracy” in the development process is the creation of a “dry” statement of work, that is, a document aimed at simpler goals. It lays out the procedures for writing documentation, the various protocols and algorithms for publications, including such publications.

The development of the “dry” Terms of Reference has not yet been finalized; it began just as the order of writing devblogs, or, as they are called, “eschrakampf” for literary style. The terms of reference require special care in writing, and it's probably still developing or has already been finalized as you read this.

The story being sought is a simple chain of events in plot and narrative, where the emphasis is on the reader's or player's speculation and character revelation in an attempt to follow the movement and action of the story. There are no abrupt plot twists, no mysteries that can take hundreds of hours to unravel, and are global in nature. The main theme of the story, or rather, the driving force of the plot is war. We will not delve into the moral dilemmas and causes of war, for this is a work for philosophical manifestos and individual judgments. However, what really drives the story is the “simplicity” of war in its actions. It can be complex in its inception, have many causes, feelings, reactions and actions, but then, in the course of its “life”, appears very simple. And that is what the story is about: a simple story.

https://www.americanrevolutioninstitute.org/treasures-of-the-american-revolution/revolutionary-war-paintings/

In a world where war has become a permanent condition, one of many turns from an ordinary refugee into a soldier, driven by despair, hatred and suffering, once a lucky pyromaniac, becomes a miracle of the war machine - a cog in the mechanism of mass murder, violence, acts of blood, filled with despair and doubts that were hidden under external control and pressure, he turns into an eternal cycle of failure and struggle from which it is impossible to escape, in the doubt of the essence of heroism and evil, in the essence of their common opposition.

https://www.mycast.io/stories/blood-meridian-or-the-evening-redness-in-the-west

One of the characters, representing a conservative bloc that does not perceive the surrounding world, symbolizes the clash between the idea of the superiority of the past and the revolutionary movement that tries to change the environment and its own future. The truth of the behavior hides not only the military conflict, but also the clash of two realities of different times. The end of the conflict appears only as the fall of two regimes at once, for one without the other is incapable of existence as compromises.

The second character, opposing the ideology of the past, perfectly represents the regime of the new future, coming from nowhere and potentially going nowhere, since it itself is unknown. Neither the past nor the future is uncertain, but he represents only constant movement in the present, forming a conflict with any dissimilar and resisting in nature. He is this constant movement.

War was always here, it was before man, war was already waiting for him, the supreme craft, waiting for its best performer.

War in the story is not an inert force, it interacts with the world, it affects it, directly and figuratively:

Most of the things that happen in the story are in some way spawned from the war, such as the story of the protagonist, whose “driving force mask” was forged in such an environment, and the protagonist is the one who forged that environment.

Alhawa "Einsam"

Let's get to the dessert of the program, namely the protagonist of the story, whose name is Alhawa “Einsam”, we will use the format of his introduction as a description of the character, complete with creative vulgarity and quoting another source, namely the synopsis of the story:

Alhawa “Einsam” is one of the former refugees, free citizens and young members of the scholarly academy. In a fit of despair at the war and the loss of his family in a blaze of fire that previously combined with his pyromania to bring him pleasure, he collapsed as a person and turned into a resource of war - the best resource of war. He became a soldier stuffed with ideology and hatred, the best of variants of the soldier of failure, bearing bitterness and suffering.

From the brief description, and given that he never assumes the role of “hero” but only protagonist, it's safe to say that he's far from a positive character. Some may feel comfortable calling him a villain, but the truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Therefore, let's move on to a deeper discussion of him.

The main leitmotif in Alhawa's story can be described by the sentence: “the right person in the wrong place can turn the world around”; this expression perfectly captures his position in the story - he was indeed useful to the world, but not in the role he occupied. Alhawa is an intelligent character, but broken by the weight of life and the horrors he has endured. And a broken man is very easy to steer in the right direction for others, for he himself does not realize what he needs in life. There is nothing more dangerous than a man without a purpose.

Alhawa, according to his backstory, is not just a scholar in the academy with accomplishments, but one of those who began to promote a new engineering craft. This craft though existed before him, but it was sorely lacking its own personal zealot. It is the development of weapons, not the classic ones as we perceive our guns or cannons, but combined with elemental magic.

Alhawa, shortly before the events of the main story, not only lost his family but also his will, left alone with a desperation that would eventually be taken away as well, and this time not by his choice. Alhava would become the subject of a program that could be called “super soldier,” but a more accurate title would be “prophet of war,” an absolute instrument of this activity whose purpose is to kill on command and on purpose.

As a protagonist, Alhawa plays an incredibly important role. However, surprisingly, the beginning of his journey and the end are negligible compared to his impact on the world in his “middle”. He has to change his nature twice: first from a strong-willed citizen to a mindless killing machine, and then to a renounced man who has regained his consciousness, but too late - “too unnecessary” in the moment.

Sometimes some observers of events, involuntarily or even forcibly, become accomplices of these events. They have no implication within themselves, no other thought or philosophy; they are simply a marching force that has been directed from the slope of existence towards the chaos and anarchy of an event. Even if they do not imply chaos or anarchy, they deliver it in one way or another to the “destination” and become the altering actual force or forces.

Alhawa is an audience member who has been forced to become an actor, and now the whole theater is a mess. A mess unknown, frightening, taking lives and everything that may be dear not only to the individual but to the world at large; a mess that takes time.

Königtwelt

Königtwelt is a mysterious figure, like a god from a machine, a great general and an equally great warrior. He does not appear in public, only on the battlefield, and once he arrives, the number of survivors tends to zero, for he is invincible, undaunted and unstoppable. Without passion or emotion, he is devoid of aspirations and hopes, his only activity is war. As his self-proclaimed name says, he is a prophet of war, and carries with him the goal of a holy war of liberation.

Königtwelt is the antagonist whose shadow hangs over history throughout its duration. His name is mentioned as often as his influence is constantly felt. He evokes a sense of impending inevitable disaster, which is, in fact, what the antagonist's side of the story is all about.

An antagonist of this nature incorporates a vast array of inspirations and carries an extensive background “story”. Unfortunately, it is simply impossible to discuss too many details about him, for it would take too long and ruin the whole narrative and mystery of the story. So let us turn our attention to its other aspects.

The “big character in big armor” archetype is not a new one. The most popular examples that inspired Königtwelt's character are the “Emperor of Mankind” (from the works of the “Warhammer 40K” universe) and the “Mordekaiser” (from the “League of Legends” games). However, what makes Königtwelt different from all the others to some extent is that he is a combination of all of these images, and the main leitmotif he carries is absolute inevitability and the idea that “it's already happened and you've already lost”.

Königtwelt is not a literally brutal character; he is tough but fair. He doesn't have a grand plan, but he has a simple in idea but complex in execution goal - to destroy the ideas that affected him in his lifetime. Which ideas, exactly, we will give separate attention to in the devblog, which will touch on societies, cultures and religions. He can be called more of an “idea” than a character, more of a “god” than a person. It is precisely the projection of this “effect” of a mysterious presence felt everywhere in the story, which is caused by its inevitability.

His appearance in the plot emphasizes this: he is literally absent from the active part of the story until the very end, when the protagonist's fate becomes unchangeable. The problem turns out to be not the triumph of any one idea, but basic human attention to detail. Throughout the story, Königtwelt is “advertised” as a mindless killing machine like Alhawa. But in the end his only appearance is an attempt to dissuade Alhawa, to “awaken his inner self”; for what reasons and for what purpose is a mystery for the reader to unravel, for Königtwelt is a “god from the machine.”

Königtwelt is a very interesting character in that he cannot be revealed exactly as he appears in the story. The only thing we know is that his followers respect him and follow his commands and ideals not without fanaticism, but rather out of respect, for he does not ask for what he would never do himself.

Königtwelt's basic idea of the absolute as a “phenomenon” rather than as a person is perfectly described by his descriptive introduction:

But even such absoluteness can fall victim to its “power”. Königtwelt's entire narrative as a character is that power may not have properties, but it can certainly undercut itself. It, akin to a unit, can fall into itself, shut down, and strike at itself with infinite force.

Conclusion

Here we come to the end of the first devblog, which emphasized more on general introductions to the story in development with a slight focus on its main characters in an attempt to avoid spoilers or important information that might disrupt the plot or story as a whole.

Most likely, the next devblog will be devoted entirely to either of the two of them, or characters very affiliated with those two. That's it for now.

Vision

Terms of references

Alhawa "Einsam"

Königtwelt

Conclusion

Reference List