Lone Dawn - The Career of Bounty Hunter Game

This week we're back with a metroidvania style hitman mashup game. A nice and fun one particularly if you're into cowboys! 

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Chapters

• 0:00 30 Second Intro
• 0:30 Main
• 3:00 30 Second Outro

Transcript

0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender. I'm Matt and I'm here with... Hello Scott, hello. Welcome, welcome you, welcome listener, welcome all. Essentially, welcome to the Gaming Blender. That's what I'm trying to get out. The Gaming Blender is the world of hypothetical video games. We will today combine a randomized genre, randomized mechanics, and a randomized plot and make a brand new game before your very ears. That was the intro. Did you enjoy that Scott? I did enjoy the intro, well done. It was... it was... was it different? was it the same? It was succinct, it was succinct. was succinct. I don't know. I kind of felt really formal doing it. I felt like I'd fly through formally and then we'd just see how life goes. And then we got to the other end and I was very happy. And here we are on the other end. but now you've done it formally, do you kind of feel like you don't know what to say? oh what, because we're not really formal people and you've decided to do something formal? just going formal. It's like, it's like, it's like wearing a, I've worked in advertising for 10 years and it's like working, wearing a tie. It's like, dear. Anywho, anywho. I thought I'd, I thought I'd start with this, this. I thought I'd start with this. But firstly, I just also wanted to say something about the, the, the state of the video game world. I anticipate you have some thoughts given some of the developments. Well, I'm trying to, I appreciate it by the way, listener, thank you very much for keeping up the podcast. Apologies for it being a little bit tardy this one. However, I've been keeping up to date with closures, shutdowns of various studios. And I was looking at the news today and did you, I don't know if you know the developer, Smashdown, Smash Splash Damage. They're quite a small developer. They haven't developed too much, but they look like they've got private investors come in who look likely. to maybe shut down slash cause redundancies, which is obviously awful, awful news. was doing that with that news came out yesterday as we were recording. I was doing some reading up into this. I recognize their name firstly, because I've applied for them and they rejected me. dear. But secondly, because they were developing a new Transformers game for ages. And I remember keeping tabs on it and it kind of disappeared. And I suddenly went, where did that go? And I read up on it and this Transformers game was canceled back. in January and they've been working on it for three years. So in a roundabout way, I started thinking what point, and this is with the Game Awards coming up as well, where the Game Awards, know lots of games are going to be announced and lots of pre-rendered trade is going to be shown off. What point is hype about anything completely and entirely pointless in the modern day world of video games? It is so insecure. Do you think there's even a place for hype nowadays? It's a difficult one because I think you're never gonna get... No, no. No, I think you're never gonna get rid of hype. It will always exist, I think, and it will only get worse the more the internet continues to evolve and the way media continues to evolve. So, yeah, it's never gonna go. Is it still relevant? Is another question you could ask. So many games now get delayed and I'm not gonna complain about that, it happens. It happens. But the issue with that is that hype is not just linked to how good the game is going to be in your mind, it's also linked to how quickly it's going to be in your hands. back in... Oh, when was the Elder Scrolls sp- 6 announced an absurd amount of time ago it was like seven years it was like was like seven years ago and at the time people thought oh my gosh yes yes it's been whatever it was seven years since since it was released into in since elsewhere five was released in 2011 yes elder scrolls finally cut to 14 years since Skyrim was first released and we still don't have it hype very quickly fades away if gamers go, yeah, but I'm not going to see it for five years. You can't get hyped about something in five years time. You get hyped about something next year or in six months time, because that's something tangible that you can almost touch. Game timelines are getting longer and longer. And so I would argue hype, they have to really thread the needle game developers about when they announce games. So if they announce them at the start of uh when they start developing them, if they don't finish for five years, they've announced it at the wrong time. need to keep it secret, keep it safe, in the words of Gandalf, and announce it for, I'm going to say, a year and a half away from when they plan to release it. That's like, as in like, that's your far left of Ark and then, you know... I like it, just because I put all the effort into Googling it. When do you think the Elder Scrolls 6 was actually announced? There's two questions here. And when do you think that hype video came out? You mean that little joke of a trailer? Yeah, where they're like, Elder Scrolls 6 is coming, my god. I'm gonna say Elder Scrolls 6 was announced in 2017 and the trailer was in 2019. or you're one year off on both. Oh, 20... What did I say? I forgot what I said. What did I say? it's essentially like having a conversation with your grandfather. like, did you have a good day? I had a good day. Did you have a good day? Nope, other way. So he said they working on it in 2016. This is good old Todd Howard. And then the announcement trailer came out in 2018. It's been seven years. seven years since a visual like this is happening. They released a trailer seven years before and they're not even close to finishing it. I think this is where, okay, this is going off on a slight tangent because totally a weird review. think hype as having worked in advertising years, you've got to manage hype, you've got to work with hype too, so you can reach a peak. At the moment, the video game industry seems to love peaks and troughs. So you release something, you get interest and then especially your small studios. Small studios use it as a way to get backing as well. I mean, No Man's Sky essentially, let's ignore the actual release for that one. But that's got a lot of backing from early trailers. But that is a high risk strategy. If you want to play the safe game, you have a game and you go, right, this is a lovely game. It needs two months of work. I'm going to release it in six months and I'm going to entirely work on my marketing. But that's not the way the modern world works. And I know there's a million reasons for that. However, I just feel like in the modern day safe bets, we're going to see this more and more. I can't see this many games getting canceled and studios shut in five years time. There won't be any left. I just don't understand how because the amount of conglomerates that bought them all out, apart from unless they get bought by the Embracer group, in which case they just get killed off. Anyway, that was all awfully depressing and obviously I hope Splash Damage stays open and the studios continue making things. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for was when Ubisoft who... uh So Sandfall who made Claire Obscure, Existion 33, which is obviously gonna sweep, did sweep the Golden Joystick Awards and will sweep the Game Awards. Yeah, it got seven awards at Golden and it's nominated for 12 at Game Awards. Yeah, it deserves every single... We do love that guy in here. absolutely not that game but the people who made that game were sacked from Ubisoft so I would love to have been a fly in on the wall in Ubisoft when it got announced that their former employees who they sacked made arguably one of the best games that's ever been made in that genre I would argue In that genre, okay, I'm back with you. I'm back with you. It was a bold statement. It's an incredible game. me, it's one of the best games, for me personally, it's one of the best games ever made. But that's as in for the things that I like about games. That's fair. All that maybe all that entertained me there is when you first said that when that's a bold statement that could come and bite us and then you went in that genre on that day. No, it is, it is for I pay. Let's not get into a discussion about Claire's. You know how much I love that game. Yeah, no, no, I know. And I do love that game as well. would I would happily say it's in my top top 10 of all time. enjoy the fact that Ubisoft will be reeling from that. find out in the background who made it but I think that will take me too far off piste. should we get into your game? Let's get into the game you are making. Your game. Your cl- No, no, no, this is very much your obscura. uh Scott, what kind of game would you want it to be today? What mood are you in? What are you feeling? What's the vibe? Let's be honest, what you have drawn is not going to be what I want. So what I want is irrelevant because once you give me dating sim again I will reach through the shroud of the internet and I will throttle you. I love the idea of the internet being a shroud. That's a beautiful image of numbers and symbols. No, you have not got a dating sim dating sim is far from this. What you do have is a one-on-one fighting game, AKA Tekken, Injustice, those wonderful games. So you have that as your main genre. And then as your mechanics go with that, I think you've got a couple of interesting ones. You have a career mode, AKA uh what you play of career mode in in FIFA in a sports series, that kind of thing. That is a career mode essentially where you're playing a career pretty self explanatory. Career, career, career, career. This career, this is a career of course. Thank you very much. And then the next one is the interesting one, which is a Metroidvania. Now Metroidvania being essentially where you usually have access to a large map start. will work your way through and often have to unlock various abilities or things to come back and unlock new areas later on. Getting its name from Super Metroid. Woohoo! Yeah, my first interaction with Metrovania was probably the Spyro games where you could only get to certain areas once you'd bought certain abilities from money bags then you could do certain bits. So that was a clever way of doing it because it very children friendly because the way it did it is it had a main hub, which was the Metroidvania bit. And then each time you went into a level, you knew the level was linear. You're like, okay, great. Just play your way through level, get back to the main hub and then play around with it. It was that I loved the Spyro games. I thought they were phenomenal. So it's the one game that I'm allowed to play with my daughter by my side because she likes the purple dragon as she calls. clear, Scott's child is too young for Claire Obscura. That is the only reason. Unfortunately that's, you know, silly laws. one-on-one fighting game, career mode, Metrovania. Okay. So I'm going to say the career mode 101 fighting game is quite easy, you can probably put that together quite easily. The Metroidvania and the 101 fighting game don't necessarily go together because 1... You know, 101 fighting game is very... You're in essentially a 2D arena. you know what I mean? This is true. Yeah, this is true. This is true. Are we thinking maybe some sort of... huge map where there are only two people on the entire map and you need to murder each other. don't know if you've ever had this, but I've often thought when you're playing a GTA or something like that, wouldn't it be interesting? mean, GTA Online is actually the perfect example of this, but toned down, you go, oh, well, wouldn't it be interesting if you were just, well actually, sorry, Assassin's Creed's a better one, where you were like, I just have to assassinate one person, they're miles over there and it's just me and nothing else and it's totally normal city and you're just relying on spotting them and then your brain goes, actually, that would just be really boring. Mmm. need rules, need limitation in order to make it entertaining. And that's what the Hitman series does so well. The Hitman series goes, go there, go there, go there, go there. It keeps things flowing. You could do that with one-on-one fighting games, but it's quite tricky because you'd have to limit it to make sure you met your opponent because otherwise you could just be looping around each other forever. So, I've got semblance of an idea. it's... The thing I've got in my mind, okay, is did you ever play Star Wars Bounty Hunter? I didn't, was that PS2? PS2 and you played as Django Fett so that the Fett from the prequels not the Fett from the good Star Wars. Yes, very good. So it wasn't a one on one fighting game but you... I'm thinking Bounty Hunter. Okay, this is what I'm thinking. like a bounty hunter. So what I'm thinking in that that fits quite well into career mode. I'm not saying it has to be a Star Wars bounty hunter. I'm not saying we make a Star Wars game, but you can you can make you can you Scott has regularly got halfway through an idea and gone IN SPACE! Halfway through it. You could set this in the Old West, where you could uh have big maps that unlock with certain abilities that you unlock through your career mode. So let's say, which also implements a lot of travel into the game, the one-on-one fighting elements of the game... are once you once you find event you have to go through a lot of different hoops you have to actually like track the target you have to speak to people you have to um like investigate it's a little bit a little bit like yes a little and a little bit a little bit of sort of that sort of arkham the arkham games where you have to do a bit of investigation and clue finding and kind of like putting stuff together um and the one-on-one fighting game element is that It always ends up in a duel. Once you find your bounty, the bounty is never going come quietly. So it always ends up in a duel. It doesn't have to be a la Tekken or Injustice, but the idea being that no one else will be involved when you get to that final duel. on Wii on the Nintendo Wii called Red Steel? So that was one of early Wii releases and what it was, it was a... I think it was a Samurai game. was a long time ago that I was playing it and essentially you had these linear levels and you shot everyone throughout and then you reach the boss and then you'd both be like honorable and take out your swords to fight. it was quite a nice idea. mean, there was an element of me that every time he died went, well, I'm just going to get out my gun and shoot him, aren't I? The old Indiana Jones thing, but that's me. I like the idea. So fundamentally you'd be using the Metroidvania elements to access areas. Yes, it's access. would say imagine a bit like in Red Dead 2 where you have different areas of the map that don't unlock until you get different parts of the story. there are narrative reasons why you can't go there because it's full of cops that looking for you. You can't go there because you've got no transport there, stuff like that. But you could build it into the story in that way or you could build it in a more environmental way. say you'd have to probably do the latter for it to be a Metroidvania because Metroidvanias are often mechanics, not story based unlocker maps. Unlocker maps is much more an open world em thing. Metroidvanias where you go, you get the new gun. That means you can teleport across the thing. Yeah. so I think for this, think perhaps you unlock uh certain pieces of equipment or certain expertise that allows you to traverse harsher terrain to get to different areas. So for example, uh let's say that the horse that you have is, you know, it's a plains horse, it's not built for the mountains, it will freeze to death. your rewards potentially for building up to a certain bounty may be a particularly hardy breed of horse that is that is that doesn't have no I'm giving you an example and then some could be linked to certain pieces of expertise like certain techniques and lessons that you learn from NPCs so ah you could meet I'm trying to think of a uh idea actually that might make something interesting because instead of doing an unlock system, what you do is you do a time-based system. So what it is, is there's always, because it's the old west, there were actually quite a few ways of traveling around the old west. You had the old train lines, you had caravans, you had walking or whatever it is. Maybe you do a system where every... five hours, there's a in game time, there's a caravan that leads to this one place. So you essentially have to do all your prep work and get everything ready to catch that caravan because you can go there, you could go there and do your investigation and then realize, know I need in order to kill this guy, I'm going to need a rifle that shoots a certain distance. So you then come back again, do all your prep work and then go out. So the Metroidvania is less like unlocks, it just limits the availability of those areas of maps. just because then you have one base that you always come back to in order to source things. I mean, it's a bit almost witcher-esque in the idea that you go away and make the potions that you want to make to take out X monster and do those bits. But your limitation would be, right, I've got four hours before the train comes. I've got to go and sort this out, make sure I've got the rifle in time, make sure the rifle's loaded, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps it's built in sort of an idea where you could utilize all your prep time really well and be completely prepared, but you may have to, in most instances, you might not be fast enough, you might have to make compromises and say, right, okay, this particular bounty, what do I really desperately need and what's a nice to have and what's a... more procedural and if you miss one, it damages your reputation. then you get, that's because that builds into career actually, doesn't it? Because if you miss a bounty, because you couldn't get the time ready, and you're like, I didn't get the bullets in time, your reputation goes down and you have worse targets, less pay off targets, sort of worse. Because you could say that, for the American viewers, please do correct me I'm wrong, but I believe that certain bounties were only issued within certain states, so the bounty was issued by the state. It's only relevant if that person is in the state, i.e. you can only collect it within that state, so let's say you're in Texas, but the guy is fleeing to, what's adjacent to Texas, Nevada. I have no idea. My American map is awful. I'm going to say Nevada, uh apologies American viewers, but he's fleeing to Utah or Louisiana or whatever and he doesn't have a bounty there. You need to catch him before he gets across the state line. So, and if you don't, then as you say, the guy's still alive, the bounty might come back up, but guess what? The authorities are going be, know, annoyed at you because you haven't, he's escaped the state probably because you were doing too much prep work and you miss the train. Can you imagine that'd be really funny? let's say the train is, it's not one of these things where you have to go up to something and press X to board train. No, these are active things moving in the map. So I have this great image of you riding your horse after the train and jump off the horse onto the train in order to make it in time or doing a similar thing with the caravan like, no, they've left, they've gone over there. I've got to get them before they cross the border. I think that could be a really funny mechanic. Definitely, no I like that. If we do the narrative, I like we've to a point where we've fleshed out of that. narrative. I quite enjoyed that game actually, I've got to say I quite like it. The narrative you drew was one of maturation. Now by that, essentially, it just means maturing. Maturing as a character coming into your own. I feel like that's a fairly generic one, hero's journey-esque. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a thing that isn't Billy the Kid. And I'm struggling. It's very easy to say, yeah, he or she starts off as a... That would be quite interesting actually. Why don't you make it so that the protagonist is female in a predominantly male-dominated genre? No. Do you know why? That's exactly what we did last last episode. Word for words. Exactly what we did. We did a strong female character in a male dominated environment. It was the it was the sort of Hunger Games-esque tiddly tiddly things because the men were so stupid. Well, listeners, if you wish to do that in this game, you can do that. But the game will not be centered around that, but you are more than welcome to do that. But that would be interesting actually, you could say that the way your character matures will, like, some narrative choices and the way the careers progress may be different, depending on whether you're a male or female. So you could say that... in the time, a female bounty hunter, people would have thought in the 1800s as a bit of a joke, but so at the start you might get paid less and you might be given the easier bounties, but as you build up more of a reputation, you could argue that a really scary female bounty hunter is gonna scare the absolute crap out of people. Do you know what mean? the reputation changes because I would argue that a seasoned female bounty hunter at the time would be far more sort of well known because of the fact they were female than maybe their male counterparts. So perhaps as you go further up, your reputation bounds increase more than they would do if you were male. you what I mean? Yes, so that the interesting way of doing it, what you can do is you can say if you start as a male middle aged person, you start with a mid ground career thing, because it's a sort of traditional but they're much harder. And also you can dip much quicker or whatever it is. So depending on what you are is relevant to the time, which is an interesting thing. And then the maturation, I'm just wondering with the story just to make it a bit more interesting, is there any way you can base the bounties that are set? Like, if you get told to set I'm just trying to think of example, like you end up sort of taking sides, and then getting less bounties for some people. And that's about it. I don't know the sort of gang warfare in the cowboy world. I know Mafia 3 did a sort of similar element. You could delve into the sort of more political conflict between obviously the United States and the native population in that maybe you can choose to go after bounties that lean more one way or the other but that might get a little bit too political as in like politically sensitive for now. I don't know. It's an interesting angle you could explore. I'm just trying to think, or perhaps, I tell you what, at the time, there's a lot of, if we still would be politically, maybe racially sensitive, but there's a lot of immigration into American times, there's a lot of Chinese building the railways and all that sort of stuff. So perhaps you could have a situation where you could lean more towards helping, you know, the downtrodden immigrants or the local government. see what mean? Like you could do that angle, for example. Yeah, I mean, what? and and and and there are pros and cons to pros and cons to both like more normal people will help you if you go one way but you'll get more money from the government if you go the other way do you see what mean like just i'm just trying to think of think what you could do, maybe the maturation, maybe you do make it more narratively locked and say that you have to help those smaller groups. mean, I'm not saying whatever, I'm fundamentally just going to make sure I don't step on any toes here because I don't like talking about things without knowledge, but fundamentally, there is a good side and a bad side. And the maturation, again, is one of these things where you end up the rewards start being better for actually not not rewards that doesn't work narratively because the point is if you get rewards for doing the good thing that's not really you doing the good thing that's you just trying to get rewards from it it's difficult actually and irritating why is it so irritating to be there is, but there is, there is... I get reward as a gamer for doing the right... So I always play good guys. I can't stand playing bad guys. I've never been able to do it. I've tried. I can't do it. I'm really sorry. For those people who love like an evil BG3 playthrough, good for you. I can't do it. I've tried. I'm rubbish. As a deceptive, it took me far too long to work out what a BG3 was. That's fine. So I get satisfaction by doing good narrative choices, by doing things that change the world. So it would be, you could, it's an open world game. The NPCs that the character saves by taking down this bounty, they will still exist in the world. They could remember the player character, a family could flourish because of the actions of the player character. Yes, he didn't get paid very much for the job. you didn't take down the person the government wanted to take down, he took down someone that the local sheriff needed him to take down. Do you see what I mean? Like, rather than the state, do see what I mean? Well, to build it into the gameplay thing, because I do think you need you need something. I agree the thing about you feeling good about doing a good thing. However, the way you can build into the gameplay is if you take certain missions, then certain allegiances prices go down of things, people help you that kind of thing. So you can go to certain factions and be like, I need any bullets and they go right here, here, here's some on the slide, whatever it is. One thing I just wanted to touch on, we didn't really touch on what the one on one fighting would be. So I think that you get pulled into like a almost like a ton, not tunnel vision, but like almost like a slightly more uh tunnel vision version of the game. So uh let's say when you, when you find the bounty eventually, you could say that when you do find them, they could be maybe in like three potential places, okay? And those potential places get sort of, they're in locations where you can narrow it down into almost like a small-ish area. thing. And within that area you have bits of cover and you have open areas and I think it comes down to a good old fashioned duel whereby your character can kind of... the camera is fixed and you can go left, right, forwards and back you can't get out of the area you're stuck in there until either you kill the bounty or the bounty kills you It could start with a gunfight, might not have a gunfight. And if everyone runs out of bullets, guess what? It's whatever weapon you've got on you. You could be really imaginative with it, to be fair. What you could do is you say there's a boxing match happening, an illegal boxing match. You might find that it's a bit hit man-esque, but you might find, the best way to do this, if I enter myself in the boxing match, is you take on my target, because my target is saying it. So then it ends up being a bare knuckle brawl. Or for example, the guys at shooting range. So you go to the shooting range, like pretend to be there, take part or whatever it is, and you bring a rifle and then turn them. I mean, it's becoming a bit hit man-esque, but I think what happens is you're right when it happens. Whenever you take on your target, it's not a stealth attack. The target spots you and you get into a fight in the area you've almost picked to attack them. So if you go, right, okay, I feel like I have better range weapons, I'm gonna pick this area out in the open, then you will fight them out in the open. And that's the point, you could pick to choose, you might just decide, I'm really good bare knuckles. So you're gonna go, I'm gonna pick on somewhere where I know they're not armed, that kind of thing. So you define what the one on fight is gonna be. Yeah, and I'm thinking melee wise you could have rewards say if you help out Let's say you do a pro bono for uh For a load a local Native American tribe for example, you could get gifted a tomahawk as a gift as a thank you But guess what? Hey, you can use it as a melee weapon then for the rest of the game Hey, you've got an axe and the other guy doesn't I the idea of them going, what did you do with the ceremonial tomahawk? it's like, it was ceremonial, was it? It worked pretty well as a tomahawk. have buried it in some bloke's skull. Yeah, I think that would work. I think I'll work. Well, now we come the time that you hate. Which is, I do the summary and you think of some names. Right. So this is our fighting Metroidvania career game in which you play a bounty hunter in the old west who is unnamed because, because there is a customizable character creator and what you pick depends on how people will view you, which is accurate to that time. Depending on what kind of jobs you get. Don't say correct, focus on the names. um The Betroidvania element is not an unlockable thing, but it's a travel limited thing. So you can only travel to areas via the transportation that was available at that time, but it's limited by time. So you can miss the train or you can miss the caravan or you can miss these elements, which means that you have X amount of time to plan to take out your targets. Once you get to the targets and you find where they are, you can choose to attack them in various different environments. And that environment will be the one-on-one fighting area. was a pause there because my door just went at the moment I was doing the summary which was one of the most alarming things I've ever heard shall I cut this or shall I leave it in it was such a hard stack I might have to leave it in yes so cutting back to that thank you door that means that you have this time-based mechanic you have the one-on-one mechanic and then you have maturation the story of you helping various people and becoming it's a classic heroes journey to be honest it's built into mechanics and this game is going to be called Right, I've got three, so I've got, I think they're right, I've got Lone Dawn, because I think, you know, your character, this isn't a game where you've got companions, you you are a lone bounty hunter. I've got On the Hunt, and I've got Blood on the Wind. like Lone Dawn. Lone Dawn it is. Well that was Lone Dawn, the wonderful game that is coming to maybe never, maybe never. ah But I hope very much you enjoyed that and if you did, please leave us a review and get in touch using the contact details in the area below the podcast. There'll be noty things and you can see and you can get in touch with us, which is lovely. We'd love to hear from you. But thank you so much for listening. I've been Matt. and I've been Scott. Keep blending! Bye bye now! Bye bye.