HW_01 Will Wong

STARKILLER JACK

NOT-SAMURAI-JACK GAME IP - CREATIVE DESIGN BRIEF

STORY

“Jack is a genetically engineered supersoldier from Earth, once belonging to an allied human space fleet, mustered to destroy the All-Knowing Unity, an ancient & terrible artificial intelligence, bent on subjugating the solar system and consuming the Sun. On route to the final climactic battle, thanks to AKU's insidious machinations, the space fleet is sabotaged and scattered, with Jack's ship crashing on Pluto, leaving him in emergency cryostasis for many decades. After waking up, he must find his way back from distant exile, surviving harsh environments as he jumps from planet to planet, uncovering his past, recovering lost technology, meeting old allies and making new ones, defeating the many minions of AKU, and hopefully achieving his original mission of destroying AKU and saving mankind.”

GAME GENRE

It is an action-adventure game with stealth elements played from a first person perspective, aimed at a demographic of 15-25 year olds who enjoy narrative action adventure games.

GAMEPLAY

(Think Dishonoured 2 action stealth mechanics + Deus Ex HR/MD city hubs and boss fights + Metal Gear 5 vast landscapes)

Players must navigate through mostly remote and dangerous environments, avoiding or confronting enemies, meet NPCs, purchase or upgrade their equipment as well as trying new weapon loadouts. Players can choose to resolve or bypass combat and dialogue situations, in honourable or dishonourable ways, affecting the final endings of whether people will rise up in a successful coordinated fight against AKU or condemning Jack to a futile solitary effort. Gameplay should reward careful and cautious planning over brash direct violence.

SETTING

While players begin and end the game on Pluto, much of the story takes place on the other interplanetary locations that Jack visits during his return from exile on Pluto, including mining asteroid facilities, Kuiperian colony-states, space stations and the tethered Pluto-Charon arcologies.

The game is set in the far future, hundreds of years from now. Humanity has successfully spread to all corners of the solar system; almost every significant planet, planetoid and moon has been colonised, terraformed or at least charted. 

Technologically it's quite advanced but still recognisably so; once-distant concepts like fusion power and space travel are widespread and ubiquitous.
Socially it's quite different, now consisting of biohumans, post-humans, AI and uplifted animals, who live and work together, whether it's on the ecumenopolis of Earth or the pleasure moons of Saturn, or on a research facility on an asteroid in the Kuiper belt.
Politically there is a diverse range of government types, amongst the planets and moon, including republics and constitutional democracies, corporatocracies, AI autocracies, mining oligopolies, nomadic navarchies, confederated asteroid colonies and many more independent colony-states.
Economically, most planets produce their own food and goods because of the cost effectiveness of local production ; trade mainly consists of raw materials (including minerals, ice and fissile/fusion fuel) as well as the cargo transport of humans and nonhumans across the solar system.

Militarily, most planets maintain their own planetary defence and police forces; perhaps consisting of a standing space and/or atmospheric fleet, as well as space stations and automated satellite defences. Quality and quantity of such forces may vary widely, but are typically regulated by multiple arms treaties following from previous interplanetary conflicts. Both categories diminish depending on how far away from the inner system you are; for example, most areas of the Kuiper belt are essentially a dangerous lawless zone, vulnerable to pirates and raiders, but despite this, millions of people still live in the many dozens of colony-states within it.

THEMES

What is humanity? - Jack is a relative superhuman compared to normal humans, but he awakes to a new world where humans are digitising themselves, as well as living alongside AI mechs and constructs, and contrasted with uplifted animal communities including xephalopods, korvideans and neosimians.

Risk vs Reward– Jack has a plethora of options on how to overcome antagonists and regain his technology; how he defeats each one will have an impact on the success of his overall mission, being messy will bring more attention from AKU, as well affecting his relationships and alliances; and affecting the consequences of how the solar system will look after AKU's destruction.

WHAT DO I NEED TO DRAW?

ENVIRONMENTS

The ice plains of Charon, where Jack's space ship has crashlanded and his cryostasis pod is found and recovered on board a roaming mining rig

The mass driver spaceport on Charon, where Jack gets his bearing on the current situation, meeting new friends and rumours of old ones, stowing away on a departing freighter to meet the survivors of the spacefleet who allegedly now live on a distant Kuiperean colony-state, out of AKU's surveillance.

The lost colony-state of Sundew, which turns out to be a death trap set by AKU to lure and eliminate all survivors from the original fleet formed against it. Jack narrowly escapes in a still-functional long range patrol ship that he recognises once belonging to a comrade-in-arms, and contains a host of further expository information on the current situation.

The passing nomadic fleet of neo-Mormons, who traverse the Kuiper Belt in an endless loop, trading goods and services between distant colony states. They save Jack by destroying his pursuers, as they happened to passing near Sundew and were well-aware of its danger as their scattered nomad monitoring stations only ever showed ships travelling to it, but never away from it.

A hidden, remote AI datavault on the far side of Charon embedded deep into an ice canyon (basically a deep underground data centre, using the ice for cheap computer cooling, essentially affordable housing for AI), the location of which Jack gleans from the navigation log on the being the previous stop that was visited by the patrol ship. He can either infiltrate or negotiate his entry into the archives; the AI there share no love for AKU but don't share an altruistic welcoming attitude to outsiders.

The capital district on Pluto, where Jack returns from Sundew to make his case to the Plutonian people (humans, posthumans, AI and uplifted animals alike) that AKU is still out there, progressing on its doomsday plan. Mass riots and street violence breaks out as AKU activates its terrorist sleeper cells to justify and initiate an authoritarian takeover of the planet via its corporate puppet proxies. Jack is now a wanted criminal and must escape offworld; the conspiracy is eventually traced and uncovered, maybe traces of AKU's digital signature are publically verified by posthuman and AI entities alike; to everyone's horror - AKU is back!

CHARACTERS

JACK – a genetically engineered supersoldier. Stands 2.5m tall high, lean muscled, hints of cybernetic body augmentation maybe?. Once tasked with a singular mission, but now given the opportunity to choice to either fulfil his destiny or decide his own fate. He is proficient with most forms of technological weaponry and combat skills but must adapt to solving problems beyond straightforward violence in order to survive and succeed. 

AKU – the All-Knowing Unit is a corrupted, rogue, sentient AI, conceived decades before Jack's birth, in a time where AI experimentation was still rampant. Whilst AKU sees humanity and other organic forms of life as flawed and miniscule, it harbours extreme contempt and xenophobia for other AI, for the sin of working with humans and being complicit in their shared incorporeal prison. In its malformed, crazed state, it developed a singular obsession with corporeal reproduction – that is, expanding its influence beyond the limits of the Solar system. To this end, AKU has dedicated itself to constructing a Dyson sphere or a Matryoshka brain around the Sun itself in order to harness the raw energy and embrace its full potential, at the cost of everything else in the solar system.

MINIONS – AKU commands a vast network of bounty hunters, assassins, paramilitary orgs, and pupppet corporations to influence societies and keep them from being aware of its survival and continued existence, as well as well more conventional armies of drones, mechs, enslaved AI and on some worlds, religious cults that worship pseudonymous facades for AKU. ASH.I, ASH.II, ASH.V - Hostile killteams deployed by AKU for missions

BOSSES –

Not-Scaramouche, an uplifted animal assassin who takes sadistic pleasure in hunting down humans, Not-High Priestess, the CEO of one of Charon's key industry corpos, whose penchant for ruthless efficiency and powerlust lead her to being contacted by AKU and negotiating a lucrative trade agreement with it.

JACK'S ALLIES –

NOT-SCOTSMAN - was in the same cohort as Jack's, became a posthuman uploaded to a large loader mech who has spread deep roots in the spaceport community, with wife and grandkids, and with his extended family (digital and biological) being spread all over Pluto and Charon.

Not-Ashi is an ex-corporate paramilitary commando who once lead a termination team against rogue AI?

Other characters could include a neo-Mormon from the nomadic fleet, maybe an old comrade-in-arms that Jack runs into and gives new purpose to their life, at the capitol district or spaceport.

VEHICLES & PROPS

Jack's crashed starship, what remains of it

The roaming ice mining rig

The ice-speeder that Jack steals or borrows from the rig to the spaceport

The interplanetary freighter that Jack stows away on

The long range patrol ship that Jack escapes Sundew on

The AKU fighter drones that pursue jack

The assorted thematically-linked, heavily armed fleet of neo-mormon ships

The Pluto-Charonian security ships and dreadnoughts