Shades of Noir: Finale
October 20th, 2006 by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau
Our story begins as Eva Mancini, a dark-haired beauty, enters the office of James Harris, our private eye hero. She has a tear-jerking story to tell: her husband has murdered a journalist who was about to reveal some business wrong-doings of his and he is framing her for the crime! She needs help from an investigator who can protect her and prove her innocent. Her husband is influential and has bribed some policemen, so she cannot trust the authorities. She’s desparate, rich and sexy — James accepts the contract, he hasn’t had much work in a while anyway.
The game starts at this point, and so does the trouble. The pretty lady wasn’t completely honest — quite the opposite in fact. Her husband is Dante Mancini, the city’s mafia don. And he didn’t frame her, she’s framing him: she killed the journalist, her secret lover. The journalist was using her to get information on her husband for an article he was writing — if it were published, Dante’s career would be ruined, her reputation destroyed and she’d probably get killed by the mafia.
The player learns all of these facts as the game progresses as he collects evidence. In addition to Eva and Dante Mancini, the story involves a corrupt policeman named Nathan Wayne and Jeremy Doyle, an Irish journalist friend of the victim.
Enemies
All of the game’s enemies will be human — anything else would just feel weird in this setting. The player will have to avoid security guards, policemen, mafia goons and more.
As the game progresses, enemies will become smarter, faster and tougher. While security guards may just have nightsticks to threaten the player, goons will have submachine guns, making raising the alarm a dangerous proposition.
Music
The right music can set the appropriate mood for a whole level. The obvious choice for this game is jazz — some Miles Davis would fit the period perfectly.
Beyond that, a few modern songs with a retro-feel could be used at key points, like the beginning and end. I’m thinking of songs like “Don’t trust a woman (in a black cadillac)” by Brian Setzer or “Shoot your gun” by the 22-20s. Both songs’ lyrics fit the game’s story perfectly in addition to fitting the mood.
Wrapping it Up
So that’s the end of this first design challenge. This Film Noir game for PSP ended up being a moody stealth game set in New York city with a sordid tale of murder, corruption and manipulation. As an actual game, I believe it would have deep, emergent gameplay and could be played in short (10 to 20 minutes) periods, perfect for an handheld console. Moreover, the noir esthetics are gaining popularity in movies these days so the game would probably be easy to market — if I were a publisher, I’d time its release close to the release of Sin City 2.
I’m happy with the results: it’s a game I’d both like to work on and play. Quite a bit of work is still needed to get a complete design doc, but I think these posts gave a good idea of how the game would look, play and feel.
Although I realize there aren’t too many visitors to this blog yet, I’d love to get your comments on this game concept and the site in general. If you know anybody who could be interested, please tell them about this site. The more we are, the more fun this will be.
See you again monday, when I start a whole new challenge!
I’m curious to see how you’d handle the controls on the button-challenged PSP. You’ve listed quite a few abilities for the player to do (cigarettes, blackjack, gun, moving the bodies, etc.), and since this is a 3D stealth game I imagine you’d need to reserve L/R for moving the camera around, so this doesn’t leave a whole lot of controls for a somwehat complex game.
What I’m thinking is, if you assign one ability per button, then the gameplay can be quite fluid but you’re limited in your number of possible actions. And if you use a menu-style control scheme where you’ve got to continuously select which action you want to bind to an “action” button, then the player is constantly interrupting the flow of the game to use all these abilities.
How would you handle this?
I was thinking of using a mix between contextual actions and an inventory system. A lot of actions only make sense in certain contexts (picking a lock, picking up a body, etc.) so they can all be done with a single “Action” button. Most of everything else can be done with inventory items (shooting a gun, using a black jack, throwing a pack of cigarettes, etc.), so my plan was to reserve the shoulder buttons to select the active item and have another button be the “Use Item” button.
As for camera control, I was thinking of putting it on the d-pad, with direction control on the analog joystick. It’s not a first person shooter, so you don’t need to control the camera all the time. The levels would be intentionally created pretty flat, to avoid having to look up and down too often. I don’t have a PSP, so I don’t know how most games handle the camera on that system though
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You’d still have 2 buttons left, one of which could be for toggling crouch and the other for unforeseen needs. Start would obviously be for pause (why they don’t call that the ‘Pause’ button, I’ll never know), with a menu that gives access to the usual Objectives, Map, etc. Anything I’ve missed?