Pancho Villa — Day 2: Who and What
November 14th, 2006 by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau
The theme for this week’s game is “Mexico”, a pretty broad subject indeed. After spending some time thinking about it, I remembered a popular bandit and hero of the Mexican revolution: Pancho Villa!
There haven’t been many games based on the lives of real people for some reason. I think it can be a great way to add some realism to a game: having real people makes the whole game seem more real. Villa’s life is filled with action and adventure — he’d make a great game character.
Pancho Who?
Who was Pancho Villa? For those of you who may not be experts in Mexican history, here’s a summary from the Pancho Villa Page:
No one can be said to be more synonymous with the wild side of Mexico than Pancho Villa - the rebel general of the Mexican Revolution who invaded US territory and led American soldiers on a wild goose chase all over the harsh Mexican countryside for months.
Along with Emiliano Zapata and Francisco I. Madero, Villa led peasant armies to a swift victory over the corrupt and repressive regime of the aging dictator, Porfirio Diaz, only to see Madero betrayed by reactionary plotters. Undaunted, the rebel generals led their armies in another uprising against the usurpers, routing them at every stage and ultimately driving them into exile.
In two words, he’s really cool. He started as a peasant, then became a bandit, then a general who could have become the president of Mexico.
Some trivia about the man (check out Wikipedia for much more information):
- He appeared in Hollywood movies to get money to fund the revolution
- He printed his own money to pay his troops
- He invented the tactic of maquina loca (Crazy Locomotive), namely hijacking a locomotive behind enemy lines, packing it with explosives, then sending it with the throttle tied down into the rows of railroad cars at the enemy’s rear
- A true womanizer, he married many women, maybe as many as 24
- To escape from US troops looking for him, he reportedly hid by having himself sewn inside the body of a dead horse
- Years after his death, his skull was stolen and is now (according to rumors) held by the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University (former president George Bush was a member of that secret society)
The man was larger than life and lived a life of adventure. He’s the perfect subject for a game.
What Kind of Game?
This game will be an action-adventure game following Villa’s life, from when he left his village to become a bandit to his victories as a Mexican general. The story will follow the main events of his life and you’ll see him age slowly from mission to mission.
You’ll control Villa directly, whether on foot or on horse. While he was a general, the game will focus on his personal heroics and not on military strategy. As such, a large part of the game will play as a third-person shooter.
Each mission will focus on an important event in Pancho Villa’s life. Some mission will be about him acting alone, in others he’ll have to fight his way through a battlefield filled with hundreds of warring friends and foes. During these missions he’ll be backed by other soldiers.
As I mentioned above, his life is filled with adventure, making for a great variety in missions. You’ll be robbing trains, evading US troops, fighting wars, escaping from prison and so on. Best thing is, Pancho Villa really did all of these things, so you get cool missions and a (relatively) historically accurate story!
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