Theme

Theme
TRUST/BETRAYAL

“Assume everyone you meet is a thief.”

The main theme of the story is about the deceitful nature of humans, that lying and deception are deeply embedded in our subconscious, and that they show up clearly when one is pressed against the wall to fight for their survival. Their manipulative tendencies are presented before the reader in their most atrocious form. As a result, the story could be colored with pessimism and possibly emerge a bit of nihilism, when the protag(s) are left wondering if it is meaningless to fight for anything in this world after being betrayed time after time by everyone and everything they want to protect. We decided to go for a depressing ending with a glimmer of hope.

Core Ideas
TNM: * I would stick with the traditional findings of GT, which can be very surprising at times: the kind of story where the characters with the most mastery over these elements proceed the furthest through the game. To counteract this we might make it so that playing nash (playing to get the Nash Equilibrium, playing the strictly dominant\dominant strategy) stops you from accessing certain cutscenes or even entire routes.

ITSUKI: * I believe we should craft a story in which a balance of utilizing betrayal and deceit ensures survival--sometimes. But not always.Sometimes, you'll play the game wrong and die in that sort of scenario. It's a bleaker, more reality based outlook on it. * Since we can change the fate of a handful of characters on each protag route, I think it's a good idea to focus more heavily on those characters in each route, however they're distributed. I think that's an advantage we have with having three protags. We don't have to stretch out the story focus to everyone equally on each route, instead each protag has a set of characters the player can explore in depth. This allows the player to spend more time with characters they really like and it makes the background characters have a little more life to them. This will also make each route a little more unique and less monotonous. It also minimized what I call Hanging Cloud Syndrome in these killing game stories--when the main narrative shifts focus to a character(s) and so you know the upcoming death is going to have to do with them.

QM: * It's easier to betray someone the more trust they have in you. So by giving the player multiple opportunities to affect what a character thinks of you, it changes whether or not an individual lie will be believed, or a betrayal executed successfully.After all, if they don't trust you you'll end up in the double betrayal scenario where everyone loses.


 * The betrayal aspect of the story, and thus its mechanics, needs to feel like it means something.The affect should be felt by the player and, even to a minor extent, the flow of character interactions.