Coming Up With An Indie RPG's Opening Cinematic Based Solely On Some Slasher Movie Music I Pretended Was Game Soundtrack
In this post:
- Background information.
- A rough sketch.
- The whole thing.
So, we're watching horror movies, still. The last few we saw, I noticed the music in them. Most of my commentary on the music in Mirror, Mirror was some variation on Jimmy, take it down a notch, but before that... We have seen all of the Prom Night movies, although, thanks to a beat up DVD, not all of all of them. Anyway, when the action in Prom Night IV shifted from "inexplicable happenings" (Why was the brother out there? Who goes around stealing freezers?) to "killing off teenagers for their sins", the music suddenly took a weird direction.
It kind of sounded like the soundtrack of some kind of indie RPG in the vein of Undertale. So, I'm going to try to sketch out the opening narration to this game I made up in my head.
So, the opening cinematic is going to end with a meteor streaking down the center of the screen, and the narration says "I heard that wishes come down to Earth on falling stars. I wonder whose wish that is. Could it be mine?"
Backing up, there's some kind of establishing thing laying things out at a high level, like in Undertale, but here, the narrator exists within the cinematic. The narrator is somehow oppressed, enslaved, possibly chained. Aesthetically, I don't want exactly the Mimigas from Cave Story, but something in that general design area. With monstery characters like this, there's the question of how they relate to humans. I think, rather than oppression or war, the humans in this setting are unaware of the narrator's plight, and perhaps the narrator's race altogether. Perhaps the humans used to know of them, and have forgotten, and one of the themes of the game is "remembrance".
So, there's some other group involved, that I'm having trouble figuring out the aesthetics for. Maybe some kind of shadowy, spindly figures.
I'm going to say for now that the narrator's race is aesthetically based off of deer, but they're short and somewhat humanoid.
Shot of a human figure, a small horned figure, and a tall figure, tightly wrapped in a tattered cloak.
"We saabin didn't always work for the spindlecloaks. We used to live in harmony with the humans, who protected us. Then, one day, the spindlecloaks cast a terrible spell. The humans lost their memories of us, and couldn't see us! The spindlecloaks captured us, and the humans did nothing."
The shot fades to black.
"... At least, that's what my grandmother says."
Shot of the narrator breaking rocks with a small pick-axe. The narrator's right side is facing the camera, and they're missing that eye. It's just an X.
"I don't know what it's like outside the fences. I can only imagine."
Shot of the narrator's left side. The moon is out now, and the narrator looks fatigued.
"I used to imagine that one of the humans would realize we were here, and come to our rescue."
The narrator closes their eye.
"But those fantasies grew bitter over time. Thinking about the freedom I should have hurts, and it's easier not to think about freedom at all."
A shot of the narrator from behind, with a forest in the background.
"Every once in a while, though,"
The sky flashes.
"Something happens that wakes up those feelings, and I wonder if things could be about to change."
A shooting star streaks down the middle of the screen, towards the forest.
"I heard that wishes come down to Earth on falling stars. I wonder whose wish that is. Could it be mine?"
Cut to the crash site. The title of the game is superimposed on the meteorite. A crack appears in the meteorite, and shifts apart and open. The title fades out, as the player character climbs out of the meteorite.
Needless to say, imagining this general kind of thing (I specifically came up with the idea of people watching a falling star, that happened to contain the player character, during the movie.) during a slasher movie was... bad for the mood. Anyway, maybe I'll do something with this later.