Are these abilities too corny to include?

[Pierman Walter]

Hello everyone! This is my first post.

In the game I'm working on, the main character has the psychic ability of being able to see everything from a 2.5 D bird's eye view perspective. I'm worried that this is way too meta, because this ability is mentioned in-story. For example, his friends bet that he can't guess what clothes somebody in another room is wearing, but the character gets it exactly right. As a result of this, blindfolds and bags over heads don't work on him. There are also gameplay benefits. Some accuracy affecting attacks don't work on him and he can use items like eyehole-less ceremonial masks.

I'm worried that this character will appear cheap and lame, since literally every single RPG protagonist can do this. Maybe I can give him some other related abilities so he isn't as lame. Then again, a lot of other characters in this game have super corny powers, too.

 

[nerdypants]

if it is a funny story i think it is fine.

 

[EternalShadow]

In Undertale, save and load are actual powers. Go figure.

 

[The Infamous Bon Bon]

I actually think that's kind of nifty, it allows players to use what they can see all the time with their in game character. It will only be corny if you write the story in a corny way and if it is suppose to be funny then corny isn't that bad.

 

[Pierman Walter]

An ongoing theme in this game is that a dumb power used creatively is better than awesome power used badly. For example, the character who gets some string after they reference something using proper citations is infinitely more powerful than the character who can summon giant demonic attack serpents at will.

I just feel like the 2.5 D vision is too " Look at me, I'm so pretentious and postmodern. I believe that I'm better than everyone else for deconstructing something, even though a hundred other people have already done it."

 

[Minoru Leonardo]

In the game I'm working on, the main character has the psychic ability of being able to see everything from a 2.5 D bird's eye view perspective. I'm worried that this is way too meta, because this ability is mentioned in-story. For example, his friends bet that he can't guess what clothes somebody in another room is wearing, but the character gets it exactly right. As a result of this, blindfolds and bags over heads don't work on him. There are also gameplay benefits. Some accuracy affecting attacks don't work on him and he can use items like eyehole-less ceremonial masks.

I'm worried that this character will appear cheap and lame, since literally every single RPG protagonist can do this. Maybe I can give him some other related abilities so he isn't as lame. Then again, a lot of other characters in this game have super corny powers, too.

That depends on how you'll deal with your character. Is he going to be aware he's in a game or that'll be just one of his powers?

You can give your character difficult situations that only someone with bird view would experience like being unable to see the back of a house or a tree when "normal" people would see what's behind it (from the right angle) perfectly and have his friends pester him for that and the bad guys to exploit this. Things like that gives you a lot of interesting options.

 

[nerdypants]

to me, skills, powers etc are all over used, anything and everything that you can think of are most likely used or thought of by people before.

what is important is how you implement it, how it fits your story, how is your story. etc.

 

[Pierman Walter]

To put things in context, the main character lives 700,000 years in the future, after the destruction of the Earth led to humans evolving many subspecies to suit the conditions of whatever earth chunk they are living on. A small percentage of the main character's species is mildly psychic, but this is fairly unremarkable, as artistic ability, math skills, and social awareness are also considered psychic, since they originate from the mind.

 

[Wavelength]

It sounds good.  Make the game.