[Idea discussion] What do you guys think about a story-focused game with an overpowered protagonist?

[JCAP]

Sup guys?

Before anything else, this is my first post and I am as newb as a newb can be. I am new to this forum and just tried yesterday for the first time ever rpg maker (MV to be exact). Sorry if I am breaking any rules or if I posted this in the wrong category.

So, here's the deal, I have an idea and I wanted to discuss a bit with you guys to see how viable my idea is. I just want to make a small game and it's just for fun, no commercial use whatsoever intended.

A little backgroung:

I am "fanfic" author and my story's protagonist is an overpowered magic warrior. In short, he's a Servant who has to protect his Master that is a younger girl. (it's inspired from Fate/Stay Night series)

I am a huge sucker for choice&consequence systems. I love games like Telltales games and Dragon Age where the story changes depending on your choices.

Writing the fanfic was fun, but when I tried to practice this idea (giving choices to the reader), people didn't like it that much. That made me turn my attention to other alternatives, like RPG maker and ren'py. I'm not an artist so making a visual novel is just not a realistic goal, so my only option left is rpg maker.

The idea:

My game is going to be story driven, inspired by Telltale's games. The core mechanic of my game is making choices.

Imagine a telltale game, but made with rpg maker. That's how I imagine this game.

The game will be about an experienced magic warrior that can be considered overpowered, not a new adventurer who can barely lift a sword. That means that I will not focus on combat/battle (it will have very few battles).

The game will have two main endings (one is a good end, the other is the true end), not counting the bad ends (if you make a wrong choice, it will lead to a bad end). I have the story planned out

Although the game will be inspired by Telltale games, I plan to have a few zones where the protagonist can walk around and explore the area, talk to other characters, etc.

So that's it, that's my idea. What are your impressions? Do you think that this can be a good game, or is combat too important to be left out?

Basically, I just want to have an idea how people may like a story-driven rpg maker game. And also pick up some suggestions/ideas if someone decides to share.

 

[trouble time]

It could work, the problem is that if your character is overpowered you can fall into the trap of writing them poorly. I think one of the better examples of an overpowered protagonist is part 4 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure where the main characters could essentially out fight every single opponent if they were able to get into effective range, the problem being getting into that effective range and the fact so many of the villians had super weird powers that had to be countered creatively and couldn't be brute forced through. This is the approach I ended up taking since both of my game's main protagonists are pretty overpowered (though being a game with lots of combat this made sense to me, how are you going to deal with all those encoutners if you're only average?) and any villian meant to be a threat has some way of either negating the protagonist's powers or some application of the settings rules of magic that make them difficult to deal with

Spoiler

(for example, one of the enemies encountered can create a small alternate reality from a television show and all characters are forced to comply with the original show's network's age rating which makes most of the characters unable to even look at their weapons.)

The alternative approach, which I personally don't like, is to just have your character brute force through everything. I'll be honest, part of the reason I don't like this is that I'm such a big fan of Jojo's Bizarre adventure and find battles where the characters strategize in some way tend to be more creative. Creativity is pretty huge for me, even standard things that should be cliche with the right abmount of creativity in the formula can result in something that's still interesting.

 

[Milennin]

If you're making a visual novel, you really don't need combat. You can use cutscenes for that.

 

[Kes]

@trouble time

Please do not quote entire posts; it makes scrolling through threads more tedious and slows down the time for a page to load.

If you want to select just a part to highlight for your reply, that's fine.

thank you

 

[Sysen]

I think it's not a problem to have overpowered protagonist, as long he's not Gary-Stu character

A good example that i comes on my mind is persona 3 and 4 if you know about the series

the game both got overpowered main character (story and combat wise) in my opinion, since he can use multiple personas while the others can use only one

and the game is focused more on story and character development (though i love the grinding and dungeons) and have many choices that you must make throughout the story.

so:

I think it's not a problem to have overpowered character

A little backgroung:

Writing the fanfic was fun, but when I tried to practice this idea (giving choices to the reader), people didn't like it that much. That made me turn my attention to other alternatives, like RPG maker and ren'py. I'm not an artist so making a visual novel is just not a realistic goal, so my only option left is rpg maker.

No, having choices on game is not a problem, in fact, most of my favourite rpg game is the one that have choices that can affect the story or character development (Persona, Rune Factory, ar tonelico, suikoden, etc)

 

[ArcaneEli]

the problem with a story driven choice game with two endings, is at the end you feel all your choice with the exception of 2 are completely worthless.

it don't matter if you mugged the old lady, cause you stole the jewel from Rad.

 

[realz012]

my concern is...

overpower protagonist will make you freeze in writer block. story will'nt good anymore cause everyone will expect same think. your protagonist will solve everything because his/her power. i advice you to make ordinary protagonist. not gain super power ability from GOD, Deus, etc (agarest and most rpg fantasy like this). just man or boy wo want to protect something... gain party member, trust, story driven rpg. the most important value for rpg is story for me and second is gameplay. anyway i'm longtime novelist and fanfiction. for me the good story rpg is like Celestian Tales Old Nord.

i making game like you but is R18 psychological survival horror inspired by the dark inside me, cat lady, and downfall (story driven). Milennin tell above. if story driven is more important just making visual novel with rpg maker. don't bothering with combat mode. you can make a cutscene for that true. including basis for player to choice his/her action is good. maybe like fable (good or bad decision). 

just my opinion.

 

[Wavelength]

"Overpowered" main characters tend to be getting a bad rap as of late (Sword Art Online seems to be the poster child for this), but I think it's just a matter of how the character fits into the story.  I mean Trigun's and Smallville's main characters seemed pretty OP and they were relatively well-liked, right?

If danger and adventure are core points of engagement for your work, don't make things too easy for the main protagonist!  If you're a good writer you can still give the audience the sense that they're extremely powerful, but set up nearly impossible odds for them to battle against, so that it's a challenge even for them.  Or even better yet, task them with something that their incredible skills won't make easy.  Using your own setup as an example, maybe this Servant that you play as has incredibly powerful area attacks that could kill off an entire army, but would really struggle in the goal of protecting a defenseless young girl (as using his full power would blast her too).

This kind of struggle keeps things more unpredictable and interesting, and also (if written in a way that seems logical to the audience and doesn't shine an unlikable light on any characters) helps the audience connect to this extremely powerful person that still can't do everything they want to do.

 

[Syltti]

Well, Vash the Stampede was well liked because he was the kind of character that was OP as all Hell, but was hardly the type of person to try and flaunt that fact. I'm pretty sure that was the major selling point for him. And Wavelength has a good point; OP characters need extreme challenges. For example; Fairy Tail's Laxus is known for being OP out the butt (destroyed an entire Dark guild alone), but met a challenge he couldn't beat; Melvis's crying. "That hurdle's too high!"

Basically, don't make challenges so underwhelming that OP characters can just stroll through the park one day, in the very merry month of May. (Or is it 'merry merry'?) Sometimes you need challenges that even yourself couldn't handle (those tend to be the more problematic ones for OP characters anyway).

 

[Vox Novus]

I don't like the idea of having only a few battles in the game, it makes them seem like an after thought and can mislead people into thinking its a different type of game than it is. Also it doesn't give players time to get used to how battles play out and strategy employed. Granted you said your hero was overpowered so maybe battles are super easy in which case are they necessary at all?

As for writing the character, an overpowered character should have something that holds them back in some way, brings them down to the same level as others or humanizes them. Someone mentioned Smallville earlier, Clark is overpowered compared to many in the show but he can't run around recklessly and do whatever he wants; he hides his secret from others, he avoids killing due to his morals and must be wary of kryptonite.

Unless you were making some comedic visual novel or adventure game where the player can run around and do whatever they want I don't see an overpowered character with no limitations working well.

 

[Frozen_Phoenix]

You can make a badass OP character that destroys everything on his way in a story sense, if it's fun from a gameplay perspective.

 

[Mouser]

Some of the worst habits in writing live in fanfic...

Say good bye to Gary Stu (and his sister Mary Sue). They don't make good protagonists in literature, and they're even worse in games.

Think about your story and how to make the main character struggle to get through it. Remember - at the end of every 'scene', the protagonist should be in a little worse place than he was when the scene started (up until the climax). Obviously it can't be a continuous downward spiral, but that's the gist of it. Yeah, they can be hard habits to break, but you'll be a much better writer for taking the time to deal with it and write engaging conflicts.

 

[Einreicht]

A story with an OP protagonist who's absolutely invulnerable and could do anything as he wish from killing people to destroy a galaxy is straight boring. But an overpowered character for a story is fine if you could make the story interesting enough.

Personally I found it somewhat hard to implement in an RPG game with battles involved. Since you mention that it'll be more story driven game than battles, I think its plausible.

 

[Munchy Fox]

Like everybody else is saying, an overpowered character doesn't make the story fun or interesting. You want a little bit of a challange or it will become boring. Now if the protagonist is really weak and then within the game gets really strong, make the enemies stronger as well.


Anither thing I'm seeing is you want the game kind of like Undertale where the choices make it really fun, but it's also like all the telltale games, like The Walking Dead season games. I think it's a great idea, but it would be a bit difficult in doing it for the RPG style game, but I've seen games like that so it's fine.


But back to the original idea, overpowering the protagonist us just a writing no-no because when you're writing a story, you want your character to develop with everything involving the mind and body. A RPG is the same thing, but the visual effect, but don't worry, I'm doing the same thing as I'm writing a story and then doing it as a game as well.


Best of luck to you,


~Munchy Fox out~