Ok, this may or may NOT be good, but please don''t steal it either way. I have this story that I would like to put into a game (actually, writing is the reason I want to make games!), but I don''t know how good it is. So I''m going to write just a brief part of it here, to be judged as objectively as possible. BTW, it gets a little long, so.... Ok, there''s this ancient race called the Seekers, and basically they screw with the evolutionary track of races. They go down to planets, mess with the lifeforms, enhance them, so on; and they created humans. After they created humans, they created this information storage device, which turns out to be quite good at its job. This tree, Raziel, is basically an translucent organic computer. Problem is, they can''t control the flow of information inside the tree. So they take a human, enhance her even further, and insert her into the tree, using her mind as an interface of sorts (The name of the girl? Catalyst. Fitting, huh?). Afterwards, they input every bit of information ever discovered by Seekers into the tree. Meanwhile, they created another race (which shall remain nameless, I guess) and this race ran amok in their ships obiting above the Human world, destroying everything in sight. Apparently, the Seekers had made this race TOO powerful. Anywho, in an effort to protect Raziel, the Seekers jettisonned (sp?) it onto the Human world, intent on coming back later to pick it up. Well, time passes on this planet. Humans evolve somewhat (they''re still at a tribal stage, although genetic tampering by the Seekers made them smarter, they just haven''t had enough time to evolve), and one leader in particular named Crusae (won countless battles, very smart man) decides that his destiny lies elsewhere, and he goes off in search of aforementioned destiny. Even the Seekers were a bit astonished at the performance of this tree. It seemed illogical that it could hold so much info, but it did. It turns out that Catalyst is the physical manifestation of a god. It explains her ability to control the tree, but this god is trapped. Her mind is connected to the tree, and can''t escape (you might say that the two are interdependant) but she still wants to. So when Crusae finds this tree, and coincidently, this is also the time that the Seekers choose to retrieve it, what does he do? He decides to stay and fight for this girl. Well, he "interfaces" with Raziel. This granted him power to fight off the Seekers, but still not enough to free Catalyst. Catalyst instilled a power in Crusae, and in herself; so that one day she would be free. Time goes on, and the people evolve. When the government later uncovers Raziel, terrorist organizations pop up, in an effort to acquire the tree by any means neccessary. The government KNOWS this is an incredible find, and their lust for knowledge brings them to a horrible decision: load up Raziel on a starship, along with a few hundred thousand people, and leave for a new planet while nuking the old one and all the organizations with them. The organizations found this out and went up after them. An extraspatial battle ensued, over possession of the tree. The terrorist ships exploded (poor quality!) while the government ship crashed on an unknown planet. Some people from the ship are exiled, and forced to start the evolutionary track over. The remaining people on the ship stay and transfer all the information from the tree to the girl, then destroy the tree. They exile the girl into the frozen wildlands where the ship crashed. Well, life began again, and the power that was given to Crusae and to Catalyst manifested itself a few thousand years later. A boy was born, Rei; and Catalyst was reborn in a girl named Bree. The Seekers return once again to find the tree, but Raziel no longer exists. So they go after the next best thing: Bree. They burn towns to the ground, in search for her (and in spite of their creation). So Rei, an introvert, must overcome this to help Bree, the person who he was destined to rescue. Sorry about the length. Any tips? Or is it good as it is?

It''s very Japanese-console-RPG-like. Reminds me a lot of Xenogears in the sense of catalyst being reborn as a girl called bree, etc.

First, a couple of questions:

WHY do these guys diddle with DNA? A decent enough reason would be to produce Catalyst I suppose, but do they have another agenda?

Does the game tell the story of Rei and Bree, or of Crusae and Catalyst?

What do you mean when you say that Catalyst has become the physical manifestation of a God? Being superpowerful in her connection to a bio-computer? Is she really a God or just very powerful? I guess that would depend on your definition of God.


I like the idea of her wanting to escape from the tree. (Perhaps she wants to give up her immortality or something similar?) and so partnering with Crusae to provide for that in the future. I guess that''s where Bree and Rei come in.

Definitely change the name of the character called Rei. I feel that keeping that would be like making a science fiction blockbuster with a main character called Skywalker.

Also, in making him an introvert, be careful you don''t turn him into another Cloud or Squall.

first off, its a bit jumpy. not bad, but the flow could use work, i understand the space constraints so its understandable. WARNING: my critique may seem harsh. i am not trying to be mean, and will be pointing out more bad then good. mainly because telling you something is good is pointless, instead i will leave that to someone else. if i dont say something is bad, assume that its acceptable and workable. i am going to attack this on a believabiity level NOT grammer and structure of paragraphs and sentences. i like sci fi, but i am not the best at portraying ideas in writing.

the main problems i have are:

1. you act as if the Seekers are the only beings in the universe and created all life as we know it to an extent. thus their technology would be so advanced that they should be able to deal with other beings they create. the other race should NOT be a race that was created by the Seekers. instead just another race period. even creating them too powerful by accident seems a little shaky. maybe foul play with a group of evil seekers wanting the tree for themselves or something.

2. dont call the tree thing a physical form of god. a bit religous. use diety (probably spelt it wrong) instead. also storing massive data in a brain is a bit unbelievable. with the tech they have i am sure they would have other ways of encoding and accessing large quanties of data. i mean they do play around with DNA as a hobby. also if the Seekrs can input all the data, that means they have all the data stored already. why not make a traditional copy instead? instead make the organic computer some sort of new super computer of sorts that is high advanced at thinking. ie actually an artifical life instead of a dna manipulated human.

3. you have the Seekers creaty the diety form from a human. thus your implying that the human either the potential to be a diety in some way 9ie fluke mutation or something). you may want to rethink some of this. human form is good, but it seems a bit weak it was a human.

4. Crusae seems oddball. i dont see the motivation for him to go off to find his destiny. there should be something that would cause him to do so.

5. Crusae and Raziel interface yet Catalyst is the human component. quite confusing, possibly a type on your part. if not, rethink that. also how would this grant Crusae a single human the power to fend off an entire advanced civlization with tons of technology on their side? i mean they did create the humans, the tree, etc. I am sure they could create bio weapons to dispose of Crusae or even just zap him from their ship. also i am sure that the Seekers would not need Crusae to find the tree, as they would place tracker devices in it and the human interface.

6. you jump from no time setting to tribal staged humans. fine, thats ok thats when the seekers get involved. yet Crusae and Catalyst exist long enough for a formal government to exits? hundreds of years at least. also how did they find out about the tree? again, maybe foul play with evil seekers. you then say they take the tree and place it on a ship (so this is many thousands of years) after they find the tree. what were the Seekers doing all this time? floating around sapce reading the comics? need to better handle this.

7. ship crash lands on an unknown planet after an attack by the "good" guys (ie the organizations). the problem is that i highly doubt a civilization with space travel tech would not have satilites. a ship housing hundreds of thounsands of ppl would be uite large and require a substanial amount of resources to build. i will dub the ship Noah (heh). i am sure the other oraganizations would notice Noah being built beofre it took off. even notice its take off and intercept it before it left the ground.

8. so Noah crashes and ppl get exiled (why were they brought then?). i am left to assume most ofthe cargo was destroyed? i mean the mission of Noah was to colonize another planet, thus it would contain stuff to do that (ie tech, food, etc). think about that.

9. the government ppl can get Raziel and Catalyst to interface. fine, but how they even find out how it worked or about the girl? heck how did they even know who the girl was? gain evil Seekers helps again. they can even transfer all the data from the tree to the human? why did the Seekers not do this? i mean i am sure the Seekers had plenty of time with it to do this. the government humans know too much and are doing things the Seekrs could not with all the tech they had (ie they craeted it). so a damaged ship with crashed on some wasteland has the resources to do the transfer? why not when they were still on their home planet? amke things easier, since they were with the scientists. does the fact they crash give them magic knowledge? a very large flaw. think about motivation and plausiblity.

10. now the stupidest part of the entire story. they exile the girl!?!?! why would they do that? they do all this work to get her and the tree to naother planet so they could have all the data and power, yet just throw it out to the wasteland to die (after surviving already thousands of years). does not make sense at all. please explain why they would get rid of their prize after crashing? also explain why would they destroy the tree? i mean they could have studied it to learn how to create their own or something. heck they got rid of the girl, why not try to create their own crude interface to it since she did not cooperate. beyond that, it was said she needed the tree to survive. it was destroyed so she cant do much of anything any more (the whole interdependence thing really traps you on that)

11. another poor section. the whole rebirth thing. it would work on some levels, but not here to well. i could see catalyst being reborn in a way since she passes her dna, but she would be less "pure" due to the mates who would have some of their dna mixing with hers to create the child. in fact it was said that she was special because her dna was tampered so she could access the tree, and that was the special part. without the tree she was just a human who was manipulated to be controlled by the Seekers (i doubt the girl would have been coopertive let alone understand who or what the Seekers were). she was basically a keyboard and screen for the tree. i think you may wish to change some things in regard to the rebirth thing. as for Cursoe, he has nothing special about him that would grant him rebirth. what is this magic force you say that came back? the Seekers create another one? (ie tree, human interface then some guy thinks he needs to protect her). maybe the Seekers could have created Cursoe as a protector (or other half of the interface, ie tree, heh). and they needed to protect this from evil Seekers. you dont need the rebirth or massive time changes at all you know.

12. how do the Seekers know Bree is catalyst reborn? why did the Seekers wait so long? why not get the real deal when they could have (ie when she was banished to the wasteland)? seems like a top priority mission for the Seekers to me. also you make the Seekers bad guys now burning towns and such. why would they have to? they should have tech that could find her with ease. again they created it.

13. Rei is a girls name. Cursoue and Rei are two different ppl thus you implying that Cursoe's destiny was to die, get reborn, then guard a complete stranger (ie Bree). better idea, get rid of the whole rebirth thing. it complicates things and creates tons of holes. the story is actually interesting enough without the rebirth (and has enough gameplay elements like consiprecy, romance, a goal, a worlds life at at stake, etc).

overall the concept is good, but needs some consistency. dont worry about length too much when you post. the length you used was fine (in fact this post might be longer, heh). i can understand why you want to keep it short since you dont want to give away too much and it more ppl will read it.

take my comments with pride that i actually took the time to write all this and read the story. if i thought it was terrible and could not be fixed i would not have posted at all or kept it much shorter.

once you get some consistency and time frames that make some more sense. think about motivation as well. whenever someone does something its out of motivation. some evil Seekers could have created the creatures that attacked the ship. heck the evil Seekers could have attacked themseleves. also you seem to ignore this other race once after the attack. you cant do this. towards the end you actually make it seem that the other race was actually doing something good by trying to get the tree. maybe you could work this into something. maybe its actually a group of good Seekers trying to stop Seekers corrupt with power trying to do things they should not be doing (ie creating the tree/human thingie).

i suggest reading over my suggestions, and working up a new draft at about the same length. or simply discuss the points in general to help flesh things out better. also you may wish to wait for other ppl to critize the story.

again, dont feel bad. i am not trying to put yoru story down, remember that. someone telling you what you want to hear is doing you a great disservice since you wont actually know what they may dislike about the story. i expect no one to flame him, but please try to be somewhat honest and offer suggestions on how to fix things. why something seems odd is very important, and helps in the fix things phase.

EDIT: btw for those curious. Rei translates to soul. i am not 100% sure its a girls name, though i notice at least two animes (evaglion and sailor moon use it as a girls name). so i would do a little research in that area. seems to be a female name. though i have seen it in the male and female japanese name catalog thingie i found online.

http://www.kabalarians.com/male/japan-m.htm
http://www.kabalarians.com/female/japan-f.htm

gives meanings of names as well (ie those long winded things that ussually are not as useful as the actual translation of the name).


[edited by - a person on July 18, 2002 2:07:45 AM]

I always thought Rei translated to "zero" hence it''s use in evangelion, but I guess "soul" would work too.

actually it could mean zero, beutiful, or soul. depends on the web site you goto and who you ask. japanese words have a bad habit of meaning mulitple things depending on how they are written vs the romanized lettering used.

Time for a draft, then? Ok.... Here it goes... After long deliberation period spent with, well, mainly myself, I have decided to change certain things, namely things you guys saw wrong.

Ok, for one, the whole Seeker World-ship attack by the "experimental" race could be changed to another race that wants Raziel. Since they''re both advanced enough to get into space far from their Homeworlds, I would suppose they would also have sophisticated sensory/recon technologies. Therefore this other race would know that Raziel was completed. And since Raziel is chock-full of info, this could be quite a capture by the other race. But when they annihilate the Seekers above the Human world, what happens to them? Any suggestions?

Second, I was thinking that the Seekers have a MAJOR superiority complex here. I''m not quite sure what their motivation is. A quote from one of my favorite games is, "God seeks not followers, but companions". Maybe the Seekers are simply looking for interstellar companions, something with purity of form, much like themselves (Thinking of something like Protoss and the Covenant combined here, in the way of image). But when these Humans (or mainly Crusae, for that matter) fight back, I guess you could say that the Seekers basically black-listed the Humans for all time. This might also be why the Seekers didn''t just nuke the new Human world (that "Rei" was on), because then Bree would die, with all the reincarnated info with her. They may''ve just gone down to the new world, and began burning the towns, for two purposes: spite, and to find Bree.

Ok, also, I think most of the game would be played out as Bree and Rei (I guess I do need a new name. I don''t watch Evangelion, and I alo didn''t know Rei as such a popular name. I guess I''ll be checking out some name sites, then.). Some parts would be played out as flashbacks of Bree (from Catalyst). I was thinking that when the Seekers tampered with the Human DNA, they could''ve greatly manipulated our genetic memory capability, but why would the Seekers do that? Ugh.....

About the whole God/Catalyst thing, I guess I meant that as the uber-genetic tampering they did to help her interface Raziel, once she was actually put into the tree, she became essentially omniscient. "Durability" enhancements, performed to keep her alive as long as they needed the info made her basically immortal, till something killed her. Well, not immortal, she just wouldn''t die of old-age. She was made tougher though.

I think she wants to lift the burden of all that information. I mean, can you imagine everything she would know? The atrocities performed against the expermental humans? The Seekers would have to know a lot about Humans to tamper with them. She would have something like DVD recordings of the screams, experiments, and everything else IN HER MIND. I would think that would get old. BTW, Bree has all the information in her mind, too, but like a person said, mixed DNA would "filthify" (maybe that''s too strong a word?) her blood, specifically made to access her memories. So accession is not nearly as easy, and may only come at times of extreme mental fatigue, because that is when the preconscious take over (even in the real world!).

I suppose that the whole reincarnation thing would work if I spent enough time on it, ie, increased genetic memory capability basically disregarded the sperm and the egg of the father and mother, and made Rei completely out of nothing, but that wouldn''t work either. So, maybe a person is right, and he could be the opposite part of the interface, a virus-protection program, if you will. Or should that be what Crusae is? Tha might work, he would have to protect Raziel and Catalyst from EVERYTHING, including his creators. Maybe the Seekers and the other race (I guess they can''t be nameless anymore....) both went to get it at the same time? And Crusae fought off both, with the power given to him when it was neccessary by Catalyst.

Also, I said they exiled her because they knew if she lived, eventually there would come a time when people would fight over her again. So they exile her, in hopes that she''ll die in the wild white yonder (it''s cold where they crashed). And about the people splitting, they had a coinflict of interest. Some began to rethink the actions of the government. Those were banished from ship for all time. BTW, Catalyst was exiled AFTER the people split. The government supporters were going to keep her, but decided not to, seeing all the fights that had happened becaus of her.

And the whole Seekers-finding-Bree thing, they''re advanced. But they live a LONG way from the Human worlds. Big, huge distance. Even with all their advances, it took forever for them to get back after the other race destoyed their fleet above the human wold.

Ok, well... think that''s everything. Oh and about turning Rei into an introvert, I wouldn''t dream of turning him into Squall (see, I''m actually gonna have DECENT charcter development. Lol).

Well I definately like all of the different plot strands going on, and I think this story would have alot of potential. Just work out the kinks!

Thanks, once I start writing the details, there''ll be website up, and the kinks will be much easier to kill off.