Adding an intro video,

Soldier is gearing up, just got orders to go to battle. They are inline for supplies, and instead of being given a weapon, they have to buy it with their own credits. Oh, and tacked on to that is the cost of all the ammunition they used in training. ... didn't you know? ...

[quote name='hpdvs2' timestamp='1357326600' post='5017475']
instead of being given a weapon, they have to buy it with their own credits.
[/quote]

I wanted to have them pay for their own equipment,, that's how I came to the theme in the first place ;).

How I see it, there are three possible endings when the commanders are evil and you fight them:

• You fight and defeat them, a bit holiwood style.
• You fight and don't defeat them, giving you the feeling that this was their plan all along
• You fight them only to realise, you yourself are the real evil. Very cool, but hard to pull off. Especially when you don't have a obvious protagonist.

Or you don't fight them, but then I only see the ending that you go into exile. This seems a bit boring to me.

I chose the Theme because it helps with the underlaying topic of only trusting your fellow team members. But maybe there's a different theme that helps with that. Do you have any Ideas?

One possibility to create an obvious protagonist in the end is a point based system. With one protagonist left in the end, there is always a sea of options that opens up and nont just the 3 you mentioned.

And it also brings a real competitive element to the game, isn't it?

Hmmmm...

You could do what Halo Reach did in the end: force the player into a situation against the enemy but they're inevitably going to lose.

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If you want to come across "Expendable" theme in the nature of your game, have your superiors intentionally steer you towards a trap to draw the enemy's attention away from a priority target. Your squad becomes, naturally, bait to the enemy.

In an animation, one of you guys can trip and say, break the transmitter/radio. However, though players can't radio in for any supplies what so ever, you can now hear the transmission of your superiors as they talk about using the squad as bait to lure the enemy away. Generals, really. So now you can't even call in supplies.

As each person dies, they can no longer "respawn", they literally see themselves get shot in killed in the first person perspective, dropping back dead, hitting the mud face first, etc, etc. Some might be alive, can crawl and look around as their friends fight as they bleed out, maybe shooting with a pistol, but really slowly. Every ally that dies comes back as a ghostly apparition, only seen by dying or other dead soldiers until each and everyone else dies, the last person alive gets a desperate cutscene just as their health is gone.

You end up with a small squad of ghosts in the end and then they walk back the other way, towards the millions of more ghostly apparitions of dead soldiers behind them. Swallowed up in the m being a pawn among the war games of kings.

I know you mentioned no one in their squad talking to them in a human voice...

If you really want to make them seem like they don't care, make them call in supplies and such via a robotic call center.

"Press 1 for Emergency assistance. Press 2 for review of combat orders. Press 3 for information on purchasing weapon drops"

If you press 1

"Press 1 to request additional soldiers. Press 2 to relay distress signal."

Press 1

"Please enter coordinates or Press 9 to speak to a supervisor"

This really gives the impression no one cares (as someone who just spent an hour on the phone, didn't get a real person, and didn't get a question answered), and it would be an incredibly unique game play component for doing things like ordering weapons and checking on your commands.