LONG POST
PART 1 Through spiritual journeys, there is something called a psychopomp... a guide for a person in the realms of the dead, or a spiritual guide. I think that, unconsciously, videogames have had psychopomps for some time. More than that, they have taken on a form specific to the visual, no-depth perception medium of gaming: an eye.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/torment/images/d/d2/Morte.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100421161224 ^ mort, from planescape torment. Don't know much about him, but the idea of a floating skull guiding you around is appealing to me at least.
The obvious example though is 343 guilty spark.
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/3/3b/Haloce_2011-08-26_17-36-01-82.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110826234317Also, very similar to 343 is Wheatley, from Portal 2:
http://i1.theportalwiki.net/img/thumb/9/94/Wheatley.png/300px-Wheatley.png Also from Bungie (this time, ODST) is the "Superintendent"
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/5/5d/Superintendant-alone.svg/revision/latest?cb=20100103220515Maybe the most ignominious example of the "psychopomp" is Claptrap, from the Borderlands franchise. Now the character made me want to kill myself (the tragedy of borderlands is that there's an incredible, actually epic in the old sense of the term FPS hidden under hundreds of pounds of steaming anthony burch writing), but you can see that he still follows the archetype of the monocular, floating, semi-neutral companion:
http://www.kharamell.com/blcalc/assets/claptrap.png If nothing else, I just find it poignant that a tradition has started to develop in something as disrespected and "low art" as a shooter game…
Ken Levine (designer of Bioshock: Infinite, which had a dumb, overly complex story but was enjoyable nevertheless imo) once said that the FPS genre was beginning to develop a tradition, almost like there is in musical theatre: the stoic, silent hero guns down millions of foes in a bloodbath, and then it's expected that they talk to the "plot-armored" main characters in cutscenes. Like there are a certain amount of interesting rules that we take for granted while we play these games, and the whole thing is almost like a performance that all game developers push forward naturally...
Maybe you find that tradition repulsive, but I find it deeply evocative.
Additionally, I think that many of the greatest shooter games have tended to have a girl companion/macguffin in them. Obviously the most famous of all game girls Princess Peach, but in the shooter genre we usually have characters that accompany you, like Elizabeth:
http://mattbrett.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-elizabeth.jpg as well as characters like Alyx in HL2
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LTj1BPFIxmI/maxresdefault.jpg and Cortana in Halo:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.hitfix.com/assets/9702/cortana.jpg Cortana is probably the most intriguing example, as I think that she ties back into Jung again, specifically his concept of the Anima. I would say that Cortana, at least, is very clearly an Anima-like figure... she literally lives in the back of the main character's head. Anyway, onto my universe idea, starting with the characters:
HappyMap Image ref:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1061/1924/files/Sad_Face_Emoji.png?9898922749706957214 (obviously not so large, would be about twice the size of a soccer ball, floating around, explanation being that HappyMap has to become crass and ugly to fit into a far fallen world, or simply looks the way it does because of unhappiness. would usually be happy for a long while in the beginning, though:
http://pix.iemoji.com/images/emoji/apple/ios-9/256/smiling-face-with-open-mouth-and-smiling-eyes.png )
A mapping application A.I. who would fit into the "spirit guide" archetype that, as a shooter, Song of Sophia could benefit from... or even deconstruct…
HappyMap would have been created by the primal race and used by a celestial surveyor... supposed to be a companion and a helper, even an apprentice.
For some reason, in the distant past, the surveyor willfully abandoned HappyMap... but because the primal race had such a high tech level, HappyMap is immune to damage and functionally immortal... this is a curse, however. Maybe as a counterpoint to Blue (my fav of the main design doc characters), who struggles to connect to the world and become invested in it (if I understand the character right), HappyMap would be too invested in the past, unable to forget a single thing that it's seen in its long wanderings throughout the universe.
Why should we care? The story of character who struggles to free themselves from the memories of a happy past is, in many ways, the story of every human being, as well as the story of the human race as a whole. Every culture has a myth of a lost golden age... and nobody feels this longing more than traditionalists... all conservatism, all "reactionary" thought is inherently driven by a hatred of the present and the desire to return to a time when things were better.
Concretely, this longing could take the form of HappyMap's desire to study under the surveyor once again... and now I can no longer pretend that the surveyor is not a thin metaphor for J.C (one whom putatively once gave western life meaning, once the protagonist of history itself, once a figure so immense that his oath is still on our loving lips 2,000 years after we based our timeline on him, even though we no longer understand or even recognize him, and he has become a complete stranger to us all [and I don't say this in some moralizing sense, but in the melancholy sense of the unhappiness in having lost touch with someone who once gave one's life purpose and meaning]), often thought of in medieval times as the great architect of the universe:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c8/48/5e/c8485ee478337513c93c826379a65f0a.jpg Additionally, I think that there should come a moment when the player realizes that their friendship is no longer enough to satisfy HappyMap's loneliness. Some people have had an experience when they realize that they're a lot stupider than one of their friends, and that that friend doesn't respect them, that their friendship isn't as solid as they thought it was (or in a romantic sense, everyone's had unrequited love)... it would be interesting if the player could, just for a moment, feel that feeling towards HappyMap, feel complicit in the ugliness all around them, and feel shame for even existing next to a loving mapping software that was more nuanced, deep, feeling... was more human, was more deserving of life, than the player themselves (and one can only imagine what the primal people were like!)
If the player is the typical FPS shooter guy, all this could be quite unforced.. just kill your first guy and see how appalled HappyMap gets at the brutal world she's in...
I also think it would be cool if HappyMap was androgynous. In the Krazy Kat sense, not in the blue haired sense... the floating orbs in other games are basically loveless in the same way.
PART 2 Luciferna Image ref: google image search for white haired anime girl. But she wouldn't be bitchy, or daffy, or lovey, or whatever else you see in those results. Just a white haired wan girl with one red eye and one white one (it was burned blind by imperial soldiers because she was star-gazing too much) in a black prison jumpsuit. Met by the player in the prison colony he starts the game in. Lucy's sob story is that she was once a princess in a world that hadn't yet been conquered or even noticed the desolation (somehow spared) and was taken prisoner by imperial assassins (she can't explain why they'd make someone so important a slave) and forced into a prison colony. The player can swallow this story, or he can later with some snooping see into her file... She's not a princess, she was born into slavery. The princess thing is a lie so that she doesn't feel like dirt all the time.
Once the player has bonded and come to like Lucy, she is snatched up by the Lion, giving Sunset a motivation to do something. Though because he's a mute protagonist, HappyMap may wonder aloud if the PC really cares about Lucy at all, and isn't just fighting to lion to satiate his own implacable bloodlust.
Sunset The PC in this universe. A mute protagonist, probably forced mute by the empire. The name comes from St. Dismas (Sunset in Greek), the thief on the left (?) of Jesus who was forgiven before he died (the lower strut of the Russian cross points up on his side because he was saved). Nickname to him because he's brought in at a weird time, prisoners are usually brought to the colony at dawn, but he is brought in at a weird time due to a delay. Lucy invents his name. Total blank.
The Lion Image ref:
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2486/3701043263_60bd90fb26_o.jpg He just looks like a huge lion (much larger than life, a few meters tall). Not anthropomorphized or anything. He can manipulate tools and stuff, however.
The Lion (formerly the chief guardian of the primal people) has become the tyrannical main bad guy of the universe. He was the strongest of the warring chiefs left in the wake of [nobody in this place has a taste for the past, so we don't talk about it].
Millions of years of ruling the world has made him into a libertine.. He has a taste for princesses. After all, despite his pomp and grandeur, he's essentially only an animal and subsists mostly on animal pleasures. The more mordant a princess' grief, the sweeter she tastes, kind of like a delicacy. Because Luciferna isn't even a real princess, her grief is deeper than anyone else and he imprisons her soon after the PC comes to like her in his private reserve. The time clock for the player's mission is the great self-congratulatory world-conquering anniversary ball that the Lion will hold with all the other monsters of the world, where he will chop her up and serve her like an delicacy to all his warlords.
Like many bad guys, he has misread or invented prophecies that are ultimately self-aggrandizing. He believes that he is the hero fated to restore order to the world, and that he has accomplished his goal.
Soldiers:
https://i.imgur.com/9bne943.png https://i.imgur.com/AKzfhJu.jpg (less cartoony, though) Either machines or brainwashed survivors of the desolation... it's unimportant. The PC will have to fight thousands of these guys at once, to the point where killing them isn't even a big deal anymore.
Angels: 20 foot tall guardian mechs armed with blue laser cannons. Later enemies, actually pose a challenge once the PC has gotten gud. The mechs have massive, angular wings which leave eerie blue trails whenever they move (like this but bright blue:https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lBw5m4Yjl34/TOZiJ48ccrI/AAAAAAAAAQw/gfIBp-ejhC8/s1600/22.jpg ) Angel ref:
https://i.imgur.com/Oome1q5.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4tLGSok.jpg (no pilot)
The History of the world:
robbed of a very crucial, irreplacable thing. Everyone feels that it's missing, but nobody can quite explain what it was. The loss was so total that even the faculties that would notice the loss have also been mostly removed and cauterized.
Somehow the prophecies have all failed to come true and have gotten so complex and legalistic that they're illegible. History in this universe has become a palimpsest that can only hint at a tantalizing meaning that has been irrevocably lost.
On the basic level, Sunset arrives in prison and works until the guards all withdraw. Nobody knows why (maybe just some bureaucratic mixup, though that's not very compelling)... the prisoners all escape and scatter, at this point Lucy is stolen by the Lion and the player has to go through the world to find her.
Aesthetic:
This universe would feel like a crunchy, sprite-based FPS, like the original Doom or like Notch's game Shambles. Sprite-based FPSs always seem more beautiful to me, because everything was painted, instead of sculpted. Also, for some reason, persistent dead bodies are really important to me in a game, even if they're just sprites. Another good thing about a sprite-based FPS is that it's often still a lot of fun and there's the potential for a huge amount of enemies, even more than in Serious Sam. In some Zandronum servers the sky is just clogged with 1000s of flying monsters and the ground is packed with terrestrial ones, and on modern computers the game runs fine. To this day, Doom, Duke Nukem and Blood look a lot more beautiful than Quake, Unreal Tournament or the Original Half Life.
Additionally, everything in this universe would seem like it was stufftily translated from an ancient text. The post-apoc patina extends to the most basic interactions with people, like there's a wall of time and history that the player can never fully surmount.
Level names:
The Paradise of Desolation The Heaven of the Tigers (reference to some joke about how bunny hell and tiger heaven are the same place) Ref pics (album):
https://imgur.com/a/cUgRa Imperial insignia & motto (on flags, on major buildings, on the shoulder-patches of imperial soldiers... etc):
https://i.imgur.com/VYRDEaM.png Story of unnamed Universe
Something irreplaceable was lost… The Lion (a guardian AI of the primal people) filled the power vacuum, and established a universal empire.
The Lion and HappyMap both represent two responses to a great loss: sadness and rage. It is tempting to assume that the antagonist is always simply an evil opportunist, but in reality the Lion turns to sadistic conquering and acting out of a desire to fill the aching emptiness caused by a plundered world. This is only apparent after the player has murdered him, however.
The primal people were so powerful that their echoes have lives of their own. To explain what I mean, think of how lots of people in the world go around living out the exact lives of some novel that they've never read, due to how pernicious the novel's influence has been. The Sam video where he talks about how people try to live their life like it's the Office speaks to this. Through a similar means, certain primal people have "Ghosts."
The Lion is the ghost of the former king of the world, Lucy is the ghost of Eve (one of the first primal people), and Sunset is the ghost of Adam (another one)
