Premise of my FMP

So to give you general idea of what I am going to do for my major project I shall give a brief description of the story/location/game mechanics and what I aim to have by the end of this.

Brief Description of the Story

The story is simple, you play a character in a medieval setting where magic is outlawed, penalty of death, and mythical creatures are near extinction. Throughout the course of the game you must discover the reasons for humanities take on magic and you must also save the world from an impending doom.

Location

As previously mentioned the game takes place in a medieval setting. The overall look I would like to achieve is that of the rural England back in the medieval time period, with great stone castles, elegant wood buildings and dirty poverty ridden villages. For research into this I shall be looking through books and taking inspiration for my own designs from existing ones. Not only that but I shall also be looking at previous example of work in other media forms such as movies, TV shows and pre-existing video games. Good examples of these would be;

Game of Thrones

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

http://uk.pc.ign.com/objects/143/14345201.html

Game Mechanics

To make my game more unique from the already huge list of medieval based RPG video games I must come up with an interesting new game mechanic that would give this game reason and a place within the market. For this I have decided to take a new look at the way RPGs present their looting and inventory systems.

For the majority, RPGs tend to present their in-game menus by way of lists. Take Oblivion for example, below are two examples of the way Oblivion presents its looting and inventory system.



 Oblivion's Inventory Menu  In both examples you can see that every item in the game is just listed and that leaves the player to have to scroll through an endless list of items that they posses and they must then select that item.  For the inventory system, it is a little harder for items not to be shown in list for. My initial idea for this is when the inventory is brought up the player is shown a 3D render of the character model, and using that they may select various sections on the body, such as shoulders or chest and they can then cycle through there obtained items. However I am currently unsure whether to include this system as I may go for a more realistic approach and get rid of the bag system entirely.



Oblivion's Loot System

 

What I propose to do for my looting system is to do everything by sight. For example when looting a body instead of a menu of text showing up, the camera shifts to show the body lying on the floor and all available items that can be took. To further help the player decipher what can be looted and what can't, each available item can be scrolled through and will be highlighted.