But my brain likes to take old things I've written and keep turning them over as well. This can help when I'm working on something new, as it leads to deepening a concept or story. But it can be annoying if it's something I've already published somewhere, when I want to move on to other things.
I've learned, however, that sometimes it's best to go with it, and get it out of my head. This is, after all, why I started this blog in the first place.
To that end, and to get some drivel out of my head, let's go back and revisit my very first Gamr Drivl below the break.
Freedom Fighters Revisited
A little less than two years ago, I first started writing the periodic blog series I would eventually call Gamr Drivl when I talked about how I would reboot the 2003 game Freedom Fighters. I wrote about what the game was in the original entry, but here's the basic gist: alternate history Soviet Russia invades America and occupies New York, third-person shooter with AI squadmates you can command about. My updated/reboot pitch suggested more of an update to the setting, but as part of my revisit, I'll retouch on it below.
Setting & Plot
The original FF diverged in the timeline back during World War II and Soviet Russia never collapsed like it did in our world. They also developed the atomic bomb first and dropped it on Berlin, enabling them to dominate the political field while America struggled to keep up, making us weaker and allowing Russia to invade later. Throughout the backstory my FF would provide, we avoid using any real-world political figures. No George W., no Obama, no Trump, no Putin. We're not going to be in the business of pointing fingers for real-world issues.
My FF has the divergence point be more recent, starting after 9/11. In this continuity, the War on Terror doesn't go swimmingly, and America over-reaches and over-extends its resources, burning up international goodwill. This combines with the economic downturn of the Great Recession, making things even more difficult at home and abroad. Meanwhile, Russia uses the War on Terror as an excuse to beef up its own military, and as America is forced to close its international military bases due to the economic hits reducing budgets, Russia moves in to make use of them as its President throws their weight around.
By the time the game starts, America's greatly weakened, but still not an enemy to take lightly. Nevertheless, American forces are worn out after two decades of non-stop fighting, in increasingly hostile countries, and goodwill at home is starting to wear thin as well, as the civilian population gets fed up with losing its troops to a conflict with no end in sight. Civil unrest erupts across the country, which is when Russia makes its move, ambitiously invading to "stabilize a once-great power," and the invasion is pulled off because the Russian President has an elite group of hackers crash American military networks to cripple their effectiveness.
The player-character is an average New York City citizen forced to go underground and join up with the Resistance to fight against the Russian occupying force. Working with a team of specialists, they infiltrate and sabotage the occupiers' checkpoints and bases of operations, building up toward more ambitious goals, like taking out high-ranking officers.
Gameplay
A lot of the gameplay would stay fairly true to the original FF game. From a central hub location, the player-character heads out on basic missions, taking out a supply depot here, eliminating a nest of enemy snipers there, and so on. The first few missions introduce various elements, like commanding squadmates, sabotaging equipment, and collecting resources. Then comes a series of missions recruiting the specialists the Resistance needs to keep their base camp (the hub) running, and to help the player on missions. From there, the mission strings get longer, more in-depth, maybe even moving to new hub locations as the stakes get higher.
There would be crafting elements in the game, but not as severe as with other games. Also, there's only so much room you have in your pack to carry resources and items. Thus if you come across some component that can be turned in for an XP bonus at the hub, you might have to abandon other resources to make room. Your squadmates can carry stuff for you as well, but they also have limited storage space in their packs.
Resources would be used to upgrade the player's skillbase and those of his squadmates, as well as improve things at the hub. For the most part, these squadmates will be randomly-generated Resistance members, but falling into one of several skillsets. As they complete missions with you, their skills improve, but they can get killed while on mission. You can't replace the empty slot on your squad until you get back to the hub, and any loot you leave behind on their corpse is gone for good. This would make it that much more important to keep your squad alive, since having to do a mission when you're a man down increases the difficulty.
The specialists, meanwhile, mostly stay at the hub, but there are some missions where you need to bring them along so they can perform some action that only they can do, or perhaps the mission has some personal significance to them. The specialists are not irreplaceable, but letting them die would just run into a "mission failed" scenario. I could also picture a plot twist coming when one or more of the specialists might get killed on a mission, but the mission continuing, suddenly adding more drama to the story, and reducing effectiveness at the hub. (Bonus stats applied by the specialist are suddenly gone, etc.)
Squadmate types would include Soldiers, a jack-of-all-stats type, average across the board. Heavies can use the bigger guns (LMGs, rocket launchers, etc.), and can carry extra loot, but aren't the best at finding said loot. Snipers can be useful to tag enemies and perform long-range takedowns, but their up-close game isn't as strong. Scavengers are a little less effective in a fight, but they're great for finding and carrying extra resources. Medics are lightly-armored and lightly-armed, but they can help heal up squadmates and allies more quickly than others, giving you a fighting chance to survive in hectic situations. As the specialists are upgraded/leveled up, squadmates can gain extra talents as well, if given time and experience to acquire them. And so on.
The Characters
Chris Stone
The player character themselves. The name is taken from the original FF, but in deference to modern gamers, they have the choice between Chris being a man or a woman, but it shouldn't have too much difference to the plot. In the original game, Chris was a plumber, but in my version, they're a mechanic, giving them more capabilities for sabotage and jury-rigging equipment to a purpose. Chris starts out as an average citizen, but during the course of the game, their successes lead to them becoming a symbol of the Resistance. While most of their base talent comes into the jury-rigging and sabotage game, players can boost and level up other skills through gameplay. Part of Chris' story arc is trying to find out what happened to their brother Troy, who gets captured during an early mission.Isabella Angelina & Phil Bagzton
Two other key members of the Resistance, Isabella had been a social activist trying to warn people about the rising threat of Russia, but despite having a significant Internet following, no one took her seriously until it was too late. Her insight and analytical skills are a boon to the Resistance. Phil is, in this continuity, an NYPD policeman, who provides basic firearms training to the Resistance, but a bum leg means he can't join in fieldwork for the most part. Between the two of them and with assistance from some other Resistance figures, they highlight some of the specialists they need to recruit.The Specialists
The Resistance needs people that know their stuff, to help them become an effective guerrilla warfare group and rallying force for the occupied NYC, and they appropriately come from all walks of life. Recruiting them provides immediate bonuses for Chris, and completing missions for them unlocks more skills for experienced fighters.Catalina Mendez is a gang member who knows her way around explosives, being good at coming up with IEDs and other things that go boom for the Resistance. Catalina saw the Russians occupy her neighborhood and arrest a lot of her friends, so by helping her out in clearing her neighborhood, you free her gang from Russian custody. Her gang will then help the Resistance, providing additional support and intel.
Tyrone Marcus is a former Army combat medic turned nurse that got rounded up with other medical personnel, and was forced to treat injured Russian soldiers and sympathizers. After being freed and joining the Resistance, Marcus trains up other people to help in the constant rush of wounded and sick people. More medical personnel join up with the Resistance as time goes by, especially while completing his missions, but he's got a grudge against the Russian officer that forced them to treat their wounded.
Dane Blackwell is an ex-PMC sniper who saw his share of darkness in the Middle East, but maintains a stoic demeanor about it all, having got out before things got worse. He's a hard sell on recruitment, requiring a few missions even to track him down, largely managing to live off-grid in one of the largest cities in the world, but once he's brought in, he finds the sharpshooters in the Resistance and trains them up as snipers as well. The remainder of his mission string deals with "closing the books" on his former career, making sure that there's nothing left for the Russians to use against him.
Jo Berg worked in sanitation, and one thing she knows is that people throw away perfectly good stuff that can still get used, and if it can't be used for its original purpose, she knows a thing or two about making them work for something else. She and Chris hit it off pretty well with the respective knacks for getting things to work. Jo helps the Resistance learn what to look for when scavenging resources, and can help boost Chris' jury-rigging skills. Her missions deal a lot with getting stuff they need, but she later asks for Chris' help in stealing back a memento that she's worried the Russians will take or destroy.
Oleg Kozlov is a Russian expat, who moved to America twenty years ago, just after the current Russian leadership took over. He's former military, and he was the heavy weapons specialist in his battalion. If it shoots bullets or fire or ordinance and if it's oversized, Oleg is all too happy to use it. Naturally, the fact that he's Russian leads to a lot of friction, but few Resistance members argue the point when they see how much he hates the occupation's leader and especially the leader's chief muscle. Oleg lost family because of them, and he wants to see them burn for it.
The Russian Side
Naturally, we can't overlook the antagonists of Freedom Fighters. We want to get know these guys, so we know precisely why we should kill them. Careful tweaking of the backstory/alternate history to play up the more villainous aspects of things in Russia would go a long way, especially if the game were to be marketed in Russia. This may be why the original game had it be Soviet Russia that was invading, and why modern shooters like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare explicitly made the Russian villains "ultra-nationalists" who had no problem simply killing anyone who disagreed with them. Something similar may be necessary here. Regardless, here's who's important on the Russian side.President Vasillj Tatarin is the "bigger bad" of the game, being the largely authoritarian leader of Russia. His name and appearance are both callbacks to the original game, though where in the original he was the leader of the invading forces, here he's been kicked upstairs. A giant of a man, Tatarin has a bit of a cult of personality around himself, and some of the propaganda broadcasts that can be found will feature him booming about Russian superiority and whatnot. He does not, however, visit America in this game. Instead, he leaves the invasion and the heavy lifting in New York to some of his best.
General Dmitri Zharkov is the leader of the Russian invasion and the occupation force. A hard man, Zharkov believes that a hard fist is better than soft hands, and that swift and brutal retaliation is necessary to break the will of those who rebel. He is the "big bad" of the story, leading the Russian invasion of the East Coast from New York, though Chris can find intel reports that suggest he's got other lesser generals handling the occupation of other major metropolitan centers, such as D.C. or Philadelphia.
Kiril Gasparin is Zharkov's "boogeyman." An elite Spetsnaz soldier, Gasparin knows a lot of guerrilla tricks, and he learns quickly what the Resistance can do and how they do it, and becomes a serious threat to the Resistance. Gasparin was personally responsible for murdering several members of Oleg's family, and now in America carries out Zharkov's brutal commands.
Colonel Karkov is one of Zharkov's best officers, and the one overseeing control over the city's hospitals and medical resources. When the occupation began, he rounded up as many medical personnel as they could get their hands on, and forced them to treat wounded Russian soldiers, on pain of pain and death, if not of the medics, then of their fellows and their family. Karkov is Tyrone Marcus' nemesis as a result of this, and he wants revenge.
Colonel Gregorovich oversees the prison facilities and is generally in charge of maintaining civil order until the occupation force can turn things over to a "civilian" regime under their command. As a result, members of the gang Catalina's a part of were rounded up, and some of them executed, to eliminate them as a threat. Naturally, she wants to blow him to kingdom come for this.
Tatiana Kempinski is the face of Russian propaganda in New York. She is another callback to the original game, where she fulfilled the same role. She presents the "pretty face" and parrots all the propaganda the occupation force wants her to, but once the cameras stop rolling, she turns out to be a lot more sharp and vindictive than her vapid on-air persona would lead people to believe. She largely would just be visible or audible on broadcasts throughout the game, though later on, she would end up bumping into the Resistance when they attack the TV studio where she works.
U.S. President Thomas Roberts has been reduced to a figurehead, a puppet ruler for the Russian occupation force. Prior to the invasion, he'd been complimentary of Russian leadership and generally not very effective at his actual job, and now obsequiously tries to kiss up to the occupation force, aware that if he screws up or ticks them off, he's got no protection from the angry American populace. He's mostly there for backstory and a glimpse at what's going on elsewhere in America. He's under the thumb of General Mikael Bulba, (another original game callback) one of Zharkov's peers, who is commanding the occupation of Washington.
~*~*~*~*~*~
And there you have it. It's not a huge update, per se, to my original idea, but I wanted to add a little more character to it all, by adding more characters. Obviously, they're all placeholder ideas, just there as concepts, but various side-missions would expand the game a little more, and by tying them to other characters, it deepens lore and adds meaning to what you're doing. And I will always go for ideas that allow more storytelling.
Until next time, readers.
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