Lazarus Development - 005

After the first treatments I think I added a lot more depth to the story and made it feel a lot better to understand what's happening but there is still a few things I wanted to change like at the start it just glosses over the whole first scene so I want to add a bit more description so you can tell who the character is working for and stealing from.

There is also no explanation for how the bounty hunter got onto the main characters ship which I'm going to have to add to tell the audience the main character is already being watched and whatever he is hauling must be important. I changed it from meeting an ASD scientist to meeting up with the same person as the last contract, so it feels like there is a reason for the first act other than just being a cool scene. I also want to link the cargo from act 1 into something that will come up further along into future episodes. but I haven't thought too far ahead yet so I'm going to leave it ambiguous for now which will give me more options to change the narrative later down the line.

I also added more information about the protagonist which helped me develop the character more as I had to put more thought of why he is doing what he's doing. I want the short to have a lot of fan service so I'm using a lot of names and organizations from in the game that would actually make sense gameplay wise instead of just naming random organizations so that it is actually coherent for people that already play the game.

I think at the end of act one I should move the bit about the characters making their way to the facility to the start of act two as it feels a bit weird having that bit as the ending to act one, it makes it so act one ends nicely with anticipation for act two, and the act two can start up nicely with the start of that mission then.

Treatment - 003

ACT 1

Former feared-bounty hunter, now mercenary Cai is finishing up a contract for Ling Family Hauling, a courier company based as a front for a sketchy gang of drug lords. After stealing some cargo from The Hackrow Agency he is pursued by bounty hunters. He hides his ships signature hiding under water and can quantum jump just in time before the bounty hunters are able to get to him, he wasn’t aware that there was a bounty hunter that boarded when he was loading the cargo, waiting for the right time to attack.

Whilst waiting in quantum to arrive at the location of the contractor, the bounty hunter removes the fuses for the jump drive which takes the ship out of the quantum jump. Cai investigates his ship when he’s suddenly attacked from behind by the bounty hunter. After fighting with him Cai gets the upper hand and finishes him off with a fuse, he was getting out of his bag to fix the quantum drive. He dumps the body off in deep space so he can’t be tracked and then takes the longer way to the drop off point which gives him time to think properly about how the bounty hunter would have even known he was going to be there in the first place.

Cai then made his way to Checkmate, a space station in the abandoned, pirate run system of Pyro, where he meets up with the contractor to get paid. This time it is different though, the contractor for Ling Family Hauling is met with a strange new man surrounded by heavily armed guards.

The mysterious man interrupts the contractors praise of the last job to offer a new contract which he would have to swear secrecy to but would be enough money to pay off all of Cai’s depts 5 times. The mission would be to infiltrate an ASD facility in Pyro IV and steal a data card.

Cai begrudgingly accepts the contract but knows he will need some back up from an old friend he knows is nearby. He meets up with his old friend Gethin in Gaslight station, and they begin to prepare for the mission.

ACT 2

Cai and Gethin arrive on Pyro IV and scope out the compound before their assault. The facility is swarmed with ASD security making this a real challenge for the mercenaries. They slowly advance up towards the main doors of the facility but decide to take a side door as there are less guards covering that area. They make their way inside clearing each floor and eliminating everyone in sight, Gethin even killing the unarmed scientists that were no threat at all.

They secure one of the scientists and take them to the door of the data centre. They scan the scientist and Gethin shoots them the second the door opens and isn’t useful to them anymore. They get inside and start printing off the data drive labelled “Specimen Access Card.” Gethin doesn’t seem bothered at all, but Cai looks confused and dazed, as if he’d seen something like this before but can’t seem to pinpoint where or when. Just before the data card is printed off a huge group of armed personnel swarmed their location.

They grab the card and rush out of the building narrowly escaping the onslaught of rounds whistling past them. On the way back to their ship Cai noticed something else strange, a broken off wing of a ship nestled into the sand with a strange symbol on it. Cai was again confused and had a weird sense of déjà vu but brushed it aside a scampered back to the ship.

On the way back to the meetup point Cai confirms with the contractor that they had acquired the card, when they told him they would triple the pay out to complete another objective. Again, they were vague about the mission, they did mention that they had to harvest a creature that is hatched from a special egg in another ASD facility on Pyro V. The request was bizarre and immoral but the money from the mission would help Cai out immensely.

ACT 3

Arriving at the new ASD facility Gething gets set up in a rock pile with a sniper as Cai sneaks through the facility. Everything was going as planned until a Kopion spots Cai and starts running straight for him, Gethin snipes the Kopion dropping it to the floor at Cai’s feet, emitting a weird green glow. There is something wrong with this animal but there are more important things to think about.

After clearing out the facility Cai and Gethin meet up and head to the containment room to retrieve the egg. Gethin got ahead initialising the procedure for the egg whilst Cai was stood watching, contemplating what might be ahead of them. After retrieving the egg, they make their way outside to find a load of adult Valakkar’s emerging from the ground and spitting toxic venom at them. They battle their way to the big metal contraption and place the egg inside.

A bolt of lightning strikes the antenna of the machine and sucks the egg down inside as if planting it into the ground. The ground trembles as a giant Valakkar worm erupts from the ground and roars loudly vibrating the floor beneath them. They fight off the worm for as long as they can, even having to respawn at a nearby med bed, this can’t keep up though as there is limited med gel, so they need to be very cautious.

They finally take down the worm, its body strung out around them lying limp and lifeless. Cai is getting his multi tool ready to harvest the worm when he spots a helmet buried halfway into the dirt, the same Morozov helmet that Cai wears which is strange as they are extremely rare only owned by elite mercenaries and miners from past times. This seems to have similarities to Cai’s custom helmet though. He reaches down to take a closer look but finds himself freezing up and blacking out, images are flashing in his head, either a premonition or past he can’t tell.

After a couple minutes Cai wakes up, the rain pounding his face and lightning lighting up the clouds. Gethin stood over him checking his vitals. Another flash of lightning illuminates the sky exposing a big group of what looks like small ships high up in the sky. No ship can enter this area of the planet though because the lightning would disturb the ships power, so it doesn’t make sense to be a ship. Another flash of lightning reveals the black dots to be getting closer, as if just free falling from the sky.

Gethin helps Cai back onto his feet as over 20 Ling Dynasty soldiers land around them in IKTI’s causing huge craters in the ground from them landing. It was all a façade just to get the objective complete for the Ling Dynasty, now it’s time for them to clean up any loose ends. As Cai is looking around, he hears a loud gunshot, Gethin was brutally shot in the back of the head, leaving Cai on his knees trying to help but there’s no point, Soldiers storm over and take Gethin's mobi glass and cancel his imprint, not allowing him to respawn.

Cai hears a familiar voice coming from behind him, it is the person that issued the contract in the first place. It’s obvious now that it was all a set up for them to do all the hard work for them, Cai looks fed up and ready to give up. He drops his head, ready to share the same fate as Gethin.

A loud bang and suddenly Cai wakes in an old, dirty abandoned facility. Not knowing how he got there or who he even is, the only thing he knows is that he has an open contract from a company called Ling Family Hauling. He slowly sits up and evaluates the contract and starts to head to find a way out of this facility, not knowing who he is and how he got there.

He finds a ship and flies off into space, not knowing that he could be repeating the same situations again, or could he have broken the cycle this time?

Something I've changed is starting act three off the same as act two. although I already kind of did that, it got into the action a bit too fast in my opinion so I started the new treatment off a bit slower explaining them setting up instead of it just starting with fighting.

I think making the people coming down to kill them at the end should be the Ling Dynasty as it can tie back to them having control over the main characters imprint, and also hinting at them having his friends imprint as well. I've tried to add a bit of the Jason Bourn amnesia kind of thing I was talking about in the last post into the end of act three as well.