Assassin's Creed: the movie and my idea for the next game, plus my FF magic system

I just saw Assassin's Creed the movie and I want to do a review. I must admit, I don't actually know enough to be sure of my opinion of this movie, but with my fresh eyes I would say the movie did a good job of capturing the iconic action sequences, although I will be perpetually confused by how Aguilar survived the first Leap of Faith since they pull Callum out of the Animus in the middle of the sequence and pick up later without resolving where he landed. I would say the historical part of the story seemed to be minimized, sacrificing that part of the story to focus on action sequences and the present day story, which is confusing as hell to anyone not familiar with the franchise. I mean, I get it, but given how much I've heard about how this franchise covers history, the way they half-assed this parkour extravaganza, I can understand why fans may be disappointed. If you want to see some live-action recreation of iconic action sequences with no regard for story, then this is a spectacle to behold, but if you give a damn about plot, then an actual game that can last for hours can not be properly truncated into two hours.

On the other hand, I'd love to see an Assassin's Creed game based around the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is something there, a little mystery that would work perfectly for the conflict with the Templars. An archaeologist is studying the Qumran site and hits a dead end in his research when he finds out about the animus and has a chance to see the past through the eyes of an Essene who was there. He knows nothing about what he's getting into but jumps at the chance, only to find out that the Essenes were actually Assassins who were harboring a piece of Eden until the Templars came for it. After a conflict at Qumran, the player's character escapes with the treasure and brings it to Jerusalem to hide among the larger population. However, the Templars eventually find him and the treasure, and after the second stage of the conflict, the Templars get away with the treasure, leaving the Assassin for dead, but he catches up with them in at Megiddo for the final conflict where the treasure appears to be lost to the sands of time. Back in the present, the archaeologist goes to look for the treasure at Megiddo where he is drawn into the conflict with the Templars. The Bleeding Effect has not only given him the skills of an Assassin, but also the outlook, unsure of whether it's really his creed or the past-life laid over his own mind, he is driven to find the treasure and protect it from the Templars. When the battle is settled, it is discovered that the treasure is not in Megiddo, the Templars leave, and the archaeologist accepts his fate in the Brotherhood. If this goes well, the story would be followed up by one direct sequel in which the smae archaeologist finds a new lead with a second Assassin in 1585 England who found the lost treasure of the Dead Sea and the two sides race through both time periods to figure out exactly where it ended up, and this time the treasure is found and the two-part story will be concluded.

And now for somethign completely different... the magic of Final Fantasy for the world I have presented for the last two weeks.

There are two major types of magic, white magic and black magic. White magic was a gift from Leviathan to all people, and like most talents, it is something anybody can do, but some are certainly better than others, and the best who pursue it professionally are white mages. White mages learn basic magic from teachers, and then they can advanc their basic spells on their own, but some very special ones are hidden in ancient tomes after being innovated and then forgotten from lack of use and necessity.

Black magic is a little ore complicated, humans were not originally given black magic, only the other three races, and it was limited to cyborgs using electric magic, werecats using fire magic, and dark element and status cursing magic being the domain of demons. Once the gods were crystallized, the cyborgs were the only ones who remained with innate magic, but when the crystals shattered, people discovered they could use crystal shards to use black magic, though it takes time to learn how to use the power of crystals.

In game terms, white magic is learned from magic books which can be purchased from shops or found in dungeons and are used once to teach the spell, while black magic is learned from crystals that are dropped by enemies and which must be equipped and each character has two slots just for crystals. Cyborgs can use thunder spellsword magic innately without having a crystal equipped and can uniquely use spellsword magic of other elements when equipped with crystals, but aside from a cyborg's innate thunder spellsword magic, all black magic requires a crystal to be equipped. For much of the game only fire and thunder crystals seem to be available, so two slots for crystals are enough for any character to use all available black magic, but occasionally, dark and water crystals may become available and the player would have to choose which crystals to equip.

The elements relationship to each other is fairly simple, there are only four elements, thunder, fire, water and dark. Thunder beats water and water beats fire, and to close the loop in "paper covers rock" level of logic, fire beats thunder. As for dark it has a binary relationship with the other elements, dark can do more damage against any element and any element can do more damage to dark than normal non-elemental damage. By default humans have no element, although holding a crystal will make one half elemental for damage calculations, and cyborgs are thunder while demons are dark, but there is only one playable character of each, so players don't have to deal with this much, but it does kind of give something away if you're paying attention.

Sill more World Building: Cyborgs of Cyberia

last week I suggested a world for Final Fantasy, or just about any fantasy story, this time I want to go into more depth on a part of that world I'll call Cyberia. Cyberia is a unique place, a small nation on a small continent mostly marked by iron rich mountains and a near constant thunderstorm, it is rather hostile toward life, forcing the population to live in coastal villages. The people live here because they need the ore to make cybernetics, a seemingly anachronistic technology in an otherwise medieval/renaissance sort of world. Cybernetics were a gift from Golem, the mechanical Thunder God, along with the power of electricity to power those cybernetics.

A cyborg is born like a normal human except that they are missing their left arm and instead have an electrogenic organ in its place. Cyberian culture is to raise their children to use their innate electric power and to craft cybernetics. Once a cyborg has stopped growing they are considered an adult, receive their cybernetic arm and take a test to determine which of three castes they will go in. Those who prove adept at handling complex electronics to make cybernetics join the highest caste of Engineers, handling the sacred duty of making cybernetics as well as leading the community and planning the architecture of the city. Those who are not as intellectually adept, but still skillful with manual labor and crafting join the caste of Smiths and make the basic parts of cybernetics as well as crafting swords and other tools and metal goods for domestic use and export. Those who do not present enough skill for either join the cast of Miners, named because the best job for such individuals is to mine raw metal ore, though many become merchants exporting metal goods in exchange for food and other goods that cannot be acquired domestically or else fishermen and rarely the desperate attempt to become farmers. Generally it is understood that all are necessary for life and higher castes try not to look down on lower castes knowing that they will have to do the work themselves if they don't respect those that supply their basic needs.

One great equalizer is fencing, the national sport of Cyberia. Caste does not matter in fencing, the tradition of fighting has nothing to do with the practical proficiency of the economy, and it is not uncommon for a miner to best an Engineer. The costs of the sport are balanced because as equipment are prizes, so if a poor person proves skillful against other amateurs, they get what they need to work their way up the ranks so in the highest match, skill alone trumps any other advantage one may have. Cyborgs are generally peaceful and only engage in swordsmanship in memory of the legendary swordsmanship of Golem himself.

One notable quality of cyborgs is their innate use of electricity both magically and non-magically. Normally they use it only for powering their cybernetics, but they have also refined the art of channeling their electricity into tools and weapons, making their favored class Spellsword, which is unique to Cyborgs as nobody else can use such abilities in their world. By the time a child has grown to use a cybernetic arm, they have already been able to use Enthunder, and can easily learn to use Enthundara without the need for a crystal. Using a thunder crystal shard, they can develop Enthundaga, and a fire crystal shard allows them to develop Enfire, Enfira, and Enfiraga, and using both with a blessing from Levithan unlocks Enflare. If they acquire a dark crystal shard they can use sword magic of the dark element as well as status effects, but such shards are hard to come by and even then, the cursed shards will invariably backfire on the cyborg.

The Thunder Crystal seemed to sustain the persistent thunder storm for the better part of the last thousand years, but twenty-two years ago when the crystal shattered, the thunderstorm stopped and the landscape of Cyberia has slowly changed, getting more verdant as vegetation starts to spread over the less hostile landscape. There is still a barren desert plateau where the crystal used to be.

More World Building or My Final Fantasy

A few weeks ago I posted about my plans for a sequel to Final Fantasy Spirits Within, this week I would like to share my plans for the next Final Fantasy game, you know, whenever Square Enix will let me try writing a scenario for them.

In the beginning there were four gods, Leviathan the Water Dragon, Cait Sith the Fire Cat, Golem the Thunder Cyborg, and Chaos the Dark Demon. They created the world together and then Leviathan created humans and the others created races in their own image. The demons of Chaos thought they were superior and reigned in tyranny, but the werecats and cyborgs fought back, but they were no match for how ruthless the demons were and were driven to the brink of extinction. Finally the gods saw that the world would be destroyed by war unless they stopped Chaos, and so they combined their power to crystallize him, and the price was that they were crystallized as well. The Dark Crystal was hidden away and the demons were forced into exile while the other crystals were revered for the next thousand years as humans built a civilization on their own without divine intervention. Then the Crystals of Fire and Thunder shattered and the shards were brought to the remaining intact Crystal of Water where it was found that a minor avatar of Leviathan would bless any couple who would bring a shard from each crystal, annointing the soul mates as divine gaurdians.

Twenty-two years after the Crystals shattered, an aspiring white mage named Sarah finds a shard of the Fire Crystal and begins her journey to the Water Crystal hoping to find her soul mate and accept her destiny. However, she is soon pursued by the Empire, a secular organization in opposition to the Crystals promoting a society of ordinary people without divine guidane. Sarah is protected by a pair of cyborgs named Biggs and Wedge and also a mysterious warrior named Garland who joine her in her journey and she is sure either Biggs or Wedge is her soul mate as they are also bearing Thunder Crystals. When they reach the Water Crystal, Leviathan blesses Sarah, but before her soul mate is revealed, Garland steals their crystals and reveals he is an agent of the Empire who has been conspiring to defeat Leviathan. Without their crystals they are powerless, but Wedge reveals he is a true cyborg with innate abilities that the crystal merely amplifies, and fearlessly stands against Garland, while Leviathan helps Sarah revealing they are a blessed union. Biggs feels left out and rages, surprisingly turning into a robotic monstrosity known as the Ultima Weapon. They are able to defeat him, but Garland excapes during this confrontation. Sarah and Wedge make a stand against the Empire to retrieve their crystals and find out that four years before the shattering, the Empire found the Dark Crystal and has been using its shards to war against the gods and free the demons from exile. As Sarah and Wedge reach the end of their quest, Garland reveals that he is in fact the reincarnation of Chaos and they are the reincarnations of Cait Sith and Golem, and draws them into a final battle in the realm of the demons exile.

The Gifted

I just got around to watching the season finale of The Gifted, the Fox series that continues the story of the world of the X-Men, presumably after the movies, although I didn't get to see the last few just yet so I dn't know exactly what happened. For those not in the know, apparently the final battle between the X-Men and the brotherhood was an event so big it has become known by it's date alone, much like 9/11. In the wake of that event, the mutants are no longer a secret and the prejudice isas strong as ever. While I understand public fear, I've always wondered if it was a smart idea to openly hate people who are actually capable of hurting you in such horrifying ways. It's one thing to be afraid and want to protect yourself, but the movement in the X-Men universe to put mutants down is short-sighted when civilians turn into lynch mobs against people who can make explosions at will. Anyway, there seems to be four sides in the conflict and a case is made for each to be the good guys while the other three serve as villains, it all depends on the perspective of the character featured in each scene.

According to the promotional ads the central characters are the Strucker family, led by patriarch Reed Strucker, a prosecutor who gets the brunt of cases involving mutants, and he has trusted in the law that he serves to uphold, that is until his children turn out to be mutants. Andy Strucker is being bullied at school and his rage manifests in the destuction of a school dance. His sister Lauren saves him with her more defensive power and when they are both outed they are forced on the run. In an instant their parents put their children first before anything, even Reed's career, and he uses his knowledge of the Mutant Underground that he used to prosecute to try to smuggle his family somewhere safe, effectively ending his career. The Struckers are a heart-warming contrast to the rest of the world where most mutants are instantly outcast and abandoned by their parents or forced to hide their powers, the Struckers simply accept what has happened and try to survive together as a family. The Struckers go into hiding with the Mutant Underground where the parents become the outcasts as the only humans among mutants. Andy and Lauren are a little cliche in how her powers make her the protector and his make him the more destructive of the two and how they grow into personalities fitting their powers, which may seem appropriate if I hadn't seen the trope so many times, but the actors are working with the material and selling it well.

The primary villain for the first season is Jace Turner, the face of Sentinel Services, the government organization that is trying to control the mutant threat. Sentinel Services is the de facto villain against the mutants, but being represented by Jace there is a level of sympathy. During the infamous battle between the X-Men and the Brotherhood, his daughter was killed, an innocent child who was playing in a park when a stray explsion from the battle ended her life. Jace never found out which side was responsible and he doesn't care, he knows mutants are dangerous and he wants to protect people from this danger. He is motivated by revenge, but it's not the kind that leads to blind hate, rather caution taken to an extreme.

Then there's Roderick Campbell, the more secret villain who is turning mutants on each other, brain washing them into sleeper agents. He is so cruel and cold in everything he does he seems to be the true villain of the story until the season finale revels that he has a brother with cystic fibrosis which in the X-men universe gives him a really twisted perspective on genetics, that his family can be hit by such a debilitating genetic condition while there are others who seem to be blessed by their genetic mutations. His actions and personality make him such a bad guy, Jace Turnr seems like an anti-hero by comparison, but his motivations to use genetics to benefit humanity make him seem like a somewhat sympathetic character who may only appear to be a villain because the general perspective is in support of the mutants.

Finally, there is the Hellfire Club, which once included the Strucker's ancestors and Magneto, whose daughter is Polaris better known through the season as Lorna, the Leader of the Mutant Underground. Polaris can use magnetism like her father and she is also bipolar, which is cliche, but it leaves her with a complicated situation, stay with her lover and father of her unborn child in the mutant underground, or follow in her father's footsteps to rebuild the Hellfire Club. Again, this is approached with sympathy, unlike how X-Men introduces Magneto as the villain and you kind of hate him before you know why, Polaris is introduced as a hero and you watch her descent in such a relatable way that even when she gives in to her darker impulses, you know her well enough that you understand her decisions and question whether the moral argument against the Hellfire Club is enough to actually see her as a villain.

After looking at the other sides of the story, there is even an argument against the Mutant Underground, the successors of the X-Men, that thy may be the villains for everything they do to dodge the law even if it is for survival. If the second season is as interesting as the first, the X-Men may be playing second fiddle to The Gifted.