I personally gravitated towards the Gothic Sci-fi and having a good feedback session with Amil after class we felt more confident locking in on that idea. I took time to develop some world building ideas and potential stretch goals for the project based on it.
Following our feedback from Amil and his suggestions to explore games like Scorn and the H.R. Giger aesthetics, which incorporate an organic feel into the sci-fi elements of the aesthetic, we took inspiration from the Lucifer Morningstar statue in the Holy Trinity Church as a hero asset and focal element. We really liked the idea of it being chained there, which prompted the question: why?
Also re-purposing the idea of a siege onto the island (inspired by Mont Saint-Michel in France) from the Neo-Noir Sci-fi proposal we wanted to give some context or justification as to why the Cathedral is under siege which could be this statue.
With the initial intent of creating a Cathedral that prompted us to consider having monks and I had recently seen some images of Schema Monks in Russia and thought they had some really cool robe designs that feels befitting.
I tried to create a cult-like element by having the monks worship the statue. I imagined that the monks were slowly compelled by voices from the statue to bring blood to feed it—from fallen soldiers, their own blood, blood from the shoreline (which could go through a scientific filtration system), and sacrifices. They could carry blood in skulls, buckets, helmets, or their hands from all areas of the island, creating blood trails and footprints that lead from these locations straight into the main door of the cathedral and to the statue.
The carpets in the cathedral could have been initially another colour but stained blood red over time by these deliveries.
Idea Notes:
-Weeping angel/morning star statue chained up/down within the main cathedral possibly in-front/over a blood pool/fountain and watched over by monks (inspired by Schema Monk Russia).
– Potential stone reasoning: vampiric- it may be that the angel turned to stone as a way of self preserving itself (inspiration from the Pillar Men from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure(1987)).
-The statue may have tubes connecting its back to the pool of blood as a way of absorbing the blood. Alternatively, their may be a balcony above the the statue where the monks pour blood over it. There also may be fountains/taps of blood leading up the walls.
STRETCH GOAL 1 could be have a phase showing the development later on in the level where the statue in patches starts to turn to a pale almost translucent skin like the Engineer from Prometheus (you can see the veins pumping blood through the statue). A compliment to this could be the Monks start to get paler from their loss of blood and lifeless (zombie like) as their sense of self leaves them and they become almost a hive mind.
STRETCH GOAL 2 tapestry/painting on the main dome of the cathedral showing the cathedral when it was first built, when the angel was trapped, when it turned to stone, when it started to compel the monks to give it blood, maybe last panel chaos and torment- something that is to come.
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