Dev Log 03 - Misho Needs a Friend

When Developing Misho it had become very clear to me that the base shape and look of the character was not cutting it and wasn't standing out. In my opinion this could easily be fixed with the addition of a typical companion character. This could make Misho stand out a lot more if the companion is visually interesting and add more depth to the Misho world. Another area that could be improved by the addition of a companion is the overall gameplay. This side character could be used to perform tasks such as the player's robotic companion in the 3rd person cover shooter Gears 5, where your a.i. companion Jack will stun enemies, deploy protection and gather weapons found on the battlefield all at the players request. Similar mechanics can be seen in games like Bethesda's Fallout 4 where an optional dog companion by the name of Dogmeat will collect useful items from the game environment. Though this mechanic requires too much input from the player and offers little to no reward most the time. Thought this same sort of mechanic can be seen and is easily done to a much better degree in 2K Game's Bioshock Infinite, in this game the player is accompanied by the A.I controlled Elizabeth who will on her own collect ammo and weapons for the player. This mechanic could easily be refined and possibly implemented into Misho, with the companion searching the environment for supplies or maybe acting as a warning system for the player if enemies are near. I will propose the idea to the group at the next team meeting.

When Proposing the character, two notable things came up with the character moving forward. These being that the character would be linked to Nerice's waypoint mechanic where s glowing orb will lead you through the environment, yet I felt the orb was too close to a character that was seen in the Zelda series. That's when I came up with the idea of having the character still linked to that mechanic but being a firefly and leading the player through the environment via its glowing abdomen.

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Ideation

This overall was an easy character to start fleshing out, when looking into firefly reference the creature already has a cuteness to it with even elements of a personality coming through. In the real-world the insect is rather small so this interpretation will be much bigger with the character needing to look good in scale along side Misho. I also wanted the character to feel like it looked comfortable hovering upright when the player would stop. As this character wasn't part of the original GDD and is my contribution to flesh out this world while still improving the overall gameplay and the essential exspirenece, I decided to not get members of the team to start concepting him as there was other areas that they needed to focus on. So the plan was to get a nice collection of source images and footage while looking at other insects and others games take on them and begin sculpting base shapes and presenting them to the group.

This was easily the only character during the development of the vertical slice that just hit the spot straight away in my opinion, even from this base block out you can see below I could already see the characters personality, how he would move in the environment and the small animated areas on the character with the wings fluttering the smaller arms twitching.

I went on to keep on doing minor changes and sending these into the groups slack chat getting minor notes on what to change till I came to have these last 3 designs you can see below with one of them just being the bug having its wings closed. The group would go on to like the design of the far left one which was also my personal fave. The design of that one has the shoulders resemble more of a humans I feel like this allows you to see it more as a character that can talk and express and less like just an insect.

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Evaluating the Base Design

with all of this done the final thing I wanted to do was to have a render of him along side Misho to feel as if it really just worked. Below you can see the render along with him drawn out with my original redesign sketch of Misho, in both cases I feel like the design works really well and they compliment each other beautifully. The group also seems to fully agree so I will continue working with this design and go on to get this character game ready.