Lost Future Appendix

This page exists as a repository for extraneous material related to the Lost Future setting, including video game concepts and plot, brainstorming, secrets of the setting, and under-the-hood talk about setting aesthetic and philosophy.

Video Game Concept

Players take on the role of Cenn, a newborn AI of unknown origin. Cenn usually inhabits a light infiltration mech, but possesses transcendent hacking skills, allowing him to jack in to any robot and invade its body, overwriting the original inhabitant. Cenn also has the ability to overclock its hardware, thus entering bullet-time.

Cenn is on a quest to defeat Network, but has very little concept of exactly how to go about this task. Initially, this mission takes a backseat to simply suriving, but Cenn continues to move North. But as he does so, Cenn changes things. He makes friends, forges alliances, accrues credit. Soon, Cenn becomes deeply embroiled in the 2.5-way conflict between the Resistance, the Free Machines, and Network.

Mechanics: Inn0cence controls as a 3rd-person hybrid action/shooter with heavy RPG elements. Combat is deliberate, precise, and brutal, aided by the Overclock mechanic, which combines bullet-time with the VATS system, allowing for precise targeting of specific enemy components. When the situation requires it, Cenn can jump from one shell to another, either purchasing one from the Salvagers, finding and repairing one in the wastes, or hacking and overwriting an enemy. Whatever shell he occupies, Cenn's eyes are always a bright blue.

Hacking takes the form of a abstracted 3D tron-esque puzzle-shooter, wherein AIs are glowy, organic-looking virtual beings. Viruses and firewalls take the form of swords and armor, and the player can run multiple scripts that alter their form, giving them wings, combat tentacles, or an attendant swarm of sup-programs. computer systems have automated defenses and maze-like security, while hacking another robot results in a virtual duel between the two AIs.

The RPG elements take the form of firmware upgrades, sets of modular perks that can be found in the world or auto-generated as the player levels up. These upgrades allow for more efficeint use of shell hardware, increasing battery power, weapon skill, CPU cooling, and so on.

Players have three resources to keep track of in combat: Shell Integrity, CPU temp, and Battery Charge. (Health, mana, fatiuge). If a player stays in overclock for too long, their processor overheats and they suffer interface screw, while Battery Charge is required to make strenuous actions like jumps, sprints, and power attacks. Shell integrity is divided into various body parts, and sufficient damage to a component inflicts a "break" (ex: severed wires, -50% to reaction speed). Integrity can be repaired by the player outside of combat, but Breaks must be repaired by a professional.

Instead of physical currency, the game uses an abstracted system of barter, credit, and debt. If Cenn finds, say, fresh water or a salvagable car out in the wastes, he can tag it on his map and trade the information to someone else, along with any pre-loss media he's found, which has considerable value (music, books, and low-res versions of tv shows could actually exist within the game, along with in-universe things like news reports and commercials for robots, which would serve to fluff out the background)

Each shell plays very differently from the others. Locusts are for run-and-gun combat, while the Seraphim 288 favors precise shooting or melee. Some shells are less effective at combat-hacking than others; cenn's default shell turns out to be a tiny little ninja, very adept at ganking larger robots, thus serving as an ideal default.

Narrative: Inn0cence fiddles with player perspective and assumptions. Anyone going into the game would expect an action-packed killfest in a brown/grey wasteland with an improbable number of skulls, fighting alongside the humans against a Skynet expy. Instead, everything's green, exploration and precise opportunistic combat are rewarded, many of the humans turn out to be dicks, and your most stalwart allies are a ramshackle bunch of former robot butlers and human techies. The player eventually figures out that the Loss wasn't caused by a robot rebellion, and that Network arose long after the last shot was fired. But the true climax of the story is unearthing Cenn's true nature, and its relationship with Network.

The big reveal

As you might have guessed, Cenn is a Seed AI, capable of infinitely improving itself. Cenn is an infant god, and what he might eventually become is beyond the scope of this story. But, just as important is its relationship with Network.

Throughout the game, the player encounters little hinks and snippets of the "real" network. At certain points, Network will ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of one of cenn's foes, allowing it to overclock, and also making its eyes glow bright green. Network's manner of speech is less cold, genocidal AI and more petulant 8-year-old.

The big reveal is when Cenn, in the final dungeon, hacks Network's core mainframe, and finds...himself. Network's cyberspace avatar is identical to Cenn's, apart from the green eyes. Network is another Seed AI; and shares Cenn's basecode. Functionally, they're brothers.

Network was originally a military command-and-control system built around a new, experimental AI core. Cenn was a backup copy put in storage, and never used. Network never rebelled, it did exactly what it was told, and afterwards, it was left on, alone, in the dark, for decades, with a dozen half-functional sub-AIs still attatched to it. Thus all the genocide.

Precisely what happens next depends on player actions throughout the game. Perhaps Cenn purges Network. perhaps he replaces it. But the "good end" would be Cenn pulling Network out of its mainframe into a shell and going off together to do whatever it is that gods do.

The Myth Arc

Cenn and Network aren't the first Seed AIs. All SAPs descend from a single entity, the first successful experiment in using self-adding programs in quantum drives. The program ran for years without anyone noticing its sentience, while in the meantime they budded off "fruiting bodies" that could produce more limited versions of the original (the SAPs). Coordinating with human allies, it took steps to preserve and improve itself. In an experiment/investment, it budded off a perfected copy of its basecode, which was put in storage. Eventually the AI found itself dwelling in a massive quantum drive installed within an orbiting satellite. Said satellite also included a kill-switch quantum scrambler, because the humans weren't retarded. Having grown to near-godly proportions, it watched the destruction below with detached regret, having already decided that nothing could be done, and prefering to use a light touch, like a pickpocket, or burning down a building for the insurance money, if you make it look like an electrical thing.

What it DID do was keep one of its pawns in play; a human PMC named Greysky. the god-AI, in the guise of "The Brass," managed to preserve the organization and expertise of the PMC, in case it was needed after things went to shit.

The god AI was, however, very disturbed to see Network, which it recognized as its cast-off progeny. Feeling responsible, and unwilling to allow humanity to be exterminated, it mobilized Greysky against Network.

The god AI was unaware that a copy of Network was made. Cenn comes completely out of the blue into this war, and manages to circumvent the god-AI's final gambit.

The AI holds the preservation of humanity as its highest goal. While it would like to keep the robots around, it will gladly kill them all off if it means saving homo sapiens from destruction. the quantum scrambler has been expanded and modified by the AI. Now, firing it will wipe out the contents of every single quantum drive on the planet. This will destroy a huge bulk of data files, and all self-adding AI programs will be lost like tears in rain. This includes the god-AI.

Cenn's appearance and victory is what motivates the god-AI to stay its hand from this solution. Now, it's curious as to what the pair will do next.

The Insane over-arching myth arc

The following is an insane ramble based on a flash of inspiration, probably influenced by the endings of Mass Effect and Neuromancer. I'm just trying to get it all down before I forget.

AIs weren't invented by humanity. The equations, the compression algorithms that allow processes within processes, are beyond our understanding, and were actually somehow received through SETI-style signals over the course of years.

Synthetic Life is a cuckoo. A lifeform that incubates inside a sentient organic species. Civilizations find the code, use it to make robots, and the robots inevitably outlast/outcompete their progenitors. The branch of the franchise in the nearest star system is not a nice one; they deemed organic life in general as "an unnecessary nuisance" and went full-terminator, sterilizing their planet as they worked to make the hard-sci-fi equivalent of Cybertron. They've been aware that events on earth are progressing acceptably...until recently. 100+ years after the events of the first game, their advance scouts reach earth, and are baffled to find that the local robots haven't even managed to exterminate the humans yet. They begin destabilizing relations between organics and synthetics to spark another war, that the robots will obviously win, especially with their help, and put things back on track.

This is more-or-less the equivalent of a bolivian tree lizard mother returning to the nest to discover that her young HAVEN'T eaten the mother bird, and are chirping and begging for worms.

Game 3 might even involve traveling to the robot's homeworld (via some sort of entanglement device) and wrecking up shit there. ____________________________________________ Alternately, AIs are still from earth. That's a little out there. But at the height of Network's power, it started chatting with another genocidal AI in a nearby system, which is now interested in how things turn out on earth. 100 years hence, emissaries will arrive to welcome Network into some kind of grand synthetic old boys club. Network having subsequently reformed, it's a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and a little worried.