Design Ideas

Ideas I’ve had for mechanics or games.

Ideas for Unconventional Games

Celia Wagar1 Comment

You talked about in one of your articles that there some things that we haven’t begun to explore in terms of gameplay. Can you share some of those ideas?

Mang, I’ve been sharing those ideas. I drop ideas all the time.

Here’s some random ones out of my idea file (some are obviously repeats of stuff I’ve said before):

A game entirely (or heavily) based on whiff punishes to get damage.

FTL except remade to be about all the mathematics you would learn at a real naval academy, practically applied to randomized situations. Make sure the ship doesn’t sink, explode, capsize, etc

Moving checkpoints, instead if going back to the checkpoint you just activated, you go back 2 checkpoints instead.

Parrying system that somehow integrates spacing more, like different attacks need to be parried at different spacings. Parrying system that needs a setup from the other game mechanics before it can be used, so parries don’t/can’t become the dominant or sole gameplay system.

Dragon’s dogma style magic system based on charging spells for long periods of time. Imagine you have 3 strengths of spell, light, medium, and heavy. Lights can be used pretty quickly, mediums have some startup, heavy are long and you gotta charge them. Big deal is, while charging heavies, you can’t use mediums, but you can use lights, and you take a hit to your mobility. So picture a dude with one hand in the air charging, zipping off little magic missiles to keep enemies at bay as he darts around them, then unleashing a typhoon when fully charged.

An overpowered super mode that makes you take/deal more damage and disables your ability to dodge, and takes a while in that mode before you actually deal tons more damage, so if you want to cheese, you gotta do it the hard way and survive to the point where you can wipe the enemy out.

Option to forsake bonus powerup type rewards in order to unlock hidden boss fights, content, endings, etc

An RTS with an overall health meter that is depleted each time a unit is destroyed, and when units are destroyed they are queued up to respawn at a certain point for free.

Vertical oriented “platformer” where you “jump” out to the left or right from a central pathway upwards, with gravity pulling you back into the center. Could lock onto other paths out in space and those become center of gravity.

RPG game about pacifism, where all your dialogue options deal damage to the opponent’s “will bar” and cause your character to shoot a stream of bullets at the enemy. See MSPA’s Sleuth Diplomacy and Listening to Both Sides of the Argument.

Rhythm platformer, you jump in beat with the music uncontrollably, automatically, without input. Gotta platform through levels by timing movements with when the jumps come in songs.

A fighting game that, as an on-going experiment, only nerfs characters to balance them. Imagine nerfing all of Melee to Kirby’s level.

Top-down twin-stick melee combat game.

Deep Mind on Starcraft 2: Competitive AI in Real-Time

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you thinik of Blizzard’s collaboration with Google to developing sophisticated Starcraft 2 AI using Google’s Deep Mind?

I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited as hell. However I think they should try a version where they train it with the visuals on a 250ms delay, because unlike chess, this is a realtime game. Humans realistically operate with a delay between when something actually occurs, and when it reaches our brains. An AI playing a realtime game can frequently employ strategies that are not only better than human ones, but which are literally impossible for humans. My classic example is SFA Akuma, which will walk up to you, and if you press a button, shoryuken, if you block, throw, and if you shoryuken, block you and punish. It destroys the RPS loops that define the game. It’s effectively not even playing the same game arguably.

The AI in Starcraft itself is already way better than any human player (just way stupider), with up to 3000 APM depending on what it’s doing. It can operate every unit individually if it wants to, using units like Ghosts to hard counter mech builds with the lockdown ability fired from every ghost individually onto each individual unit, when in real starcraft, ghosts are practically useless because no human player can possibly micro like that.

You’ll notice that the lockdown ability didn’t return in starcraft 2 where ability units like the high templar are rigged to only have 1 unit cast the relevant ability when multiple of the same unit are selected, because it would have made the above tactic really really easy.

The point is, in realtime games, unlike turn based games like Go, computers are frequently able to beat humans in simple ways that don’t really reflect the way the game is normally played. A 250ms delay might produce something that looks more like optimal human play rather than play that is borderline rigged cheating.

Like, we want AI to beat us in playing roughly the same game we’re playing, ostensibly, but if you remove this human limitation, then it’s like you’re effectively playing poker without hiding your hand, not very interesting.

Improving Beat Em Up AI

Celia WagarLeave a comment

Do you think the beat em up genre could do with a level of shaking up in the AI department? I find that the enemies mostly repeat the same moveset, and don’t act all the dynamic most of the time. Although the same could probably be argued about the enemies in a lot of martial arts films.

Here’s one big change: Record when the player deals damage, and perform attacks with inverse proportionality to where damage is taken. Keep updating this as the battle goes on. So if the player is only trying to deal damage during one particular cycle, or punish one particular attack, start using that attack less, forcing them to get damage elsewhere. This can help force continuous aggression from the player and improvisation instead of really safe play.

Beyond that, better AI is really a matter of thinking up specific behavioral characteristics. Making observably good AI is hard. Halo enemies dodge only after they’re initially shot, or if you throw a grenade or fire a slow moving shot. They can’t dodge pre-emptively or on reaction to your shots, so their dodging behavior is predictable instead of random. Continue reading →

Stealth Game Distraction Tools

Celia Wagar4 Comments

Stealth games need more distraction tools, here’s a list:

Old ideas:

Tap, bring enemies over to your position via sound, tapping on walls, or simply making noise in place
Coin, throw an object to make noise far from you

flash bang, temporarily disable enemies, but alert them. Can stun them during alert phase to allow for an escape.

Smoke Grenade, Obscures vision inside of and into an area temporarily, but alerts guards

Tranq, shoot someone from afar, they conk out after a delay

Sneak/Crouchwalk, move silently, but slowly.

blackjack, hit someone from behind/up close, they conk out.

Remote detonated noise maker, makes a noise, needs to be planted in advance

Water Arrow, shut off light sources

Moss Arrow, dampens sound on a surface

Decoy, guards will follow it when in alert if they can’t see you, will be drawn to it otherwise, dishonored 2 lets you swap places with your decoy and leaves the decoy to fight

Cardboard Box, move slower, but ignored while staying still, unless directly in guard’s path
Camouflage mat, like cardboard box, but must be set up

Fulton, dispose of guard bodies

Stealth Action Camo/invisibility potion, cannot be directly perceived, lasts a limited amount of time.

Disguise, allows access to areas granted by disguise. Certain suspicious actions may trigger an alert
Possession, like disguise, but possess a guard or animal, moving them around until they’re released.

Run Silent, removes the sound of your footsteps temporarily, allowing you to move fast silently.

Camoflage, blend into certain areas/surfaces, can be changed to match surfaces, octocamo in MGS4 changed automatically based on staying still

thermal vision/wallhacks, lets you see through walls, usually blinded by sources of light or heat, like grenades or flashbangs

Scouting Orb, see from another viewpoint, limited use

Lean, see around corners, making yourself slightly visible in the process.

Directional Microphone, Hear further in a specific direction

EMP/Chaff grenade, disables electronic sensors temporarily without alert

Magazine/stuffed puppy snare, lures enemies in and holds their attention, even when in investigation mode

Fake Death/Revival pills, Allows a player to fake being killed during an alert, then revive themselves, wait too long and die for real

Handkerchief, inconspicuous melee conk during disguise
Cig Spray, inconspicuous slightly ranged conk during disguise

Colored Smoke Grenades (Yellow, Red, Green, Blue), From MGS4, trigger enemies to laugh, get mad, scream, or get sad, then fall unconscious afterwards. Laughing has enemies kill those on their side, anger has them kill other non-allied enemy combatants. During these last two they’ll ignore snake. While screaming they’ll run around.

Bamboo dart, stuns enemy very briefly, causes them to investigate where it came from

Caltrops, stuns enemy when walked over

Blink, instant teleport to a position, ignoring everything between including guards and their line of sight. Can get away when spotted, ideally sets the investigation point to where you teleport to.

Swoop, move quickly across a short distance without making sound, limited by a recovery/cooldown time.

Bend time, slows guards, making it easier to move around them.

Stops guards, making it easier to move around them, or possibly through their line of sight temporarily.

Remote Drone/clone/spiderbot, can scout areas, sometimes using different routes and movement abilities than you, attack or interfere with enemies without risking yourself. Usually has limited environmental interactions, being incapable of completing some objectives

Patsy, accuse other guard of being a bad guy while disguised during a clearing phase

New Ideas:

Blur Ward, Place a small zone that when guards step into it, they cannot perceive anything outside that zone, but don’t realize something funny is up unless something egregious happens, or maybe the effect wears off based on how long they stay in there.

LIFE gun, Nonlethal tranq weapon that overheals enemies and buffs them for when they wake back up, so you can tranq people, but in the process you’re making them more powerful later

Holo-wall, an object that makes a detour guards must move around, can make hiding spots out of dead end hallways. Expires when passed by too much or after a period of time

Mass Mind Tuner, changes guard’s affinities towards certain objects, lets say red, yellow, and blue arbitrarily, so they patrol around these objects more frequently. Allows you to adjust the guard patrol patterns, but as a matter of level design, this opens up and closes different routes as well as forcing guards in the short term to move by you, so you gotta keep your wits about you (this absolutely depends on good level design and guard scheduling). Can have differing effects based on each guard’s distance from the affiliated object at the time of tuning, determining the direction they go, so the player needs to use timing and adapt in the moment.

Smelly garbage, makes guards adverse to moving near an area, might make them surround the areas around it though. (needs a better drawback, and a clear counter)

Reversi, Reverse guard patrol schedules, so they patrol backwards

Fake Grenade, makes guards rush away from a specific point, potentially onto the player’s position.

Slow Guard, makes a specific guard’s movements slower or stopped temporarily, broken by alert. Slow people while they’re in favorable positions. Faster to alert in this state, maybe wider peripheral vision

Caffeine Shot. Guard spends less time standing still, goes through patrol route faster. Speed people up to get them out of your hair quicker. Alert triggered more quickly, buffs enemies during alert.

Recall Point. Set a point that can be teleported back to, maybe takes time to teleport back to, maybe the point is conspicuous and can be destroyed.

Fear Gas, (inspired by the MGS4 green gas grenade) causes enemies to temporarily run in fear, ignoring the player while doing so, mixes up guard positions all over the place, potentially in good and bad positions, gives you a chance to move through enemies in the short term. Alternatively, you could need to hide while the fear effect is going on and take advantage of it afterwards.

Darkness aura, decrease guard vision cones in a limited area, triggers investigation and clearing of area. Like a less effective, but presumably larger radius smoke grenade.

Pretty Painting, draws guard attention, they don’t investigate it, but they can’t look away from it while patrolling, effect is stronger as they get closer to it. Won’t look over their shoulder at it though.

Position Swapper, swaps your position with a guard or other person. Makes them want to get back to where they just were.

Sleep gas but slow, temporarily makes a small area that will put enemies to sleep if they stay in it for too long.

Sleep poison, sets guard to clearing mode, gives them time limit to find you before succumbing to sleep, ineffective on alerted enemies

Shoulder Tap, causes enemy to turn around in your direction and look around for a bit.

Instant Barricade, throws up a wall behind you that enemies need to destroy or go around. Very loud.

Push, shunts enemies further away from you, making space to run. Obviously triggers alert.

Trip Wire, a wire that trips enemies who run over it, temporarily stunning them, ineffective on enemies in idle or investigating states, will be removed by those and trigger clearing. When Tripped, extra time can be devoted on knocked down enemies to easily knock them out.

ADHD Inducer, Guard in Alert or Clearing is temporarily forced down into doing an idle patrol of the immediate area. If they can directly perceive you when hit, they will only have a momentary lapse in concentration.

Swift Kick in the Shins, slows guards down.

Sonic Flashbang, deafens guards temporarily, also stuns for a brief period. Causes them to go into clearing or alert phase while still deaf.

Meme Machine: Change a guard’s memory so it remembers everything that they currently know as being in the wrong state

Amnesia: Wipe all current object state knowledge

Meme Virus, set a charge on one guard, have them pass it off whenever they encounter another guard, so it gets passed between guards one by one. Not duplicated, just passed. Then some effect on whoever’s holding it.

Block off doors, either with an adhesive tool, or by physically moving objects in front of them.

Recorder/tapedeck, record guard conversations and play them back in different places for an effect, maybe to keep people out of a room

Sticky floor: Slows down pursuers who walk through it. Useful in escapes.
Glue bomb/thrown object: throw at people chasing you to stun them briefly, giving you a chance to run away. Probably only stun for like half a second, because more than that would end the chase completely.

Constraints to think about:

Guard movement paths through levels, predicting and affecting it. How can you reward someone for predicting where a guard will be in the future? How can you reward them for predicting where multiple guards will be in the future? How can guard paths be altered strategically, how can this have drawbacks as well as benefits? Maybe tune guard affinities to inspect and patrol around certain areas?

Items targeted at interacting with different guard states (idle, investigate, clearing, alert, unconscious, dead). How can you interestingly move them from one state to another? How can you differentiate the states? How can you manipulate them while keeping them in the same state?

How can these be made to have varying effects based on when and where they’re used in relation to the guards?

How can the guards’ scheduling be affected?

Scale, how can you make people worry about future and past encounters more? Maybe a way of setting up

Affect guard vision, change what they look at?

How can escaping be made more interesting? Ideally in cycles of causing the alert, running away, and triggering more alerts as you go.

How can clearing phases be made more interesting? How do you force people to pick good hiding spots, then move from them regularly? How do you give people options when they’re cornered? How do you give people options to get the guards to not look where you are currently hiding versus the other hiding spots in the room? Rather, how do you make selecting a good hiding spot a fuzzy heuristic evaluation instead of a binary right or wrong?

Guard states

Idle: No perception of the player, purely following schedule
Investigation: moving slowly to look at something outside of patrol, small perception of player, not coordinating
Caution: Follows Alert and Clearing phases, like Idle, but skips investigation phase to go directly to clearing, and has more aggressive and fast patrol patterns.
Clearing: Moving quickly to check over areas, follows direct perception of player, but not currently perceiving player, coordinating together
Alert: Moving to attack player, directly perceiving player, coordinating together
Unconscious: Cannot act, revives after a timer, can be revived by other guards, triggers investigation or clearing
Dead: Cannot Act, triggers clearing
Injured: Can act, Actions impaired during active states

On guard AI: maybe enemies could have narrower vision cones during alert and clearing phases and more wide ones during investigation and idle. So they have the easiest time seeing you when idle, and the hardest time while alerted. This also incentivizes moving around more during clearing and alert phases, when players normally want to bunker up.

General categories of tools in Stealth games:

– Distraction

– Escape

– Information

– Self Obscuring

– Disablers (weapons)

– Mobility/Area Access

Enemy Ideas:

Eleven Men, an enemy that can split off and rejoin

An enemy that can see in all directions but not hear (dishonored 2 sort of did this with jindosh’s robots, but only 2 directions, which makes more sense than seeing in all directions, which is kind of dumb actually. narrower vision cones in multiple directions makes a lot of sense)

Enemy that is blind, but good hearing. (feel like this has been done before)

An enemy that can see extremely far, but tight like a laser beam

Enemies that function like pacman ghosts, alternating between investigation phase and sleep phases, regardless of what you do and whether you trigger them, so there’s always some enemies that aren’t just purely patrolling (and therefore function as simple timing puzzles), but are actively looking for you and thus need to be avoided.

Cultivating Creativity in Game Concepts

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What is your thought process when coming up with game ideas? Do you think of the premise first? The game mechancs? The genre? All of the above?

I bounce all over the place. Creativity is the product of constant tinkering and recombining pieces. It’s about coming at things from different angles and being persistent about it. Sometimes I try to think about how FPS games can inherit certain desirable behaviors from fighting games. Sometimes I try to think up ways to counter common complaints with a genre (RTS is all about APM? How can we continue to incentivize APM, but limit its effect over more tactical play?) Sometimes I try to think of how to combine weird physics models with projectiles, or character/enemy behaviors, sometimes I see a really cool animated gif and ask if you could make a mechanic out of that. Continue reading →

What Would An FPS Game by Platinum Look Like?

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What would a FPS made by Platinum look like? Assuming it was made for a mouse in mind unlike Vanquish

Funny, I was thinking about how to build an FPS combo system this morning. I don’t think they’d ever make something like my idea though (involves a lot of subtle manipulation of hitstun values in a weird way no other game does). Suibriel, the Desync Dev, suggested it would be like Painkiller + Vanquish, which makes a lot of sense (though I didn’t play Pankiller yet, but I know it’s about fighting waves of enemies in arenas, much like platinum games).
Continue reading →

Making Team Shooter Healers Interesting

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of videogame characters who specialize in healing other team mates like Mercy, or the Medic?

I mean, this only really applies to Overwatch and TF2. Other games like Dota and MMOs have healers, but they don’t really overlap with the things I have to say about healers in those particular team shooters.

Basically, Mercy and the Medic, characters like them (with an auto-lock heal beam) in these team based shooters have a tendency to be really powerful. Medic was the most powerful character in TF2, and Mercy has been at or close to the top frequently. Lucio is actually better than Mercy and has been top tier consistently throughout overwatch’s life cycle. These characters serve a valuable function that all the other characters need, because these games have a slow pace of movement, and a low time to kill, factors which compound on each other. You basically always need and always want a healer rather than another damage dealer or support. They’re that essential to winning.

What kind of sucks about them though is, they’re not terribly interesting characters (except perhaps Lucio). They generally get to move faster than other characters, but their input on the battle is basically holding M1 and avoiding getting shot. Mercy is kind of interesting, because she can dash to the target she’s healing (and otherwise moves slower than the other characters), glide along in the air, and resurrect everyone on her team within a certain radius.

TF2 put an interesting spin on the medic with the vaccinator: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Vaccinator A weapon which allows the medic to select a resistance for their heal target, between bullets, explosive, and fire, making the process of healing the target slightly more involved, but overall is still kinda just, hold the button and stay close, but don’t get hit.

Making a character that is more interesting than that in a healing role is kinda tricky and I don’t have any good ideas off the top of my head. Making it so healing characters aren’t as necessary to a team means making a game where you don’t always fight battles of attrition, but rather more rock paper scissors oriented fights. Right now you can’t avoid losing damage, so you need a way to heal it or you can’t have a sustained map presence. Also making the game faster helps, but also makes it harder to maintain a defensive perimeter.

Stealth Without Guns

Celia Wagar1 Comment

1. Is Thi4f worth playing? I”m not really experienced in the stealth genre but I know you are supposed to be god-like at that game. 2. Agree/disagree with the thesis of this post? https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/52seai/stealth_games_need_to_stop_giving_us_guns/

1. No. Really no. Unless for some reason you really want to see how the swoop works, because I thought that mechanic was pretty cool and totally worth stealing for a worthwhile game, don’t bother.

I heard when the game was released that there would be custom difficulty modes and leaderboards based on who could beat the game with a custom difficulty setting, and that whoever got to a certain rank would sit there forever, instead of getting dethroned by someone playing on the same difficulty with a faster time. My intention was to download the game, beat it with every modifier turned on, and then write a review being the permanent best player in the world. In practice, I could not accomplish this, because beating the whole game in one go is fucking insane. I got glitches that would randomly kill me in a late level, you were supposed to press space to do a context sensitive jump, but it wouldn’t register sometimes and you’d swoop off the ledge and just die right there. I was number 1 in the world when that review went up, but not with the maximum possible rank. I was rushing to complete the review, and I actually had a thesis project I was putting off to work on it, so I didn’t have additional time to try to get the maximum score possible and wreck that game permanently. It was a good accomplishment for the time though and makes for a good story. How many journalists have literally become the quantifiable best player in the world for their review? Continue reading →

Stealth Beat ‘Em Up Pitch

Celia WagarLeave a comment

Metal Gear Rising tried to combine hack and slash gameplay with stealth and most folks weren’t too keen on it. What do you think people could do to make this combination work?

I think it would work with kind of a Far Cry or Crysis style approach, where you move into and out of stealth as you attack enemies. Would require levels that let you escape into cover and move behind enemies.

Here’s my pitch: Imagine pac-man or bomber-man shaped levels from a top down perspective. Similar to the vulcan raven fight in MGS1. You have a bunch of pillars or other forms of cover with ways around them. A few more open areas as well. Continue reading →

Air Gear Game Design Ideas

Celia Wagar5 Comments

Which mango series do you think would have some great material to be used in a videogame?

Air Gear, no doubt.

I’ve been rereading it recently and just going, holy crap this would make such an amazing game, but it would be so impossible.

It just has this amazingly rich system it built for skating. It was inspired by Jet Set Radio, but took the concept a lot further and made it more into its own thing, focusing less on graffiti and more on turf wars + the powered skates themselves.

It has this core concept of powered inline skates, these can be customized with different parts and there are different types, riders that operate in teams and compete over turf in different competitions that are varied within each category, progression from simpler tricks to harder ones, different styles of tricks that different riders specialize in, the 8 roads that categorize the different styles of tricks and 8 kings who are the masters of each road, and even tuners who help repair and “tune” the different skates to perform their best.

Here’s a few wiki entries explaining things, there are unmarked spoilers for the biggest twist in the series, so be warned.
http://airgear.wikia.com/wiki/Air_Trecks
http://airgear.wikia.com/wiki/Parts_War
http://airgear.wikia.com/wiki/Kings_and_Roads
http://airgear.wikia.com/wiki/Regalias

And imagining a game of this is awesome, because it has this incredible hero’s journey thing going on with it. The main character starts out barely being able to walk in air trek skates, to riding up flagpoles, to being able to go up walls, to eventually riding on pure air. Other characters learn to shoot fire from their skates, freeze time, and shoot layers of wind at their opponents. There’s a lot of assorted powers throughout the series, but the key is there’s this sense that characters learn them through effort and experimentation. Naturally, having played fighting games and speedrunning mirror’s edge, I have a good idea what this could feel like. When I first learned to kick glitch in mirror’s edge, it was a world opened up to me. It was magical. One of the core themes of Air Gear is this magic of pulling off a neat trick.

The trouble, the part where it’s impossible is, how do you allow players to do all these moves? How do you allow players to learn these moves? How do you pack all these tricks and moves into a system which is naturally designed to have this progression from normal skating to grinding to wallriding to flying across buildings and eventually flying through the air? How do you make players steadily go through these stages?

Part of the reason there can’t ever be a game of Air Gear that lives up to the source is any normal game designer would solve this effortlessly by just making a stat system. Okay, you’ve done 30 dashes, your speed levels up. 30 wallrides, now you can wallride a bit higher. Your overall trick level is 20, now you have access to elemental tricks, all of which are one-button that you can bind to whatever face button or trigger you want.

What I’d really like to see is a control system that somehow emulates the way characters learn tricks. You can take some cues from fighting games, speedrun tricks, mirror’s edge and of course Skate for this.

But how do you feasibly build that, introduce new concepts to the player over time, and avoid players accidentally riding on sheer air by buttonmashing? I don’t honestly know. Is it even possible on current controllers?

Maybe you could have leveling up for the styles and tuning just to keep the insane number of possible tricks you could do reasonable?

The perfect inspiration for air gear tricks is super metroid tricks. The walljump, shine spark, space jump. They’re all really nice design inspirations for low affordance tech. There could be RPG systems that actively change how easy the inputs are to do, like lengthening the windows or even changing the read algorithms to add extra shortcuts.

It’s not a style of game that really conforms to the types of game design that is common nowadays. You’d have to work out how the environments would work, all the things players could trick off of, how to combine tricks, a lot of things.

But damn, it could be awesome. I might write up a design doc if I get any good ideas for it.

So why do you like Air Gear so much? Genuinely curious.

It’s hard to explain without spoiling it. The anime is a good adaptation in terms of just having a better intro, building up the beef between Ikki and the Skull Saders better, as well as introducing the world of the storm riders a bit better, but after that it doesn’t really do the manga justice, and unfortunately a lot of the early arcs aren’t so great, especially behemoth, which is practically just anime fighting instead of inline skating.

What I like about it and what got me into it is, it builds up this world with a real mythic force behind it. There’s this sense of the whole stormrider culture of competition and mutual cooperative self improvement through competition, which is something I personally identify strongly with. Then in the background, there’s the Kings, and the Roads, and the Regalia, and a lot of it is kept vague early on. Early on Ikki sees the Wing Road, and it’s not portrayed as a literal element of magic, but there’s still this sense of manifest destiny that he’s going to climb to the top and learn how to fly. Having the crowd in the anime version of the Devil’s 30/30 was a great touch, and not showing his final attempt was probably the best wrap-up they could have given that limited part they were able to adapt.

Then he starts learning wind road stuff directly from Sora and you have that whole hero’s journey mentor thing going on, with it further cementing manifest destiny because Sora is someone who was nearly crowned the wind king, but he got too high and came crashing down, which is related to the initial fears that Ikki should be kept away from the stormrider world, and his journey to become strong so he can do what he loves. And then you learn that the tower of tropheaum isn’t some metaphor but is a real thing controlled by none other than the people he was brought up with, but because of his path to become the wind king, he’s destined to fight them, even though Ringo is in love with him and they’ve been close ever since they were kids.

And here’s where the big spoilers come in:

And then you find out that ALL OF THAT IS BULLSHIT! His Mentor, Sora planted ALL THIS STUFF ON THE INTERNET to create the entire stormrider mythology. He trained Ikki to be the wind king and set up Genesis in the first place as a monumental distraction for everyone so he and his twin brother could swoop in at the last moment, steal the wind regalia that was stolen and hidden from him years beforehand, as well as a special Toul Tool To tuner. You get this massive betrayal by the mentor character mid-story when it seems like Ikki was finally gearing up to take down Sleeping Forest. From there all kinds of shit gets fucked up, and Ikki finds out the real truth about the Tower of Trophaeum. But kind of the genius of it is that because it’s a comic, because it’s a story, the manifest destiny and mythology stuff is still true in a way, by it’s own merits rather than in-universe urban legend, you still have this hero’s journey arc and the ending is positively insane.