Blood & Amputation
Blood and gore effects will be a central part of achieving a “gross out” horror feeling in
some portions of the game. When creatures are shot they will spurt geysers of blood,
which may in turn lead to the creation of pools as described above.
Certain creatures will be set up to potentially lose certain limbs or their head. This
will be done in a “canned” way such that the same creatures will always have the likeli-
hood of losing the exact same limbs in the same way. Once a limb is shot off, the limb
itself will turn into “chunks” that will fly off and then fade away. Some creatures will
start bleeding to death after they have lost a limb, though they will continue functioning
for a short amount of time. Other creatures will continue functioning as normal once
they have lost a limb.
As Torque kills creatures, he gets bloodier and bloodier. Torque will get bloodier if
he kills a creature with a melee attack or with a close-range projectile attack than if he
kills creatures from a distance. If the player is already bloody when he gets some more
blood on him, Torque will become even more bloody. Torque will become the most
bloody from killing creatures while in Insanity Mode, with the red color literally cover-
ing his body. There will be four stages of “bloody” Torque. The blood on Torque will
then fade away over time, eventually returning Torque to his original, relatively clean
state. Torque will tend to frighten away certain friendly NPCs if he comes up to them
while extremely bloody.
Projectiles
Of course projectiles will be a core element of the game, and their mechanics are cov-
ered in detail in the Attacking section found earlier in this document. There will also be
a number of aesthetic effects associated with projectiles.
Projectiles will be able to leave tracers behind them. This will be especially useful
for bullets, which will, except for the tracers, be invisible to the player. The tracers on
the bullet streaks indicate motion and will be reminiscent of those found in the game
Oni.
When projectiles hit surfaces, they will generate impact effects appropriate to the
material they hit: wood will splinter, stone will chip, metal will spark, and so forth. Pro-
jectiles will also leave behind bullet holes and pockmarks. The pockmarks and impact
effects will vary both by the type of material hit as well as the type of projectile fired (a
shotgun pellet leaves behind a different mark than a pistol bullet).
Flashbacks
Over the course of the game, Torque will have flashbacks to the events surrounding the
crime that landed him in jail, a crime his conscious mind has blocked out. Each flash-
back will portray a bit more of Torque’s back-story. The player’s actions in the game will
determine the form of the player’s final flashback, which reveals the nature of his
crime. If the player helps the NPCs he finds, it will turn out Torque was framed for his
crime, while if the player kills every human he comes across, it will turn out that Torque
savagely killed his wife and children.
The appearance of the flashbacks will disorient the player and will come suddenly
and without warning. The flashbacks before the last one will be short, lasting only a few
seconds. The flashbacks will be pre-rendered, using still paintings that pan and zoom
614 Appendix B: Sample Design Document:The Suffering