Torn

When I first conceived the project, I was aiming for a very military/cyber-punk style, main inspirations being along the lines of Ghost in the Shell, big bleak cities, a focus on special ops group and awesome looking vehicles.

That style quickly changed, I get a bit tired with the ongoing 'realistic' looking games and frankly I wanted to try something different, the Unreal Engine does some wonderful things with lighting and so I wanted to exploit that, in the end I decided on a more cyber-goth inspired style, still heavy and dark, but with neon highlights.

I decided on a fairly basic story to match, in the future Augmented Reality training sims have become common, these sims were a well kept secret at first, but as with all software it was eventually leaked, cracked and adjusted by many online black market operators.

One of these operators is the Archangel network, instead of nefarious means they took a more relaxed approach, releasing the program as an extremely adjusted module that quickly caught on as an urban sport among several groups (and more than one military squadron), while the military does not officially support the use of their technology curbing the spread of modified versions has proven difficult and extra curricular activities for the troops is always considered welcome.

Now here's where the issue arises.

A Conflict of Interest

First, I'll state, the new style I went for, the dark meets neon cybergoth rave look, works out quite well and offers a unique style, at the same time I love the visuals of the military of the sketches I did early on in the project when it was still an idea for a military shooter.

Obviously with the ability to customise the player character this leaves some flexibility, so I can still use the designs I've scratched out, however going forward I'll need to be much more careful with designs, now it's striking a comfortable balance, with the neon lights of the avatars and neo-tokyo, and the cold pragmatism of military armours and hardware. As I go forward I plan to include more styles and add more variety to the avatars.