Choice

Choice is a 2015 conceptual video game created by Thor Steinbach under the Lunatic Entertainment license, originally conceived on January 5th, 2015.

Choice is an open world, action-adventure "sandbox" game for the PC. Set in the megalopolis known as (the) Big City, the game events take place in the near future, and depending upon choices can lean more towards more realistic storyline or heavy sci-fi elements.

Gameplay
The game is unique in that each of the primary 15 protagonist character's gameplay style is based primarily around a different game genre. The customized characters can focus on skills geared towards specific genres but are able to access missions for every genre. The play style for each character is as following:
 * 1) Zeke: Fighting game
 * 2) Kwan: Hack and Slash
 * 3) Janet: Music game
 * 4) Shane: Pet raising simulation
 * 5) Rogero: Platformer
 * 6) Trevor: Point-and-click game
 * 7) Harriet: Puzzle game
 * 8) Xavier: Racing game / vehicular combat
 * 9) Alonzo: Roleplaying game (action RPG)
 * 10) Gavin: Roleplaying game (turn based)
 * 11) Leslie: Shoot 'em up
 * 12) Cassius: Shooter
 * 13) Brad: Squad-based tactics
 * 14) Olivia: Stealth game
 * 15) Veronica: Survival horror

Levels
The game features over 200 missions to complete between the various characters, with a great many of them accessible from the beginning of the open world portion of the game, about five "intro missions" in. However, the missions will play differently depending on which character is running through them. Each mission completed will affect how the rest of the missions play out. For example, eliminating a faction's supply lines early will starve them and weapon their weapons caches to make them able to fight back less and be overall weaker, while letting their supply lines last will effectively make missions more challenging with more enemies with stronger weaponry. However, disrupting supply lines early may also lead to development of new technologies out of bare necessity, such as energy weapons that can be even more dangerous. Eliminating one faction will allow the remaining factions to overtake the others' former territory, while stopping major factions in areas that they cannot expand into can lead to newer factions springing up to take their place.

Dialogue
Shockingly, all 200 missions and all cut scenes are completely voiced over for all 16 characters (the 15 regular characters and the custom character).

New Game +
Uniquely for a video game, the option to create your own character is not unlocked until the game is beaten at least once with any of the game's regular 15 characters, with the exception of online mode where character customization is immediately unlocked. It should be noted that only one character's story needs to be completed to unlock New Game +; this is not the case with the secondarily unlocked New Game ++.

Although the storyline is played through again with the same huge variety of options as before with the other characters, this time there is no direct references made to the character such as usage of their name, due to voice acting complications inherent to this.

Janet Hall
Janet Hall is the guitarist of a local garage metal band located in the suburbs on the outskirts of the metropolis. Her first two missions are long and involve her practicing for a Battle of the Bands concert that is expected to occur later in the week. Eventually the day arrives to drive into the Big City, and Janet and her band must face off against other bands to try and win the competition. Not winning the competition won't end the game, but winning or losing affects how she can obtain her Jazzer Axe item.

If she wins the competition by a landslide, "talent agents" working for COG Industries will reveal themselves to her and immediately bring her in to test out the new Jazzer Axe. If she wins just regularly, they will still show up and inform her of the item's presence but will instead require her and her band to pass an interview (which again can be won or lost without a Game Over). Should she lose but be in second place she will be close enough to hear about the location of the Jazzer Axe as the agents talk to the winners of the contest, and they can then decide whether to try and steal it or to remain true to their own instruments. If they lose and place any rank 3rd or lower, they do not get to hear about the Jazzer Axe at all.

Possessing the Jazzer Axe allows the player to use it to create intense soundwaves and fire lasers from the head, which ultimately will lead to more battle-oriented musical stages. Not obtaining it leaves the game at a more realistic level, and leaves the band to try and make it to another battle of the bands instead of saving the world with sci-fi instruments. These themes will cross back and forth throughout either path, but will focus on one style or the other, with non-Jazzer battle gameplay requiring taking advantage of the environment.

No matter whether the player chooses to obtain the Jazzer Axe or keep her regular electric guitar, the game plays the same. Whenever in an action sequence (battle or gig-oriented), the game will play like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, with a musical score traveling down the screen and with the corresponding buttons needing to be pressed at the right moment to properly hit the note. The more notes hit perfectly in succession, the more damage her weapon does or the more excited the crowds will get. However, the more notes missed the more unhappy a crowd will get while also healing some specific in-game bosses. Failing to hit several notes in a row will have adverse affects upon the battle, dependent on the opponents faced. As the game progresses, battle music speeds up and becomes more complicated.

Uniquely, in her mode the rest of her bandmates are the ones who play the background music.

Olivia Ferringer
Olivia Ferringer is a 14-year-old hacker who lives with her family in the suburbs. While she is talented at hacking she is far from a godsend, and would not be able to hack into say, for example, the defense network but she can open electronic doors and obtain data from computers better than she knows the back of her own hand. Normally more interested in bubblegum than boys and data collecting over defending her city, her life took a sudden turn when her older brother, 25-year-old Gregory, suddenly disappears during a long night at the research lab. Her parents are on vacation in the Caribbean leaving her with nobody to trust as her hobby as a hacker leaves her untrusting of the police.

Rogero Stadig
Dr. Rogero Stadig, Codenamed ICARUS is an employee of HEAT Industries, initially working as a member of Research & Development on hardlight boot technology known as the Stairway to Heaven or Project: HIPPOGRIFF. When it comes to test the boots in the field, Dr. Stadig comes to discover that the "owners" of the company are corrupt and that there are plans to use the HIPPOGRIFFs on a soon-to-be-developed supersoldier with the intent on using it as a weapon against their enemies, including other supersoldier companies located in Big City such as COG Incorporated and Dr. BadGuy's Mutates. It is then up to him whether he wants to volunteer for the supersoldier program and continue his work for HEAT Industries or to steal the boots for himself and work as a vigilante. His choice will determine who his initial allies and foes are.

Should he choose to betray HEAT Industries (which he can do at any time) he can either battle against all supersoldier groups or choose to sell their blueprints or even hire himself out to either COG, Dr. BadGuy, the military, the S.C.U.M. of the Earth, or even to the SKULLS and galactic space pirates, should he discover them. At the same time he can keep them for himself and either work for the forces of good as a vigilante or act selfishly and become a villain, himself. Police and the military can become hostile to him if he acts out in public where his presence will be revealed, but HEAT themselves will not report their device stolen as it is labeled TOP SECRET and will instead send supersoldiers to deal with him, as will the other groups. The police will turn hostile whether he acts as a vigilante or a villain, while the military will only step in after his potential villainous actions have become a serious problem for the city. Instead of the periodic enhancements received under HEAT, he will need to steal equipment to upgrade himself to better deal with the ever-increasing threat of foes.

Should he remain loyal to HEAT, his mission instead will be to first test the equipment first on their usefulness in environmental situations and then on civilians themselves to determine their worthiness as weaponized equipment (this can either be done against the innocent or against gangs, which will affect purity and corruption levels, respectively). Once the HIPPOGRIFFs are properly field tested, he will begin his attacks on their rivals, working towards controlling all of Big City. He will also receive periodic enhancements as time goes on while working under HEAT. This same storyline follows how it works under other companies should he instead defect, with some changes due to other companies' policies and certain levels of distrust towards him until he fully proves himself to them.

Gameplay differs somewhat depending on Dr. Stadig's personal choices in becoming the supersoldier ICARUS or simply operating as a vigilante. As it is Stadig's choice to call himself ICARUS, this name will follow him wherever he goes and whatever he chooses.


 * Should he become a regular human vigilante (or join the military or SKULLs), he will only be able to perform typical human stunts with the addition of creating hardlight platforms with his boots, allowing him to either create bridges between places or even slowly create stairs to let him climb to the tops of buildings when necessary. The boots also have shock absorbers to allow him to survive a fall, although he will still be injured as he will not have proper safety devices on the rest of his body.  Eventually he can upgrade the boots with stolen technology to allow for weapon systems or even to allow him to create angled hardlight platforms to effectively build slides to very swiftly move around the city (though one must keep in mind that your speed will very much come into effect while doing this similar to a roller coaster, and moving up for too long can lead to stalling out and sliding backwards).


 * Should he become a HEAT supersoldier, he will gain superhuman reflexes that will allow him to run up buildings and jump significant distances. He will still take damage from extremely high falls such as off of skyscrapers, although shorter building falls can be mitigated, and he can use his hardlight boots to stop him short of dying in a fall, turn the boots off and set out another hardlight platform to safely but swiftly descend.  He will receive occasional upgrades where he will need to return to HEAT Industries to have his boots enhanced.  His physical prowess will not enhance naturally but he can perform tasks to be given security clearance to obtain upgrades to enhance his other skills.


 * Should he defect to COG, his supersoldier enhancements will be primarily cybernetic in nature. This will allow various and major boosts to his skill set, although each skill must be upgraded in turn once he receives clearance or purchases clearance.  While initial enhancements are not quite as powerful as HEAT's supersoldier, later upgrades enhance his abilities on greater levels with larger increases per upgrade.  However, this is equalized by cybernetics heating up as they see use, requiring cooldown periods similar to machine guns if any technique is used for too long.  This can be used to one's advantage, however -- should the user enhance both arms and legs and overheat all of them together, they can use a powerful steam release attack to seriously damage organic opponents.


 * Should he defect to the Mutates, he will be given the option to become a Mutate himself or simply perform operations for Dr. BadGuy as a regular human; should he choose the former option, he gets the choice to choose what animal or animals to enhance himself with. He can then capture one or two animals before returning to Dr. BadGuy and cementing his decision permanently.  He can either roam the city and find various lifeforms such as cats, dogs, rats, pigeons, falcons and insects, or he can break into pet stores for easier access to cats and dogs and more exotic creatures to choose from such as chameleons, snakes, and hedgehogs, to name only a few; each pet shop has different animals however.  He can even slip into the sewers to find the hidden easter egg animals, the crocodiles or sewer turtles and use these, although he will need to subdue them first.  If he has two animals selected and wants to discard one, he can do so in order to claim another or remain with only one animal.  He can then return to BadGuy to be transformed.  During this transformation process the player can choose to upgrade different body parts for different abilities based upon what he has collected.  He will have no physical changes initially, but if the game progresses beyond another 9 months from after his transformation (as there is a 3 month period of recovery that will lapse first), he will experience the first mutation, transforming him into a half man, half animal hybrid.  What appears will depend on what he chose and what was directly chosen to enhance with those animals' parts.  This will also greatly enhance his ability skill levels for his chosen abilities but will also mean that he cannot move about freely in the daylight without proper covering such as large hoods and the like.  If the game progresses for another year the final mutation will occur, transforming him into an anthropomorphic hybrid.  At this point his abilities will be at their strongest but he will also become unable to go out safely in the daylight.


 * The S.C.U.M. of the Earth will take him as-is. However, he can forcibly upgrade himself by brutally removing equipment from foes and attaching them to himself, which the SCUM will heavily encourage.

The player must remember that any rival group will send their soldiers after the doctor on a basis dependent upon how big of a threat he is to that faction directly. This leaves Dr. Stadig as a unique individual in this unique game, as he gets to directly interact with a large number of already existing characters from the Lunatic Entertainment license, such as HEAT Industries and Mutate characters, such as Cyborn, Raccoon, Lightning and even Dr. BadGuy himself. These opponents will not wait for other villains and will try to triangulate and attack him; generally speaking, they will simply move about seemingly at random, trying to spot him but if they do spot him will radio in and other villains will begin moving towards him from across the map -- this is assuming he has become a top priority target, however.

Shane Woolsey
Dr. Shane Woolsey is the game's life simulation character. Dr. Woolsey begins the game as a member of Darkscope's top secret weapons research and development department. Specifically he has been working on genetic enhancement projects known as Project: AMOEBA, which has recently reached the testing phase. Dr. Woolsey is entrusted with a forearm-mounted "gun" that holds within itself a vial of AMOEBA and is quickly sent out into the field to test the weapon.

Initially he is tasked to use the weapon's AMOEBA on small animals, such as rodents, small birds and shoals of fish that roam the metropolis' landscape. He then learns how to control and then feed these creatures, and is also ordered to force two or more AMOEBA into combat, whether with each other or against unwitting human guinea pigs.

During his absence however, Darkscope headquarters is attacked and Woolsey is forced further and further away from the compound, leaving him to have to decide whether he wants to work his way back to the company and continue working for them or use his newfound power over the AMOEBA for either good or bad.

Dr. Woolsey's primary weapon is the forearm-mounted weapon, known as a Darkscope Syringe. This weapon fires globs of AMOEBA, a living genetic biomass that quickly overtakes any biological substance it encounters, transforming its new host into a weapon. While normally these AMOEBA hosts will be feral and wild and very, very dangerous, the Syringe has implanted in every glob a beacon that can be used from the Syringe's control panel to essentially "tame" the AMOEBA and effectively make them do the wielder's bidding. The Syringe is intended for use with fire teams as opposed to large armies, and as such the Syringe can only actively control up to four AMOEBA hosts at any one time. It can release a specific AMOEBA from Syringe control if necessary, which will cause it to return to it feral state and become hostile to pretty much everything in site. This release can allow the wielder to either fire another AMOEBA glob at a new host. If a AMOEBA is released by mistake, program patches can be downloaded (how Woolsey himself gets upgrades) to leave the AMOEBA blind to Woolsey's presence temporarily while he tries to reacquire control over the target.

All AMOEBA have the same capability to absorb different creatures for the same effects. The various attributes however are changed depending on the overall % of each type of creature consumed -- land animal, sea animal, air animal, or human/superhuman. Through these four creature types to consume, each of the four AMOEBA under Woolsey's command can be entirely different styles of monster or be the exact same as each other, all depending on what types of targets that the doctor sics his pets upon.

Trevor Dozark
Detective Trevor Dozark is a seasoned and respected member of the Big City Police Department, Homicide Division. At the start of the game, he is finishing up an open-and-shut case involving murder. He then is moved on to another murder scene, and while this second case appears to be a simple lover's quarrel murder-suicide, trace amounts of evidence just don't add up, leading him down a path to discover what really happened on his own, while the BCPD officially closes this case as well.

Dozark initially is open about his questioning if the investigation is heading in the right direction but soon learns that this is a bad idea and officially drops the subject; however, still suspicious he begins to quietly continue his investigation. He is forced to sneak into the archives for leads, distract and mislead other officers to get his hands on evidence or some suspects or others wanted for questioning. As he progresses the truth begins to reveal some wild revelations that from Dozark's stand point should not even be possible. Depending on how deeply the player chooses to delve will alter how much he knows about the case, with casual glances at solving cases leading to evidence of corruption in regular Human staff, moderate solves leading towards evidence revealing the nature of programs such as Project AMOEBA and extremely accurate solves revealing the nature of an clandestine alien invasion.

In the same manner, any time Dozark is spotted in his off-beat investigations it will begin to concern and lead to ridicule and even suspension as an officer, leaving him with difficulties getting the right equipment to solve the case. Certain people who might catch him in the act can be bribed, but for the most part the information on his apparent "downward, obsessive spiral" will get leaked to the homicide division and later the entire BCPD as a whole. If he is found out, certain foes will begin to directly target him in an attempt to silence him.

Gameplay outside of investigations play like much of the rest of the game, in a third person adventure view. However, investigations all take place in a point-and-click adventure style of gameplay, where he must move a cursor to click on various locations to find what needs to be solved. He can hold some items for use later, with certain items combining or having secrets on them that can be revealed by studying the object, bringing up a 3D model viewer.

At certain times, Detective Dozark will need to defend himself, and he carries his service pistol with him when actually on-duty and a concealed carry firearm when off-duty. These weapons work differently, with one having higher stopping power and the other firing faster. Dozark also speaks to himself in typical film noir style throughout his storyline.

Zeke "Da Man" Dummann
Zeke Dummann is a young and brash 20-year-old looking to get into the illegal street fighting circuit. His friends all root for him for his level of badassery he has shown in both high school and the early years of college, but when he takes on his first opponent on the street and gets the floor mopped with himself, his friends lose respect in him and his hot girlfriend dumps him on the spot. After licking his wounds for a few days in the solitude of his apartment, he realizes that he needs some training and immediately sets out to find some. Out of desperation, he receives a pill from someone he meets on the street that enhances his learning capabilities to that of a child, allowing him to learn skills in fighting within mere hours instead of years, explaining how he can so quickly progress from untrained to master fighter in the context of the game. It is up to the player on how deep he delves into this "learning drug" and whether it will take over Zeke's life entirely or not.

Zeke is able to start out going to martial arts schools, choosing during his intro levels what to focus on (with a large variety of martial arts schools available in Big City). By his final introductory level he is able to make a choice between focusing on showmanship by starting out with a professional wrestling circuit or focusing instead on sheer brute force by joining up with the MMA fighters, and he will continue to have these choices throughout most of the game, allowing him to increase both stats as much as the player desires. He can also take on street crime as he witnesses it or choose to ignore it, with the pure choice being to stop the criminals and leave them alive for police to handle, the corrupted choice being to stop the criminals but kill them in the process, and the neutral choices being either to completely ignore the crime in progress or to call the cops.

As he rises through the ranks of the street fighting competitions, he will get the opportunity to rescue the friends who abandoned him in their hours of need (some fatal, some not) or leave them to their fates and abandon them right back. Regaining their faith in him will put them behind Zeke during matches, sometimes with renewed vigor in him and sometimes without, depending on how well Zeke did in the rescue attempts -- the closer to a perfect score will give him an extra boost of endurance and strength as well as less of a handicap when getting back up from being knocked down, while doing poorly in these will oftentimes leave them still badmouthing him when trying to get back up, giving a larger handicap. However, leaving them to their fates will mitigate this risk in how they can react, yet will lead Zeke down a corrupted path. He can discover an underground fighting ring that involves individuals who have become genetically enhanced through various means and where murder is considered "OK", and doing certain events while a member of this ring can expose it to the world and lead to the mutants openly invading Big City.

Gameplay is similar to a fighting game during these stages of the game, with mapped buttons able to be completely remapped manually by the player so as to maximize their preferred fighting style with attacks and defense moves based either on martial arts the character has been trained in or on the more kayfabbed styles of either professional wrestling (retro AKA 80s-90s gimmicky style or modern AKA 2000-current style) or luchadore Mexican wrestling. Even the exact input needed to perform each skill (such as "quarter circle back + heavy punch" or "down + down + left + right + B") can be remapped, only requiring a certain level of button input to be used, allowing players not very great at fighting games to still be able to pull off moves. More complex inputs will be worth more points, leading to faster attacks for more advanced players, however.

The effects of the pills Zeke takes are only temporary; as the effects wear off he quickly returns to regular learning levels and essentially his learning is halted in terms of gameplay. He can either choose to go and buy more drugs from the dealer or take the far slower path of regular learning, which yields far lower rewards but also leaves him on a more "pure" path. The more pills Zeke takes the closer he comes to overdosing, wherein he becomes able to actually evolve his body for less skill-required abilities and more "natural" ones. If he continues to progress on this line he will eventually be able to leap over buildings and deal severe damage to even armored vehicles, however if he takes too many of these pills after gaining evolution, he will eventually become a burnout, where mutations occur on their own and he loses control over himself, becoming a monster in his own right.