During my tenure with NDS, all employees were encouraged to write game pitches as often as we could muster. Some of them were more fleshed out than others. Below is one of the games I actually took a bit further and created a two-page backstory for.
The 1800’s are coming to an end and the industrial revolution has turned the world into a forge of ideas. A sense of optimism fostered by a strong economy has idealistic men and women pursuing their fortunes in the fields of science and mechanical engineering. Some for a better tomorrow; others for personal gratification, recognition, and historical prominence. These men and women are the modern day artists and superstars, and in that respect not much different from the celebrities of our time. Your garden variety eccentricities, vanity, petty rivalry and intrigues comes with the territory, of course, but people love them just the same – and why shouldn’t they? After all, their egotistical pursuits for the next big leap in technology propels the civilized world forward at a blistering pace. Despite a few God-complexes and a general blatant disregard for the consequences of their inventions, the world need not fear men who bolster and announce their ideas out loud. Oh-no; the real danger comes from the quiet ones.
And one of them in particular remains all but silent.
Completely overlooked between the public in-fights of the newly-crowned modernists, the quiet and secluded industrial entrepreneur Leer Vanderbrecht has set in motion a project that is to change the world forever. Leer, the result and only offspring of emotionally distant real estate billionaire Karl Vanderbrecht’s short brush-up with a young prostitute, has harboured a single idea since he was old enough to have them: To give life. But not just any life; logical forms of life. Helpful life. The kind that would never have let him down his entire upbringing. The kind that would never have kicked him around at school, told him off, rejected him or humiliated him at the debutante’s ball. The kind who would never think to discriminate against someone because of their peculiar speech impediment, white-as-a-cotton complexion and frog-like posture. For all intents and purposes, a species that does not yet exist.
Having spent his entire life in the books of his father’s study, Leer quickly took to both the scientific teachings of the most prominent thinkers of the day as well as the cautionary tales of fiction that had spread like wildfire among the conservatives since the dawn of industrialism.
After the death of his father, Leer invested the vast inherited family fortunes in steel mills, manufacturing plants and manpower enough to populate a small Eastern European country. Acutely aware that he would become a household name before long, Leer chose to preserve his solitude through the use of middlemen and conducted his business solely by mail carrier. Confident in the thought that loyalty between man and idea is far stronger than that between employee and employer, he never met or spoke to any of his employees, but instead chose a symbol to act as his proxy. Something workers could confide in and pride themselves with.
Completely secluded from the world around him, Leer drew up his visions for a new and better world, and at the dawn of the new century, Leer builds the first self-sustaining machines. As a tongue-in-cheek political commentary on the still largely class-oriented society, he dubs them “labourers”—The first of many mechanoids in what is poised to become the eradicator of scarcity and inequality. However, unbeknownst to the increasingly eager and secluded Leer, his new race of machines is about to become the eradicator of all organic life as well.
The first sign of the apocalypse does not go unnoticed.
One morning, in the rural area outside the small town of Fairvale, a local sawmill-owner wakes up to a baffling sight. A huge chunk has been taken out of his forest. Well, actually not a chunk as much as a “bite”. Masked by what had seemed like a terrible storm during the night, an acre’s worth of lumber has simply vanished.
The air is completely quiet. Yet a vague rumbling of the storm can still be sensed emanating from somewhere beyond the far treetops a couple of miles away, and as the owner pursues the sound, growing louder as he closes in on its source, the woods seem to become more and more enveloped in a thick mist. The sight that greets him as the tree line suddenly comes to a full stop goes far beyond even his worst nightmares. A dozen roaring metal monsters the size of small cargo ships have formed a circle, eating away at any vegetation they cross. In a frenzied panic the owner returns to the town elders with the grueling account. Having gained the reputation of a long time booze-hound, at first he is laughed and scoffed at. But as days pass, more and more accounts from hysteric farm folk pile up, and when the town walls are finally breached to the sound of carving metal and roaring engines, it is too late.
Dubbed “doomers” by the general public, these bulky, locomotive-like engines of soot-covered steel and pumping pistons have little relation to any living being. Gobbling up any and all combustible material in their path, the machines do not discern. Anything that crosses their fiery, buzz-saw laden maws is chewed up in seconds and incinerated. Trees, whole fields, small houses and even men end up as fuel for the gigantic, relentless labourers. Eerie trails of rubble and charcoal are left in their wake as the bits not vaporized in the fires underneath the heavy kettles are secreted. With no real sense of front or back, the other end of the labourer features a long elephant trunk-like snout consuming large quantities of water from local lakes and rivers to keep the huge kettles filled, only adding to the machines’ nightmarish exterior.
Local blacksmith Guido Crecente is one of the last to flee the Fairvale township as he waits relentlessly for the return of his daughter and wife, who have both been reported missing in the forests for days.
He does not leave quietly.
In a maneuver soon to be heard of by every man, woman and child on the continent, he manages to single-handedly take down one of the machines through a combination of sheer blunt force and a unique understanding of both mechanics and metal alloys. In the following months of travelling through the scarred countryside and burning cities in his search for refugees with knowledge of his loved ones’ whereabouts, he meets a few of Leer Industries’ deserting workers. Now hunted men with nothing to lose, they tell Guido of the organisation which is now fiercely defending itself and its property with every department brainwashed into believing firmly in the righteousness of its work. He also learns that through the help of the first crude labourers, the organisation has already spawned new models thought up by the now completely isolated Leer, as he constantly refines and adjusts the mechanics to perfection.
When Guido finally arrives in one of the last standing big cities of Western Germany it is to the sound of cheering crowds. Greeted by both the burgomeister and city council, he is immediately approached by local scientist Manfred Von Ettingshausen who has devised a new and powerful weapon for the aging hero: A modified, gas-powered and burst controlled hammer with the averagely measured force of 3017 foot-pounds. With the new invention and all the trust of the people firmly vested in him, Guido sets out marching against an army of Leer Industries’ henchmen—determined to find his loved ones as well as the twisted founder of the new world order, and in the process beat the machines back to the ore from which they were forged.
The weapon at his side is named The Deconstructor—or, as history has later dubbed it:
Geilhammer 3000.