Hey Team,
This is a rough artist statement draft for today's class period. If you feel that I didn't quite capture it, or have things to add feel free to edit/comment on this page (really though, I'd like the constructive criticism if you have it).
Spirit Quest Statement of Artistic Purpose
Spirit Quest has been designed as a game that connects people to the state of New Mexico through exploration, guided by a fantastical story thread inspired primarily by various aspects of Southwestern Native American cultures. The intended method of exploration found its beginnings in our collaborative love of the Elder Scrolls series, and continues to be molded by the challenges presented by the ARIS platform.
The challenge of an Elder Scrolls inspired method of play is limiting map size to maximize player interest. Also, time constraints have limited our intended depth of gameplay. Presently, our goal is to push players to discover the city of Albuquerque through gameplay. In the long run, we hope that players will be able to interact with this game state-wide.
The game itself is one that might be described as having "soft rails". To elaborate, there is an over-arcing main-quest storyline that players must complete in order to "beat the game" (put in quotations because the game is never really over). But players are free to leave that quest line and come back to it as they please, while they complete complete side quests and explore to collect various "easter-egg" items. These side quests will contain a lot of extra content that will hopefully deepen the intended connection to place. In the open-ended game design, we've left room for ourselves to continue working on this game after the shipping date but still have something to ship as a finished product.