Pac-Man: World's End gdd

2.6Supporting Characters

2.6.1.The Voice

‘The Voice’ first appears during the opening level of the game, when the player is the leader of an eco-activist squad, penetrating a Prometheus lab facility. The Voice is the invisible leader of the eco-activist organisation who relays the tasks to the unit via radio from a distant, dark and unidentified control room.

Later, after the Enslaver has awoken and begun to make his escape attempt from the lab facility The Voice returns to aid him in his quest for vengeance. Apparently managing to hack into the biomechanical hardware that Prometheus has placed into the Enslaver’s body, The Voice aids the Enslaver by pointing out key targets and objectives or providing critical information, such as the effect his actions have had on other areas of the city.
The Voice provides a credible link between the player and the game without having to rely on presenting a consistent voice for the Enslaver, where talking to himself may seem odd and disjointed. The Voice becomes an excellent mechanic for providing the Enslaver with objective and mechanics related information in addition to providing a much needed narrative factor.
Ultimately, however, The Voice is all a part of the larger experiment conducted by The Prometheus Corporation and is in fact the controller who is observing and perhaps even controlling the Enslaver during the experiment. The viewpoint that we have of the Enslaver is actually the viewpoint of The Voice, with the HUD being the on-screen information that the controller is looking at on his monitor.

2.6.2.The Media Reports

It is important as a part of the overall reward to the player that they see valid reactions to their actions within the city. When sections of the city (that relate to either primary or secondary objectives) have been overwhelmed or destroyed, a news bulletin will report the event and the subsequent state of the city.

As they continue to report each progressive act of devastation the newscasters’ attitudes will deteriorate progressively. At the start of the game they are 100% professional, whereas towards the end they are unnerved and obviously panicked, with the news studio descending into chaos. Eventually the broadcast will finish altogether, to be replaced with an automated advice message.

2.7Single Player Gameplay

2.7.1.Overview

The Enslaver, himself once human, is the result of a twisted experiment by the unscrupulous Prometheus Corporation. Having escaped from the lab in which he was created, The Enslaver sets about laying waste to the Corporation-owned city, building an army of the dead from the inhabitants…and marching them through the streets toward the Prometheus HQ.

A preternaturally strong and agile character, The Enslaver may raise, command and mutate a huge horde of zombies. In controlling The Enslaver, players choose for themselves how best to use their powers and the zombie horde, either commanding directly from the front lines or from a distance. Both options are valid and each carries their own different risks and rewards. The Enslaver can survey the battlefield remotely by using the Angry Cam, though its range is limited with a fog of war. From the Angry Cam, the player may not only gain a tactical overview but can also possess any single zombie, using their unique vision, special abilities and attacks as he wishes.
Arrayed against The Enslaver are all the forces that the civil authorities can muster – police, riot police, SWAT, National Guard and the might of the US Army. In addition the civilians themselves will form bands of hardened Survivors, willing to fight with whatever arms they can scavenge. Finally the Corporation itself will send their own deadly Omega Troops, specifically trained to target and hunt the Enslaver down.
The city will react to the threat of The Enslaver according to his actions. Every act of death and destruction committed by both directly by him or one of his zombies is remembered and applied to an increasing scale – the Enemy Response Level (ERL). As the ERL climbs, the enemy numbers, aggression, rollout, distribution and armament will increase accordingly, intensifying the enemy threat as The Enslaver and his zombies push forward.
Whilst primarily an action game, the player can reduce the increasing threat of the Enemy Response Level by carefully choosing the order in which The Enslaver and his force target various groups of enemies and opponents. Target one group or location first and the forces at another may have built stronger and better-armed defences by the time you reach them. However by destroying an enemy arms supply, vehicle depot or command-centre first, the player can ensure that enemies will be deprived of that resource. Direct media and radio feed information, combined with a dynamic in-game map, support from The Voice and careful exploration will reveal the potential targets and routes for the player so that they can determine the best tactical approach.
Successful outcomes of engagements with the enemy will, in the end, be determined by how the player chooses to approach each situation. How well they learn to use the strengths and weaknesses of the Enslaver and his zombie mutations is the key – will they use the hard-to-kill but slow Shamblers? The fast but vulnerable Runners? The wide spread infection capabilities of the Bloaters? The wall-hugging ambush abilities of the Shredders? Or the sheer brute strength of the Monster? Does the player use sheer force of numbers to overwhelm the opposition…or do they experiment with the best combinations of zombie mutations to bring them down? Or can they find the occasional hidden solution…the route to taking down their enemy with the fewest losses possible?

2.7.2.Game Progression

The player’s overriding objective for the single player game is to tactically progress through each of the city’s three districts, with the aim of reaching and destroying The Corporation’s power-base. This ‘Corporate HQ’ lies at the very heart of the city’s civic centre. Each of the three city districts (Suburbia, Downtown & Corporate) is a self-contained island, forming part of the larger whole.

In order to progress from one district to the next, the player must use a particular zombie mutation in order to pass barricades that exist on each bridge connecting the two districts. In order to use these zombie mutations the player must first find and unlock a series of Genetic Upgrades. Once collected these allow the player to mutate members of the zombie horde into the appropriate type.
The Genetic Upgrades are housed within well-defended Corporation lab facilities, one in the Suburbia District and two within the Downtown District. To defeat the facility defences and penetrate each lab the player will have to explore a number of completion routes that will result in the lab defences falling and entry to each facility being made available. How this is achieved will depend upon how well the player uses the zombies under their command, their mutations and the Enslaver’s own abilities. In addition, by discovering and then manipulating physics and mechanic-related elements of the city they may make their task easier.
As the player explores each District, secondary tasks will become evident – some that relate to a direct threat to their progress and others that are non-critical side-objectives. Some of these secondary tasks relate to finding, evaluating and then destroying components of the civil authorities as they mount defences and attacks against the Enslaver and his zombie horde. By removing elements of these threats the player will be able to remove the hazard that they pose, preventing these forces from increasing the difficulty level too far. As with the Corporation lab facilities, multiple routes can be discovered and emergent tactics used in order to overwhelm the opposition.
When entering the Corporate District, the rules of the game will change to take a more aggressive stance with both civil and corporate forces actively targeting and hunting the Enslaver himself in order to prevent him from progressing forward. Ultimately the Corporate District will become a maze-like battleground as the player attempts to negotiate the trap-filled area in order to reach and destroy the Prometheus Corporation HQ.

2.7.3.Storyline

The storyline is broken into 3 main sections:

The Beginning

The story begins as a group of five eco-activists break into a lab facility of The Prometheus Corporation. The activists discover evidence that Prometheus is conducting experiments on human corpses for their own mysterious ends. However, before they can take this information to the media, the team fall into a trap and are rendered unconscious.

The leader of the group (known as Alpha), the player’s character, is subjected to horrific experimentation and awakens as ‘The Enslaver’. Breaking his bonds he quickly learns of his ability to infect and create Zombies, proceeding to use this ability to overwhelm the facility. The Enslaver exits the lab with a small horde of zombies, and heads into the city with the aim of breaching the Prometheus Corporate HQ and taking his revenge on them.

The Middle

Progressing into the city, the Enslaver begins to attack the population, building his zombie army, and targeting the Corporation facilities. The authorities respond in kind, using the police, SWAT, National Guard and US Army to attack the Enslaver and his army of the dead. As the Enslaver’s horde destroys each district, we see the collapse of society within the city through both the environmental destruction and city media, whose broadcasts steadily deteriorate until they breakdown altogether.

The End

The Enslaver completes the final District and reaches the heart of the Prometheus HQ. We see him suddenly being shut down with a single code command. The camera draws back so that the last frame of gameplay (including the HUD) appears to be an image on a corporation computer, operated by a Prometheus scientist. Corporate men in hazard suits place the Enslaver into an armoured government military container, whilst the sinister looking Prometheus scientist looks on, making notes on a clipboard.

We thus discover that in actuality, the Enslaver is a genetically engineered military puppet…a new devastating weapon. Was the player controlling the Enslaver at all, or were they in fact playing the scientist and remotely controlling the Enslaver? The Corporation are actually engaged in a horrifying military experiment. The test site is the city, and the population…the test subjects. Ultimately the player will come to learn that the Enslaver is not the possessor, but the possession.
Note: This is the most likely game ending that a player will uncover on his first playthrough. However, two alternative game endings can be unlocked, depending upon how the player has played the game – whether they attempted to spare the civilian population or harvested the entire city…or whether they favoured frontal assault and explosive action over stealth & flanking tactics and the discovery of easier routes for defeating the enemy.