Outline:
Knight’s
Honour is a single-player game about a boy who wants to become a knight but
comes across a lot of obstacles, one of them being that he has to work for the
man who killed his father. It’s called Knight’s Honour because during his time
as an apprentice he witnesses a lot of questionable things these supposedly
people of honour do. It is a story about personal growth and it is set in a
fictional world where knighthood is a profession just as much as carpentry. This
is a fantasy-adventure RPG set in a medieval fictional world with a linear-branching
narrative. The story begins with Darius, the main character, who is set on
revenge. He wants to kill sir Fray, the antagonist, because he killed Darius’
father. During his journey to achieve his goal Darius encounters sir Barty who
is the trickster and the Golden Lady who is the mentor. The core mechanics
allow Darius to run, ride, fight, fence, talk, take and use items. In the end,
Darius realises that sir Fray isn’t the main antagonist, the one responsible
for his father’s death is the Crown. The game ends with a cut scene in which
Darius says that he is going to take down the Crown in order to get justice for
every family who has lost a member because of them. The intended audience is
young adult and the publishing platform is PC.
The game story is told in chapters. Each
chapter has a theme and a subject, For example, the first chapter would be “Arrival”
and he would have just arrived to the main city where he would begin his knight
apprenticeship. In a sense, the opening and closing cut scenes could be called
a prologue and an epilogue.
 |
| Darius, art by @lilbooktopus |
Script:
The game opens with the following cut scene that the player watches in
third person:
Five years ago, at Creville village, in a
sunny and cloudless day, a young Darius
is having fencing lessons with his father. Darius is twelve years old, tiny for
his age and wiry. However, what he lacks in height and strength, he makes up in
inexhaustible amount of energy. Young Darius jumps and runs around his father,
while holding the wooden sword in one hand, a big smile on his face shows that
maybe those lessons aren’t as serious as they are supposed to be. The smile on
his father’s face and the glint in his eyes confirms that as the two of them
run around the yard fencing with wooden swords and laughing with not a worry in
the world.
Suddenly, the sun disappears behind heavy,
grey clouds, a rain drop falls on Darius’ nose.
A sound of hoofs echoes in the distance,
screams of terror can be heard amongst the cacophony of running horses and the
heavy rain falling on the ground.
Darius’ father quickly shoves him into the
house in a hiding place typical for the medieval ages, his mother shows up not
much later, carrying his two younger siblings with her and all of them but his
father fit into the small hiding room. Darius’ father stays behind because there’s no space left for
him but also to defend the house. He is still holding onto the wooden sword he
used for the practice.
The next few things happen very quickly and
all Darius and the rest of his family can do is watch as a couple of knights
storm into Darius’ small house. They seem to be saying something to his father however,
due to the heavy rain and the continuous screams and crying of the people
outside, he can’t hear anything. The only things he knows for sure is that the
first one to make a move is this big and scary-looking guy with short hair and
a stern face. He is the first one to take action and attack Darius’ father
whose wooden sword is nothing compared to a real one that cleaves right through
the wood and the man himself.
Darius’s mother puts her hands on his
siblings mouths to stop them from making a sound and she bites on her vest to
stop herself from screaming in agony. Darius however, doesn’t make a sound. He
stares at where his father had been standing just a second ago, now gone. From
his hiding place he can’t see much else, he just stares at the empty space, all
he can see is his father’s killer’s face. In that moment, young Darius decides
that he will become a knight to get revenge for his father.
End of cut scene.
 |
| Sir Fray, art by @lilbooktopus |
Chapter 1 – The Arrival
On a black background, written in plain
white letters it says “Chapter 1 – The Arrival” and it opens up the scene in
first person. The player, as Darius, stands before the city gates. A message
from the mentor pops up on the screen, telling him that he has to find The
Golden Lady who is going to be his mentor for this journey. He has a map, a
limited amount of money and a sword.
POP-UP
MESSAGE: Hi, Darius. Welcome to Halicarn! To begin your journey, you should
first go to The Golden Lady. She is the woman for any sort of information were
it money, women, people or dark secrets. Since she is an information broker,
she does nothing for free so be ready to pay the price or go home. You will
notice that everything has a price. Use the map to find the inn and navigate
your way through the city by using the arrows.
The commands for walking flash on the screen
after the message disappears. In the help section on the screen, one could see
all of the commands but for now the player is only allowed to walk and run in
order to test the grounds.
Darius starts
making his way through the busy streets of the city. He looks around,
intrigued. He grew up in a small village and the only times he had seen
something bigger than it was when he travelled to the nearby town with his
siblings, selling the vegetables his mother had grown in their gardens. He
notices the shops, people yelling what they are selling and the prices they are
selling it for. He passes by a mirror and sees his reflection in it, he can see
the wonder in his eyes and on his face.
He checks the
map and keeps on walking until he sees a small and almost inconspicuous inn,
called The Golden Lady. He walks in.
The scene changes…
[…]
Mission 1
MENTOR
MESSAGE: Aim of the mission is to escort this trader and his carriage safely to
the closest village. When you succeed, you’ll receive a reward and will be able
to buy a horse. Remember, the trader must arrive at the destination safely.
[…]
After the
mission is successful, Darius is able to buy a horse. He chooses one (the
player can choose from the shop) and is offered a tutorial. The aim of the
tutorial is to help the player, and Darius himself, to master the mechanics of
the riding. Since Darius has no previous experience in riding an trained combat
horse, he will be very bad at it at first. The tutorial’s purpose is for both
the player and the character to get better at it. One of the consequences of skipping
the tutorial is that if Darius hasn’t practiced before, when he needs to ride
urgently, the horse will throw him off its back because of Darius’
inexperience. If the player has chosen to take the tutorial, Darius would be a
better rider and this will affect the rest of his journey.
[…]
After Darius leaves his new horse (player has
the option to name the animal) he goes to the Knights’ barracks where all of
the apprentices have sleeping chambers. After settling a pop-up message
appears.
POP-UP MESSAGE: You have to go to the Knights’ Order
to get assigned a master in order to begin your training.
Darius does as
he’s told and goes to the Knights’ barracks along with every new apprentice.
They all get assigned a master.
The master
knights are different than the mentor. While the mentor is a part of the game
and serves to teach Darius and the player of the basic rules in the world, the
master knight’s purpose is to lead apprentices on missions and to teach them
how to be knights.
[…]
The first
chapter ends with a dramatic scene in which the Knights’ Order announces that
sir Fray will be Darius’ master and he will dramatically enter the room. The
scene will end on a close up of Darius’ shocked and then determined face.
Chapter 2
The second
chapter will begin with a choice Darius could make. He can choose to confront
Sir fray then and there or to go with it for now. If the player chooses to
confront sir Fray and challenge him on a duel in front of everybody, it would
be fatal for Darius because everybody in the Order is aware of how things work
and Darius as one of the apprentices still doesn’t know about the corruption
among the knights. If the player chooses to go with it for now, Darius will lose
a match because he is still inexperienced when it comes to real duels. However,
he would impress sir Fray although the player won’t notice it until later.
If Darius dies
in any of the chapters, he will get revived in the beginning of the same scene
he died in.
 |
| Sir Barty, art by @lilbooktopus |
[…]
Darius and a group of three other apprentices
along with sir Fray and sir Barty, a mischievous knight who prefers a bow and
arrows to the sword, enter a village which according to sir Fray hasn’t been
paying its taxes.
SIR FRAY: Do
not engage with any of the people.
EVERYBODY:
Yessir!
SIR FRAY: And
watch out for robbers.
[…]
This
is an example of how one of the conversations could go. Possible choices:
Darius line 1:
a)
You
didn’t have to kill him!
b)
Don’t
address the issue.
Darius line 2:
If the player chose a)
a)
He
may have had a family. You took him away from them!
b) You, bastard! I’ll kill you!
If the player chose b), they will go back to the city
and the chapter will end.
Example
conversation:
DARIUS: You
didn’t have to kill him!
SIR FRAY: Yes,
I did.
DARIUS: He may
have had a family. You took him away from them!
SIR FRAY: It’s
orders, kid. I didn’t have a choice.
DARIUS: Oh, so
you did have a choice when you pillaged Creville five years ago? You didn’t
have a choice when you killed my father?
Darius attacks
sir Fray.
[…]
The player would have the choice whether to attack him
or not. If he decides to attack, sir Fray will defeat him again but will leave
him alive because he isn’t the kind of person he appears to be. He likes that
there is somebody who doesn’t blindly follow orders. This is the time when the
player realises that there is more to sir Fray’s character, especially after he
leaves Darius alive and explains to him that the orders come from the Crown.
End
scene.
Chapter 9
[…]
Mission 9
If he chose
not to confront sir Fray, the realisation that he isn’t the bad guy will come
later. However, if he did choose to challenge him, he wouldn’t know what to
believe after that. So he goes to The Golden Lady and asks her about
information about sir Fray and the Crown. Instead of giving a straight answer,
she sends him and sir Barty on a mission which affects both of their character
growths.
Depending on
the players choices in this mission, they can find out different things about
sir Fray and the Crown. What’s more, depending on the players choices, sir
Barty may turn out to be a double or a triple agent.
Possible
things Darius and sir Barty can find about sir Fray:
a)
Sir
Fray lost his family in a similar way to Darius’ lost.
-
This
will make him a more sympathetic character in Darius’ eyes and he will realise
that they may have similar goals.
b)
Sir
Fray wanted to expose the Crown for its schematics, the King found out and is
holding somebody dear to sir Fray as hostage in order to assure that that he
will cooperate.
-
This
will make Darius understand sir Fray’s motives and reasons for everything he
has done.
None of these findings would excuse him for what he
has done.
Possible
things Darius and sir Barty can find out about the Crown:
a)
The
King is giving false information to the knights. In truth, every village has
always paid their taxes but the king just wants more. By ordering the knights
to pillage the smaller villages, he assures bigger profit from the bigger ones.
-
This
is the time when Darius starts rethinking his motives and what his end goal
should be. This is when he begins to think that maybe revenge towards just one
person isn’t the best way to avenge his father. Instead, he finally starts
aiming to be the knight his father would be proud of.
The player can see Darius’s
thought process.
b)
There’s
no monarch and everything has been orchestrated by the Knights’ order.
-
Similar
to point a), Darius realises that sir Fray isn’t the main antagonist and it’s
actually the Order. Darius decides to focus his attention on the Knights’
Order.
[…]
 |
| The Golden Lady, art by @lilbooktopus |
Final
cut scene, the player watches it in third person. Depending on the player’s
choices, the final antagonist is going to be different.
Darius stands
above sir Fray’s lifeless body. In the beginning that seems to be so long ago,
he had wanted exactly that, to stand above the man who had killed his father.
He hadn’t known so many things at the time, he had been so naïve. Darius hates
his old self. He wishes he hadn’t been so close-minded. He should have known
that there was so much more to this than just one bad knight.
As he looks
down at the body of the man who started it all, he feels empty inside. Hadn’t
he wanted just that? To kill him? He hadn’t done it directly but he might have
just as well. Just before his final moment sir Fray had thrown himself in the
way of a sword thrust that had been meant for Darius. He had received a blow
that hadn’t been meant for him but with his final strength he had taken down
the attacker with him.
Sir Barty
comes to stay next to him, looking down at the body of his former friend.
DARIUS: They’ve
been killing innocent people for far too long. It’s time somebody stopped them.
Darius turns
to sir Barty, no matter if he turned out to be a double or a triple agent
because in both cases he has a reason to fight with Darius.
DARIUS: Are
you with me?
SIR BARTY:
Yes, they will regret this.
Darius and
Barty put on their armour and go out of the city gates, towards other cities,
towns and villages in the Kingdom. Towards other people with similar faith to
theirs. Towards a future they can fight for.
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