Ideas

This remix gave me and idea:

If I’m understanding the lore correctly, during the battle with Omega and the Dark Elf, X and Zero fought side by side. for the thing I’m thinking up, X is the only playable character, so to do a true side by side fight, that would mean Zero would have to be on the battlefield as an NPC. That has never worked, as far as I know, in the history of gaming. Not even going to attempt that here.

So, now what? What about parallel battles?

First wave: X fights Omega solo, and beats him, but he just regenerates. (He’s powered by an artificial god, after all)

Then Zero crashes in, explains someone needs to take down the Dark Elf, and X is the only one able to do it. Beside, Omega is his.

Now, X boots into cyberspace to face the Dark Elf, while Zero has his epic duel with Omega. X’s direct fight will be the Dark Elf, but periodically, the battle will pause/shift to a cut scene where Zero will land hard enough hits on Omega that he has to draw on the Dark Elf’s power, staggering the Elf. That’s when X has his best opening to absolutely unload everything into the Dark Elf.

Further, when X lands enough hits on the Dark Elf, it will stagger Omega, and pop to a brief cut scene with Zero hammering Omega for it.

Do this enough times, and the Dark Elf goes down for good, and it cuts to the cutscene of Zero defeating Omega.

I think the challenge will be making the transitions seamless, so the player feel like this is an organic back and forth between the two fights, and does not feel like they are getting cutscene spammed. I’m wondering if it would be possible to ghost in the Zero/Omega fight in the background, rather than doing a full cut scene swap when the heavy hits happen? Essentially, when a heavy hit is winding up, fade in Omega over the Dark Elf model, and a transparent Zero winding up for the strike. Then the Dark Elf and Omega recoil together with the hit. This would give the player information that this thing is coming, without grabbing control from them.

X breaking one of the Dark Elf’s three lives could simply be handled like a boss defeat animation. They know the life bar is getting low, even though it has a couple of layers behind it, so they should be able to guess something would happen when each one goes down.

It would be especially cool if Zero’s heavy hits could be timed in with the background music. Would give the player a gut feel of how the battle is going on the ground, without explicitly saying it. But, may be a bridge to far 🙂