Omega Odyssey Series Bible

-:OMEGA ODYSSEY SERIES BIBLE CONCEPT:-

 

What Is It: Streets of Fire Meets Final Fantasy

What Is It In Terms Of Things That Are Actually Still Popular:

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Meets 90s-Era Anime

 

Omega Odyssey is not so much a series, but a connected series of series, each season being its own self-contained story set in its own self-contained setting, with shared elements of visual stylization and of creatures/worldbuilding elements between them. Sort of like Final Fantasy before it started becoming stupid or, perhaps more relevant to the point, sort of like Heroes was supposed to be before it started getting stupid.

 

While other live-action works, such as the aforementioned Streets of Fire and Scott Pilgrim but also Brazil, Blade Runner, Akira and so-on have tried a similar sense of stylization, said works mostly failed . But, said films also gained a huge surge of popularity thanks to home video, television and internet streaming re-airings, from an audience generally more accepting and attuned to highly visual weirdness but also more likely to watch television than pay for a theatre ticket.

 

And while they did not have a good initial return, they gained through television a longevity which most blockbusters cannot even dream of, thus perhaps making such ventures more suitable for franchising on television rather than on film. And in the era where things like anime (At least before it started getting stupid and otaku-pandering) and Adventure Time are hugely popular, we think that the television viewing audience is even more receptive than ever to the idea of visual stylization being combined with live action.

 

Also, given its heavy video-game inspiration (Not just Final Fantasy, but also all those beat-em-ups that Streets Of Fire was ripping off) video-game tie-ins, produced in a PlayStation 1/Nintendo 64-era-type style not only to create a certain feel, but also to focus more development manpower/budget on things like artstyle; story and gameplay and to allow us to keep team size small to keep it from getting too unwieldy.

 

But, I hear you ask, what are these shared elements we keep talking about? Well my inquisitive friend, let's start with them:

:-STYLE-: This is the key point behind the series, the glue holding every element together, the visual style. It's a style very much taken from the visually baroque elements of the Final Fantasy series, but taken in a completely different direction. Instead of fusing those elements with a stereotypical fantasy setting, as was the direction it instead fuses it with the modern american cityscape, in all its different incarnations.

 

But, the type of urbanoscape can be as versatile as the creator wants it to be, whether it be the streamlined; tacky-yet-bombastic neon cityscapes of the 80s, the decaying grunge-y, futurism-decaying-into-cyberpunk cityscapes of the 1990s, the statified between homey-decay and slick; sleek; advanced corporatist hollowness of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century/now, or perhaps even the non-euclidean cities of Lovecraft's nightmares, or the burning; wrecked cities we imagined would come if the Cold War became hot, or even the flooded cities of a world where life is dying that we may come to inhabit very soon.

 

It all depends on the series. But, for a short version of the style, think baroque urban fantasy rather than baroque high fantasy.

 

The basic concepts for three seasons have been planned out to at least give a guideline for how it works.

 

:-SEASON 1-:

The Look: Ridiculously eighties-urban, lots of neon and color but also sleaze and decay, ala Hobo With A Shotgun or The Last Dragon or every classic beat-em-up ever. Of all the seasons, this'd hew closest to the "default" Streets-of-Fire-esque "default" of Omega Odyssey

 

The Plot: A woman by the name of Relleth drifts into The City, pursued by The CLeaner and on the run from her past, and thanks to her meeting with a lad with strange powers named Rucifel (Rui for short) she gets drawn in a struggle for power between two factions and their efforts to collect the Seven Mystery Eggs, with a mysterious emerging third faction looming above it all; linked to the mysterious; sprawling ChanceCube Corporation.

 

The Villain(s): The aspiring politician Ada, who intends to gain control over the city by means fair or foul and has increasing designs on creating a repressive security state in response to the efforts of the other main villain the gangleader Evan; a lawful-batshit crimelord who's creating an ever-growing syndicate on the verge of starting a full-blown urban war. But both of them are being manipulated by Domino Lemarchand, a whimsical yet dangerous Hobbeseyan nihilist who runs the ChanceCube Corporation and who wants to create a state of chaos to match his twisted vision of the world. Think Kefka Ilpalazzo mixed with Willy Wonka.

 

The Big Twist: Relleth is an artificually grown human being, as are Ada and Evan, all three of then made and implanted with false memories by Lemarchand to use in his scheme. And yes, there is foreshadowing, and yes the word "Replicant" is used for this sort of artifically-grown human.

 

The Recurring Lines/"Arc Words"- "It's all part of the game." "I remember a white panther..." "There's always somethin' to do tonight"

 

:-SEASON 2-:

The Look: Like the 50s/60s-futurism-inspired "World of Tomorrow" rotting into Cyberpunk. Also, a big influence from 90s artists, like Sam Keith and Todd McFarlane

 

The Plot: The World of Tomorrow seemed to be coming to this world in an age of plenty and societal revolution, but for some reason it just... fell apart. Now, with a number of building societal problems, including urban violence driven by trade in a drug called "Key", an increasingly strict crackdown on violence thanks to said violence, monsters appearing everywhere, a strange fungal class of organism causing the infrastructure to break down and the air to become toxic, increasing racially-charged violence (of both the fantasy and non-fantasy kind) an increasing rate of unemployment and business consolidation by shady megacorporations, and an increasing death of hope as the dreams of the past fade.

 

In the middle of this, a crusading reporter and a bitter; frail unemployed magician team up to investigate the link between the growing corporate-religion of the Neo-Century Project and the suspicious and secretive Project Reality, which takes them far deeper than anyone had thought into layers of conspiracy and corruption.

 

The Villain(s): Philo Bernays, a tweedy PR_executive-type running a religion derived from a combination of "The Old Religion" and his corporate/technocratic/"engineering-of-consent" philosophy. His most distinctive feature is the elegant electrical chrome neckbrace/intercom-device that alters his normally unremarkable;l slightly-obnoxious voice into something beautiful, and allows him to sing well (For without it he cannot sing a note)

 

He thinks he's doing good, and that his cult will "elevate" the human race. The real brains behind the operation is his computer/satelite Electric Eye, who is his second-in-command and the person who auto-runs the cult's operations (Including its evangelists/death-robots known as "Painkillers") and who takes his pholosophies to a whole new level, believing that free will is an aberration and that mankind should become a collective conciousness; willingly or no.

 

It ends up as a case of "Right hand working against the left" for a while until they eventually confront each other and merge into the machine-god-being known as Sentinel, who then goes crazy and sets the whole "Collective con.

 

The Big Twist:In addition to the above hijacking, all the societal problems causing the society to rot, from the drugs to the monsters to the fungus to even the ennui, all of those were put in motion by Bernays. All of which he made before the collapse of the dream to try and put it under his vision of a corporate state.

 

Also, at a midway point in the narrative, a huge monster causes a 9-11-scale disaster, which the Neo-Century Project capitalizes on to try and mass-recruit the people scared by their fears of societal breakdown.

 

Recurring Lines/Arc Words: "Keep circulating the tapes." "It's the end of history after all." "Today is what it means to be dead" "And I saw it fall from the skies; a..."

 

-:SEASON 3:-

 

Style: A new style reflective of the 2000s, a city stratified between the world of the rich, with a sleek; clean; sterile and soulless chromatophobic future-by-way-of-Apple design scheme, and the world of the poor; with a used; worn-down-small-business look (Think something like non-Foothills Tucson) with blocks of "Wal-Mart"-style design to reflect "influence" by the upper class. And there is the world of the Webways, which looks like a combination between a strange Seussian-meets-Tron-meets-Parisian-sewers city, and the early polygonial graphics of a Super-FX-chip-based game.

 

Story: A dying world is stratified, into the rich, who live in luxury in strange white tower-cities and can access this world's more-limited-than-normal magic through strange eggs to the poor, who work grueling makework jobs with the purpose only being to service the rich; and who are forbidden from accessing the magic eggs, and have to make do with slowly breaking down technology to help them survive.

 

Though, there is a connecting factor, a virtual-reality-internet of sorts known as the webways, and which preserves the peace; for the most part, even though the society is still dying slowly by degrees. And that is where our protagonist; a young woman; finds a bit of information that allows her to find a key IRL, that creates an alternate path for accessing magic. And it whispers to her that there are six more keys, and a door with seven locks they could open releasing magic for all. And so her journey begins.

 

Villain(s): A biomagical clock-tower known under several aliases before its true name is revealed as Olduvai, of origins hazy even to itself, who has put society on a specific "path" that it scrupulously tries to keep them to via manipulation from behind the scenes specifically for the purpose of creating what it considers an eternal; beautiful drama (Think something like Drosselmeyer from Princess Tutu), even though said path is slowly slipping out of its control and slowly killing mankind (And; as it turns out; the world itself). Of course, this character is secret until the twist. And even more secret is the recurring rich "defender-of-order" antagonist Torluse who starts out as a normal; elitist; upper-class-entitled twit who gets into fights with the heroes for at first what seems like petty and stupid reasons but ends up hijacking the plot and; indeed; perhaps steering it towards its natural conclusion better than its creator.

 

Twist: In addition to the villain-twists above, there are only four keys and the keys and the door with seven locks were both made as a way to quell change by Olduvai and trap those who would oppose him. but, in addition, there may be another way to bring back magic involving the Deep Web and the "Streetlights" leading into it, and there may be more magic in the four existing keys than Olduvai thinks.

 

Recurring Lines/"Arc Words": "Everything breaks down eventually." "Nobody dies tonight!"  "For the _______ of all mankind" "'How do we know this is gonna work?' 'We don't!'"

 

Throughout this, the recurring elements will be the glue holding the franchise together, and thus they are of special importance here. They are, amongst others,

 

:-CREATURES-:

 

Shmo- Looking something like a mix between Grumpy Cat, a Pacman frog, and a Dragon Quest Slime, this little creature has a very slow but near limitless capacity for regeneration from any sort of harm. This is both fortunate and unfortunate, as it lies near the very bottom of the food chain, its meat delicious and the rest of its body harvestable for all sorts fo incredibly useful resources. As a result it is very agressive, because it hates the world and the world does likewise.

 

These are kind of the Goomba/Slime/Rabite/Cotorocks of the whole deliebob

 

Beet-All- Something like a combination of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a tiger beetle, and a staghorn beetle, these creatures roam the lonesome roads and streets, hunting other creatures as prey with their lightning speed, and their plasma-breath. If you can get one to accept you as its rider, you are either very savvy or very lucky,but you will have a friend for life.

 

Occupies approximately the same role as a Chocobo in Final fantasy, albeit far less domesticated

 

Urbeavs- Actually something more between a pomeranian, a beaver and a Moogle, these silery-furred little fellows have a strange combination of technology and magic at their disposal, able to synthesize fantastical devices from the detritus of civilization, create huge, strange machines and fortresses of junk. This, obviously, gives them a mixed reaction amongst humans. Inspired by, obviously Moogles and beavers ability to influence their environment

 

Whizzbang- Whimsical creatures that looks like shadows beneath a floppy wizard's hat, with three long, dextrous birdlike leg/hands beneath. They have various magical powers, varying in strength from "Make pretty sparkles" to "BEG FOR DEATH", that they have relatively little control over, with a cheerful and almost childlike disposition and a tendency to get taken andvantage of by others. Inspired by the Mr. Saturns from Earthbound the Black Mages from Final Fantasy.

 

Eyeball Kids- Unassuming little eyeball-headed humanoids in a carnival barker's outfit with various incredibly deadly eye rays. They almost always know more than they appear, and some say they are the true holders of the secrets of the universe.

 

Inspired by Tonberries, Beholders, the band known as The Residents and the Tom Waits song "Eyeball Kid".

 

Boomin' Onion- A plantlike onion-baloon type monster with a propensity to explode and do heavy damage, but its flesh is useful as a healing item if it is kileld before it can do this. Based on the Final Fantasy Bomb and the Bloomin' Onion.

 

-Mountain Doomer-An enormous creature that resembles a combination of a Mountain Dew vending machine, an octopus and a home entertainment system. He talks like a ridiculously 90s XTREEEEEME DUUUUUUDE of the type that only exists in 90s commercials, and exists mainly to do XTREEEEEEME things and promote Mountain Dew products across the multiverse.

 

Inspired by Ultros from the Final Fantasy series and my love of stupid-product-placement-where-it-doesn't-belong-for-strangeness'-sake

 

Hellephant Seals- A demonic looking elephant seal, with burning horns and batlike wings and many deadly infernal spells. And yet it still looks as stupid as a normal elephant seal.

 

It likes to dwell in sewers and turn parts of them into miniature hellscapes. It bellows constantly and incessantly. It is inspired by the Behemoths from Final Fantasy as well as how fucking stupid Elephant seals look

 

Hunter-Panthers- Humanoid purplish mono-eyed robots with a Panther motif (Most notably shown in their panther-shaped helmets) and a laser-gun-arm that never misses its mark (Amongst many other deadly weapons). It and its variants are usually mooks for various villains, mass produced by the dozens. Inspired by the Mega Man Sniper Joe, as well as the name for the lead singer of the Protomen

 

Mr. Klipboard- A creepy vaguely humanoid ventriloquist-dummy-like thing, with longfloppy limbs that move like a broken motion-capture rig and that looks like a stereotypical door-to-door salesman with a clipboard. Ha various creepyand enimgatic abilities triggered by someone answering (Or, insome cases, refusing to answer) its bizarre survey questions

 

Based on Mr. Clipboard from the infamously terrible FoodFight, Howdy Doody and also on the Handsome Tom and Earthbound enemies in general.

 

Cristy/MotorPsychos- A sentient red Caddilac-like car with something liek a shredder for a mouth, two glowing eyes, and a mean streak a mile wide. That's dangerous already, ut there's also the fact that it can spawn secondary monsters, made out of the metal it eats through its "mouth" called MotorPsychos. THey look like Volkswagen beetles with eyes, tentacles, and a smaller shredder-mouth. Very obviously inspired by Christine, but also by Earthbound enemies in general.

 

Omega Tower/BlackHole Reaper/T Wrecks- These three creatures are considered legendary in about every part of the OO Multiverse, able to topple cities and change the fate of nations. Omega Tower is an enormous; golden; sentient winged radio tower with one red; glaring eye broadcasting a strange signal from an unknown universe. T. Wrecks is a primordial god-dinosaur of pure rage from the beginning of time; and also perhaps the reason why dinosaurs even exist in the first place. The BlackHole reaper is the ghost of a dead star, visciously "feeding" on the lfie of worlds into its empty corpus trying to gain back a taste of the life and heat it remembers. They're inspired by the trio of Final Fantasy "Bonus Bosses", Shinryu, Ultima Weapon and Omega Weapon. They also possibly might show up as Summons.

 

:-MAGIC AND TERMS-:

 

Zauber- A general term for "magical sword", named from the German term for "wizard" but based on the use of the term by Barkley: Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden.

 

Colors Of Magic- Each sort of magic has a color generally associated with it, I.E. fire magic being red, cold magic being blue, manufacture magic being pink, game magic being red-and-white, doom magic being black mixed with another color, portal magic being blue and white, ectcetera, all showing up when magic is activated. This can also translate in-show into subtle lighting/set coloration cues as foreshadowing.

 

Keys, Eggs and Streetlights- These recurring elements symbolize in some way the general use of magic, similar to Final Fantasy's Crystals. Keys are usually some variety of McGuffin and/or simple magical tool, eggs signify some great source of magic with more to it than it appears, and Streetlights symbolize magic without a creative hand behind it; created accidentally by the ebb and flow of the cities and very powerful; but also very dangerous,. Inspired a little by Banjo-Kazooie's Stop-N-Swop.

 

The Van- As Final Fantasy games have an Airship as a recurring element, so too would each season have some variety of souped-up van as a means of transportation for the heroes, though the significance of it plot-wise varies throughout.

 

Summons- Like in Final Fantasy, these are essentially multiversal beings of great power (Though of different supposed "origin" in each installment) that can be summoned for use. Said summons, or at least the recurring ones, will be detailed later.

 

:-CHARACTERS-:

The Cleaner-A woman in a black leather trenchcoat and a candy-apple-red motorcycle helmet. She rides a souped-up white Crown Victoria, and has a shotgun with a dragon's mouth at the end, which also serves as a conduit for her magic.

 

She's nicknamed the Cleaner because she "cleans up" people her employer at the moment doesn't like. She's cold, smart, and committed to whatever job she's doing. But she does have a sense of honor, and is willing to break from what said employer wants if they've gone too far.

 

In every season she appears in, she'll be sucked into some dimentional vortex-type-thing of some sort in her last appearance in said season, explaining how the same character manages to appear in every season despite each season beingset in a different universe. She's inspired by Boba Fett, The Plague from Hobo With A Shotgun and a little bit of the same guy as the character below.

 

Gargamess-A rowdy biker who wears a bizarre combination of medieval-type armor and biker gear, the most notable bits of which include a fur-lined leather jacket and a horned helmet. He's boisterous and a bike-for-hire, but he's not really evil (though he has worked for plenty of bastards)

 

He has a sledgehammer known as Mjolnerr, which is all but hilariously useless in any but his hands, and which he uses as his primary weapon. Though, this is one from many weapons he keeps in the seemingly limitless trunk of his motorcycle, a powerful, bulky black-and-slivery machine with a cow's skull tied to the front.

 

I would say that he's based on Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy but, in actuality, he's meant to be heavily implied to BE Gilgamesh from said series under a different name, and he also has a similar vortex-travel-y thing going on to The Cleaner (The same as he does in the Final Fantasy games)

 

Dante Joe- A carnival-style huckster with a trailer-truck, who travels around the multiverse through means unknown to him, bringing a collection of games and prizes known as The Red Arcade with him. Said Arcade fits in the back of his truck, and looks an awful lot like the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, and which also has bizarrely metaphysical games that give strange prizes.

 

Also, there's a small creature beneath his truck known as Shiny Mink, who does indeed look a little like a mink and is implied to be a god and the reason the truck keeps transporting around the multiverse. Dante Joe is named after director Joe Dante, and Shiny Mink is based on the "Mew under the truck" rumor from Pokemon

 

:-SUMMONS-:

 

Gamma Gertie- A brontosaurus covered in radioactive fire and who also breathes mushroom clouds, and whose heart is full of burning justice, but also rage. Associated magic is fire.

 

The Freewayman- A vaguely humanoid creature made up of roads covered in swarming vehicle, this being is the colelctive soul of all roads everywhere. Associated magic is Earth.

 

Thunderbird- An enormous blue hybrid of jetplane and eagle who plows through the skies, its cry bringing fear in its wake. Associated magic is Air.

 

Bigmouth- A huge sewer-dwelling sacred catfish with a deep, endless wisdom but also a deep, gnawing hunger. Associated magic is Water.

 

YuleFather- Pretty much a multiversal reflection of Santa who brings winter in his wake. Associated magic is Ice.

 

Frankenstein- Created by one who wished to usurp the power of the gods, this strange, fororn, twisted being wanders the multiverse, trying to find his purpose. Associated magic is Lightning.

 

Master Computer- A huge factory computer mainframe created aeons ago that has evolved and changed over the years into a being of godlike intelligence. Associated magic is Manufacture

 

Alseralk- A jeweled skull who commands mighty magics and who dwells in the heart of a endless Tomb, filled with monsters, traps and other sorts of nightmarish Horrors, which he uses to gather and harvest the souls of the wayward. Associated magic is Doom.

 

Neon Knight- A knight on a motorcycle made up of neon tubes, who travels about the multiverse, unable to stop until evil is gone from the multiverse forever. Associated magic is Holy.

 

Bandit- A humanoid combination of gambling paraphanelia (I.E. Dice, roulette wheels, pachinko boards slot mahcines) who changes wherever he goes to a strange and whimsical gamefield. Associated magic is Game