Hey, I was trying to work a bit more on that start screen, and this idea came to my head... I thought about making the Hexen scene much richer in our SE mod! You see, one of the greatest things about Antara wasn't the graphics, engine capacities or furious fights. The best aspect of it was the very, very rich universe, not only in city, npc's or monsters variations, but yet an entirely built culture (or cultures), with history, famous events, politics, regional culture, and all the things that we feel were there before the player, and make him feel he's actually travelling into another world.
It's cool, but what does that have to do with Hexen and SE? Simple. Since it is the last chance for us to actually shape Hexen's world the way we like it (at least for a big while), and I have already said something like that, we shouldn't let the oprtunity slip away, and we really should change and add things we like, and wasn't there in the original. Since SE will be a RPG, it should have much more richness than the original game, meant to be a fantasy action only. Yet, Hexen's original engine gives us lots of possibilities that others doesn't, like Heretic, for an example.
What I'm trying to say is: what if someone smart and talented enough (do you hear RambOrc, it could really be you! <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> ), would care to writte texts, poems, everything that would make the player dive into hexen's universe, and would reveal to him all aspects that passed unknown before, like Chronos history, the town history, important facts and people, heroes of other times, gods, religions and it's doctrines, chantics, chorus, prays...;some big events, like the "royalty joust", or some other, that the player would never meet during the game, but only to know it, would already be cool, the inner aspects of the Legion, it's history, important people, tactics; the inner aspects of the Arcannum school of magic, it's tomes, legends, philosophy, students work, masters revelations...;and etc,etc,etc. That could be achieved in different ways: by, in a similar effect of that placed in the tombs of that grave map of Death Kings, where you get those funny messages when you click in a tomb; you could, when into some place with book shelves (like the Arcannum/Legion/Church library, that mage's house we all saw, etc), click on them and then you would get those texts,poems,etc, and you could spend some time there reading about all the library has to offer. In practical effects, when you click into a book shelve, you woud activate the respective script, and you would receive a "page" (firstly the book/text/poem/etc title and author), going to the next by pressing space, an arrow, or by waiting some time (not a good idea though). To skip the book and finish the reading, you could press esc, or there could be a system like Duke Nukem, where you just walk away from the source, and the information is finished (this way the action doesn't stop).
OR we could have a system similar to most rpgs, where you actually pick up/buy/select a book in your inventory and read it in a "pause" system, like the "Help Menu", where you skip pages by pressing keys and go out with ESC.
Of course, besides the system, we should have a talented and willing writter, and that's clearly outta my hands... Don't you think it would be just fantastic? Please comment this one! See you later, pals. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->