Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop! Today, I'm posting my formerly 48 hour exclusive to Patreon "How to make a Harley Quinn game good without directly copying the Batman Arkham Games" post. So if you want to see these first, click on the link and donate at least the 1 dollar tier.
First off, we'd need to base Harley on her New 52/Rebirth incarnation, so this one's got the bleached skin from a similar vat of chemicals that the Joker was exposed to. But more importantly, this one's not attached to the Joker anymore. No, this Harley Quinn actually despises the Joker for the abuse, but is still slightly in love with him despite that. She is definitely a battered ex who needs to move on with her life.
And that's when her story comes in; Harley, who lives in New York, gets a letter from the Joker saying he wants to meet her. Knowing full well that she'll never be free so long as he lives, Harley decides its time to end things and finally kill the Joker, beginning her hub world/level progression game where she hunts him down with some help from her friends along the way.
Now, even though we've got a functional system from the Batman Arkham games, I'm not going to use that. Instead, we're going to use a system similar to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines for combat and to show off Harley's insanity. Harley Quinn's arsenal includes guns, knives, a baseball bat, her mallet and a variety of explosives, all of which would work well with Bloodlines' combat system. However, instead of Bloodlines' melee system, we'd give Harley something more dynamic and destructive, since Harley is an antihero in this scenario, and she doesn't care who gets hurt in her quest for vengeance. And that's not even counting her gymnastics training allowing her what she needs to BE more dynamic in melee combat.
As for her her insanity, we could actually do something similar to the Malkavians from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines; she's hear things that aren't there, see things that aren't there, and get insight into her quest. Combine that with her genius level intellect and her training in psychiatry, Harley would be able to figure out any clue in her investigation into where the Joker is, as well as any other side quests she's involved herself in.
Which leads me to an idea about her insanity; we'd have a button that allow her to drop into her insane state at her whim, which she'd call "insight", and that would affect her in combat and in investigations; combat would be flashier and more damaging, and she'd find clues quicker. But be warned, because "insight" usage would be tracked, and would affect her ending if used too much; would she continue to try to be a better person than the Joker made her, or she give in to her madness and stop fighting what the Joker made her?
As for her quest, it would be open world with a level by level system; you'd start in New York, do a little bit of open world there to advance the story, then head to Gotham, Metropolis and any other place the story takes her, doing the same thing until she catches up with the Joker. This mean that the open world aspects would be smaller in scale than in Spider-man or Arkham Knight, but that's only because you're not just dealing with a single city.
Harley's got a few dozen friends too. Her long time love Poison Ivy, Catwoman, the Suicide Squad, even the Bat Family could get involved in Harley's story. Pamela, who loves Harley the most, would be like "Look, don't let him get to you. This is your life, not his. But if you have to do this, I'll help you.", while Catwoman and the Bat family would be like "bring him in, but don't kill him; you're better than that," while the Suicide Squad members would be like "Just kill him and be done with it." All would have quests for Harley to perform in their locations, and all would be integrated into the the story line.
And finally, the Joker. This would definitely be a boss fight, both physically and mentally. And how it would end would be determined by a number of factors; would she kill him or let him live? If she let him live, what would she do next? If she killed him, what would she do next? The madness meter would definitely play into this and would determine her ending.
Harley Quinn would definitely need a lot of work to be unique, but as illustrated here, it is totally possible.
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