The game is set in an alternate-history version of the US west coast in 1993. Instead of computers, we've got biomechanoids. And instead of the traditional cyberpunk Japanophilia/phobia, the neon writing is going to be in Nahuatl. But more about that another time.
As a friendly neighbourhood biomech-fixer, you come into contact with all kinds of meat-devices, including some rather horrible and illegal ones. Okay, they're all horrible, but some of them are also illegal, Cronenbergian fleshgun style. Which means that you also get frequent visits from the police.
Mockup of police interaction
I've been working on a separate narrative prototype to the main prototype. While the main one is about mechanics and user experience, the narrative one is written in Ink and is for me to figure out what kind of stories you're going to encounter. But while writing the dialogue for this prototype, I ran into a really silly problem: the cops kept on sounding really British. It was all "well, well, what's all this then?"
Monty Python
Which doesn't work if you're actually in alternate history California. So I needed to figure out what police in that place and era would actually sound like.
Which meant finding a 90s police TV show set on the US west coast. I found one: it's called Nash Bridges, and it's very 90s and quite silly. The titular protagonist is A Cop. He's a Good Cop, of course, because this is way before The Wire. He's also an ex stage magician, which mostly means he has the special move of putting handcuffs on people without them realising, which admittedly is pretty useful. He has two ex-wives, the Sexy One and the Difficult One, and a rotund hispanic sidekick. The whole thing is very 90s surface-level multicultural, screaming "it's fine now, racism is totally over."
He does Criminal Investigations, breaks about 800 laws per episode, likes to antagonise dangerous criminals, but we forgive him because he's Assigned Good Cop At Birth. He gets into various gunfights and vehicle chases with his Special Cool Car, which the Internet informs me is a "1971 Plymouth Barracuda".
As you can probably tell from the amount of snark in the previous two paragraphs, I don't think this is actually a very good show, but it's kind of adorable in a 90s TV way. And I've been taking lots of notes on how the characters talk, so that I can hopefully nail their lingo for the game. Less "He's a wrong 'un on account of all the crimes," and more "Well, I don't know about that, but I sure know the deal's going down tonight."
It's all part of the Writing Process.
