Ideas for Rayman Worlds

[Keane]

THEdragon:
What I meant by inside a pencil is how sometimes the background wall is all wood and stuff. With that and the erasers and ink, at first I thought I was inside a pencil.

Golly, I never thought of it like that. I always wondered what the wooden background was meant to be!

Whoaa, that is a neat idea. It would bring some sense to it all as I always felt like Rayman is inside but not sure what.

[spiraldoor]

THEdragon:
What I meant by inside a pencil is how sometimes the background wall is all wood and stuff. With that and the erasers and ink, at first I thought I was inside a pencil.

It's meant to resemble a school desk. I always found it very provocative. Like, does the desk fade away as you approach it? Or is there a huge wooden wall surrounding the city, Truman Show-style? Who etched those vast scratches into the surface? It kind of makes you think.

[THEdragon]

Yeah, it did seem a lot more school desk to me. But that is strange, what would the huge wooden wall be doing there? Very strange.

[jurebj]

A dungeon that would connect Razoff's and the Begoniax's house.
And there should be an area in the heart of the world. In R3 I always wanted to go there because I thought if I destroy it, I would see a tunnel under it.

[THEdragon]

I think it would be nice to return to the Valley (Rayman's homeland, quite possibly?) And perhaps see the location of the Great Protoon. It seems to be somewhere in the Dream Forest.

[spiraldoor]

Razoff and Bégoniax's house? No way. They'd never go for such a niche reference, and besides, there's already a magic mirror that goes most of the way, so it wouldn't even make sense.

The valley was never really intended as a separate place. That's a rationalisation I constructed in a misguided attempt to hammer the first three games into a vaguely coherent continuity. It only half-worked, and after Origins it hardly works at all. They won't revisit it – they'll just continue to drop locations and elements from the previous games into the new ones. They're all one big abstract world – the only borders are the ones we've imagined and applied.

The Great Protoon is gone. It has evolved into the Heart of the World in the eyes of the developers, at least in terms of narrative function – I doubt they'll ever bother to spell out the fact that they're the same thing in the fiction itself. Even if they're not, they're so similar as to make the Great Protoon totally irrelevant.

A level inside the Heart of the World is something that I could actually see happening. It's prominent enough through the series that they might want to revisit it in more depth (hey, they already did this in Rayman 3, and arguably in Rayman 2). A level inside it makes sense. It could be kind of like the Teensy Highways, really trippy and fantastical, full of light, Lums everywhere.

[jurebj]

If I made a game somebody absorbed its power and you would get an empty room. It would be destroyed into lums and if Rayman collected all of them a tunnel would upon. I don't know what kind of a level it would be.
And in the beginning of the game Rayman would be trapped in the hall of doors.

[Haruka]

A level inside the Heart of the World is something that I could actually see happening. It's prominent enough through the series that they might want to revisit it in more depth (hey, they already did this in Rayman 3, and arguably in Rayman 2). A level inside it makes sense. It could be kind of like the Teensy Highways, really trippy and fantastical, full of light, Lums everywhere.

I like this idea. The Rayman universe has got so many potential to bring us to new and unseen worlds, and to delight our eyes with spectacular environments.

The valley was never really intended as a separate place. That's a rationalisation I constructed in a misguided attempt to hammer the first three games into a vaguely coherent continuity. It only half-worked, and after Origins it hardly works at all. They won't revisit it – they'll just continue to drop locations and elements from the previous games into the new ones. They're all one big abstract world – the only borders are the ones we've imagined and applied.

The Great Protoon is gone. It has evolved into the Heart of the World in the eyes of the developers, at least in terms of narrative function – I doubt they'll ever bother to spell out the fact that they're the same thing in the fiction itself. Even if they're not, they're so similar as to make the Great Protoon totally irrelevant.

Knowing how the Valley got pretty much "forgotten" and maybe like 90% of everything linked to Rayman 1, since Rayman 2 on, I believe it got somehow "scrapped" to not say rebooted. I always believed that the Heart could be the evolution/replacement of the Great Protoon since both objects are pretty much similar and with similar endings. Only god knows if the R1 universe will be brought back in mass somehow, but it is few likely to happen.

[MisterDark'sFanClub]

But if they did bring the Great Protoon back,...what if the Great Protoon was dying...and Rayman went INSIDE it to save it or restart it or something?

[lumgum]

A level inside the Heart of the World, eh? I could imagine that... I think that some level inside the Heart of the World would basically look like a huge factory place where everything is made out of lum energy, and there is loads of lums inside, with the bottom of loads of disco lights stuck in the roof with the wires and everything. Then, after that, maybe there would be a level beneath the Heart of the World where everything is all gloomy and stuff and filled with ghost chickens and with minimal lums. Rayman would probably have to carry a lantern with a lum as the light source, and there are loads of pipes shooting narrow jets of steam that Rayman has to avoid and old, dusty Teensie etchings on the walls which kind of explain the history of the Heart of the World.

Oh, and my idea: a world set inside a giant spaceship. There would be loads of futuristic stuff and there would be cyborg space pirates everywhere. Occasionally, Rayman might see piles of old Robo-Pirate things, possibly hinting towards the fact that the spaceship might have once belonged to Robo-Pirates and maybe even there would be a basement place with Zombie Robo-Pirates everywhere and technology that might affect Rayman in ways that make callbacks to previous games such as floating hula-hoop thingies that give Rayman certain abilities like Heavy Metal Fist and Super Helicopter and lasers on the ceiling that shrink Rayman by using "Shrinky Elf brand energy"!

[THEdragon]

Ooh, there should be moon levels. Levels where Rayman goes to the moon(s). Yep.

[spiraldoor]

I always had difficulty telling whether Rayman was really on the moon in Space Mama's Crater. I also thought he was going to end up on one of the moons the first time I played the snowboarding level in Rayman 3 – they seemed to grow bigger and bigger in the sky as the level went on...

[THEdragon]

I think the battle with Space Mama takes place on a stage, in a set that's supposed to represent the moon.

[Master]

Yeah, hence why they've got the curtains rising up, it's meant to be a sort of theatrical fight, which I think fits in better with the "artsy" thematic of Picture City.

[THEdragon]

Yep, Picture City is a city of not only visual arts, but also performing arts.

[Hunchman801]

I think it'd be great to have a swamp level with an even more gloomy atmosphere, though not as caricatural as in Rayman 2, and a thick fog all over the place. That'd allow for a lot of interesting gameplay possibilities and bring an unseen atmosphere of insecurity as enemies could pretty much appear right in front on you. Of course an entire level like that would be quite tiresome and most of the time the fog should be such that you can see where you're going.

[THEdragon]

Kind of like Silent Hill, yes? I have never played Silent Hill, but I'm pretty sure it has that eerie fog effect you described.

[Hunchman801]

Never played it either, though I definitely plan on doing so.

[Master]

Hm, that reminds me of when you enter Sovngarde in Skyrim, there's a huge mist which makes it difficult to see and progress.

[THEdragon]

Or setting the render distance to low in Minecraft!