Inspiration comes in many forms, and can strike at any time.
No matter how similar two people are, the same subject can (and usually will) inspire two very different reactions: some people may take to the internet and voice their opinions online, while others may decide to go off on their own and create a piece of art.
For Korean game developer Yang Bing, inspiration struck after watching one of the many Final Fantasy XV trailers from a few years back — however, Yang wasn't satisfied with leaving a comment or drawing a single picture. No, Yang's ambitions were grander than most.
He decided to make a game of his own, from scratch, by himself.
Now, after two years of near-constant work, Yang has revealed Lost Soul Aside: an action-RPG with a heavy focus on combat, built from the ground up on the Unreal Engine 4. It's still a prototype, and there's no guarantee that the game will actually be released to the public — but even so, the debut trailer stands as a work of art unto itself.
Most independent developers (even those with relatively larger teams) tend to stay away from realism, as it can add countless headaches to the already-monumental task of developing a game. Yang, on the other hand, fully embraced it — and the result is something that most gamers would expect to see from a triple-A development studio.
Remember, everything in the trailer above was made by one person, working in his spare time. It's almost hard to believe: there are entire professional development studios that wouldn't even bother to attempt creating an action game like Lost Soul Aside, and yet, Yang has built a full working prototype in just a few years. For an amateur programmer, that's unheard of, even with a third-party engine serving as the foundation.
What's even more impressive is that Yang still isn't satisfied with his work: in a post on Twitter, Yang admitted that the influences of Final Fantasy XV are a bit too prominent, and that he wants to give Lost Soul Aside its own unique personality:
As with many of these fan-driven projects, Lost Soul Aside has no solid release date — in fact, Yang isn't sure if the game will ever even make it out to fans. Over on Twitter, Yang addressed the idea of a crowdfunding campaign with a simple reply: "I know nothing about marketing, I won't ask for people's money before I'm sure that I can finish [the game]."
With any luck, Yang can continue working on Lost Soul Aside — given just how good the game looks already, it'd be a shame if gamers never got a chance to play it.
At the very least, the game that inspired Lost Soul Aside does have a release date: Final Fantasy XV is due out on Sept. 30.
