A story that took place within recent history without hordes of monsters to battle needed strong, interesting allies and adversaries so we peopled 1888 with mixtures of fact and fiction.
The Ripper was an agent of "Big V", and the murders were to harvest body parts for a ritual of "Big V's" devising.
Kevin suggested Spring Heel'd Jack, a fascinating character from Victorian legend that was a definite "in".
And... Frankenstein's monster.
My idea was "What if Mary Shelley didn't create a work of fiction? What if she either found Victor's journals or actually encountered the monster?"
The creature was still alive, his torment continued. "Big V" controlled him with the promise of creating another bride for him (hence the Ripper's harvesting).
Other ideas we tossed around included the Masons, the Illuminati, Sherlock Holmes and H.G. Wells.
But our collective enthusiam never equalled the scope of our ideas.
Our friends from Black Isle felt 1888 was a good concept, but though they continued to give feedback, when the studio died so did our momentum and like any hobby project on the internet, people come and go. We'd bring in someone new for a fresh persepctive but the interest was waning.
After about a year, one of our ex Black Isle friends suggested writing it as a novel, making it easier to shop around to developers.
Mattias and I loved the idea. We scaled back on the the story's more fantastic elements and felt a renewed enthusiam but in the end... well....
Mattias has always proved to be less than reliable. He's intelligent and has some talent however he's also one of those people that can "talk the talk" but it's usually just that: Talk with little to no action.
Joe Cousinea was all set to design a nice, dark, horror themed themed site for the project but when the writing team fell apart that served as the final nail in 1888 coffin. A good idea died.