Enemies

Well i had thought about having the enemies be infected animals. Wolves, bears big cats etc, only they have a host attached to them kinda like the flood in halo. We could also have the actual things that mutate the animals be enemies too, totally separate from the others. this idea may not be the strongest suggestion, but I'm just going for a different take i guess. We had mentioned that maybe the creatures "just exist" and that the world kinda has to deal with them regardless, like in final fantasy, but I'm just not sure how we could do it uniquely.
Maybe, for instance, the creatures have an origin point, them come from a certain spot or location. An example of this would be Diablo in that the minions you fight sprout from hell, due to Diablo and his brothers creating a link between both worlds, and thus a hero is needed. I think that it is important to have a unique take on the monsters in the game for two reasons: 1 is that our game has to stand out and to do this most every aspect has to be fun, different and interesting(those three are key) 2 is that the game is somewhat serious,(we aren't making a game were you are a plumber who stomps on dinosaurs who live in the piping) so we have to be rational about where these things come from, I don't think having the enemies just be part of the world is very interesting, yes we could do that but I think we should shoot for something more creative.
So far I have mentioned that the enemies could be mutations like the flood, or from a different dimension or world, like Diablo. There is also the idea that the monsters come from the sky?.. i know it sounds kinda lame but we might be able to make it work, like maybe Merle sees one crash land off the cost of his home and checks it out, and maybe that's why the ships have come, it could tie nicely. But it still doesn't answer WHY they are here. Brace yourself I'm gonna go all final fantasy here, maybe the monsters are sent from beings from the sky or another planet to "test man". Maybe the player finds out that the world is being watched by these god-like beings that decide to start challenging the inhabitants(the alchemists?)... Idk where this is going, but i thought about two things when I came up with the approach: 1. is the reference to War of the World's in that the aliens have been watching us for some time, and the other reference is the Greek God's in the battle for Troy, they sort of sit and watch the goings-on and play chess with the characters, giving them hope,restoring their courage and killing them off.
All this said, I don't think we need to go into a lot of depth with them reason or origin of the enemies and how they fit. I mean, we are creating an adventure game, and we like the notion of "basic is fun" so i see no issue with having it be simple but interesting at the same time. For instance, because we are doing a game where you essentially just kill things and lvl, it would behoove us to not think too much into the reasoning behind the relevance of the monsters, basically what I'm saying is that we are going for "fun first" and we saw that with Final fantasy XIII it wasn't fun first, it was like a company produced a bad product and tried to put shiny stars on the box that said "look i have a new battle system and the graphics are amazing", but it wasn't any good, and the story was way too intense and needed way too much explanation. In short, we should stick to the roots of the game, fun first and basic is better. -n8b