Menu,health, battle.

Haven't talked to much about the other aspects of the game like the menu screen while your playing, if you should be able to view your health and or other stats on screen, stuff like that. It is worth noting the games that do things different when thinking about what we want he player to see on screen while running around, engaged in battle or in towns. For instance, Fable is a great example of this. As the series moved forwards, the screen showed less and less giving the player a centralized view of the main character without a health bar, magic or other things to clutter up the screen. Kingdom hearts showed quite a bit, with your magic, health of Sora and his party. Now this is interesting because, you had to constantly check on them and it added a sense of urgency and just another aspect to pay attention to while fighting. Also the blinking alarm that turns on when you are in the red as well sora's face looking like he is really hurt was cool, because it made you want to heal and get back to a fresh state.
I'm not sure how i feel about this. I mean, if we want there to be really nice visuals, it makes sense to take out most of the stuff on screen. Maybe it pops up when you battle?... could be. I think this is a very touchy subject because, like in FF13, i thought there was just to much going on in the battles, and the all the gauges seemed to overwhelm the viewer and took away from the intense fighting that was going on. I mentioned to you about the "warm up" idea i had, in that you don't quite get to fight like a hero right off the bat, you have to warm up by blocking or by pecking away at the enemy until you are able to unleash much faster attacks, also I just thought that maybe you could get bonuses by dodging things?... This tactic would give the player a sense of like... I can't wait to get in there, get warmed up(Rather quickly) and destroy this monster. Now of course, later in the game as you level, you don have to warm up at all, your ready to kick ass from the start. This is very tricky because we want the game to be fun first and the idea of having to warm up first might turn off the player from the game... However, i think if we break this down to a science it could be great, and its just ONE idea.. so its nothing solid.
now.. are we going to have a reward for defeating shit other than exp? we need a new way of rewarding the player. Diablo gave you drops, kingdom hearts gave you green orbs, mario gave you coins...SO its important to think about this, but its not necessary. Also, the exp idea... i think we should keep it REALLY simple. Just like in Knights of the round...were it is just some bar that fills or something. I think it would be unique to have(above the bar) maybe a silhouette of the item thats next up for upgrade.. like if it were gloves there would be gloves about the bar. SO it becomes awesome when you see a sword above the bar because you know the new blade will rule no matter what.. it should be the last to upgrade.
The main menu has to be simple yet effective.. I enjoy the concept of having some of it drawn in pencil on like a parchment background, almost like a carpenters drafting table. It would be a nice juxtaposition of the vibrant nature scenes of the game, in relation to the somewhat bland menu screen, something to play with.