And here's my idea for what would be, in my view...THE ULTIMATE GAME! I posted an earlier version of this before. This one's updated! It'd probably take forever to make. Hah. XD
The overall “shape” of game would be like classic RPG’s like “Planescape: Torment,” “Arcanum,” or “Fallout.” However, unlike those isometric games, this would be fully 3D, third person with a movable camera, with movement and the camera being a bit like the game “Splinter Cell.” You could enter a certain “cursor mode” to get control of a mouse pointer, to highlight objects in the game world and interact with them.
Features:
-Brutally beautiful dark fairy tale art style. Gothic as hell. Shadowy, macabre, magical, bloody--all done with awesome visuals. It would be realistic and dark, with the color palette being mostly limited to white, black, and red. The graphics would take advantage of all the latest graphical hardware. The developers would pay particular notice to the atmosphere and the animation. The animation would be even better than that of “Assassin’s Creed.” The monsters in the game would be a bit on the Silent Hill-y side…very dark and twisted looking. The whole atmosphere would be creepy as hell, even for the safe places. The character costumes would mostly be lovely gothic outfits (corsets, etc.)
-Character creation system with fully customizable appearance. Think something as advanced as the Create-A-Sim feature in “The Sims 2”--completely customize your character’s face, outfit, make up, accessories, etc. You could create your character’s face using sliders. For the outfits, it would be something akin to Heromachine--you could choose every single part of the outfit. Most of it would be keeping up with the gothic art style, but there would still be plenty of variety. It would make good use of the graphics, and the dark fantasy theme would mean you could add things like wings and what not. With the modding tools, however, you’d be able to make your own clothing parts if you found it too restrictive.
-Advanced, branching storyline that would be defined by your choices. And in this case, it would actually work and kick ass. I’m not talking about insignificant choices, like those used in “Indigo Prophecy”--choices that, while kinda cool, never had any real impact on the story, which was basically the same no matter what choices you made. In this, there would be REAL choices--choices that would make the game’s story go in completely different directions. (The Witcher claims to be like this…I have not yet played it though.) Even after completing one storyline, though, you’d be able to keep playing to complete others (unless it resulted in a scripted death scene or something). This would make the storyline play out like a series of myths, all involving your increasingly heroic character, but one would always turn out to be the main storyline. In some cases, the sub plots you chose would tie together in unexpected ways to create something truly epic.
-Political choices. At one point in the game you would have the opportunity to enter a position of political power. If you chose to took it, you would be presented with problems, and could make political decisions that would affect the game world. This would play out quite a bit like Nationstates, except that you would be able to SEE these changes in the game world as you explored it. Some choices would be so extreme that your people would rebel against you, and you’d have to fight them--directly if you so choose. This would be another one of the ways that the storyline was affected.
-Different gods you can worship. Each one would grant you different powers and weaknesses. Some would require regular bloody sacrifices in their names. After gaining political power, you would be able to decide which god to make your city-state worship, if any. (Forcing everyone to worship a single god would decrease civil liberties but it makes your godlike powers that much more powerful, especially during battles. And yes, you’d be able to make your entire city worship the evil bloodthirsty ones.) Some gods would forsake you for your actions and decide not to grant you anymore abilities, but you could also forsake a god or goddess if (s)he kept nagging you to do things you didn’t want to do. One of the major possible storylines could involve just this, and your struggle to remain alive even when a goddess is trying to destroy you. It would even be possible to become a god yourself, and even become a ruler (or murderer) of all the other gods, be it through might or politics. (This would be one of the possible endings.)
-Lots and lots of kickass writing and dialogue. I’m talking “Planescape: Torment” level of writing here. There would be memorable, even quotable lines; characters with distinct personalities; generally great dialogue; and of course a mind-blowing story. No cheesy, cliché lines here! The dialogue choices would sometimes be a way to shape the story and make your choices.
-Emphesis on a romantic relationship with NPC. One of the ways that the dialogue would come into play would be that the protagonist could have a romantic relationship with one of 6 “love interest” NPC’s. (Why so many? Because you have to account for different genders--your character could be male or female, and could be interested in males or females. Some love interests would only be open to heterosexual relationships, though it would be possible to change this via modding.) The potential love interests would be among the most detailed characters in the game, and a particular amount of dialogue would be given to them. One could have very long, sometimes deep conversations with these characters, even random arguments about things that are really unimportant but SEEM important to the characters. A love interest would eventually travel with you, and as your relationship would grow, one could interact with them in more ways. Here the game would take another cue from “The Sims,” with various social animations. (One could also use these animations on other players (or choose how their character responds to such animations) in multiplayer, which I will discuss later.) The animations would become fairly risqué after a cetain point, enough to land the game a hard-M rating, though the game wouldn’t enter AO territory…at least not without some mods, ‘cus you KNOW horny gamers would make those mods. I’d love a really well done sex minigame, but the game would sell practically no copies if it had the AO rating. Really, it would have more of an emphesis on romance than sex. You wouldn’t go on actual “dates”--crappy Hentai dating simulators have shown that those don’t translate well into games--but there would be romantic scenes, romantic speech, an accurate feeling of genuine love between your character and your love interest. (The game would also come with the ability to create your own love interest by choosing one of the built-in love interests’ personalities, dialogue, etc. and changing the appearance using the character-creator tool. This would replace that love interest in that character’s game world.) Love interests would also play a role in the story, sometimes directly affecting it--especially the ones with more passionate, less passive personalities. If you became king and decided to make a woman your queen, maybe she’d refuse to become your queen and you’d have the option of having her beheaded; if this happened enough times your people would hate you. Or perhaps she would indeed accept to become your queen. Maybe you two would be happy. Maybe the woman you chose would turn out to always want to have a say in the political decisions--and maybe she’d be right and maybe you’d be unable to admit it and have her beheaded anyway, or maybe you’d listen to her, or maybe she’d be wrong and you’d listen to her anyway. Or behead her. Or maybe you’re controlling a female character and become queen, and want to behead your husband because he’s a drunk or because he cheats on you. But always, a love interest would impact the overall story somehow. And yes, it would be possible for one of the love interests to be a god: that would be one of the ways you could become a god yourself. Or maybe a hot god or goddess would just want to have sex with you, no strings attached.
-Huge battle scenes. Battles could be instigated by you, or another country may just end up massacring you, maybe for political reasons, maybe for economic reasons, maybe because they don’t like the god of your country. Maybe another country would run out of a resource that your country is rich in. Maybe you’d end up getting drafted and just being another grunt, hoping to stay alive. Maybe you’d run off from a doomed battle with a drunken general, and get hunted for being a deserter. Maybe you’d run off from a battle that wasn’t so doomed, and still get hunted for being a deserter. Maybe you’d get caught; maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d rise up in the military by killing tons of enemy units. If you became a king or queen, you’d be able to lead armies into battle. Several of these would be important in some threads of the branching storyline. It wouldn’t turn into an RTS here, exactly, for you’d keep controlling your character the same as always. However, your character would be able to call in for more units (“SEND MORE TROLLS!” type of thing), though like in an RTS game there would be a limit to how much manpower you could have at a time. You’d have to decide which units to bring in when while still keeping on your toes and fighting for your life until more reinforcements arrived. Naturally, all around you units would be fighting each other, and the other enemy general would keep bringing in his own reinforcements. The units you had would depend on how you decided to make your nation. You could be able to invest in steampunk military weapons, or use magic to breed freakish monsters. (There would even be a minigame where you could create your own monsters--think “Spore” but everything would be creepier and weirder.) The units would have a large impact on not only your success in the battles, but also on how the battles played out in general. If you got a lot of flyers and attacked a kingdom that never got around to developing anti-air weapons, then you’re in for an instant win. But you’re also in for an instant defeat if YOU haven’t invested in the right offense or defense when an enemy comes. If this was a siege on his castle, you could take it over, and, yes, say what happens in the country of it--so you could make your country prosper while making the enemy country wilt and vice versa. But it would also be possible to have your kingdom taken over and to be dethroned and imprisoned and have all your people enslaved. It would also be possible to free your people from bondage, with or without the help of the gods. (Without would make it much harder.) Whether or not gods helped you would depend on how benevolent they were and how devoutedly you followed their will. Perhaps the god would say, “No, I told you to make your nation like this and you disobeyed me.” Or, “No, you were late to sacrifice me a virgin last time.” Or maybe they’d say, “Yes, but only if you promise to do this thing for me!” Maybe you’d have to kill someone you loved, or undertake a difficult journey, or even kill a rival god. And if you failed in your quest the god could curse your entire kingdom, or your loved ones.
-Swordfighting that’s actually fun. Think “Jedi Academy”’s lightsaber fights, but even more advanced and cool.
-Real emotion and kickass voice acting. None of this contrived “We have Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean in our game!” BS. The voice actors would be “right” for their characters, but would all be great voice actors--and most would be unknown, and unrecognizable. There would be real emotion here--I want voice acting so powerful that it could make the player cry. There would be some pretty intense moments, too, plenty of times when the actors have to stretch their muscles. There would be real acting here, with real facial expressions. I want to stress that this game would be, at times, truly terrifying and disturbing, and that there would be parts so sad that they would bring most players to tears, and the facial animations and voice acting would be critical to achieving that.
-In-game ecology. In the wilderness, animals would feed on one another and on the plant life. You’d constantly see evidence of an entire ecosystem within the game. You could take pictures of them (for money), attack them, eat them, ride them, tame them, bond with them. One SUPER HUGE one would extremely hard to catch but it would be possible to tame it and ride it into battle to lay waste to your enemies! It would also be possible to capture so many animals that you could turn your keep of them into a sort of zoo--and get paid for it as people came to see, even as you went off to do other things. Or maybe your war effort would slowly destroy the game’s landscape. You would see the effects of industrialization, making plants deteriorate.
-A full orchestral soundtrack that would put other soundtracks in MOST of the gaming industry to shame. Combine memorable themes with a great overall sound…again, very dark and magical sounding.
-Multiplayer with Dungeon Master/Storyteller gameplay. The multiplayer would take cues from “Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption” or “Neverwinter Nights,” with the host of a multiplayer game taking the role of a Storyteller, who could sweep their other players into a storyline by possessing NPC’s, spawning objects and monsters, giving them experience points, etc. For those players who would want an arena deathmatch or just a room for standing around and chatting with other players, it would be easy to set those up, too. Also the multiplayer would HAVE to be relatively low lag, and not be bug-ridden. That was a major problem with Vampire’s multiplayer: you could barely play a multiplayer game without the game freezing, or becoming a slideshow.
-Split screens. Taking another cue from “Indigo Prophecy,” the game would have some split screens—while you play, sometimes a box would appear that would show a cutscene happening at the same time.
-Oh, the modability. It would ship with powerful, but extremely user-friendly modding tools, that one could use to create even more content--outfit parts, new meshes and animations, maps for multiplayer, or even adjustments and additions to the singleplayer game world via “plugins,” a la “The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.” (Dunno if “Oblivion” has plugins or not.) When you join a multiplayer game with content that you don’t have, the game would automatically download that content for you, a la “Half-Life 2”’s deathmatch or “Freedom Force,” so you don’t have to search online for it. And I DO mean user-friendly--as in, I could figure out the basics and pump out a simple map out in a few hours with no programming ability required.
-Idle animations. You have the ability to do various MMO-style emotes, like make your character randomly start to riverdance.
-Details. Great little touches at every turn!
-A really cool menu. Meaningless? Perhaps. But I like really cool menus. XD The presentation and production values would all be very good in general.
-Quicksave. No f*****g checkpoints. I wanna save when I wanna save.
-Mostly Bug Free. There’s no point in playing an unplayable game. A few glitches is forgivable, but this game would be mostly cleaned and polished.
17 May 2008, 1:38 am
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