[General Discussion] If technology was no object, what game would you make?

As the hardware in games consoles and PCs gets more and more powerful, games developers have more and more processing power at their disposal and are able to implement more and more complex ideas and gameplay features in their games. It's not just graphics that improve with technology, greater processing power allows for more to be going on at once on screen and for more complex maths to go on in the background allowing for more "intelligent" behaviour by the AI in games. It can only be a matter of time before our beat 'em ups look like the opening scene of Final Flight of the Osiris, our RTS games have a unit count approaching that of the D-Day landings and our FPS games feature opponents with a full grasp of SAS combat tactics.

So with this in mind, if we were already at that stage and technology allowed for unlimited scope in computer games, what would you like to do with the technology? Also, what would you like to see in the intermediary stages as consoles get more and more powerful?

I remember when I first played Shadow of the Collossus, riding across the plains on the horse I thought how awesome it'd be to have a game where you play as a Mongol horseman. You'd start off as a lowly warrior, following orders and going where the commander told you then graduating up to controlling a unit, then a division and so forth until you controlled the whole army. There'd be an army of thousands of horsemen fighting across the Steppes and assaulting fortresses, maybe leading your unit sneaking behind enemy lines then springing a surprise attack on them. I guess it would be a kind of combined RTS and FPS game in that you're controlling various aspects of the army strategy but also riding your horse in the thick of things killing people.

It's that level of scale that I look forward to from future generations of games. I can live without photo-realistic graphics or planet sized play areas if I get a few thousand AI troops on either side who act like real soldiers.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

A Jekyll and Hyde RPG with Jekyll as a PC and Hyde as a fully cognizant NPC working to undermine the party.

Anything less would be stilted and annoying.

Yes, I do want to eventually separate the two (sup I've played too many JRPGs), but I want them to somehow make Hyde work in-game as an AI while he's still attached to Jekyll.

I've expounded on this more in my Journal, but yeah.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I remember when I used to think the idea of a game where you played as god and controlled everything about how your world worked was such a good idea I was really looking for a way to sell my idea. Then that cocksucker Peter Molyneux beat me to the punch.

If only I'd known.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I have so many, i'll need time to collect all my thoughts.

The one that sticks out most prominently in my mind is a survival horror type game that is heavily inspired by Resident Evil, Halo, and (strangely enough) Bunker Defense maps in Starcraft. The Basic premise of the game is that you're a paranormal activities agent of some sort and you get called in to deal with different kinds of abnormal circumstances involving murders, etc. You have to hunt down monsters and trap/kill them using varying strategies depending on your environment. You can set up a gun turret (al a Half Life, or Portal) and try to chase your target into it's range to try and kill it, or you can set up trip wires that set off a sleeping gas bomb or something to that extent. One mode of play that really got me going on this, is one where your character is trying to hold his own in an apartment building while wave after wave of zombies, enemy soldiers, gangsters, whatever, are coming after him/her and you have to try and rig the building up to take out as many of them as you can (think Home Alone from hell style) and try to last as long as possible. Or if you so chose you can go after some of them with your gun, and go rambo on them.

One other idea i've been kicking around lately is the idea of you being the general in a third person RTS style game. You have a character that you run around your village, plan where new buildings go, and can interact with your workers/soldiers, and tell them directly where to go and what to do. Alternately, I think this idea would work really well in a star ship simulator. You're the captain of a star ship sort of like the Enterprise and you have a crew. You have to assign roles to them and actively tell them what to do in the event of a confrontation, or discovering a new planet. You can leave the ship to explore the new planet, or visit other ships, and chose whether or not to attack an enemy ship or try to make peace with it. You can also fire members of your crew, and hire new ones.

Yeah, this is a topic i think about alot in my spare time. I'm sure i'll be back with more ideas.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'd love to make an open-ended RPG with artificial intelligence, that adjusts quests and events based on player skill. For example, you assemble a standard team of adventurers to defeat threat X. Losing to threat X would be a game over in other games, but the open-ended RPG would simply generate a new scenario, adjust difficulty levels, and give you another shot.

Thus, everything done here has consequences, and since there is no strict script, it's difficult to write a FAQ, unless the readers would like to strictly follow the author's game route. Of course, it can't be too open-ended in the sense that there should be broad story arcs, but one can dream, can't he?

@Helloween - Your starship simulation scenario sounds a lot like the terran campaign from Starcraft 2, where you control Jim Raynor

I was speaking idiomatically.

I like the idea of playing as a bad guy, but I guess Star Wars/Fable kinda already covered it. Never have I in my entire life do I enjoy being so destructive in Burnout as well as GTA series. I swear... destroying things and people is addictive.

But like Shin said, I'm all for a horse action rpg someday that isn't ZELDA... there WAS one that was made and looks like all kinds of awesome, but too bad, it didn't get enough attention to come over here... I don't think its a rpg really but still.

And I also liked the scaling in SotC, which I didn't think its technically possible before. So taking THAT technical issue and throw it in all sorts of building/city/massive forests (red woods ie) and do a simple game of hide and seek. Or build a log cabin or a fucking tree house and like rule in that little forest; maybe as a wolf maybe! I kid you not. I just want to like explore for all kinds of wildlife in the wilderness like we already are doing in underwater games. I mean I live here in Virginia with plenty of forests but my god would I give to just see a deer since I had moved here. A bear would be nice. I've seen hawks here and there but not close up. If THEY can do that, I'd buy it. Same thing for like tons of other areas out there. I mean come on, its not just underwater here that is just fascinating.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Zergrinch

@Helloween - Your starship simulation scenario sounds a lot like the terran campaign from Starcraft 2, where you control Jim Raynor

Yeah? Oh well. I didn't rip it off though. I've been keeping myself ignorant to much of the specifics of Starcraft 2 as i'm a big fan of the new experience feel of a game. This is an idea i've had for a few years now.

FELIPE NO

a) Deus Ex style interactive world, GTA style sized.

b) System Shock 1 with a bigger space station, fully realized with modern graphics.

c) a) with a Star Wars License. A mixture of KotOR and Deus Ex. Jeez. I just creamed my pants at the thought of that.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I've often thought of something that combines:

A full spaceflight engine, complete with stats and upgradable ships and parts (a la EVE, Escape Velocity, or Elite).

A fully-realized on-the-ground engine for walking around, with equippable items and RPG-style stats (sort of like Mass Effect).

Combine both in a setting (maybe a solar system but ideally a galaxy) where hundreds of planets and other objects are rendered so you can do everything from fight in orbit to explore the surface on foot. Add an overarching story along with sidequests and such (an asteroid mining minigame, perhaps?) and maybe even online co-op.

Parts of something like that have been realized in various games, but combining them together on an epic scale would take a huge amount of memory and processing muscle. Still, I'd kill to see something of that ilk (especially if it's not an MMORPG).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I've always been fascinated with the "massive, so detailed it's natural" world in a game. An adventure/action title similar to games like Deja Vu and such, but with detail and level of interaction on completely new scale.

That's why games like The Nomad Soul and Shenmue were so thrilling when they were still making them. You felt like those sequences and moments you saw screens and videos of were completely incidental, and many other players might never even walk in on them. So much of that "what if I decided to go there?". It was always slightly saddening to be reminded there are only so many characters, sequences and lines of dialogue as the developers can fit. I'd like to see a game like Shenmue, but with detail so plentiful it'd get to be like our world. You'd have appartment buildings and hallways and endless cabinets you COULD search if you really wanted, but most of them wouldn't provide you with anything useful, much less anything at all. It'd get to the point where you stopped playing it like a regular game title, you wouldn't search every nook and cranny and the whole focus would shift.

I suppose a game system and AI that could generate plot points/dialogue/locations dynamically would go well with that, provoding structure and direction, but constantly shifting, and changing along with the experience.

I guess besides the "what if I went there?" style hugely detailed worlds of immense fidelity, I've also been fascinated with good AI, the kind that gives you a proper illusion of a world reacting to you, not just you moving along a set obstacle course. An RPG where your choices are not just selected at dialogue trees, but through everything. Sit by a campfire with friends, decide to walk off on your own, run into guards, the choice of whether to face them or run back to your buddies completely done through your actions, not just "Fight?/Escape?" menu choices. Someone else playing that same scene, never leaving the campfire, never seeing those soldiers. Someone else going in another direction and finding something else. Someone fighting the guards alone, someone running back and having your NPC friends react with genuine surprise at the outburst, all according to incredibly sophisticated AI.

There's nowhere I can't reach.