Occupation! (how would you make a civilian shooter?)

[tlozoot]

Stealth game with shooting elements. The enemy has far more advanced weapons while you're making do with decade old stuff that has to be repaired for it to even work. Taking them on one on one would be suicide so you thin their ranks using guerilla tactics before you can engage head on.

 

[sageoftruth]

EDIT: I hasten to add, for the love of God NO ESCORT MISSIONS.

what about a reverse escort mission? you play as a civilian who is being escorted by the soldiers, and your job is to pay attention to what they tell you to do in order to not get killed.

of course, the problem is that any game that takes this concept will inevitably make the AI Escorters as stupid as the Escortees are in your normal escort mission.

Actually that sounds like a really good idea, at least for the tutorial level. It'd also make for a lot more tension and variety insofar as in some contexts the occupiers will protect you as a civilian and in others they'll indiscriminately open fire... It also ties in with this recurring idea I have that the protagonist is basically faceless - unlike Gordon Freeman or Master Chief or whoever, noone really gives a shit who you are and can't even determine whether you're friend or foe half the time.

If we use this with a model where the soldiers are human players who in addition to this objective have other COMPETING objectives, it can create an interesting dynamic.

One way to truly capitalize on this would be to constantly create scenarios where the bodyguard/escort cannot accomplish something on his own, and must havethe civilian enter the danger zone to do something like search a house for a personal possession or better yet, climb a scaffolding while the escort protects him with fire support and instructions on when to keep moving.

 

[Wolfram23]

Sounds like a survival horror, except instead of mutants and zombies, it's military guys trying to kill you...

 

[gamer_parent]

One way to truly capitalize on this would be to constantly create scenarios where the bodyguard/escort cannot accomplish something on his own, and must havethe civilian enter the danger zone to do something like search a house for a personal possession or better yet, climb a scaffolding while the escort protects him with fire support and instructions on when to keep moving.

I like this idea, but I think we can push this one step further and make it the Mcguffin more than just a McGuffin.

Maybe instead of having each civvie just be a blank character with severely limited options, they simply have a different skillset. i.e. we already have a doctor role. We can probably expand upon those skills and have say, a hacker who can go through modules, open doors, etc.

brain storm list of skills appropriate for a civvie
computer security: i.e. hacking
town leader: by just being in an area near the other survivors, they can project their voice to give the other survivors temporary boosts in health or speed
driver: operate vehicles (mostly the civilian variety. So no driver jump into a tank)
local maven: while most players might have a map that shows where buildings are, this guy will have a map that shows even more info like where are all the ammo drops, where are all the keys, etc
local security guard: has key cards that allows them to get into one or two areas. The closest thing to a real combatant the civvies will have

now, here's another concept, to make sure that people playing civvies will actually have stuff to do, we can have the civvie team players have the option to jump between civvies in the group. maybe with a ratio of 1 player : 3 civvies.

objectives will also need to be tailor properly. That is, the civvies' objective need to be in conflict with the opposing team interest.

 

[Sacman]

I would go for a Stalker like approach to this... lol... I meant with the way they handled weapons you know if you pull out a gun everyone pulls one on you like a mexican stand off, and they don't talk to you or let you in anywhere and I think level design similar to the Duty run city in Shadow OF Chernobyl would work well...

 

[8-Bit Grin]

I didn't read all of the comments so I don't know if this has been mentioned:
Not keeping a single character removes all of the attachment you'd form with the protagonist.
They would just turn into meat.
If you kept a single character you could form his background and build his family.
If you'd really like some variation, perhaps you could make several short stories intertwined.
Example:
One civilian male, middle aged and has a family. (Suburbia)
One civilian male, teenager and works fast food. (Downtown)
One police officer, 30ish and only has a small handgun. (Mall, riots)
One psycho, perhaps as an intro and shows the most brutality. (Attacking a civilian to build a story)
Gameplay could involve first person hand to hand combat (Condemned) for the most 'oomph'
Gunfights could be sporadic and abrupt (Riddick).
Also, no sandbox. I believe this kind of game would benefit from well designed linear areas.

EDIT
After going back and reading the comments, I can see that everyone else had a much different take.
Disregard this if you'd like.

 

[XSA37]

It would be a rather interesting concept to try out. The possibilities for design would be enormous as you could pretty much then fill any role in the society. You could be a loyalist with the invaders, a spy, someone who incites riots and anger, or simply a terrorist. It would have the potential to become a great survival-sandbox game. Although, admittedly, marketing it to the current trigger-happy generation of gamers would be a little difficult if not damn near impossible.


"Who would want to play an accountant-wets-his-pants sim?" -- MW2 fan on Unnamed Survival Title

 

[dlawnro]

I actually had hopes for something like this in MW2 (yeah, I know, I'm a dreamer sometimes). But that part where the little intro cinematic thing was a TV telling civilians to evacuate to such-and-such a place and I imagined a world where I was a civilian with hunting equipment sneaking around well-armed Russians in my hometown, occasionally utilizing the confusion off a full-scale invasion and my knowledge of the surrounding terrain to pick off Russian soldiers and nick their gear. Also, Israel and Palestine got together and had a pork-free barbecue, gaming was universally accepted as an art form, and I was, in fact, and incredibly sexy man. Yeah. That.

 

[XSA37]

I actually had hopes for something like this in MW2 (yeah, I know, I'm a dreamer sometimes). But that part where the little intro cinematic thing was a TV telling civilians to evacuate to such-and-such a place and I imagined a world where I was a civilian with hunting equipment sneaking around well-armed Russians in my hometown, occasionally utilizing the confusion off a full-scale invasion and my knowledge of the surrounding terrain to pick off Russian soldiers and nick their gear. Also, Israel and Palestine got together and had a pork-free barbecue, gaming was universally accepted as an art form, and I was, in fact, and incredibly sexy man. Yeah. That.

Minus the sexy man part, this seems like what a game of this type would be like... although it does start to blur the line between shooter and pure survival quite a lot.

 

[Blue_vision]

US takes over Canada. I want to see it.

But yeah, this could be a very good way of getting out a message. Make yourself an unarmed civilian who has to survive through warzones as a good way of showing just how terrible life is for others.
The immediate thought for a setting is Jews during the Holocaust, but I think the WWII setting has been bled out too much in recent times (aka ever since WWII.) But cool/powerful settings could include:
-Darfur or Somalia, during the genocides there
-Afghanistan, as a refugee trying to escape to Pakistan while the country's under Taliban rule
-Vietnam war, as a civilian retreating south, caught right in the middle between American and Viet Kong attacks.
-Political dissident, preferably very left-swinging person who disagrees with western values, but it could work in any country really

I like where this is going. Unfortunately, no big gaming company has half the balls to even experiment with this idea. Or really anything other than the "you are a tank, here are your gigantic overcompensatory weapons, go have fun."

 

[bojac6]

I've always liked the idea of a game with other protagonists doing stuff that affects you. Like imagine Fallout 3, but with 2 vault dwellers, so if you take your time getting to Megaton, say, that quest is already taken care of by the other guy. And he'd have a personality determined at the start, maybe he's good, maybe he's bad.

Here, I'm thinking the game would be completely unaffected by you at all. There's three sides, the occupying army, the defensive army, and the civilian resistant. They're fighting. You're not really a member of any of these. Instead of setting it up with predetermined plot points, why not make it more like Mount and Blade? The different factions fight and each playthrough is totally different because different sides win.

As the player character, you'd have several options. You can try to escape or you can pick a side. Say you're captured by the invaders. If, on your escape, you passed through a rebel base, you can trade that information for freedom. Of course, depending on the temperament of your randomly determined bad guy, he might kill you anyways. And giving the invaders information would make things harder in the long run. On the other hand, you could get picked up by the defense and accused of being a spy. Or maybe you just get caught in the middle of a battle and have to work your way through a bombed out town.

I really like this idea.

 

[Kryzantine]

Talking about America, I can't honestly say you'll be defenseless.

I mean, even in Manhattan, you still got plenty of diehards willing to kill themselves to take out at least one enemy with them. There's enough guns to go around for that. Don't get me started on the Deep South, they got so many guns and diehards down there there'd be no point in occupying the area, because all the civilians would be dead from resistance.

Manhattan would be interesting mostly because of the skyscrapers (which could be collapsed just to cover the streets in rubble), number of cars (very natural cover), density (lots of bodies), weather (very large wind gusts rendering snipers useless on a windy day), etc. I think most people would opt to go into a resistance movement or something. Or make a dash across the George Washington or Holland Tunnel to get to New Jersey ASAP (and most will be in the clear once they get past Jersey City). Not many people would be honest civilians still left in the action.

There'd be no point in occupying an American city. You can't establish a foothold in a major city without crippling its economy, and if you wanted to cripple America, all you'd need to do is launch a plane into a building like a few blocks from the WTC site that conveniently serves as the American government's mainframe. Yeah, that's right, 9/11 was a publicity stunt.

 

[gamer_parent]

US takes over Canada. I want to see it.

But yeah, this could be a very good way of getting out a message. Make yourself an unarmed civilian who has to survive through warzones as a good way of showing just how terrible life is for others.
The immediate thought for a setting is Jews during the Holocaust, but I think the WWII setting has been bled out too much in recent times (aka ever since WWII.) But cool/powerful settings could include:
-Darfur or Somalia, during the genocides there
-Afghanistan, as a refugee trying to escape to Pakistan while the country's under Taliban rule
-Vietnam war, as a civilian retreating south, caught right in the middle between American and Viet Kong attacks.
-Political dissident, preferably very left-swinging person who disagrees with western values, but it could work in any country really

I like where this is going. Unfortunately, no big gaming company has half the balls to even experiment with this idea. Or really anything other than the "you are a tank, here are your gigantic overcompensatory weapons, go have fun."

Well, you don't have to immediately for the big budget AAA. This could actually work as small scale experiments in the begining for a proof of concept.

i.e. anybody here who knows how to do map modding can give it a go as a small map first.

 

[kickyourass]

Hmm, you know with some work that sounds like one hell of a premise. Yeah, I'd probably buy that game.

 

[gamer_parent]

heck, if I knew anything about modding FPS games at all, I'd probably try to give it a roll myself.