What different/new direction would you like an IP to take?

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

You know, now that you mention Castlevania, I had this kind of odd but I think still pretty good idea for something involving the monsters and other creatures of the Castlevania games. While it didn't necessarily have to actually be part of the Castlevania IP, I was thinking of something along those lines that's part 3D Action RPG and part castle/town management. The overarching premise is that you're a vampire/vampire hunter/whatever that is trying to build and maintain a Castlevania style castle, town, and forest, and the overall goal is to get all the various supernatural creatures from Castlevania plus humans/mages/hybrids/etc. to live peacefully together, while still being about keeping them as threatening and awesome looking as monsters should be.

Here's what I'm thinking, each creature would be assigned one or more innate natures that have to be managed, such as "aggressive towards X" and an intelligence level that would control how easy it is to actually get them to do what you want and the distance away. For instance, with "Fully Sentient" creatures that are "Aggressive Towards Humans", as long as you fulfill their needs properly they won't attack humans without any further input on your part. However, with "Pure Instinct" creatures that are "Aggressive Towards Humans" you have to both fulfill their needs and place the lair as far away from humans as you can manage, while keeping them and humans as far away from each other as possible. Other creatures can only be corralled or hunted rather than directly controlled, but can be used as a source of resources and/or training for the creatures that can be. Then, there would be aptitudes assigned to each creature that would determine how good and fast they are at a given task that would make sense for that creature. i.e. due to their ability to climb most obstacles and on walls and ceilings plus their webbing, Giant Spiders are very good for expanding your castle and constructing other buildings, but also due to their large size and natural aggressiveness towards any creatures that have blood, they have difficulty working alongside most other creatures if their needs aren't being fulfilled to near maximum. Some creatures would even be able to make resources themselves that other creatures could make use of, such as the Giant Spiders producing dozens of eggs daily that aren't allowed to hatch which most other creatures can eat, and Spider Silk being useable at least in part in rope and clothes.

As for the action RPG portion, that would involve your character, as the leader of the community especially early on, personally running around procedurally generated dungeons, the Castle Town, Forests, and so on doing various tasks, such as hunting down creatures to recruit either through diplomacy, force, or through stealing the young, fighting off Monster hunters and self proclaimed "Dark Lords" encroaching on your territory, dealing with criminals and insurrections in your own ranks, and so forth. As an RPG would be something akin to the Monster Hunter games in general gameplay, with exp levels akin to the Metroidvania games. Later on you'd be able to delegate a good amount of these sorts of missions to your resident creatures to deal with.

I hope that whole thing doesn't sound nuts.

Well... not as nuts as making it a pachinko game, right? Hahahahaaaa...(laughter veers into sobbing).

I do like the idea of competing Dark Lords recruiting creatures, but keeping humans safe or giving them lodgings is not something they much focus on. Sort of sounds like the running gag on an old site called 'Castlevania: The Inverted Dungeon' that claims Dracula actually runs the castle like a Gothic theme park when not at war with humanity.

I'd like the idea as a straight up conquest-style, where two or more high-ranking vamps are fighting over Dracula's throne while he's between resurrection cycles, enslaving the stray beasties and taking over different portions of the castle in hopes of taking the whole thing over. You start with a band of pathetic skeletons and work your way up by capturing more souls.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Street fighter. Now look the games as they are are great no doubt. Especially in the competiive scenes . However , i would like a SF game with the craziness of MvC series. Especially since we may never see another Marvel vs Capcom game. UMVC3 Ryu was so much more fun to play than regular SF ryu.

This may sound blasphemous but I'd really like if SF used cancels instead of Links.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I do like the idea of competing Dark Lords recruiting creatures, but keeping humans safe or giving them lodgings is not something they much focus on.

I was thinking that the central motivation that the protagonist has to find out a way to end the constant wars between monsters and humans by trying to build a working community. A good part of the difficulty of the game would be trying to get all these creatures to work reliably without them all killing each other. I'm just throwing this out here as a Castlevania extension to the IP as a start anyway, it doesn't necessarily need to have anything to do with the Castlevania franchise, just has to be using most if not all of the creatures in it.

Sort of sounds like the running gag on an old site called 'Castlevania: The Inverted Dungeon' that claims Dracula actually runs the castle like a Gothic theme park when not at war with humanity.

First I've heard of that really. Any chance you have a link? I'd like to see that sometime if it's still available.

I'd like the idea as a straight up conquest-style, where two or more high-ranking vamps are fighting over Dracula's throne while he's between resurrection cycles, enslaving the stray beasties and taking over different portions of the castle in hopes of taking the whole thing over. You start with a band of pathetic skeletons and work your way up by capturing more souls.

I think maybe trying to stop upstart Dark Lords could be a good part of the story, maybe even ultimately taking on the newly resurrected Dracula and his Castlevania at the end of the game, but I want the protagonist to be involved in the action RPG manner I mentioned and generally be one of the good guys, or at least not outright evil i.e. "I did what I had to do" or "Well Intentioned Extremeist" type villain. Mostly the reason being is I never have liked the idea of any sentient being in fiction always being nothing more than MUHAHAHAHA!!! evil from the word go, not even Castlevania's Dracula is like that, and I'd like the protagonist and the creatures they rule over to reflect a little bit more nuance than that, which is part of the point of the idea.

I was actually thinking you'd actually start out with just a bunch of ghosts, which don't require any resources to function and can work around the clock without issue but also are slow and ineffective at gathering resources, building things, fighting, and doing pretty much anything else because they have difficulty interacting with the physical world. However, once you start gathering enough resources from using the ghosts you could use said ghosts as a base component for other undead creatures which are much more effective at doing any given thing, such as skeletal corpses are needed to make skeletons with the ghosts, and metal and forges are needed to make possessed armor, and so forth, and those would be used to gather more resources to make other undead creatures and build buildings for other creatures to live in, and so on and so forth.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I wouldn't say I'm sick of Space Marines, and despite the numerous games there are about them, I still think they have potential to be in something great. I AM sick of Orks though. What I did imagine once was a really slow-paced Left 4 Dead kind of game, but in Space Hulk universe, where you have a slow-moving squad of 4 or 5 that you have to get through a map together, tactics is extremely important due to the size of the corridors and slow movement speed.

In general though, I'm getting a little tired of open-world staples, I mean everything good seems to be going open world, and including all the useless minute exploration and collecting every damn thing. It just gets really boring after awhile, if it starts to feel like busywork. Dragon Age: Inquisition kept me at bay with this, as do modern Assassin's Creed games, though to be fair if it's not compulsory it's not really a problem. In fact I think Mad Max was quite ok in a sense that you only do as much collecting as you can be arsed, and even then I only did most of it while enroute to main/wasteland mission objectives.

And specifically, I'd like the Rainbow 6 series to not be so multiplayer focused, but be more like Vegas 1 and 2 (terrorist hunts, with a couple/one controllable AI, decent-sized campaign, etc). This has a slimmer chance of happening than a dog winning the next presidential election so I've pretty much moved on from that.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Call this a cop-out but I want to see a straight-up fighting game that focuses exclusively on Super Mario Bros characters and a kart racer that's open to multiple Nintendo IP. Mushroom Kombat and Super Smash Kart if you will. Smash Bros has always had a relatively large SMB cast when it comes to playable characters so I don't see there being a lot of stretching to flesh out a robust fighting game roster. When it comes to Mario Kart, I have no idea how well the Link/Animal Crossing/F-Zero DLC sold but I'm sure there's demand and there's a ton of sources to draw from to make Nintendo or Smash Kart a reality while maintaining its identity as a Mario Kart game. In fact, I think Smash Kart or Super Nintendo Kart would be much more doable than Mushroom Kombat...

I'd really love to see a Mortal Kombat RPG. Mortal Kombat lore is so deep and...well, convoluted that it would be great to make a character and throw it into the world of Mortal Kombat. I'm not sure how it would work from a gameplay stance though since; FPS-RPGs have worked great but the closest thing to a fighting RPG I've seen is something like Dynasty Warriors and while that would be fun, it isn't the best way to do a story-driven RPG. Bioware of the mid-2000's could have done something that looked impressive and worked well with the story but I'm not sure who would be best to tackle something like that today.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I would love a Witcher game in the Legacy of Kain universe. That would be so awesome. Witcher 3 already had a lot of awesome quests with vampires and werewolves and I would love for CDPR to totally delve into this kind of stuff. The gameplay of Witcher 3 would also complement the LoK games perfectly.

I would also love a From Software game in the Biomega universe. Probably my most favorite manga of all time and the entire series(espescially the first half) almost reads like a design-document for one kick-ass videogame. From could really do the dark, moody and subtle atmosphere of Biomega justice.

So in short Witcher 3 into LoK and Souls/Bloodborne into Biomega.

You are my prophet in this thread...

I've wondered if LoK would ever come back, and this would be the BEST way to bring it back. Wandering Nosgoth as Kain with that sort of depth and complexity to play with... I think I just had a mental orgasm.

And yes, I'd love to see the From Software style of game in new/unique settings. I love Dark Souls, but we've seen the Medieval Europe thing so many times; the possibility of From Software taking on sci-fi? Or pirates? Or fuedal Japan? Or ancient civilizations? The prospect is downright thrilling.

 

[Zen Bard]

Assassin's Creed - Drop all the "Animus" crap and just focus on being a cool open world stealth/assassination game.

Also, let's focus more on the actual fun part of the game that's in the title. What really grabbed my about ACII was the numerous ways one could plan, execute (HA!) and escape from an assassination.

Instead of making that portion more interesting, they've been burying it with more less interesting stuff.

Elder Scrolls - Go back to truly letting the player do "anything". That means no more "essential" NPCs or unkillable companions or certain magic doors that "require a key" when I have a 100 Lockpick skill.

While Morrowind hasn't necessarily aged well, it was the last RPG I played that felt unconstrained in the game world. There was nowhere I couldn't go, no one I couldn't meet (or kill) and nothing I couldn't try.

Sure...all these things had consequences, but live and learn, right?

Dishonored - I'd love to see this as an open world RPG. Yes, that would pretty much be a combination of Assassin's Creed and Elder Scrolls (sensing a theme here?).

But the world of Dunwahl is just so rich and interesting. You really don't get a chance to explore it much when you're skulking around murdering people.

 

[sanquin]

I prefer IP's to stay the same, but improve on what they already did. If I want something new, I'd rather have it be a new IP rather than an existing IP I liked as it was being changed. In my opinion, The Witcher series is a good example of this. The games stayed the same at their core, but they improved the games with each iteration. Well, apart from W3 being open world if you want to call that change in an IP.