Your Idea For a Perfect Game

[StormShaun]

An RPG/FPS, (More RPG though)

I want a game where you are a survivor of an Zombie apocolypse (Mutents, not zombies), You wake up in the hospital in a very private room with hi-tech machines surrounding you, you create your character, add skills, perks and etc, you walk out of your room and into the hosital, you see references of an virus outbreak as you cruise down the corridor, but bloody bodys litter it, you reach the entrance and it turns into a FP cinimatic, your guy walks out of the hospital and sees the open sky , you shield your eyes and then you see a man, he turns around and charges you, you get pinned, but you pick up a brick and smack it into his head, he lies on the ground, dead, you walks back to your hospital room and inspect it (Still cinimatic), you find a note on the table near the bed, it says that you are the cure, the cure lies in your blood, please go to and meet me Sgt., and you then enter the playing mode again and you can explore the hostpital or run out and explore, but before that you look down on the note and say "Who the hell am I!" (Yes your character has a voice, and you select it in the character screen), you character looks onto his arms and sees a tag, it says "Dark Horizon", then you play and do whatever.

Dark Horizon.

Description: You play as a survivor of a virus outbreak, you find out your the cure, you exit to find who you are and what you are, while trying to surivive the virus outbreak, mutants, crazy survivors, car battles, customisable home bases, moral choices, factions, diffirent endings, will you end the virus or will you make it worse.
Genre:RPG/FPS

and you can do more stuff but this is a brief talk about it.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Hard telling. Maybe a proper first-person survival game. Or a space privateer. I've been on a space kick recently, and open-world privateer games seem to be exceedingly rare nowadays.

Okay, so technically Spore Space stage. But I want something with depth and variety.

 

[Custard_Angel]

Grand Theft Auto style open world gameplay where the objective is only as difficult as you want to make it.

Cinematic back story:
A normal sort of guy (lets call him Dave) who after a one night stand becomes father to a son (9 months later obviously). The mother has a breakdown and commits suicide leaving Dave as a single father. He tries his best in his new role to be the best father he can possibly be and grows to love his son.

Fast forward a few years and Dave is with his son in a diner when 3 armed gang members rob the place. Everyone is cooperating but a diner patron plays hero and opens fire with their own gun. In the ensuing gunfight 2 of the gang members are killed, the hero diner, 2 other patrons and Dave's son. The remaining gang member (lets say... Bob) flees.

With no one else left in his life, Dave decides to take revenge on Bob, despite not knowing who he is or how to get revenge.

Plot:
There are 2 opposing gangs in town, so you can join either one. On one side, you may fight alongside Bob, gaining his trust and respect for maximum back stab satisfaction, or you can join the other gang and war with him to kill him.

Either way, there are mission trees designed to progress your gameplay within the gangs by completing missions involving theft, vandalism, recruiting, hit jobs etc. to progress in the gang and earn higher status.

In Bob's gang you progress with him and eventually wind up as his second in command, providing an opportunity to kill him and either take command or dissolve the gang into a leaderless mob.

In the opposing gang you progress to the leader status in opposition to Bob (who also progresses) and have opportunities to assassinate Bob, engage him in gang warfare or even diplomatically attempt to take over his gang, leaving him with nothing.

The kicker however is that at any time you can end it by killing Bob (if you can manage it).

You can sneak into his house and shoot him in his bed. You can run him down in the street. You can stab him to death behind closed doors. You can detonate explosives planted in his car. You can tie him up and beat him to death.

Or, if you're so inclined, you can forgive him.

You see, Bob is constantly haunted by the memory of what he did. He's a normal guy too, just like Dave. He isn't a gun crazy maniac. He didn't even want to get involved in the gang situation, but was pressured into it by his circle. The diner robbery was his initiation ritual and the shitstorm that ensued is something that he hasn't been able to get out of his head ever since. He never left the gang because once he was in, he had no way out and nowhere else to go. It was a shitty life but it was the only one he had.

Moral choice hmm? Yes, but the game isn't addressing it as a moral dilemma. The moral dilemma is entirely up to the player to decide. If the player doesn't see anything wrong with the blood for blood approach or forgiving him, there's no dilemma. If the player is unsure about which outcome provides appropriate justice there is suddenly a moral dilemma that can reveal to the player a little bit about themselves if they choose to think about things that way.

---

Handled correctly, I think the game can have genuine emotional depth and an actual reason for the events to occur. It also provides opportunity for the player to dictate the story and allow the emotional pitch to be played out in a way that is most pleasing to them (forgiving or vengeful etc). It also provides a huge number of ways the game can be played making the "runtime" of the game impossible to determine i.e. run him down in a car in 10 minutes or play out the missions in 40 hours or anything in between.

As for the mechanics of the game, just look at Grand Theft Auto. You can steal things, shoot things, smash things if you'd like to waste time, or you can progress with the game mission at your own pace. The innovative step involves the open endedness of the gameplay that allows you to play the game multiple times while possibly experiencing a vastly different story and game progression each time.

Anyway... Long post...

That is a rough treaty of what my vision of a game is like. It wouldn't be easy, or cheap, but I think if handled correctly, it could be a truly great game.

First time I've ever posted my thoughts on the design of a game before. The other idea I had for a game involved a time travelling FPS where you can visit scenarios throughout history and cause intervention in appropriate areas i.e. mow down waves of mongol invaders with an AK-47 or assassinate pirate kings with knives or musket pistols. Then Darkest of Days came along and in part realised my vision and I thought about the concept a lot less. Still... DoD would be great with some more ancient time periods and an occasional sneak + assassination focus.

 

[genericusername64]

A game with no minor annoyances. I've always been a person with the mentality of storyline first gameplay second. If I'm invested in the storyline I can almost ignore the gameplay entirely. Almost. Games have always had one or two very minor flaws in the gameplay that kept the game from being perfect. I know a lot of people found recourse collecting to be tedious in both mass effects. But for me, it was the dungeon crawling in .hack GU, its my favorite game, but they would make you slave to get to the next scene by going through 40 levels of the same copy pasted dungeon. I realize now it was so you would level up, but come on.

 

[Iron_will]

Total War + Company of Heroes + World in Conflict + DEFCON


I'll let you imagine what it would be like.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

For a multiplayer game I'd say a Battle Royale-esque kind of game, you get random weapons so if your generally a good player you could be given a crap weapon so its easier for new or not too good palyers or vice versa plus if you camp too long in one area then that area becomes a death zone so it would enforce players to move constantly.

For single player I'd say a kind of Super-Hero Free Roam Sandbox adventure game with lots of powers, humour and items and stuff.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

For multiplayer: A Battle Royale-esque game where you are given random weapons so good players may be given a crappy weapon to start off so its easier for new and/or not too good players but it could be vice-versa. Also if you and/or many people camp in one area then it will become a death zone so it would force you to move or die.

For singleplayer: Probably a superhero, adventure free roam sanboxz with lots of powers, items and humour

EDIT: Sorry for double post Escapist was being kind of laggy and I thought my previous post didn't go on.

 

[Gunner 51]

Brothers in Arms almost had it well and truly licked for me. Good gameplay and excellent writing and well acted. The only thing it lacks, is a B-side only from a Wermacht point of view. There'd be inter-squad speculation on who's a Nazi, sympathy for the people of occupied nations and of course - your squad take on casualties.

I guess I'm a sucker for seeing the other side of the coin.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

1) Check out as many good JRPGs as you can.

2) Take note of all the mechanics that are awesome. (SMT's demon collecting, conditional/active/dynamic battles systems, ...)

3) Take not of all the mechanics that suck. (slow story, bad voice-overs, unbalanced attacks, annoying encounter system, ...)

4) Score a 200 million dollar budget.

5) Schedule a pre-production phase of 6 months - double check the ideas for art-direction, story and battle system.

6) Start making a game, keeping both 2) and 3) in mind.

7) Get Yoshitaka Hirota, Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu, Shoji Meguro and Yoko Shimomura to compose the soundtrack.

8) Perfect JRPG made.

(I'm not saying "perfect game" because that's just stupid. You got to work by genre, I mean, you can make a stealth game as good as you want, but if a guy doesn't like stealth, it will still not matter to him.)

 

[The87Italians]

I want a first person shooter where each character has his/her own personal AI to assist them in combat, such as enemy positions in direct relation to the player, combat strategies, score counter, etc etc. I'm not sure how the rest of the game would play out after that, this might work better with a mech game come to think of it.

 

[MCDeltaT]

My idea was an open world RPG. Set during the rapture where the armies of Heaven and Hell use Earth as a battlefield, you play as some of the last remaining humans, however because they drank the blood of a dead demon and angel they can transform into an angel or demon. They would all use melee based weapons as mortal weapons can't hurt angels or demons.

Combat would be like Final Fantasy, random battles, ATB gauge etc. only if a character is knocked out in battle, one of the characters not in battle would take their place. Magic would be involved because of the whole blood drinking thing, but powerful moves and magic would require a charge time after use which gets shorter as you level up.

There would be 8 characters & of which are based on the seven deadly sins, the eighth is just an asshole all round and the main character. They would get recruited by Jesus as demon hunters. The demons would be taken from all sorts of mythology and religious lore (Judas, Anubis, Cerberus) and there would be a total of 16 bosses but only 10 battles are necessary to continue the plot. However the more bosses you beat the more powerful the demon and angel forms would get

At that point the characters would get betrayed and killed and sent to hell where Satan decides he could use your help and so you seek revenge on the angels that betrayed you. Eventually you would find and kill God and Satan and become the new ruler of Heaven, Hell and Earth.

In true RPG fashion there would be super powerful awesome weapons and attacks to find and unlock, and also hidden bosses like The four horsemen and other demon hunters.

So yeah haven't really thought about it much.

 

[RuralGamer]

To give you a rough idea, mix the following;
Fallout (really any of 1, 2 or New Vegas; from this you're taking the post-apocalyptic-but-recovering feel)
Deus Ex (1 and Human Revolutions look about right (admittedly never played any of them; take from this the cyber-punk theme)
Killzone (for weapons style and grim atmosphere, but not retarded controls or Hitlerstalin antagonists)

So basically this game is set in a post-apocalyptic cyber punk world with a largely first-person perspective and RPG-based progression system.

Spoiler: The setting; wall of text alert

50 years from now, a major terrorist group/secret society unleashes a super-virus on the internet of the day, a program so potent it effectively destroys all computer systems in infects. Because humanity has become so reliant on the internet, it wipes out most of humanity's means of production, communication and other important systems (i.e. power plant safety protocols, hospital machines); anything hooked up to the internet which by this point is practically everything (i.e even coffee machines) is rendered useless. This destruction happens in seconds and there is no warning and no defence against it. Anything relying on the internet to work safely; i.e pilotless aircraft and even elevators, fail and millions are killed in accidents caused by these failures.
As one would expect, humanity takes the rational course of action and panics; the UN disappears (obviously because countries can no longer communicate), food production grinds to a halt (because the machines stop working or harvesting), leading to mass starvation and anarchy; governments collapse and are replaced by warlords who either are competent enough to scratch together a basic functioning society (some are evil slave-drivers, whilst others try and form ideal communist societies) or they wield power thanks to possession of some of the remaining functioning high technology.
In effect humanity's capabilities are reset to the late 19th/early 20th century as there is practically no means of producing electricity (only a few, small, backup generators survived the virus); people don't know how to produce steam engines and no one can actually build new high technology (we used internet-based programs to control machines to do that for us). Suffice to say humanity enters a dark age.

Spoiler: Plot; another wall of text alert

Now fast-forward 100 years into the future; society is slowly rebuilding, but the outlook isn't too good. You awake from cryogenic stasis; you were a convicted terrorist, sentenced to eternity in stasis by the UN (practically the earth government before the virus) due to horrific deeds (could be one of a dozen things) you committed against humanity (you have the choice whether you actually committed them or not). The reason you're awake again is because the high security prison you were placed in has finally run out of power; for security reasons, it was off the internet, so it continued to function, even after its staff evacuated. Built under the sewers of a major city (which looks something like Tokyo, only with waaay more neon(obviously largely fried out), broken hover cars and run-down space age buildings), it has remained largely untouched until now; you have to fight your way out though as looters have finally arrived, triggering the facility's self-destruct (to prevent you from ever escaping). Once out in the city, which is being fought over by dozens of petty bosses, you find yourself in the advantageous position of being one of the few people alive who understand how some of the high technology that remains works. You have to work your way up the city, working for more and more powerful bosses and individuals to eventually confront the warlord who rules the city; he is also someone who was alive at the time of the virus and has somehow managed to survive, practically unaged. He has been making your life difficult from the beginning and so you confront him and either kill him and try and take his place or work with him. If you kill him, his subordinates escalate the small-time gang warfare into a full blown conflict and you will need to restore order somehow. If you side with him, he'll inform you a massive war will be coming; somewhere outside the city, another warlord, like them, a survivor 'of before', who is going to invade the city with a massive army and try and seize control of a WMD system (which may or may not work) and exterminate human civilisation. Ultimately you have to decide who to side with and ultimately won't be shown the consequences of the final action.
Obviously there are dozens of individuals in the city who offer jobs and such. Many of the weapons a crude, although some are relics from before the virus.
That's really as much as I've come up with; I hope you enjoyed the read.

 

[alrekr]

Okay well my ultimate perfect game would require tech no present today (this game would preety much be an VR MMO where you can just to whatever spanning multiple time periods and countries)

Well using current gen tech I'd say perhaps either the suggestion I made in this post:http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.255784-Poll-Would-Hellsing-make-a-good-game

or

A combination of a god game such as Black and White and traditional RPG's such as any TES game, fable, DA:O etc...
The God stuff works the same as in B&W just more indepth(more buildings and greater interaction with subjects) you can than select(or create) a normal person to become your champion. This champion becomes playable and wokrs like in an RPG and can gather other heroes to his side. The single player campaign would start with champion creation and efforts to bring back said god. The beauty of this is that you can explore the wonderful (or cruel) world you have created. I would also include the ability to research ways of creating new life such as mythical creatures, summoning daemons or making abomanations of science.

Now the multiplayer would allow for one person to play as the God and your friends to join with their champions from their own games.

A competitive mode could even work. With two God pitted against each other with a few people playing their champions; fighting till the death or over certain objectives such as relics.

Hang why hasn't Lionhead made this yet; they have experiance with both genres.

For a multiplayer game I'd say a Battle Royale-esque kind of game,

That would make an epic game. I really would have thought somone would have at least made something similar, at least a mod or something. One problem though: people would ***** about getting shitty weapons; you have to include at least some stuff on the maps that can be used. Also will you inlcude the whole trying to beat the system like the book.

 

[JamesWebber]

This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cHTNFa79RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMESFuX26rk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvmlR5v6khc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjJTtRrE2rU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2oPDyem1_U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBGIiMdjWM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBGIiMdjWM&feature=related

If could make any game i would demand that Bioware remake Mass Effect 2 into this beauty. Serious just go watch it and the Mass Effect 2 Plot Analysis and Character Analysis series, smudboy really gets what this game could and should have been

 

[scw55]

Mine would be that you're a dragon and you live in a small cave with your family and a small comunity of Dragons. One day, when you're sent out into the deepest part of the cave to gather Rats a brigade of Adventures raid your home and slaughter all your friends and family and pillage the communities' treasurey. Heart broken upon your return you swear an oath to wreck revenge on the Villains who destoyed your home.

It's a coming-of-age story about a little dragon as he grows as a per- I mean dragon into a mighty Elder Dragon and torches the Kingdom asunder in search for 6 magical crystal of un-plot related-but-you-have-to-collect-anyway.

*Spoiler* He kills all the humans and Dragons live in a Golden Age yet again.

Oh and he meets a feisty female dragon who's a tomboy - I mean tomdragon (um, is there an unsexist way of describing her?) who doesn't want to shag him near the end of the story oddly enough. Infact she's better than him in everyway and goes off and has a succesful life.

Alternatively. CoD Modern Warfare, but with Dragons instead of Humans.

Infact I'm sure any game would be better with Dragons.

 

[Trikeen]

My idea for a perfect game?

It already exists.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Ok, this is quite ambitious so expect a wall of text incoming...

story: It's 2099. 50 years previously an alien race, driven off their home world by an expanding star, seek a new home on Earth. Records are unclear as to who threw the first stone, but within months a devastating war broke out. Both sides were fairly evenly matched. The humans had the advantage of numbers, projectile weapons (which had never been invented on the aliens home world), and prior knowledge and acclimatisation to the environment. The aliens however, had much sharper, much wider ranging sensory systems, were physically larger and stronger, and their genetic makeup also allowed them to absorb forces from the environment around them and turn them to their advantage (think super human abilities such as active camouflage, or breathing fire. The closest comparison would kind of be like the plasmids in Bioshock, crossed with the augmentations in Deus Ex, crossed again with Mass Effect's biotics).

The war lasted almost 3 decades, in which time both sides lost billions and the respective societies of both were all but destroyed. As it became clear to both sides that neither could possibly achieve an outright victory, a ceasefire was reached. Now human and alien live in a mostly peaceful (but sometimes still uneasy) coexistence on the 45% of the worlds surface that has been left habitable after the war. Language, culture, and technology are now largely mixed, and in some of the most tolerant ares their are even some 'interesting' hybrid species emerging as a result of cross-breeding. The world of 2099 has similarities with the Old West. Civilisation and order are starting to reappear after the anarchy of the war, but chaos and violence are still commonplace. It is a world of infinite opportunity, but equally infinite danger.

You are 'The Traveler' (species, gender, appearance are created by the player. You real name and origin are unknown.) You goal (this is where it starts pushing the envelope), survive. That's it. There is no central plot. You are given this vast world with thousands of opportunities and thousands of individuals to interact with. How much (or how little) you make of it is entirely up to you.

gameplay: As I just stated, 2099 (I've just decided that's what I'm going to call the game) is the last word in player choice and variation. It includes a wide variety of different gameplay elements. If you choose to play it as a combat game the majority of it is in first person, but you will be able to switch to third person to give a more tactical/stealth feel when required. The combat is designed to blend gun play and melee seamlessly, with the inclusion of the alien abilities (which are gained by injecting yourself with various formula's of alien genetic material if you play as a human) mixing the familiar shooter feel up a little.

If you choose a less violent path the emphasis on social interaction (there is no moral choice system. While there is choice running through the whole game, what the correct action is is your choice alone. You won't be compelled by the game to always choose the 'evil' option just because you need the 'evil' points for your 'evil' playthrough. This is the new wild west, who can tell what's right and wrong in this world), as well as management, RTS and life-simulator style. All this is heavily laced with RPG elements. However, progression isn't necessary, just another option. If you want to always stay near the bottom of the food chain in whatever you do, you can.

You night ask "Why would you be content to never really progress in the game?". Well, the engine the game runs on operates around the central theme of probability and random events. There is no 'end' to the game. When you complete challenges the game simply engineers new scenarios to create new challenges, and these will depend on your position in the game. If you fight your way to the top and play king you have a larger game experience, but you have to watch your back, as they'll always be something trying to knock you off your throne. Alternatively, if you decide to just run a small business within the game world you are more limited, but the chances of you putting yourself or your NPC companions in danger are slim.

Game developers talk about playing the same game but choosing different paths often. I want to take this concept to the extreme. I want to create a single game where one person could be a tyrant, another a mercenary, another a carpenter, another a diplomat... and so on and so forth. I want the possibilities to be a close to endless as is possible and I want the game to last as long as the player wishes it too, not the developer.

 

[funguy2121]

I know that this topic has probably been done to death but if you could have total creative control over the development of a game what would that game be like? You can post as many ideas as you so choose. Mine would be a sprawling open world heist game that would take place across 1960s Europe. You'd play as a suave professional world class thief, you would be given jobs by various underground sources and would then have to plan the heist. The planning would be akin to the processes leading up to assassinations in Assassin's Creed games but much more organic. You would not be given scripted objectives but would actually have to find various entry points on your own, map out guard positions by going on tours and such, as well as many other things. Although if you want to you can just do nothing up until the night of the heist and run in there guns blazing, you will almost surely die if you take this approach. After each heist, depending on the amount of attention you drew, you will have to lie low out in the countryside or in some secluded village. Most of the time a place will be arranged for you to stay at. During this time you will have various things that you can do. For example you could just drive around the countryside, go into a town and take in the sights, go get drunk, help around the house, practice shooting, start assembling a team for future heists, whatever. That'd be your downtime to just relax. That's roughly my idea. Your turn.

Open world heist instead of open world petty crime? Sounds intriguing. Why not have one city and the surrounding suburbs as the gameworld, and allow the player to pick any potential site, case it, plan the heist and then pull it off before taking on the getaway?

 

[Garret866]

My great game would be open world survival in a time where there was no technology.
you play as a character from the future ho got sent into this time by accident, and has to survive by inventing all of the basic tools, until he can ultimately invent electricity, and a time machine.
he of course could try to teach some of the Neanderthals to speak and be like him, and helping him to get back to the future, or he could try to do this by himself.
there would be awesome FPS hunting sequences, and the constant puzzle - how to invent new things.