Comments on: Recycled Inspirations

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:15:56 +0000

I thought for a long time that Mage would be effectively impossible to translate to games. But really, according to the game itself, most mages rely for the most part on pre-formulated “rote” magick that gets passed from mage to mage. So all you’d need to do is put together a fairly flexible spell-creation system along the lines of Oblivion’s (but appropriate to the setting) and the primary issue of a Mage game is settled.

As far as Groundhog Day games go…I wouldn’t want a game based on the movie. It’s a great movie but it’s not compelling material for gameplay. I think a better approach would be either a game based on the series Day Break, or using similar precepts. For those (understandably) not familiar with it, it’s a brilliant television series that adapts the “reliving the same day” concept to a more action-driven drama rather than a comedy. The lead character is a cop who wakes up in bed with his girlfriend on the fateful day, does some mundane things, gets home, listens to answering machine messages….and cops break down the door and arrest him – he’s been framed for the murder of an Assistant District Attorney. Later, he gets pulled out of his cell by mysterious men, taken out into a rock quarry, and beaten while being instructed to confess to the murder. They show him video of his girlfriend being executed, and then footage of his sister going about her life. Then they give him a sedative and….he wakes up in bed with his girlfriend. So he’s got to a) keep his girlfriend and sister safe, b) figure out who those men were and why they’re framing him, c) evade police capture, d) deal with a gang informant who’s not happy with him, e) work things out with his partner, who’s being investigated by internal affairs, f) figure out how all this hangs together, and g) figure out why he’s stuck on this day and how he can unstick himself. For starters. You can perhaps see how this would make for a gripping game.

By: baf

baf — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:49:34 +0000

To quote my own blog from a year or so ago:
“…I have a long-standing fantasy about about the ideal game adaptation of The Seven Samurai. The player, as I see it, would choose which samurai to play, and that choice would fundamentally shape what kind of game it is. Playing the Loose Cannon, for example, would make the game more freeform and self-directed, like GTA: you could do your assigned missions, but you could also just wander off by yourself and try to steal the enemy’s guns. If you chose the Killing Machine, it would mainly be an action game. The Leader would be about strategy, the Leader’s Assistant would be about micromanagement. The Kid? Dating sim.”

By: Jochen Scheisse

Jochen Scheisse — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:22:00 +0000

After I just read a KBKarma comment, I realized the only thing I need is an Alpha Complex action adventure. God, Paranoia just screams make me into a computer game, doesn’t it?

By: Fat Zombie

Fat Zombie — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:34:11 +0000

James, I’ve wanted a Doctor Who game for a while now. Maybe not following the doctor, though; one set in the universe.

Okay, I just want an asymmetrical Battlefield-type game. Lots of UNIT soldiers on one side, less (but more powerful) Daleks on the other.

Not just Daleks, maybe. UNIT v Sontarans, UNIT v Sea Devils, UNIT v Cybermen… You get the idea.

By: Albides

Albides — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:25:17 +0000

18Rabbit,

There was a Wheel of Time FPS released back in 1999. It used the unreal engine and wasn’t too bad, actually, though a bit short. As far as under-utilised licenses go, Robert Jordan milking the series for all it was worth until new books became 900 pages of intricate descriptions of people’s clothes, with no plot or character development to speak of, leaves me a little cold to seeing any more of it…

As far as Watchmen goes, I’d hate to see a game based on it, and not only because I can already hear Alan Moore’s groans. The only possible angle would be an action-based route, which would probably miss what made the Watchmen special. What made it special was the application of modernist techniques to a medium that had never before been treated seriously, and a plot heavy with a dialogue between moral relativism, absolutism, and the struggle with responsibility and authority in a world in which superheroes exist and are given exactly the sort of suspicion one would expect for masked vigilantes. It was one of the first comic books (if not the first) that behaved like literature.

Now these things aren’t impossible for a game to reproduce, but it’d need something of a gaming revolution, the likes of which the Watchmen itself did for comics. Games have yet to treat itself like a serious medium, which is a shame since no other form of art is quite able to engage and interact with an audience in the same fashion. (Obligatory mention to Pathologic, which somewhat grasped this idea.)

By: James T

James T — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:27:15 +0000

It’s a shame the Doctor Who franchise is controlled by overindulged, underambitious hacks these days; a deep action-puzzler with a Day of the Tentacle-style ‘helping hands across the eras’ mechanic, involving all the Doctors (plus at least one of their companions each) could be superb. Bit of kung fu as Pertwee-Doc, plant some bombs as Ace, stab some monsters as Leela (or indeed, Jamie), all to get your ‘other selves’ out of scrapes… Good fun.

Meanwhile… “How about a boxing game?!?!?!” …And I take it they haven’t played Kid Chameleon in a loooong time.
Still, Watchmen’s not a bad idea, really; a brief unkillable spree as the Vietnam-trekking Dr Manhattan — akin to the AC-130 segment of CoD4 — would be interesting for that enjoyable-but-morally-unpleasant angle.

By: Mr. Brand

Mr. Brand — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:31:06 +0000

Screw the extraordinary – how about League of Gentlemen? Survive everyday life in Royston Vasey! Fun and excitement as..ah, fuck it. I got nothing.

The trio of WH40k-related games would be excellent, though.

By: 18Rabbit

18Rabbit — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:49:51 +0000

Based solely on the rabidness of the fans of the series and the zillions of MUD’s set in the environment, a Wheel of Time game would probably do well.

By: Andrew Farrell

Andrew Farrell — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:47:29 +0000

I always preferred Majora’s Mask to Ocarina of Time, but the same idea appeared slightly more successfully*in Shadow of Memories for the PS2.

A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s game would come quite cheap – the reason the characters were used in the first place was that they were out of copyright.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that there are parts of Rockstar that understand British humour. The British parts, for a start.

*The idea’s execution that is, not the game around it.

By: Benjamin Barker

Benjamin Barker — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:39:15 +0000

Re: Bill Murray: There’s a new Ghostbusters game, right? I bet he’ll show up in it– the man wasn’t too proud to do Space Jam or voice a CGI Garfield, after all.

By: Benjamin Barker

Benjamin Barker — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:36:16 +0000

- There’s been an attempt or two, but M.U.L.E. still needs to be updated properly.

- I always thought, from way back when it was on the air, the Max Headroom TV show would make a cool PnP RPG with reporters and hackers teaming up to infiltrate corporations and such, but a CRPG is also possible. Or a management sim for one of the evil TV channels.

- Jack Vance’s Dying Earth comes to mind for RPGs. Did you know that the D&D spell-memorization system is right there in the first pages of the first novel, from 1950?

- And Shaun of the Dead is overthinking it– simply doing the Romero movies offer great video game scenarios: defending your mall/base (Dawn of the Dead), or going on supply runs in your anti-zombie camper (Land of the Dead). Though Shaun of the Dead would be the more popular license.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:10:38 +0000

Groundhog Day’s concept is something that completely captures my imagination. I’d love a game based around it, or that concept.