This is probably a PC game, though if Oblivion is on the xbox 360 then this concept is probably workable on a console too.
The player sits down at their computer and starts the age old process of constructing their character. As they modify things like “Strength” and “Health” their character will change shape. If you have a high strength score, you’re going to be a big bruiser, for example. These attributes won’t change for the rest of the game.
The character starts out as an one of the unemployed people living in the bowels of a city, that for a complete lack of a better name, I’m going to call The City. At this point, the game becomes open ended. Missions will be available from any of a large number of factions, but they aren’t necessary for character advancement. If I had my druthers, there would not be a “main plot” but rather many smaller plot arcs that may or may not interconnect. However, I guess that selling such an idea would be a lot like getting a horse to sleep in a water bed.
I imagine the city as a massive futuristic three dimensionally sprawl, as tall as it is wide. Dense with population, it would team with life at every hour of the day. Travel is either on foot or through a subway like tube system. The city is a compression of styles from around the world, seeing visual influences from china, japan, europe, africa, america, and india. There is a very heavy emphasis on technology, with advanced holographics and cybernetics being commonplace.
The player has access to a number of skills for his character. Some of these will be familiar from other games (like hand-to-hand combat and pickpocketing) while others will be less familiar (electrical engineering and cleanliness). These skills are advanced through use and represent one of the two avenues for character advancement. The other being cybernetics. Implants are expensive, but allow you to effectively increase either a skill or an attribute or even to gain a special ability. Example include:
Memory metal cables running parallel to muscles would increase strength and reflexes.
Electronic processors in the brain would increase intelligence and perception.
Ocular implants would allow for infravision or low-light level vision.
An internal data storage unit would allow for the safe carrying of information or programs.
Sud-dermal armour would increase damage resistence.
A character’s available implants would limited by their budget, and by either a total number of implant slots or individual slots for certain body parts. A player must choose for his character which parts he wants to upgrade.
Since getting a boring legitimate job makes for a fairly dull game, most of the content will be of the seedy underbelly of the city. Players will find it easiest to become a criminal (legal jobs are very hard to find). This means a player will be very concerned with things like witnesses to his crimes, evidence, and attention from the police.
Whether a witness will report a crime depends very much on who the witness is. If they are a criminal themselves, or an ally or friend of the player character, then will be very unlikely to report his crimes. If they are an upstanding citizen or a cop, they will be very likely to report a crime. Reporting a crime increases attention from the authorities and will cause detectives to begin to gather evidence. Witness can be dealt with in any number of ways, which a creative reader can certainly divine for themselves.
Evidence is generated a number of ways during a crime. A character with a low cleanliness score who does not wear gloves will probably leave behind DNA and fingerprints at a scene. If he has been arrested before, the police will be able to track that evidence back to his identity and issue a warrant for his arrest. Certain skills, like hacking and lockpicking, will change the amount of evidence generated too. A novice lock pick will leave behind lots of scratches and tool marks as they work. An expert hacker will leave a very difficult trail to follow back to himself. In an effort to avoid arrest, a player will probably want to reduce the amount of evidence his character generates.
The amount of attention a crime receives will vary greatly. If it is a minor crime or is especially subtle, it may never even be reported to the police. If it is reported, a crime with low monetary value that isn’t violent will receive little attention. If the victim is important, crimes against them will be pursued more fervently. The amount of attention focused on a crime will increase the likelyhood of any evidence left behind being found.
A character might deal with unwanted police attention, should they tie the crime to him, in any number of ways: paying off the police, neutralizing the witnesses or evidence (via hacking or breaking in), or framing some one else. A particularly violent player might even attack or kill police who attempt to arrest him. If he succeeds often enough, the police may simply learn to avoid him for crimes that aren’t worth the risk.
There are other things I’d like to include: like an extensive hacking system that lets a character with computer skills effect the game world, a combat system that balances character skill with player skill, and a good dialog engine. I particularly like the idea of a player choosing a ‘nickname’ for their character from a list of 25-50 choices, allowing the game to use prerecorded voice acting to refer to the player character.
Three Quick Game Reviews
I’ve had an opportunity to sit down with some Xbox titles in the last week or so. So here’s a quick subset of my views.
Alan Wake
I’m not a big fan of the survival horror genre, which this game seems to be setting itself up to be. The graphics are pretty good when you’re forced to run around a scary dark forest but the faces on the people were so gruesome that they were far scarier then anything else to be seen. As for gameplay, the developers seem to have done everything in their power to make this game as not scary as possible. You get so much ammo and batteries, and the enemies go down so easy, that within half your way through a haunted lumberyard, you’re already overflowing with the stuff.
Lost Planet
Not much to say here except that my companion and I didn’t make it past the first cutscene. “Thermal energy” has already become a mocking in-joke.
Splinter Cell: Conviction
The bulk of my video game time in the last couple of weeks has been spent with this gem. I have been a big fan of the Splinter Cell series since I stumbled across the original when looking for a game to rent in my first semester of college. This is a pretty big departure for the series, moving from a more stealth based game to something a bit more like a shooter. Previously, getting through a level without being seen, without your enemies even knowing you’re there, was the pinnacle achievement. In Conviction, however, emphasis has been moved far along the slider toward just storming in guns blazing. I like the new feel and most of the new mechanics, the primary exceptions being the inclusion of only the new sonar vision mode and the prevalence of the mark and execute.
Splinter Cell’s use of the night vision and thermal vision modes is, for me, a staple of the series, and their lack is felt sort of acutely in this chapter. There were placed were being able to see in the dark would have really helped, or maybe if the developers had just turned up the gamma. I ended up pressing Sam Fisher into more then his fair share of walls over the course of the game.
Mark and execute is cool. It adds some nice bad ass factor to Sam, but it commonality kind of breaks the game. Gaining access to up to four instant kills for every melee kill is not a good ratio. I would prefer if they’d had you build up the mark and execute over a series of encounters, force you to save them up for more difficult scenarios.
All in all, I feel like my money was well spent. I got plenty of use out of the co-op mode with my best friend and that has been the real strength of the series so far. Splinter Cell is one of those games that provides opportunities for “holy shit, did you see that?” moments. Having someone next to you on the couch to go “Yes!” is really awesome.