june gloom on 2/5/2009 at 00:09
Yeah, not what I'm talking about. For starters, why does every post-apocalypse setting have to fucking look like Nevada? Picture it more like in HL2 or Stalker- everything's abandoned and partially ruined but there's still grass and whatnot, and some places are completely overgrown.
Tonamel on 2/5/2009 at 00:09
I don't know if (
http://www.fuel-game.com/) Fuel will have a free ride mode, but it's definitely got the "driving across a massive post-apocalyptic landscape" going for it.
[edit] But it does have a bit of that "Nevadaness" to it. Forests and rivers too, though.
catbarf on 2/5/2009 at 01:57
I'd like to see a game where you play as the people caught in a sci-fi survival horror setting, similar to SS2 or Dead Space. Instead of being a one-man tank, you're one of a group of survivors. You'd need to scavenge for supplies, and give orders in combat. It would focus less on your sniping ability and more on good orders, covering all possible vectors of attack.
The meat of the game would lie in your team. You'd need to rescue survivors, and deal with possibly less-than-friendly encounters with other groups. You'd have to manage the health and equipment of your team while trying to save the ship/station and stop the invaders. If you focus on surviving, bad things happen and your team dies due to air toxins/black eggs hatching/whatever. But if you focus on taking the fight to them, your group would rapidly become fatigued, injured, and low on supplies.
Of course, the whole thing would be free-form, allowing you to go anywhere you can get access to, and customize/improvise your team's weapons and equipment. Each member of the group would develop their own skills as well, changing how they act in a fight.
That's just my two cents. Given the popularity of the 'space horror shooter' genre with games like AvP, Dead Space, and SS2, it's a surprise that the closest thing there's been to this is Space Hulk.
Chade on 2/5/2009 at 03:39
Another game I'd like to see with "modern physics", etc, is a wizards-deathmatch type game. Not with those wussy little spells they give wizards in your typical RPG, but with proper powerfull Sacrifice-style spells.
Opening up bottomless pits beneath your opponents feet, creating cyclones, raising walls out of the ground, transforming into a giant or dragon, starting an earthquake, reversing gravity, telekinetically slamming your opponents against walls, that sort of thing ...
I'm thinking the emphasis will be on creating a very fast paced action game, rather then the tactical experience you would probably associate with wizards. While I do want the action to be indirect (there should be no direct damage spells) ... the spells would create a situation where direct damage will be dealt to the target very soon after the spell is cast, meaning that while your opponent has a chance to respond, he has to do so quickly and think fast on his feet.
For instance, a hypothetical game scenario might involve: 1) you cast a spell allowing you to slam your opponent against the wall, 2) your opponent responds by reversing gravity around himself so that he flies up in the air (away from any walls), 3) your opponent transform into a dragon and prepares to swoop down on you, 4) you create a cyclone to catch the dragon (lets assume a cyclone comes with lightning that strikes anyone caught in it), 5) your opponent transforms himself into stone so that he drops out of the sky away from the cyclone, 6) you raise the earth beneath your opponent, so that he reaches the ground before he transforms back and shatters.
This scenario is probably a bit unreasonable, and you would have more then two people, but it's the sort of thing I am thinking ...
vurt on 2/5/2009 at 08:55
Quote Posted by dethtoll
If that sounds boring to you, then make it an RPG with locations that you must get to by driving. And by exploring the highways and side roads you can find places to explore.
It does sound boring ;) ID's RAGE looks great imo, but there's combat of course.. Borderlands looks incredible too (ok, its not really post-apocalyptic except for the looks/feel, it takes place on another planet).
EDIT: ah, someone already mentioned RAGE sorry.
Angel Dust on 2/5/2009 at 09:15
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I've had an idea for a post-apocalypse game with driving that focuses on driving around lovingly-crafted, high-detail environments. There will rarely be any combat or chase sequences, and most of it is just driving around and exploring. Imagine if you will driving down a mostly-intact coast road, the vista of a ruined city ahead of you, with nothing harassing you except the soft whisper of a coastal breeze, light rain dripping down on you. And maybe the music could be like (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMrtP7Uz2Aw) this.
If that sounds boring to you, then make it an RPG with locations that you must get to by driving. And by exploring the highways and side roads you can find places to explore.
Sounds good to me but instead of RPG stuff, that is levels/stats/XP, I think just some good solid survival mechanics would be great. So it's mostly about finding food, fuel and shelter each day as you make your to some destination The gameplay would mainly be about exploring, puzzling (lock picking etc) and resource management. You could make it night times are quite dangerous so you have to find a safe place to sleep, perhaps letting you board up areas or set traps etc, but sometimes you might be low on supplies or far from shelter so you'll push on through the night. The less people that are in it the better too, sometimes these post-apocalyptic games are too full of people for my tastes. I'm sure some people would find that boring but if the world was perfectly realised I, for one, would lap it right up. I guess it kind of sounds like a game version of the 'The Road'.
Nice song too there dethtoll.
One of the developers at Ice-Pick Lodge, makers of
Pathologic, had an idea I thought was quite intruiging. The basic concept is a survival game where most, or perhaps all, the resources you are going to get are given to you at the beginning and you have some objective to accomplish. Think of a journey through some hostile and barren area much like arctic exploration. It would be horrendously difficult to pull of the balance but an interesting idea I thought.
gunsmoke on 2/5/2009 at 15:31
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I've had an idea for a post-apocalypse game with driving that focuses on driving around lovingly-crafted, high-detail environments. There will rarely be any combat or chase sequences, and most of it is just driving around and exploring. Imagine if you will driving down a mostly-intact coast road, the vista of a ruined city ahead of you, with nothing harassing you except the soft whisper of a coastal breeze, light rain dripping down on you. And maybe the music could be like (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMrtP7Uz2Aw) this.
If that sounds boring to you, then make it an RPG with locations that you must get to by driving. And by exploring the highways and side roads you can find places to explore.
I used to love RoadKill. Yeah, it ain;t what you're looking for (sort of a GTA meets Twisted Black game) but the locale and characters are awesome.
heretic on 2/5/2009 at 22:51
(
http://www.mobygames.com/game/redline) Redline was also quite fun, speaking of post-apocalyptic driving games. It sounded like deathtoll's idea at first, which is what brought it to mind. It was released right around the same time as
Half-Life and swept under the rug in short order.
june gloom on 2/5/2009 at 23:07
Except my idea for post-apocalypse differs somewhat. My idea tries to avoid a total crapsack world with monsters and raiders at every turn and prefers to paint everything in terms of natural (and unnatural) beauty, populations gone, leaving their settlements to be taken over by nature.
Granted, there are monsters in those abandoned shacks and rusting factories, but that's why you carry a gun. Think of it as Stalker on a grander scale.
Taffer36 on 2/5/2009 at 23:44
I came into this thread ready to post my idea for an open-world play-as-police-officer game as well.
Yeah, for a while now I, too, have thought that an open-world game where you are able to play as a cop would be cool. It just seems that everything about being a cop would lend itself to open-world quite well. The cop car would act as a nice hub, where you could check out the GPS to see what's going on, get warning messages when people zip by you speeding, and receive radio calls for random/dynamic assignments that you can choose to take for cash/reputation or ignore if you have better things to do. There's also many aspects of being a cop that could be explored, such as drug busts, being SWAT, chasing criminals by commanding police dogs, and detective work.
In GTA you fuck with people and either the cops come after you, or the game ignores it (passing red lights), but as a cop yourself the game could give more freedom, let you boss others around, etc.
I'd like it to be first-person, though, because I haven't really seen enough first-person open-world games (I'm not asking you to recommend me Riddick, I know they exist, I'm just saying I'd like to see more as well as it'd be a nice way to differentiate from GTA since this would focus on an outdoor big city as well).
