[douglas]

Okay, I'm probably going to be entering a game design competition this summer, and I have a concept. My question is: would you play it?

The game will be an action-adventure style game akin to Zelda, except that your character will advance in a non-linear manner as in an RPG and you can have an AI party with you. It's set in an epic fantasy-adventure world, predominantly within a city (that'd likely be as large as any in the GTA games).

Now the slightly different bit: it's trendy for games to have multiple endings depending on whether you're "good" or "evil", but I want to build a quest/dialogue engine that will be dependant on many factors: things like humour/seriousness, greed/selflessness, bravery/cowardice and so on. In essence, your character would have a well developed, constantly changing personality, and different paths through the game would depend on certain aspects of your personality (eg a serious character might not get a dialogue option to tell a joke).

So it's a bit like The Sims meets Zelda meets Neverwinter Nights. What I really want is to create a game world more immersive than anything anyone else has done, although I'm not sure that'll work Smile Anyway, any thoughts? Please don't say MMORPG, the world and his wife are making them at the moment and I want this to be unique!

[Bilan]

Give me the option to be a Knight that hurls fireballs around and Im sorted :D

[PsyBorg]

I would be interested.


Give the option to be an unholy knight that throws around iceballs and I'm happy too. X)

[magnum12]

Although you mention an epic fantasy world, what technology level are you setting the city in? Still, if this game gives the option of being a twin sword wielding pyschopath that likes frying people with lightning, I'm happy.

[douglas]

The tech level would likely be post-medieval but not by far; there'll be some more sophisticated weaponry like compound crossbows, but nothing that could be identified as modern machinery.

I'm sensing that as a theme people like skillsets that are cross-class (ie a fighter can learn spells, a mage can learn to fight etc).  Obviously your chosen class would bias it somewhat . . . or we could be rid of a class system and have a heirarchical skill system.  The problem is that it would have to be carefully weighted so that choices in which skills to choose actually matter.  Also that might get very complicated, which is a pain both for the average gamer and those of us who have to write the thing!

Hmm . . . something to think on, certainly.