21st September 2006, 1:29 PM
I'll say right now the guy did seem to lay it on thick. A lot of it didn't seem nearly as innovative as he said it was. The interaction of the only two creatures to really act unique me is the one thing that really impressed me about that video, and that's why it excited me. If the whole game has a compelling and involving dynamic along those lines, good. If that's just some ultra limited thing tossed in only every once in a while, and eventually the same puzzles just repeat themselves over and over until the game "ends", then I'll be disappointed. It wouldn't be the first time an innovative idea wasn't fully realized and it's potential was squandered.
lazy, you nailed exactly what I was thinking of there. In Metroid it would work great, so long as the planet or station she ended up on didn't have some binding all controlling "corruption" storyline behind it. They've done that a lot recently, mainly I think because they felt they needed a reason why everything attacks Samus. Do this though, and it's different. I'd be happy with scripted interactions at this point, but ideally some time in the future they could do it all procedurally which would give it the real depth I'm after. Of course, going beyond Metroid, I'm thinking instead of just someone with a gun, give them a different more useful tool, a HAND. The ideal would be a game that's a cross between Crocodile Hunter and Survival Man (the latter show has readily admitted a lot of the camera settings are staged though, like for example when the guy walks off into the wilderness away from the camera, well clearly he's not just leaving the camera behind, he'll have to walk back, shut off the camera, and walk that distance again WITH the camera). You could just have a plain old "I have to survive and interact procedurally with various stuff in my environment to build a lean-to and then set a small rabbit trap", only with original animals maybe on an alien world or a "lost" world on Earth. Or, it could go beyond that with side plots. Why is this person lost? Is there something even more important than your main character's survival? Maybe there is a hidden tribe on whatever place you find yourself stranded. Maybe you ARE part of a tribe and your survival is tied in with the entire tribe's. Maybe you are doing a Survival Man style nature show and on top of living you also have to set up good shots on film (or are making a fictional movie in some strange place, ala King Kong, the game of which had some interesting ideas but again that game just fell into the same "it's all enemies" mentallity, and also just looped the same sort of environment and puzzles over and over). Maybe there is some global plot, like you are a spy and have to get out of this territory to eventually get "ze meecrofeelm" to British intelligence, or perhaps you went here to get a rare sample in a cure that's been fully tested but there aren't enough of the raw ingrediants available to end the plague killing all the childrens so away you go to this location to gather then from some plant or creature before millions die. Maybe you are a peace ambassador that got lost in the jungle and you are attempting to reach a peace conference between two warring tribes on this world or the results will be devastating, avoiding or perhaps stopping a hunting party from some group that wants the violence to continue, maybe finding some spy or slowly collecting information from that. Maybe you are a conservationist attempting to study the environment to gather details on effects of either a strange new strange that's developed in a certain species, a new weather system development that occured, some high level of pollution, or the introduction of a foreign critter or two to the ecology, or poaching, or whatever there's a lot that can happen and you have to study what's happened to all the creatures and big time effects in a journal.
There are so many different ways a game that involves procedural actual creatures could go it's mind boggling. And that's just creatures without things like a prefrontal cortex! Imagine the dynamics involved in a higher level social grouping of creatures from more developed apes to the more deranged psychotic ones that we are, in other words dealing with a tribe and it's occasional hunting parties, perhaps making peace or instead deciding to manipulate, or maybe accidently offending their spirituality and finding yourself just trying to escape them as well as intelligent coordinated hunts and traps looking for you.
Wow, I want that game and all it's many possible variations...
lazy, you nailed exactly what I was thinking of there. In Metroid it would work great, so long as the planet or station she ended up on didn't have some binding all controlling "corruption" storyline behind it. They've done that a lot recently, mainly I think because they felt they needed a reason why everything attacks Samus. Do this though, and it's different. I'd be happy with scripted interactions at this point, but ideally some time in the future they could do it all procedurally which would give it the real depth I'm after. Of course, going beyond Metroid, I'm thinking instead of just someone with a gun, give them a different more useful tool, a HAND. The ideal would be a game that's a cross between Crocodile Hunter and Survival Man (the latter show has readily admitted a lot of the camera settings are staged though, like for example when the guy walks off into the wilderness away from the camera, well clearly he's not just leaving the camera behind, he'll have to walk back, shut off the camera, and walk that distance again WITH the camera). You could just have a plain old "I have to survive and interact procedurally with various stuff in my environment to build a lean-to and then set a small rabbit trap", only with original animals maybe on an alien world or a "lost" world on Earth. Or, it could go beyond that with side plots. Why is this person lost? Is there something even more important than your main character's survival? Maybe there is a hidden tribe on whatever place you find yourself stranded. Maybe you ARE part of a tribe and your survival is tied in with the entire tribe's. Maybe you are doing a Survival Man style nature show and on top of living you also have to set up good shots on film (or are making a fictional movie in some strange place, ala King Kong, the game of which had some interesting ideas but again that game just fell into the same "it's all enemies" mentallity, and also just looped the same sort of environment and puzzles over and over). Maybe there is some global plot, like you are a spy and have to get out of this territory to eventually get "ze meecrofeelm" to British intelligence, or perhaps you went here to get a rare sample in a cure that's been fully tested but there aren't enough of the raw ingrediants available to end the plague killing all the childrens so away you go to this location to gather then from some plant or creature before millions die. Maybe you are a peace ambassador that got lost in the jungle and you are attempting to reach a peace conference between two warring tribes on this world or the results will be devastating, avoiding or perhaps stopping a hunting party from some group that wants the violence to continue, maybe finding some spy or slowly collecting information from that. Maybe you are a conservationist attempting to study the environment to gather details on effects of either a strange new strange that's developed in a certain species, a new weather system development that occured, some high level of pollution, or the introduction of a foreign critter or two to the ecology, or poaching, or whatever there's a lot that can happen and you have to study what's happened to all the creatures and big time effects in a journal.
There are so many different ways a game that involves procedural actual creatures could go it's mind boggling. And that's just creatures without things like a prefrontal cortex! Imagine the dynamics involved in a higher level social grouping of creatures from more developed apes to the more deranged psychotic ones that we are, in other words dealing with a tribe and it's occasional hunting parties, perhaps making peace or instead deciding to manipulate, or maybe accidently offending their spirituality and finding yourself just trying to escape them as well as intelligent coordinated hunts and traps looking for you.
Wow, I want that game and all it's many possible variations...
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)