My Top 5 Dream Game Ideas

It should be pretty clear to you now that I f*cking love video games, perhaps more than any other medium. A lot of that is because of their interactive nature, you must be an active participant in the experience if you want to get anything out of it. This leads to many things that are unique to video games: immersion, sense of presence, customization/shaping the experience to your liking, better satisfaction/time ratio, branching narrative paths and replayability. Because it's still a burgeoning medium (roughly around 30 years old now, which is nothing compared to over a hundred years of film) there's still a bunch of stuff that developers haven't yet mastered. With film you can make the argument that we've pretty much got the basics down by now even though elements like special effects and set design are still being improved to this day. Games however still have a ton of room to grow (not just graphically) and can still tap into unrealized potential that other mediums just don't have. So when drafting my list of 'dream' game ideas I think you'll be quick to see that I value narrative, open worlds and mechanics above all else i.e things I think we can improve upon. Some of them are pure wish fulfillment, a few could change the games industry as we know it or fail miserably and one of them might be a bit to ambitious, but regardless these are the games that I hope to someday play: 

Linear games were soooo yesterday.

A procedurally generated narrative game:

If a computer can randomly generate a world why not a narrative? What if one day we could ask a computer to randomly generate a game (narrative and all) from a vast database of assets and just magic one into existence? Sure artists would have to go in and do some touch up work to make sure it doesn't resemble 50 gazillion games all thrown into one but it's not impossible to think that this could be a thing. 'No Man's Sky' engine is doing this exact thing by randomly generating planets for the player to explore. We've yet to see a game that can apply this method to storytelling though. Basically what I'm thinking about is similar to what this guy is working on:

If what Ken Levine is making ever comes to fruition it could change the way we handle narrative in games. The idea of "Narrative Legos" is from a design standpoint a really fascinating concept, something that has already proven to be mightily effective even when used in simple ways like 'Shadow Of Mordor', a game which I must get around to playing someday. In 'Mordor' enemies are generated uniquely with each playthrough of the game. Each 'nemesis' has their own personality and will rise or fall within their social structure as the game progresses. They are affected by the players actions and each will react differently, be it fight, flight, or some other reaction like remembering a previous fight with the player. Because this 'story' is procedurally generated and from a programming standpoint is turned into several interlocking bits of Legos (a bunch of X, Y and Z's that are randomly thrown together by the game's engine) every time you play 'Mordor' the narrative of you vs the Orc you're facing feels fresh because they are all distinct from one another and they feel unique to the player. Quality is a thing to factor in of course when undertaking such an ambitious idea, what Levine is talking about requires a lot more work than Shadow Of Mordor. Logistically it must be a nightmare, the amount of content needed would be enormous (mostly to do with VO and script size) and that's without considering whether it could all come together as a cohesive whole not to mention boast a story as compelling as what any linear game could offer. The pay-off however would be a game that rewards multiple playthroughs and a non-linear story that is literally tied to your every move. Procedurally generated games like Mordor, No Man's Sky and (hopefully) Ken Levine's next game could be the future of game design and help developers craft their increasingly ginormous worlds and stories. 

Come on, tell me this isn't mindblowingly amazing.

History walking simulator with Oculus Rift support:

Since the emergence of 3D open worlds games have opened up a whole new bag of potential: fully explorable, stunningly realized worlds with incredible detail and fidelity. Just look at GTA V, it has a massive recreation of Los Angeles that's packed full of cities, mountain ranges, lakes, towns, deserts, forests, highways....but zoom in on any of these locations and you'll find a ton of nooks and crannies that are full of little details that makes the world you're in feel alive. Open worlds are quite frankly getting ridiculous at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if GTA VI covers an entire country. What if we could use this knack for massive, all encompassing immersive virtual spaces for something that's less tied to the 'sandbox' stigma. Maybe something more, dare I say it...educational? How about we make a game that takes us back to the past and relive (in incredible detail) the events and day to day life of human history? It wouldn't need any gameplay, I'm talking about a pure walking simulator akin to 'Gone Home' or an FPS' sans a gun blocking your vision. It's just you the player as a floating camera exploring history from the beginning of time (how about the dinosaurs as a start point?) to today while reading up on several informative pieces about what you're seeing. 

This has already been put in practice several times in the Assassins Creed series. AC has always added it's own flair to things true, it's often tried to blend fact with fiction when it comes to it's myriad of muddled plots but the essential core of my idea is still there: for me the AC games essentially serve as historical tourism. I've already 'experienced' Jerusalem during the crusades, 14th century Rennaissance Italy, Constantinople, the 17th century Jamaicas, Revolutionary America and Revolutionary Paris during the 1800s. AC Unity is perhaps one of the most beautiful games I've ever played and regardless of it's crap storyline and bug addled beginnings it got right what mattered the most to me and that was it's setting (I'm drooling just thinking about climbing Notre Dame again). Ubisoft puts care in it's recreations of time periods, which isn't to say they're a 100% accurate but nonetheless perfectly capture the feel of that era. But this got me thinking, what if there was a first person mod for Unity that enabled Oculus Rift support? Virtual reality headsets are all the rage right now, I would gladly pay for the game again just to walk around Paris at night in Versailles with the sights filling up my vision in 360 degrees. There's even a game being Kickstarted now that's about you experiencing a faithfully recreated Titanic as it sinks into the ocean (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/titanic-honor-and-glory-phase-2). Doesn't that sound cool? Surely history buffs would be all over this? They can even show it off in museums: forget reading about the revolution, experience it! You can see the declaration of independence in real life, and then put on an Oculus Rift next to it and see the founders signing it themselves in 3D. No more boring history classes with only a few images in textbooks to go by, we could literally put on a headset and experience the past. I mean I can't be the only person to have thought of this surely? It's to good NOT to happen and Ubisoft are practically doing it now. So why don't we just get them on the job and ask them to remove everything that doesn't adhere to history as we now it (especially any semblance of a killer assassin jumping off a tall building into a cart of hay and somehow never suffering any life ending spinal breakages). This is one of the ways games can trump any other medium out there, the ability to visit worlds we can only dream about. For me this is the ultimate representation of that, the past reborn.

Try getting out of this one...

Procedurally generated open world survival zombie game MMO with destructible environments:

Given the limited hardware of today this might be a bit difficult to pull off but f*ck it, this is my dream list after all. To put it bluntly I want a Walking Dead simulator, one that gives the player total control over what he wants to do and throws him into the zombie apocalypse to see if/how he survives. Think of it as a melange of 'State of Decay' crossed with 'Day Z', any clan based MMO and 'Dead Rising'. Yes I know what you're thinking.....that does sound awesome doesn't it? If you want my opinion you combine those three games into one we pretty much have the perfect zombie survival simulator. At it's basics 'State of Decay' traps you and a bunch of survivors inside a struggling community and it's up to you to go and scavenge for supplies in an open world to improve your homebase. While certain aspects of this sandbox are procedural like loot locations and layouts/missions. You can also meet up and partner with a few other scripted communities to change homes. 'Day Z' is bit like State of Decay but it's just you on your own and is much more hardcore. In Day Z ammo is scarce, you need to do things like eat and drink to survive (a mechanic that NEVER gets put in games, whether you eat anything or not) and both zombies and other players are deadly and will not hesitate to kill you and take your stuff. 'Dead Rising' is great fun because of it's ability to generate massive crowds of zombies, thousands of them in fact and gives the player a variety of options/scenario's to kill them with. Add all this in with an MMO-like design: people can form big clans/communities and wage war with each other and you've got one hell of a zombie game on your hands. You might as well just throw in some environmental destruction (if a player fires a rocket launcher at a support structure of a building, it will fall) to spruce things up a bit. If I had to make a fake description it would sound like this.

"In ULTIMATE ZOMBIE SIM players can band together and will have to face the brutal conditions of the Zombie Apocalypse first hand. In a world without mercy, survival is paramount and groups will be forced to attack each other constantly for limited supplies. Players can also build bases anywhere they want all inside a procedurally generated world that periodically changes and where environmental destruction could be pivotal to any fight. Players will also be faced with hordes of the moaning undead that can number in the thousands and attack at any time, along with real life needs like starvation, dehydration, multiple diseases, blood infections, suicidal tendancies and cannibalism. Basically, you're going to kill and be killed a lot, and you're going to love every second of it. ZOMBIE SURVIVAL SIM, THE ULTIMATE GAME ABOUT ZOMBIES."

As for how all this could be accomplished I already named four developers who should just smash all their games together to make this one big game, so why not just do that? I mean it can't be that hard, it's not like these games run on different engines, software and have different coding techniques right? Right?? RIGHT??!!! Shut up, this game will happen one day, mark my words. At the very least it's more likely than an ACTUAL zombie apocalypse.

Oh Bioshock, how I love ye.

Bioshock: A Telltale Game

This one has to be a no-brainer. The Bioshock games are renowned for their excellent writing so surely giving the reins of the franchise over to Telltale, a burgeoning studio that's renowned for it's storytelling would make a crap ton of sense. Since Irrational Games shut down in early 2014 the future of the Bioshock franchise has been left unclear but it's safe to say that handing it over to another studio to continue the franchise is probably the most likely answer. Telltale would be kinda perfect and giving it to them would be mean freeing the franchise from it's FPS roots to take on a different genre that plays to it's strengths. If I had an issue with 'Bioshock Infinite' it's that the incessant and bloody mowing down of hundreds of dudes got in the way of the expertly crafted story it was trying to tell. Gameplay is nice and all but we play Bioshock for the world, and in Infinite's case the ludonarrative dissonance between the narrative and the gameplay was to wide. Telltale games are 100% story so this would suit me nicely. Plot-wise there's so many things they could do: a game featuring Rapture before the Civil War and watching as it gradually all goes to sh*t, choosing Between Ryan and Fontaine or maybe even one set in Columbia that ties up several unanswered threads about Elizabeth's fate. The series has literally set up the possibility of a million possibilities and it's not like 2K wouldn't hand one of their franchises over to another company to do a spin-off, they've already partnered with Telltale for 'Tales From The Borderlands' so there's definitely precedent for this happening. A continuation of the franchise by Telltale would be a dream come true, and again it's immediate potential of awesomeness is so high 2K must be INSANE to have not discussed this with Telltale at some point. MAKE THIS HAPPEN 2K!!! In any case, I'll just be happy for more Bioshock, with or without gameplay.

No Man's Sky: the ONLY open world sci-fi game (Fallout doesn't count)?

An open world science fiction game :

Up until a few years ago I would have said that my most requested sandbox game would be a pirate simulator. Now that we've had Black Flag what else tickles my fancy? Again for me one of the main draws of playing games is getting to experience other 'worlds', whether it be fantasy, reality or future based. I lost my mind back in 2006 playing 'The Simpsons Game' because the idea that I could walk around all of Springfield and go from the Simpsons house to Krusty Burger down the road was basically magic to my ten year old self. Now I recognize that the game is kinda shitty but the point still stands, open world sandbox games are awesome because you get to explore everywhere. For all the open world games that are out there now, I'm struggling to recall if I've played any that show off an extensive science fiction landscape. Why aren't there any open world Sci-Fi games? Is it really to hard to design a futuristic landscape? Are flying cars and spaceships to difficult to program? It's an odd exclusion, thankfully I think one upcoming game has me covered: whatever Mass Effect 4 turns out to be. With 'Dragon Age Inquisition' Bioware have set their sights on big, beautiful explorable zones and so far we've been lead to believe that Mass Effect with follow suite. I'm already feeling giddy about exploring alien planets, encountering new species ala Star Trek but how about something more....familiar? Look I'm just going to go ahead and type what we've all been thinking: an open world Star Wars game would be rad. We've all wanted to explore the Death Star, visit Hoth and have drinks at the bar on Tatooine etc.... it has potential to blow our brains against the wall if done right. With EA at the helm of all things Star Wars related in games this dream might soon be a reality, and I'm hoping that they're upcoming 'Star Wars Battlefront' delivers. If they like something that endlessly prints money it should be their priority at this point. Once again my wishes are being fulfilled with 'No Man's Sky' but what's stopping other developers like *SHIVERS* Rockstar from giving sci-fi a whurl? Space is infinite so that can be daunting for developers but we've got to at least try right? I'm not against fantasy RPGs or anything but it's about time we got a science fiction version of 'Skyrim'.