Video Games You Wish Existed

[James Gasik]

I can still hear Spoony's rant about "what's a Paladin?" in my head.

 

[James Gasik]

Throw in a new Suikoden and a Lufia 2 remaster and this is my classic JRPG wishlist (and also making Arcanum... as fun to play as its world is to explore)

Capcom has been hinting more and more about bringing older IP back, including Breath of Fire (Darkstalkers might be a harder sell in this day and age, but I could see it still having a niche)

And we've gotten two new Silent Hill games so far! One of them is even good! Konami could be making a comeback!

Also: hell yes.

So Capcom has this long tendency to tease us about Darkstalkers. They'll say "we hear you, Darkstalkers fans, and we have something special for you!". Then they drop a re-release of DS 1-3, games we've already played (and already have releases of). Nobody buys it. Then Capcom be like "Huh, nobody bought the Darkstalkers game? I guess you didn't want it after all!", completely ignoring the fact that what we want is a new game!

 

[Fifinjir]

Funnily enough, Ultima V and VI already have pretty great fan remakes…that probably work worse on modern computers than the GOG versions of the original games. So I guess what I want are re-remakes of Ultima V Lazarus Ultima VI Project with an Ultima IV version to go with them.

 

[Bohandas]

There is a lot of middle ground between "you are this specific person with a personality defined in a series of books" and "you are no one with no personality whatsoever"

They're both better than the Half-Life series' "you are this specific person with no personality whatsoever"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Plus I think they both used starlanes for some reason. I'm not sure why all the space 4x games are doing that now but I don't like it

Wow I just got hit by a flashback like I fought in Vietnam.

I know exactly why MOO3 used star lanes, because MOO3 did this bizarre thing where they basically blogged the WHOLE of the development of the game, with both the lead designer and art director blogging genuinely regularly and in detail about what they were doing and why.

And star lanes were a very, very conscious and intentional choice made because they felt like it was the only way to make a game with a larger universe really "tactical" but not overwhelming, because if you don't use them, people can sort of miss each other and it can become endless tag (less possible in MOO1/2 because of the smaller map) and if you have them and a lot of other travel methods, it can become very overwhelming (which is why Stellaris also ditched the original design with three different basic space travel methods for one more similar to MOO3).

The sad thing is, I do think it's actually the right decision if you're trying to make a relatively accessible mass strategy gamer market (not even true mass market, just strategy gamers) 4X. I'm not happy about that, and I'd like to see a game manage to be accessible and playable without doing that, but I don't think it's as easy as I wish.

(MOO3 also revealed some other really wild stuff via the blogs, which I don't think are online anymore sadly, like that the art director really hated humanoid races, which lead to really cool and interesting aliens - much better than Stellaris has ever managed, I note - and that the main designer was a really axe-grindy guy who was obsessed with the Heavy Foot of Government, and seemed to want to assume all sapient species would essentially baseline be massive fiscal libertarians lol which seems um, a tad unlikely and an odd basis for SF.)

 

[Bohandas]

And star lanes were a very, very conscious and intentional choice made because they felt like it was the only way to make a game with a larger universe really "tactical" but not overwhelming, because if you don't use them, people can sort of miss each other and it can become endless tag (less possible in MOO1/2 because of the smaller map) and if you have them and a lot of other travel methods, it can become very overwhelming (which is why Stellaris also ditched the original design with three different basic space travel methods for one more similar to MOO3).

The sad thing is, I do think it's actually the right decision if you're trying to make a relatively accessible mass strategy gamer market (not even true mass market, just strategy gamers) 4X.

How is that less accessible than the open map of a regular 4x?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How is that less accessible than the open map of a regular 4x?

The theory - and this isn't my theory, note, but one a lot of different designers have come to, all of them starting off wanting non-star lane designs - is that once you have a large map, if you have no predictable paths at all, ships just able to go from anywhere to anywhere (maybe within a certain range, but often a fairly long one) this becomes overwhelming, unengaging and even oppressive to a lot of players, and whilst they might not say that, they show it by y'know, not playing those games longer term, or complaining about the gameplay or the like. From a design perspective it also makes the game harder to balance.

There's a reason the design keeps re-emerging. I suspect with smaller maps it's far less of an issue and there are other potential solutions, but this is a popular one.