I'm pretty sure many of you have seen that image before. It manifested in my mind that the Mass Effect Universe could easily house a grid style turn-based strategy game with an RPG story.
Anyone else have fond memories of playing Turn-Based Strategy JRPGs on the NES, SNES, Genesis, Playstation, or GBA? How about playing X-COM or Advance Wars? Anyone played Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, made by famed game designer Julian Gallop, or Valkyria Chronicles? Anyone excited for XCOM: Enemy Unknown? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I think we might have an audience. Mass Effect's foundation is non-linear story and strategic combat (proper utilization of powers and squad). I feel that can perfectly translate into a turn-based strategy rpg.
On terms of combat, the classes for such a game already exist in the universe. Powers draw many parallels to spell casters in other games. Biotics can help control the battlefield with shifting enemies around to expose them or keep them at bay, utilizing stasis against larger threats, creating biotic detonations, causing environment instakills with weakened or damaged enemies. Tech can do debuffs, detonate explosives, temporarily put synthetics on your side to command, use medigel, or command drones and turrets. Combat skills fall under more of the AOE attacks, melee (omni-blades), and consumables and I imagine such attacks to be more direct, with the unit having to have a line of sight. On terms of being a shooter/cover type turn based strategy like X-Com, Valkyria Chronicles, or Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars or being more distance and geometry focused turn based strategy like Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, or Fire Emblem... I can imagine both ways working. Because of the image above, I initially imagined the latter, with your type of gun give you different attack ranges, ranges being square count. In a shooter turn based strategy, the guns will determine overall range, damage curve, "heat capacity", and critical possibility.
On terms of story and universe, this is what makes me really excited. The overall story is something I have no clue what it would be about but the format is something I have in mind. Whatever the story is, it has nothing to do with Shepard, at least directly. Your character is a battle commander and can choose from the 6 classes in the style of the main game (combat, tech, biotic or combo). I thought about having a commander that could sit at the sidelines and it seems like such a main character wouldn't carry much weight (at least in this game, XCOM proves otherwise). On terms of race, I'm assuming the main character will be human because there is a lot of race based interaction, yet they could go all out like Dragon Age (if this game came out on handhelds, with no or minimal voiced dialogue, then its more possible). Your unit will be ragtag and unofficial than and will contain a lot of members. How much squad members are fleshed out can go two ways: either you have a bunch of main characters and smaller squaddies (yet it doesn't completely undermine their emotional and characteristic potential) or you have about two or three main characters that are join your team early and take up a bulk of the conversation dialogue (similar to ME2 with Jacob, Miranda, a little Mordin) while everyone else is on equal footing on terms of being fleshed out in story and gameplay. Having it one way or the other can affect how story and dialogue plays out; The former would have more guaranteed solid characters and characters that would converse with each other easily but the minor characters will get the Zaeed/Kasumi treatment, while the latter would have everyone be fleshed out at the expense of having squadmates interact easily with each other. Both ways allow for the possibility of permanent death, a staple of Fire Emblem and X-Com, which makes things tense and emotional. On terms of what kind of characters will join, because of the large amount of characters needed for your team, the Mass Effect universe is perfect. You'll have members of all races both common and uncommon with a wide variety of backgrounds. You can have a pirate asari, a turian vet, a Batarian mercenary, a slave vorcha that you bought the contract for, a krogan scientist, an Monomolecular Blade-wielding assassin who can go invisible, a salarian brute (similar to Tazzik), a modified loki mech , even Varren. There will no longer be one race (besides humans) limit on your ship and more archetypes of a race can be explored. Overall, I don't see such a game to have a small cast of characters.
The format of the game would have story and side quest. Rewards for both can come in upgrades, new squadmates, weapons and armor, omni-tools and amps, cosumables, currency, experience for your squad members, yourself, and possibly a squad experience stat that gives passive and active abilities, such as squad-wide buffs and "airstrikes". Consumables can include medigel, drugs (red sand) or capacitors, one-time use weapons, grenades, ect.
So does the idea get you excited? Let me here what you think about the overall idea, what concepts you would go with and what you liked and disliked with my initial vision. Also post your own visions for such a game. Right now I have no idea in my head if this game would be a handheld game, pc and console game, or both and what art style they would go with, so post your thoughts alongside thoughts for a story if you have that too.
Modifié par cowfish13, 05 septembre 2012 - 06:48 .
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