145 réponses à ce sujet

[breakdown71289]

As long as it's a continuation of the action & adventure RPG like the Mass Effect series, i'll be kept pretty happy. That said, if they do tackle the superhero genre, then it'll be interesting to see what kind of direction they would take with it. 

[TurianRebel212]

Jade Empire 2, duh. 

[Aimi]

I want to play a game where I'm helping the Byzantine Imperium to defeat Ottoman Orks and Blood Mages!

but the blood mages are the imperium

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

but the blood mages are the imperium

 

Imperium like in Warhammer 40K.

Ottomans as bad as Orks and Blood mages.

[TheBunz]

Ez. Think what sells. Shooters, mmos, fantasy and racing. I think they'll stick with space theme because it sells, just work change story/characters. They need better advertising. Would've never played this game if friend didnt talk about it all the time and for me to download me2 and 3 demo.

[Dean_the_Young]

Themes, or settings and contexts? I have a whish list for all that and more.

 

 

In terms of themes...

 

Religion vis-a-vis ideology would be a topic I could trust Bioware to handle respectfully and competently. In a setting in which there's a big impending conflict between an established religion (say, one centered around the concept of family in the present) and a rising ideology (say, one centered on the idea of a legacy for the future), I think Bioware could make a very good story about how the two ideas aren't so different and don't have to conflict. Religion that can be applied as philosopy, or an ideology that can be practiced as fervently as any religious zealot. Both flawed, but both able to bring real good (or evil) into people's lives as well.

 

 

Empathy would be another theme I could see Bioware exploring well- especially in a setting with Empaths who can read/project/take/store emotions. You could build a good deal around such a setting in which empaths are a major part of the land, and explore a lot of ideas related to emotional health and expression vis-a-vis, well, everything else. The typical Bioware nice-guy path (Paragon, Open Palm, Light Side, etc.) is exceptionally sympathetic, and people like positive emotions and emotional reinforcement. An Empath setting could explore that in its own right- the difference between empathy and sympathy, between what feels good and what actually is good, and even the ethics of empathy and taking/giving emotions. Making people feel good could be a placebo in place of addressing underlying and unpleasant problems, could be a violation of consent and individual free will (pacifying someone who is angry for a reason), or even a tool of expansion (pacifying a conquered populace). On the other end of the spectrum, the nature and role of darker emotions and emotional toughness and sickness could also be explored, both as antagonistic forces but also as real parts of the expression of human identity.

 

 

Zero-sum scenarios, especially about resource scarcity, would be another fertile theme: what happens when there simply isn't enough to go around, and it's nobody's fault? If you have food enough for ten in a village of a hundred? How people adapt and act in ever more desperate situations is something RPGs are uniquely suited for exploring- and it's all the more gripping because good intentions and human kindness don't make up for bread and water. If Bioware were ever to do something in the Fallout setting, I wouldn't want them to do the open-world three-hundred-years-later of the main Fallout games: I would want them to do a scenario that starts the day the bombs fall, in a place that the bombs don't. A small town in the boonies that survives the bombs, but may not survive the famine, the refugees, the increasingly desperate, and its own internal divisions that follow.

 

 

 

As a distant outlier, I think I colonization scenario would also be cool. The upcoming Civilization: Beyond Earth is introducing some story-shaping RPG mechanics into its gameplay, quests and Big Decisions/Moral Choices about how your civilization will advance technologically and socially down three dominant paths in the new world (cybernetic trans-humanism, biological trans-humanism, and the rejection of trans-humanism). You could make a decent RPG scenario from the inside of that- especially if you encompass time-skips ala DA2.

 

 

 

I like this, because it is both my job and one of my primary forms of entertainment, but it is ridiculously easy to screw it up in ways that will make me unhappy.

Double-plus on alternate history, then. Anything to spur Eirene into a history post.

 

 

Hm... what sort of alternate history scenario I'd like to see... depends on the era. But I'd love to introduce time travel for some social exploration of the differences between Then and Now, depending on the context.

 

 

I can't say ancient history particularly interests me, except with a time traveler context. If you the PC (and some others) were thrown back in time, left to try and struggle and survive with anachronistic views and bits of technology in a world without 21st century liberalism and international relations... that could be fun, regardless of the setting or era. Especially since the time travelers could be less 'gods of technology amongst men' and more 'strange curiosities that are easily crucified by sheer numbers.' Some people suffer and die, some people set themselves up as warlords or those gods of technology, and the time travelers themselves could be persons of interest for any ambitious warlords... and targets of interrogation and torture for the locals who think that you could magic up technology, and are quite willing to torture you until you do. Bonus points if the player is actually enslaved early on and spends their acclimation period (learning the language and such) as the clever house servant of a local elite who seeks to benefit from their knowledge.

 

That's a premise that could work well just about anywhere in the ancient world: Rome, China, India, the Middle East, and so on. You could even move it up closer as well- imagine an exploration of, say, some ambitious and well-meaning 21st Century Americans who go to the American Revolution and being forced to confront that the legendary Founding Fathers weren't particularly interest in freeing all those slaves (or being the bastion of freedom and progressivism that modern players try to demand from their RPG settings).

 

 

If we're going to be a bit more 'modern', avoid the time travel, and stick to something more plausible... probably an RPG where the point of divergence was in WW2 or around there. A few ideas and scenarios occur to me.

 

 

 

An occupation/insurgency-scenario of Japan is a big one. Work with a PoD in which the Americans don't drop the atomic bombs, and so the Soviets continue mobilizing and delay their Declaration of War, pushes back the end of the war and turns it into a much costlier invasion. Nation-wide starvation, more than a million American casualties, the Emperor never surrenders and the royal family is never captured, and when it's all said and done Japan is broken apart into occupation zones much like Germany. Things change.

 

 

The Soviet occupation zone is the northernmost island of Hokkaido, the Korean peninsula, and its own sector of the Capital. Having rolled across the peninsula without an American challenge, one of the butterflies of this event is that the Soviets decide to use the Japanese annexation of Korea, and thus their occupation of significant Japanese territory, as the leverage to get an occupation zone on the island chains (where they only had a token beachhead on Hokkaido during the war proper). So the People's Republic of Japan is really a Soviet-backed amalgam of Korea, Hokkaido, and other bits of Japan under Soviet influence. From Northern Japan the Soviets support and fund nationalist and socialist insurgency groups in the other occupation zones, and cast their support of the recognition of Korea as 'Japanese' to appeal to the imperialist-nationalist remnants.

 

'South Japan' is the rest, and it's not quite pretty. Broken up in its own occupation zones, there's a Commonwealth zone (the island of Kyushu , occupied by British/Australian/New Zealand), the Chinese zone (the island of Shikoku, with a mostly nationalist Chinese presence), and the American zone (the main island of Honshu, with some smaller subzones and the division of Tokyo). While nominally Southern Japan is a single country, in actuality the government only has as much influence in the occupation zones as the occupiers dictate. With extremely negative memories of the war, and an on-again/off-again insurgency, Japan is effectively under a number of different boots, occupation which borders on colonization in some areas that is a national humiliation that feeds the insurgency against powers that frequently want to stomp harder the more the natioanlist insurgency tries to assert itself.

 

 

The fallout of Japan has other effects as well, particularly in China. When the Soviets were steamrolling the Korean peninsula and liberating Manchuria and openly supporting the communists in Northern China, American and Commonwealth concern led to much greater support for the Nationalists in China. The Chinese Civil war became a proxy war between Western and Soviet forces and Chinese allies, and the official occupation of the Japanese mainland had barely finished when the Chinese war went hot. Pre-empting and replacing the Korean War in this timeline, the Western-backed Nationalist China is the dense Eastern coast of China, while the People's Republic of China holds Beijing, the North, and most of the interior. Most people believe that the Nationalists and West 'lost' the war based on the map size alone, and the Chinese War has become viewed as the transition between WW2 and the Cold War.

 

Because of the land war in China and the division of Japan, the Cold War pivots from a mostly Euro-centric struggle and focus to a much more prominent role for Asia. Japan is much more important, and the Americans much more involved in keeping a foothold there. One of the manifestations of this is the controversial American annexation of Okinawa- in real history administered as an occupied territory before being returned to Japan, but here being annexed as American territory to give a permanent foothold into the region, and possibly reflecting a changed end/post-war policy of the US annexing valuable islands to deny them to Soviet influence (another possibility to reflect the decreased American focus in Europe is less Marshal Plan aid leading to a communist victory in Italy's 1948 elections- and possibly an American intervention/annexation of Sicily as a result). Very controversial, and a major resentment by nationalist Japanese to American imperialism.

 

Said resentment fuels the ongoing, never-quite-stopped insurgency by military remnants, nationalist groups, and angry youths from across the political spectrum. Centered around the hidden monarchy, which has been in hiding in the Home Islands since the war, the Royal Family is the symbol of Japanese resilience, pride, and identity that transcends the occupation zones. Just the rumors of an attack or arrest of the Royal Family is enough to spark protests. With the exception of the deepest collaborators and fringe ideological groups, the Royal Family has the popular support from across the nation, and an address from the Royal Family could easily start a major uprising.

 

Oh, and aside from all that... those nukes that were never used? They've yet to be used in public, and without the images and documentation of human suffering of atomic weapons there is no anti-nuclear movement and no nuclear taboo. People know, on an academic level, that they exist and what they can do- but there's no institutional or public awareness of it. After wars and insurgencies which killed far more people (over many years) than would have died in the atomic bombings, the largest outcry regarding nuclear weapons is that they weren't used in the invasion... after all, they're just bigger bombs, right?

 

MAD, as an internalized concept, does not exist. Nukes have some deterrence value, similar to dreadnaughts of old... but very little reservation against using them against military or civilian targets. Which, in the context of Japan, are often the same.

 

See where I'm going with this?

 

So, what does this all matter to the RPG? Setting dressing. Context. World-building. Now, here's a scenario.

 

 

We have a scenario out of a typical anime. We have your typical young adult, a student, in Japan. This is one of the more affluent/established parts of Japan- a picture out of our own time. If you ignore the reports of insurgent bombings in the news, ignore the police in armor personnel carriers driving towards the latest protest over the rumors of the death of the royal family, and the security officer at the commencement address who reminds everyone about how you are all adults now, and so can be shot under occupational law if you're found to be an insurgent... shortly before a Japanese SWAT team with American military support launches a raid on the school in the middle of class.

 

Chaos happens, **** gets real, and the protagonist is thrown into another world as truth and reality go tipsy. That prim and proper classmate, head of the class? Secretly the heir to Royal Family, the prince and/or princess who could set off a revolution. That other class mate, the intelligent and able one who always seemed a bit too knowledgeable and quick to react? A Japanese-American, and secret American spy, who is struggling with a mixed identity that neither half is able to accept. A plot of stealing and using an occupier's own nuclear weapons against them.

 

Throw in moral choices about resistance, about identity, about how to handle living under an occupation and just what 'freedom' means to you and how you can square it with accountability for a past that you weren't complicit in. Throw in reflections on occupation, justified and not, corrosive to both the occupier and the occupied. Throw it all in, and push blend.

 

 

Enjoy.

[TheBunz]

^did not read. Guy has head to far up own ass.

[Dean_the_Young]

^did not read. Guy has head to far up own ass.

 

'Too.'

 

It's a measure of degree. But otherwise, I found your rebuttal clear and insightful and have changed my worldview as a response of your enlightened contribution to this thread.

[Vroom Vroom]

^did not read. Guy has head to far up own ass.

He/she (I'm assuming he, because of Dean in the username, but I could be mistaken) took the time to read the topic, post a really thoughtful and insightful response and this is what you have to say? Utterly despicable. You could have offered some constructive criticism towards them or just left it alone, but no, you had to say that he has his head up his ass. If you didn't even read the post than how can you even make that claim? You should feel ashamed of putting down someone's ideas without reading them, especially to someone who is a writer.

[Dr.Fumbles]

Why? He has a six pack.

 

Who doesn't have a six pack of beer?

[Vroom Vroom]

Well I have a twelve pack of soda. I must be ripped like a Titan.

What happens when someone comes along with a 24 pack? 

[Dr.Fumbles]

What happens when someone comes along with a 24 pack? 

 

Thinking too small. What about the 100 pack.

 

[slimgrin]

A romance sims game. 

[Jalil]

History is far too sensitive a subject to tackle unless you reeeaaaaallly know your stuff.

You can write science fiction without in-depth science. Just look at Mass Effect. 

 

Likewise, you can write historical fiction without in-depth history.

[Jalil]

Sure. But I'd say history is more open to critique than science. Look at the flack the AC games get for a few things here and there. And besides, it's harder to writer (I'd say.) Science requires no interpretation, history does. Not to mention all the ethical and social problems which come from said representation.

 

If BioWare were to make a game set in Nazi Germany, they'd have to be careful in how they represent Germans and how they handle the social situation within.

 

Science requires facts that don't budge an inch. Helium has two electrons, and that's final. Helium doesn't have three electrons in one book and six in another. Helium isn't called a jerk by Hydrogen but a legend by Oxygen.

So yeah, in-depth history is possible. But the research would be far more extensive and not to mention required. People can watch sci-fi without in-depth science. We've been brought up by Star Wars and other stuff to teach us that. But god forbid you attempt a realistic historical setting with accurate events or you're just asking for some backlash.

 

Then again, I could be overdoing it.

 

People seem fine with Braveheart.

 

Stirling was fought by a bridge...

 

No one seemed to care.

Mass Effect ignored conservation of energy, conservation of mass, gravity, etc. Food for thought:

 

Science was flagrantly disregarded repeatedly for self-consistency and 'rule of cool.'

 

 

Likewise, a few creative liberties in history won't be TOO big a deal, spare for a few sticklers here and there. Unless you portray major national/ethnic groups as monsters or something like that. 

[TheChris92]

The mention of Metal Gear made me think of Post-modernism which is what the second game was drenched in. I'd like to see some post-modernistic thematics in an RPG.