"Insanity is doing the exact... same f*cking thing... over and over again, expecting... sh*t to change."
What is interesting to me about that quote, and that e3 reveal of Far Cry 3, was that I thought they were going doing some meta commentary on level design. I got unbelievably hyped, (mostly for the editor,) but still for the game in general. When you play a campaign of any videogame, you are literally doing the same things over and over again, same missions, same levels, but a different coat of paint. Sure, you might get a few new toys every mission, but from a layout perspective its an exact replica. By the third or fourth mission, you have experienced everything the game has to offer, and are pretty comfortable with the controls and options available. Boring.
So I have a suggestion... a new type of single player experience, something along the lines of, "Kill the Jackal." You have this big open island and there is this real guy physically moving around, and your goal is to kill him. If you take over a watchtower there are consequences, it sets things in motion. The smartest thing to do would be to lay low and try and get better equipment and ammo, take a few towns/towers to checkmate him into a spot where you have him locked. There would be so many cool and fresh things to bring into level design. There could be real world resources, alliances to be made... basically give the island and the game an economy to fight over.
The campaign could be speedrun'd in less than an hour or two, if you played every card right, or it might take 20 hours for your first time. There could still be set pieces, but not rely on them to continue the story. I understand the Vaas boss battle, where it locks you into some minigame to defeat, its colorful, its cool, but one of the joys of old school first person shooters were the boss battles, with an actual boss in the room -----> now make that room an entire island ... that's just epic.
Some problems that might arise and how to fix them.
A player digs himself into too deep a hole to realistically fight back out?
-Autosave every set amount of time and let the player rewind to whenever if need be.
Where is the villain?
-Allow NPCs to discuss his whereabouts or where they think he might be through dialogue options in safe zones. "I heard he resides mostly in the north by the Del Plata coast, but you might want to check with _____ over at Highlands."
Spruce up the gameplay?
-Add outside forces to deal with, maybe shipments of supplies come to the docks around the island, these give you and the villain their economy, battle over these areas would be important. Hell add 2 to 3 mini villains throughout the campaign.
DLC?
-A new villain, new everything. With that complex of an Island, DLC would be easy to implement and would change the equation drastically.
Game is too confusing / big?
-Player can access his smartphone at any time and can track major towns and force locations, have a tracker sight that once tags, appears on the smartphone map.
-Implement an instant access between cities/hubs like in FC2s trainstations.
If they were to do something like this, I think it could be a massive breath of fresh air, and they obviously have the skills and talents to do so. That's a "next gen" game. Just a thought. Because I certainly will not be playing another walkable cutscene where I have no control, and repeat the same tasks given, I quit Far Cry 3's campaign after I was told to grab some garden plants... just to continue... You offer this big open world, and yet trap people in for 2 hours doing fetch quests. The way mission structures are, no matter how open your world is, is still constricted, there are still rules. Just remove the rules. I spent 63 minutes thinking and writing about this, now take a whole team and plan out months of this idea and you could have the most exciting game of any year. Think about it, 20$ for a new villain DLC, people would eat that up. Yes that would be scary, and a risk, but I would play that.
Might want to have a look at Shadow of Mordor, coming out in a couple weeks.
Monolith are one of the few devs teams out there truly trying to offer non repetitive AI structure with their Nemesis system. Compile this with various gameplay style options and the option to send warning to lower ranking enemies before taking them on, and you also have a flexible upgrade system. "Epic" upgrade runes will be dropped from not just war chiefs but lower ranking enemies when you take on this type of challenge.
Add to that non linear, branching story and side missions, and it's the type of gameplay few games offer any more, certainly not Ubi games. This game is being designed to have an ever changing enemy hierarchy influenced by the player's choices and accomplishments.
A former Ubi dev actually accused them of using assets from AC games, even though it uses a completely different engine. These guys were recruited to help on AC 1&2. I trust they can make similar animations without having to steal code. LOL
Woah cool stuff, I loved their Condemned series, both Singleplayers and the Crime Scene for multiplayer were very innovative. I'll definitely check out some videos tomorrow. I'm just so bored with the tame level design in games overall. Bioshock Infinite was kinda the low point for me ):Originally Posted by Frag_Maniac Go to original post
Still, I think my idea has untapped potential especially with open world size games.