Sometimes, when a game is badly broken and the collision detection is not working right, you might fall through the floor or a wall and then for a short time, you'll see the game level as some sort of strange labyrinth or cube in empty space, before the game usually restarts somewhere in the level. Wouldn't it be interesting to turn this into a feature?
Let's say you fall through the floor somewhere and think "the game is broken" but instead, you are being picked up by a ship with some Morpheus type of figure on board. From then on, you control the ship, drifting through the empty space that is inhabited by some evil maintenance creatures, and you can see all the different levels of the game as they hang there in the void. You insert yourself into these levels consciously to fight the enemy AI, and so on. I would love to see that.
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Meta Game
This gimmick of falling through walls and reentering "reality" might be good for a nice initial surprise and an interesting story line, but its strategical and tactical impact is limited.
Breaking into presumably short and intense "runs" between an insertion and an extraction the traditional continuity of traveling through a virtual environment allows the player to plan what challenges to face with unusual freedom and to select an advantageous starting location for each, but the small scale, local movement and fighting/shooting/jumping/climbing etc. action remain unchanged.
3 hours ago, LorenzoGatti said:an interesting story line
Sounds like something that a lot of games are missing.
3 hours ago, LorenzoGatti said:but its strategical and tactical impact is limited.
3 hours ago, LorenzoGatti said:the small scale, local movement and fighting/shooting/jumping/climbing etc. action remain unchanged.
I wish those were arguments brought up when certain CEOs decide whether to produce the next AAA title. Yes my idea is a twist on an existing genre, with a new layer of possibilities or just a fresh approach to an otherwise dull tunnel level event trigger grind.
32 minutes ago, kingius said:to find the 'gap' in reality.
Sounds cool. The level would then dissolve or become uninhabitable for the enemy AI.
I believe any traditional mission template could be played out from a meta perspective. For instance, a Search&Rescue scenario. You enter a level where a virtual player is fighting the enemy AI. Just like you or I would when we play Deus Ex or CoD. You then have to find this player w/o getting killed and convince him that you're not part of the AI. Then you need to extract him to the 'gap'. A rule of this world might be that you cannot enter a level with just any type of weapon, but you would have to follow the rules and available items of the rendering engine. After extraction he becomes a member of you squad/team/party, just like in Mass Effect, let's say.
Once you have pissed off the enemy AI long enough, they become aware of your presence and start to hunt you down in the meta space between the levels.
And so on :=)
10 hours ago, ConsumerHans said:Sounds cool. The level would then dissolve or become uninhabitable for the enemy AI.
I believe any traditional mission template could be played out from a meta perspective. For instance, a Search&Rescue scenario. You enter a level where a virtual player is fighting the enemy AI. Just like you or I would when we play Deus Ex or CoD. You then have to find this player w/o getting killed and convince him that you're not part of the AI. Then you need to extract him to the 'gap'. A rule of this world might be that you cannot enter a level with just any type of weapon, but you would have to follow the rules and available items of the rendering engine. After extraction he becomes a member of you squad/team/party, just like in Mass Effect, let's say.
Once you have pissed off the enemy AI long enough, they become aware of your presence and start to hunt you down in the meta space between the levels.
And so on :=)
This is a pretty interesting idea. It reminds me of the movie "Last Action Hero" a bit. Perhaps the levels themselves could be nods to all sorts of fan favorite games? You would have a large variety of different games too, making all of the levels a little more unique. For example: You invade a level with a guy hiding in a cardboard box surrounded by guards and you have to sneak past the guards and exfiltrate with the guy. He then becomes available in every mission afterwards. Then the next mission puts you on a zeppelin and you have to fight off the fighter planes. Basically the game would combine all sorts of game genres.
7 hours ago, Novadude987 said:You would have a large variety of different games too, making all of the levels a little more unique.
The pros to this would be that you could make all kinds of statements about existing games. For instance, there could be a level that looks exactly like a tube. There could be places where the AI is just standing around, waiting to be triggered by the virtual player. You could sabotage them or get past them without triggering the event.
The cons are that conventionally, creating many unique levels would require more effort with textures, items, etc. So maybe there would need to be a reduction in details as compared to, let's say, Battlefront 2. Players would have to be okay with this reduction for the sake of a new gaming approach.
