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Post by darthdodo on Dec 28, 2008 18:24:52 GMT -8
I think it's about time we had an open-world (sandbox) rpg about Star Wars. I know, I know, we have Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, but they don't exactly count. What I'm talking about is a game that let's you start on any planet of your choice (from the 20 or so planets available) playing with your own customized character. You work, steal, beg, or whatever to get enough money to then buy a ship and then leave the planet. Have a short loading time, then you're in space, where you can select a planet from a screen you'd like to go to, then jump to hyperspace and sit back and relax as you go there. Game time equals real life time exactly, 1 minute = 1 minute, 1 hour = 1 hour, etc (although you can speed up time anywhere to doubling it to making it so fast that one day can be past in a minute (so as to not make hyperspace jumping so boring, when moving great distances). Then move towards the planet, after getting out of hyperspace, after a short loading time you enter the space around the planet, where space battles, blockades and invasions usually start. Keep moving towards the atmosphere until, after a short loading time, you are offered a choice of 1, 2, 3 or 4 massive open-world maps of that one planet (depending on the planet's importance and/or popularity). In that open world map you can travel by foot, speeder or anything, doing anything from getting bounty hunter jobs, running from bounty hunters, enlisting in the army (depending on what era the game takes place in), buying an apartment, fighting guards, making trouble, working legally, stealing, killing, keeping the peace as a Jedi, smuggling, etc. I think this game should allow getting married, having kids, etc, so that if your character dies out you can always pick to play as your son or daughter. Each AI civilian has a level of artificial intelligence so they will hold conversations with you (through text), you can answer back through text and depending on what you say they'll get happy, mad, sad, etc. Make friends, enemies, and add them to your acquaintance list. From this acquaintance list you can choose to play as them or not. Embark on missions and quests. When leaving a planet you may accidentally run into an already going battle between Empire and Rebels, or Republic and Separatists (depending on era). You can join one of these armies, moving from planet to planet fighting, or you can smuggle for them, be a bounty hunter for them or whatever. Have a similar system to that of KotOR where every action you do and everything you say has an affect on your personality, which has an affect on your light-side/dark-side meter. The farther down the dark side you go, then more you become like the Sith. Join the Sith or the Jedi.
Each general army movement is kept up on as the game progresses, so there is the possibility of meeting up with a battle accidentally.
After playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, I realize that a game such as this is not so much impossible. How about it, sound like a good idea.
And no multiplayer online game! Think of all of us who cannot upload games on the computers with internet and are forced to upload games only on your own computer which has no internet... and monthly fees are so annoying. Make a game with a one-time fee (be that $100 to compensate for the hugeness of the game, I don't care, just no online game!)
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Post by Jango Reiss on Dec 28, 2008 23:25:23 GMT -8
Except for monthly fees, that kinda sounds like Star Wars Galaxies. They're also developing a KOTOR MMORPG, but I know what you mean when you're talking making it an offline game. The only problem is that it's much easier for the developer to make a game as big as you're talking about as an MMO game, because it lets them easily add in new features and make it bigger without the hassle of DLC.
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Post by Nathan Jey'Daan on Dec 29, 2008 0:06:29 GMT -8
I would be really surprised if that happened. I think MMORPG is the best option right now, mostly due to the fact that it's...well, MM. It'd be perhaps more money and work than it's worth to make a pure single-player sandbox RPG on the level you're talking about. O_< And what the hell? Oblivion? Doesn't that go against your beliefs or something?  |
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Post by darthdodo on Dec 29, 2008 19:04:18 GMT -8
How would it? It's a good vs. evil game. |
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Post by Jango Reiss on Dec 29, 2008 21:04:31 GMT -8
I would be really surprised if that happened. I think MMORPG is the best option right now, mostly due to the fact that it's...well, MM. It'd be perhaps more money and work than it's worth to make a pure single-player sandbox RPG on the level you're talking about. O_< And what the hell? Oblivion? Doesn't that go against your beliefs or something? I agree. I think it's cheaper for them to make it an MMO due to the amount of money they'd have to spend to make it that big, and also they'd make more money if people had to spend monthly fees. Plus an MMO game would fit the Star Wars world better, since there would be a ton of people running around, it would make the universe feel a lot more real. |
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Post by darthdodo on Dec 30, 2008 20:34:55 GMT -8
I would be really surprised if that happened. I think MMORPG is the best option right now, mostly due to the fact that it's...well, MM. It'd be perhaps more money and work than it's worth to make a pure single-player sandbox RPG on the level you're talking about. O_< And what the hell? Oblivion? Doesn't that go against your beliefs or something? I agree. I think it's cheaper for them to make it an MMO due to the amount of money they'd have to spend to make it that big, and also they'd make more money if people had to spend monthly fees. Plus an MMO game would fit the Star Wars world better, since there would be a ton of people running around, it would make the universe feel a lot more real. Well I really want Galaxies, maybe someday when I get internet on my computer I'll get it. |
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Post by Jango Reiss on Dec 31, 2008 0:23:00 GMT -8
You don't have internet? I didn't know that that was possible in this day and age. Way to be a hillbilly. |
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Post by darthdodo on Dec 31, 2008 15:01:09 GMT -8
You don't have internet? I didn't know that that was possible in this day and age. Way to be a hillbilly. I have usage of the internet... daily. My dad, mom and brother all have internet and I use my dad's every day, he just won't let me load games on it because of the fact that it's his work computer. My non-internet computer is in my room, I devote it totally for games... The thing about mmorpg's is that even though there are monthy fees their like what? 5 bucks a month? $35 a year (yes, I can do math ). But yet, first of all someone has to be interesting in that movie (in this case Star Wars)... secondly, not all SW fans are into games, thirdly, not all SW game fans have internet. I'm speaking with people all the time who don't have internet or at least cannot load games on the computers they do have it with, or their computers are not fast enough... way to fix this... I'm gonna use Lord of the Rings for this example... Have a PC game that includes open worlds of Gondor, and parts of Mordor. Charge like 50 bucks for the PC version, 60 for Wii and PS3, then later come out with expansion packs, slowly increasing the map size, quests, people to play as, better graphics and AI. I'm thinking like 6 expansion packs, each one costing like 30 to 40 dollars a piece, for consoles this is an entirely new, bigger, better game. 60 bucks a year is more than 35 bucks a year. And expansion packs keep getting them more money. Truly make this the best game possible. For example, look at The Sims and all their expansion packs they keep selling. Money won't be an issue with a Star Wars or Lord of the Rings open world non-internet RPG. As for Star Wars, like Jango said, it'll be hard to have all those many people all with a good AI during gameplay on a non-internet game. But for Lord of the Ring's it'd be simpler, not as many people per square mile. In fact, a non-internet, open world LotR game was actually planned and was on it's way called "Lord of the Rings: The White Council", but sadly, due to bad management it was canceled. Maybe some day we'll get it back... hopefully. But one is very possible, just look at "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion"! There are other examples, I've just not played them yet. |
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Post by Jango Reiss on Jan 1, 2009 0:08:06 GMT -8
Actually, MMORPG's, such as World of Warcraft, generally cost $15 a month to play, so it's actually $180 to play it for a year.
So technically they'd still make more money off an MMORPG than a regular game, but I'd still like to play a regular game like how you suggested. I have Xbox Live for my Xbox 360, so if they could bring a game like that to the 360, I'd be all for it, but if they make an MMO for the computer, since I don't have a gaming PC (TFE does, so I can use his if I need to), I wouldn't bother getting an MMO for the PC.
That's the only downfall of console gaming is that there aren't any good MMO's to play on it. I don't know if you've played it yet, but Bethesda, who made Oblivion, also released Fallout 3 which is another huge open game (Only with guns and set in a post-apocalyptic world), but it is more amazing than Oblivion in my opinion.
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Post by TFE on Jan 1, 2009 0:37:38 GMT -8
(TFE does, so I can use his if I need to No way, mate. Also, I agree that this does sound like Galaxies (or what I've played of it). In addition, the likelihood of all of this (your ideas, that is) fitting onto one disk is very small. I mean, technically there are possibilities, such as generating all the content from instructions, as has been done at least once that I've heard of (some person, not a big developer. Downside being loadtimes were awful since the game had to actually create then generate the content on the fly). Of course, there's also the other possibility of doing what was previously mentioned, but saving the data somewhere onto a hard drive and just pulling it from there, later. Most of this does assume you're talking about worlds comparible in size to about 1/4-1/2 the size of Oblivions. If you're talking smaller, a la 1/32 a pop (ridiculously huge, still), it might be doable, but to make it interesting, they may have to skimp on some texturing in places (Oblivion reused a lot), that is, get creative reusing some, and probably lower-res a few of them. It'd probably help if they just axed most voice acting from the game to start with, as that can take up a lot of space. Maybe get (create) a nice voice synthesizer, which is hard to pull off well, although Portal: Prelude (PC mod for Portal) did it fairly well, but it was still obvious that they used computer generated voices for it, and they may have not been doing that on the fly. So, in the end, I don't know what I just said, and I'm not sure I care to go back and read it, so let me know whether or not you get the impression that this is or is not possible from what I wrote. Whether or not it's possible (yet, that is, the odds are good it will be soon [5, 10, years, maybe, at worst?]), I'd love to see it. They could probably pull off a 2D version of this without too much trouble, but it's just not the same as full 3D. Star Wars: Galaxies seems too need roughly 5GB (big open worlds, lower-res textures as far as I recall, no voice acting), to install on a computer, while Mass Effect seems to need 12GB (smaller worlds, high-res textures, plenty of voice acting). So, I mean, this whole this is actually doable right now, it'd probably just need a whole lot of disk space to be able to be feasible for the PC. As for consoles, well, probably not yet. Furthermo |
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Post by darthdodo on Jan 1, 2009 15:36:18 GMT -8
I'd have to agree with you with consoles I guess, but with PC it's still entirely possible. Problem is you've just debunked my entire argument. All I know is we have games such as Oblivion which are just like what I'd like for Lord of the Rings and possibly Star Wars. Oblivion utilized perfectly what is needed and it did it without crazy loading times and still maintained good graphics. How can Elder Scrolls come out with a game such as this but Star Wars and Lord of the Rings dare not... What we're seeing is mediocre games that are being created as fast as possible, forfeiting quality just so the consoles can be included, and more and more PC games are becoming extinct, why? Because they know they can make more money with consoles because they replace them every 5 years or so. For LotR what they could do is have maybe 2 open world maps, each the size of Oblivion. One including the more important parts of Gondor (Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, Cair Andros, Ithilien) and all in between, the other including Mount Doom, Minas Morgul, Black Gate and all in between. These two sandbox maps connect to each other and when you arrive at the border of them you can go no further and it asks you if you want to enter the next sandbox map. A load time occurs, and for this it doesn't so much matter how long the time is (within reason) because borders such as these will rarely be meet, as the player will rarely travel that far. For PC it starts out with like 4 CDs or so, then later have an expansion pack that includes Rohan (including Helm's Deep, Gap of Rohan, the capital (Esgorath? or something of that nature, whatever it's called) and Isengard and all in between). Also improve graphics, AI, then later come out with another expansion including parts of Rhovanion (Fangorn, Lorien, Dol Guldor, parts of Mirkwood, maybe Erebor). In the end we have 5 or 6 open world maps each the size of Oblivion's which make up most of Middle-earth (the more important parts (including The Shire, btw). I do want to revise my comment earlier about "Lord of the Rings: The White Council" (the huge, open world PC RPG), it seems I misread the article, it hasn't been canceled, just indefinitely delayed because of bad management among other issues. Another game has been announced "Lord of the Rings: Dragon Age", it is possible that this is The White Council just with a name change. Hopefully the problem has been fixed and this PC RPG sandbox game will be finished soon (I hear it's open for April release of this year!) Now all we need is a single-player sandbox RPG about Star Wars and then gaming life will be complete. |
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Post by darthdodo on Jan 2, 2009 20:27:21 GMT -8
Wait, wrong again... "Dragon Age" is a completely different game... it's still called "The White Council" and it's been indefinitely delayed, though some sources say we may get it by April of this year. |
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