Games I Want to See

After years of not playing games and then only playing World of Warcraft, I am now a full member of the gaming community again. I’ve played many games both well-known and obscure in recent months, and there are many more coming down the pipe I’m excited about, but as a true North American, I am never satisfied. There are many other games I would love to play — if only they existed.

Portal 3:

A screenshot from Portal 2We all want it. Who knows if we’ll ever get it, but if it finally does get announced, it will trigger a tidal wave of nerdgasms the likes of which we have rarely seen.

But what could Portal 3 be about? Chell has finally escaped Aperture Labs. Supposedly, the co-op campaign in Portal 2 hints that there may be other potential test subjects locked up down there, but honestly, Chell is Portal — which is odd when you consider she has no personality whatsoever.

Personally, I’ve always wanted to see a Portal game set in the wider world. The idea of running around a city with a portal gun is just too much fun. Leaving Aperture would be a risk, and there would probably have to be a section of the game where Chell returns there (you’d need to involve GLaDOS somehow), but I want to feel the sun on my face as I sling portals.

Mass Effect: Lost Chapters:

The wreck of the Normandy in Mass Effecf 2I’m not as big a Mass Effect fan as some, but I’ll agree with the majority that the game did have some very interesting secondary characters. I think an anthology game devoted to telling their stories of their lives pre-Shepard would be very interesting — maybe more interesting than the main ME games.

Potential stories include:

Call of the Sea: A tortured Thane Krios sets out to hunt down his wife’s murderers, while struggling with his guilt over failing to protect her.

Crisis of Faith: A young Mordin Solus attempts to restore the Krogan genophage while struggling with Krogan who seek to stop him, allies who wish him to annihilate the Krogan altogether, and his own internal ethical crisis.

Good Cop: New to C-Sec, Garrus Vakarian investigates a series of brutal crimes, but the farther along he gets, the more the system fights him, and the more disillusioned he becomes.

Etc.

Diablo III: Wrath of Angels:

Imperius, Archangel of Valor, in Diablo 3We all know Diablo III is going to get at least one expansion pack sooner or later, and with all the loose ends left by the ending of the main game, there’s no shortage of plots to pursue.

I hope they get around to completing all of them, but something in particular I was disappointed we didn’t see more of in Diablo III was angels as villains. The material leading up to the game certainly seemed to be building up Imperius and Malthael, in particular, as potential bad guys.

Following the events of Diablo III, Imperius now has more cause to hate humanity than ever, so I could definitely see him going rogue and trying to exterminate mankind. I think it would be a very interesting break from tradition to have a Diablo game focused on battling the forces of Heaven instead of the forces of Hell.

It’s not enough for a whole expansion, but I’d also love to see some more character-driven quests about the followers and the player classes. I want to see Kormac confront the leaders of his order, and I want to see that mage-slayer finally catch up to Li-Ming.

Warcraft IV: Army of the Light:

Warcraft art featuring several races working together as they would in the Army of the LightI’ve previously discussed the Army of the Light and the fact that I don’t see how it could work in a game like WoW. But I do think it would work perfectly for another strategy game. There’s not the same level of game mechanics reliant on war between the factions.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the Burning Legion is really the chief villain of the Warcraft strategy games. Every one of the RTS Warcraft games involved the Legion somehow, whereas only one WoW expansion has given them a central role. I view WoW’s central villain as the Old Gods — a type of villain much more suited to an MMO’s smaller scale of story-telling than are the massive armies of the Legion.

The first few campaigns could deal with uniting the peoples of Azeroth to form the Army, while casting down those individuals who are an obstacle to peace (I’m looking at you, Sylvanas), and the latter half of the game would focus on taking the battle to the Legion and ending their threat once and for all.

It’s unlikely, but I can dream.

Warcraft HD:

A screenshot of the Orc campaign from Warcraft 2: Tides of DarknessI honestly can’t believe Blizzard hasn’t already done this. Step one: Remake the early Warcraft strategy games with the Starcraft II engine. Step two: Collect money.

It’s just that simple.

The only real question would be whether to precisely preserve the original storylines or alter them to include the latest retcons. I could see a strong argument for either, honestly.

Dungeon Siege III: Seed of Creation:

I don’t care what the haters say; Dungeon Siege III was a great game. At this point, it’s pretty clear they won’t be doing any expansion or continuation for it, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one.

There are any number of awesome things a DSIII expansion could focus on, but I would love a game where you can play as the game’s villain, Jeyne Kassynder. Jeyne was a really deep and fascinating character, and one of the game’s greatest strengths.

An expansion could depict Jeyne trying to atone for her past crimes by helping the Tenth Legion rebuild Ehb, while she also searches for the lost power of Creation to fulfill her mother’s mission and resurrect the Creator Gods.

Yes, this would mean ignoring most if not all of the player choices surrounding Jeyne’s fate at the end of the first game, but I don’t care. Jeyne’s just too awesome.

A man can dream…

Honestly, all of these games are pretty unlikely to ever be made, and even less likely to be made how I want them, but speculation is fun. I can dream.

What about you? What are some games you’d love to see made down the line?

The Secrift World of Guild Warscraft Aionline

Or Building the Perfect MMO:

If only...I’ve tried a lot of MMOs in the last year or so. Though I’ve generally wound up going back to World of Warcraft after every one, each has had at least one little area in which they blow WoW out of the water, and it’s always left me wishing I could smoosh all of them together to create the perfect game.

So just for fun, I’ve come up with a list of all the best features of the MMOs I’ve played, the traits that when combined would form what I believe to be the perfect MMO.

World of Warcraft: Class design and backstory

Say what you will about WoW, but I think their class design is second to none. The classes provide very different playstyles, and while some are occasionally similar, they’re generally very different from one another. A combat rogue plays nothing like a demonology warlock, and both are totally different from a retribution paladin.

The end result is that there’s something for everyone. In some cases, multiple somethings. Why do you think I have so many alts?

All my Warcraft charactersThe other great strength of Warcraft that other games can’t match is its years of backstory. More than half a dozen games and countless novels, comics, and short stories have created tens of thousands of years of fictional history that simply makes the universe come alive.

Guild Wars 2: Overall design and philosophy

It’s difficult to succinctly explain if you haven’t played GW2, but when I tried the beta, I just felt… free.

All the pressures and pointless crap you put up with in other MMOs are gone. If you want a linear story experience, it’s there for you. If you want to wander the world as an itinerant adventurer with no specific goal, you can. Play alone or with other people; it doesn’t matter. Just do whatever you want.

Battling a major boss during a dynamic event in the Guild Wars 2 betaYou don’t need to worry about gearing — upgrades are cheaply available from vendors. You don’t need to worry about other players stealing your loot or your kills.

Guild Wars 2 may be weak in peripheral areas like story or class design, but when it comes to the bones of the MMO experience, it’s a quantum leap forward.

Rift: Patch cycle

Rift isn’t a game that greatly impressed me. But the one thing you have to give its developers, Trion Worlds, credit for is their patch cycle.

Trion has managed to completely embarrass the entire MMO industry with the speed and regularity with which they’ve been able to roll out new content — all without a huge subscriber base or the massive cash behind something like WoW. In the long months between patches, bored Warcraft players look at Trion’s record and cry themselves to sleep.

Rift patch 1.5: Ashes of HistoryAnd these aren’t insignificant updates, either. We’re talking whole raids and game-changing updates, like merging the playable factions. Most games would reserve such changes for an expansion pack — if they found the balls to do them at all.

Rift is the evolving game all MMOs try but largely fail to be.

Aion/Star Trek: Online: Customization

I’ll be the first to admit that Aion is a game with a lot of problems, but I still have a soft spot for it, and the character customization is a large part of that.

Aion’s customization options are nearly limitless — some even say it went too far, allowing people to play as bizarre freaks. But I don’t really think there’s such a thing as too much customization. It’s just too cool to be able to make a character look exactly how you want, down to the finest details. I was even able to perfectly recreate characters from my novels with Aion’s amazing character creator.

A character from my writing recreated via Aion's amazing character customizationStar Trek: Online is another game with great customization, if not great gameplay. It doesn’t have quite so many options as Aion, but it’s close, and it does have perhaps the best customization option I’ve ever seen: the ability to choose your character’s animations and body language.

I’ll never stop wishing other games had that option. Never.

The Secret World: Story, ambiance, and quest design

I read a comment on Massively the other day that struck a cord with me. Paraphrasing: “It’s funny how SW:TOR spent all that money on all that voice-acting and story, and then The Secret World sneaks in with better voice overs, better writing, and better cinematic direction.”

That about sums it up.

The Dragon mission "Into Darkness" in The Secret WorldI would go so far as to say TSW probably has the best quest design of any MMO to date — Guild Wars 2 doesn’t count because it doesn’t really have quests. The quests are challenging and diverse, and they actually help teach you how to play the game, introducing you to the kind of mechanics found in dungeons and raids.

More importantly — to me, anyway — the quests have good stories that are well-told. Funcom, the developer, hit the perfect balance that needs to exist in video game story. There’s plenty of story for those who like it, but it’s not obtrusive.

Each major quest has a good voice-acted cinematic to explain its basic plot, but then it’s pretty much non-stop action to the end. If you want more story, you can engage the NPCs in conversation, but that’s entirely optional.

Out at night on Solomon Island in The Secret WorldThis is both more streamlined from a gameplay perspective and more engaging from a plot perspective than either the “busywork occasionally interrupted by a story” approach of WoW and its clones or Star Wars’ technique of ramming story down your throat at every turn whether you like it or not.

Blend until smooth:

The end result is a game with diverse, compelling classes; non-obligational, BS-free design; unmatched customization of every aspect of your character; rapid content updates; and a compelling, well-told story based on massive history and backstory.

Sigh…

We can dream.