The Content

When it comes to any game, the content really says a lot about it. It's the content that determines a lot of the style of the game - not how cool it is, but how it feels, its mood. There are no set rules to follow, and really the only limitation to content is the limit of imagination and the ability to convey it. How many games can you think of that are cool, that are weird, that are scary? I was playing Metal Slug Anthology last night and loving (almost) every minute (at 2:30 AM the 18,523rd wave of helicopters or mummies is like Chinese water torture). Those games combined crazy wicked relentless violence with very amusing and humorous comedy to retain an action-packed cartoony style. Each aspect was planned very carefully, very intentionally. In every game design, content planning has to be a big chunk of the puzzle, after all it's what you and your players will be immersed in every time you step into that world...

For this game there are a bevy of things I would like to see... little nuances that would set it apart from other content while giving it a little niche of mood and feel of its own. Here's a list of different aspects that should lend to that goal...

• Somewhat ambiguous factional lines. It's too easy in some games (where enemies are denoted by giant red words over their head) to know who you need to be on the look out for or not. With racial factions, class factions, social factions, and possibly religious or financial factions, there would be no telling how far you can trust. Friends are made when you're backed into a corner with no way out, and enemies are made when people stop hiding in the gray areas. That's the kind of drama games need, not politics.
• Aggressive aggro. In most games aggressive enemies will run at you with sword/guns a-blazing as soon as you approach within a certain range, or walk through a certain doorway, but what's the fun in that? There aren't enough games out there where the hunter (player) becomes the hunted. Sure, PvP games lend to that a lot, but I want giant daunting scary predators that can and will sneak up on you and prey upon you. I want areas of notoriety where few survive long enough to know what's beyond the first horizon because the super diabolical monster is out on a player-hunt today.
• Rare phenomena. I'm big on random. I'm bigger on extremely random. I want experiences of various rareness to permeate this game. Natural disasters are a good example. So what would you do if you were running through the same old ho-hum field you've been through a hundred or a thousand times but for some reason today a massive black tornado has sprouted up, and if you don't get away fast enough you will be sucked up and thrown to your death? Run? But what if, by chance, this rare coincidence happened to unearth some long hidden treasure from within a smashed tree? Only one person is going to be lucky enough to find out, and that's going to make that person's day.
• Changing landscape... everywhere. For some reason the chapter Scouring of the Shire is probably my favorite in the LotR series... just because of the change, the unfamiliarity, and the over coming of the adversities.
  
• Scope and how it's dealt with. Sure, games these days are making you feel dwarfed more often than not. But that's a good thing. However, I dislike feeling like I'm going to win because I've stabbed my giant foe 9 thousand times in his big toe or his heel.

I guess I'll leave it at that cause it's getting long again. I could go on, but well, no. :P I suppose at this point I have enough ground work to have conveyed the gist enough and I can start posting on progress. Like I said it may be slow at times, but WoW wasn't built in a day...