Free choice vs. Fate

While having a game let you take part in an epic adventure is great. Writting your own adventure is often so much better.

While I'm not saying go 100% open sandbox. Multiple story paths, and endings is something that helps the entertainment and replayability of a game.

a New bench mark for the NPC?

That kinda interacting would be cool

Alien Swarm gameplay mechanic

Have you played the new very-very-similar-to-but-not-quite-Shadowgrounds game, Alien Swarm yet? It's been released freely on Steam and I've been hacking away at it.

I can tell you that the mechanics are pretty nifty for a fairly simple "run and gun" game. If your action man storyline is even a bit like a straight run through objectives, I suggest you pick the game up. It's free, it's fun and it just might give some ideas for your design-team. The interiors (especially the lighting) have been done very well and the game engine has been released in its entirety as well.

Here's to hoping you'll beat Alien Swarm in the action and show everyone else how storybased gaming can work in a similar environment.

Terrible/ Good examples

If you after ww2 games that are already out on the market tthen take a lok at "The Sabateur" because that has free-playing events as well as a main campaign. The ability to climb anything like on assassins creed is something that alot of gamers would like to stop feeling restricted during the levels, this will also open the levels and give multiple ways to trvael to desitinations and complete missions and so forth.

Another game which relates is mass affect which although it isnt ww2 like in this game it involves character customisation and being able to lead other CPU's if they applies.

If going down the RPG route then vehicles are also a great way to open up gameplay and stop the gameplay becoming repetative of walking and shooting to an objective.

Aiming guns.

Mouse = Good

Zapper = Awesome

everything else awful.

How are you planning to overcome the console aiming problem? Auto aim like in GTA?

A custom Ironsky zapper that looks like a MAUSER would be nice.

Everybody is buying the guitar hero guitars too. :)

Bad: Endless Dying & No Alternate Path

Allow me to start this shot by ensuring you I do understand and value the challenge offered in a game by the possibility of dying and having to repeat steps/rethink one's actions in order to survive and proceed. :)

Now, said that... if there is a thing I find extremely demotivating in a game, that is being stuck at some point when I keep dying over and over again... especially if this happens because I need to very quickly shoot a big number of baddies. This because my reaction speed sucks. Big times. Accuracy is not a problem, but if speed is a critical factor, I truly do not have any hope of success. I am not kidding - I may give up the game or in some cases I have had to ask help to friends to get through the one screen. Which is extremely humiliating to say the least. :/

So I'd like to ask the production to try and keep in mind "alternate paths" to simply shooting one's way through.... possibly for the most difficult fighting scenes in the "commando" path, too. As in... even if shooting would be the most practical way to go forward for the skilled people amongst us, perhaps there should be ways to "avoid" such trouble (or make things easier) by following a longer path that allows the player to make their own life easier e.g. through the use of a flamethrower or hand grenade or other trick?

The way I see it, one won't risk feel they're hopeless at the game if after dying over and again in the same room they could freely choose whether they want to try more times until they get it right or rather go seek for other options.

Of course, the "shooting scenario" is just a sample. In general, my feeling is that if there's a chance to die in a specific scene, then there should be multiple options to get past it... just in case the player may have personal limits that make it impossible for them to follow that one specific given path.

Not a requirement, of course. Merely a wish... :)

good/terrible examples

Characters.
good one:
Monkey Island 1. guybrush. Got his name from the filename. "guy.brush"
Character: unknown. Parents: unknown. Who cares? He is charming. He wants to be a pirate! So what?

bad one:
Beneath a steel sky. Character: Whatever. He is boring. Boring enough to make his "Robo-Dog" so much more exciting.

Inventory:

bad one:

Still Life 2
Due to limited inventory-space, you have to store certain things into cupboards, which are allocated in that huge psyho-killer-house. Could be an interesting mindgame.
Problem: If you try to solve a puzzle and find out you stored /picked up something wrong or too early or too late, you have to run all the way back through this huge maniac mansion house, back to that very cupboard. That harms the whole "frightening atmosphere. BTW. The Character moved very bad. THAT was frightening to look at!

General terribles:
All the games out there containing interesting, awesomely perfect parts which are not fitting together to make the game awesome as "a whole".

I do not care so much, if some parts are a bit loosen or not plausible, if it doesen't harm the main picture.

Example:
Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. Inconvenient Inventory system, weapons get damaged just because you used them! Not plausible. But it didn't harm the athmosphere. You had to hurry and find better weapons or find your way to the next mechanic. Before the zombies eat you. Or the dogs.

What about achievements?

I find that Achievements in game are really fun. It's also pretty cool to unlock extra content with them. For Example,batman arkham asylum's achievements and hidden things are great. With these things, you can make a ending's percentage . It's very gratifying to see Iron sky: Campaign: 100% .
BTW, sorry for my poor English, I'm French ^^

The bullet -time effect of MAX PAYNE

Is awesome. If there is a shootout in IS:OH add that. please.

Quicktime and/or mood-choices

I've recently been playing Memento Mori and I very vividly remember Fahrenheit. I'm also drooling for Heavy Rain, but that'll have to wait for a while =).

These great action/adventure-games have a few things in common. They all implement a non-linear choice-system, where you don't see exactly what all your choices are. This is a good and a bad thing in many ways.

Quicktime-events are a personal favorite of mine, because they very rarely contain something negative. Fahrenheit used these, but failed in a way, since if you didn't react quick enough, you died. Almost always. That was more than a bit annoying, so what I'd like to see is quicktime-events that change the course of your actions, but even if you fail them, the story goes on. Just with a different setting or a bit less info gained or whatever. Of course it can be used as a "fighting mechanic", but then people should be given plenty of time to react, so they don't end up going over the same stuff multiple times.

In Memento Mori, the chat-system works with 3 simple alternatives. "Positive, negative, questioning". This system is pretty good, altough the options are usually too vague. The tips about what will happen when you push this button should be clearer, with more tooltips and options. 3 choices is good, any more could be confusing. The game also uses timing, as in if you don't choose one yourself and the timer runs out, the game automatically chooses the "bad" one of the three. So it's always better to make a guess than let the timer run out. There are also a few problems with this, but as an idea it's quite feasible.

In Heavy Rain, the dialogue is based on "quicktimeish" choices, where you sort of see what each of your choices will do. the choices are made with either the buttons or the directional arrows of the controller. This system on paper seems the best of the three, but since I've yet to try it, I can't exactly tell yet.

Now, as a sidenote, Memento Mori uses a very, very ingenious saving system. It makes individual automatic saves at the change of every chapter, so you can pick up the game from the "main path choices" whenever you wish. But, there's a big but in this, if you make individual saves and then after failing a dialogue choice (and thus f. ex. killing one person) try to reload the previous save, the game will remember the first time decision you made. So you can't "replay" the parts already played in that save. This mechanic adds a whole lot of replay value, since you can't go through all the options and pick and choose the one you like the most. I myself was at first quite annoyed with it, but later on realized this made the game a lot more intriguing. All your choices actually mattered. You had to think and choose, but pretty quickly.

If it's possible to have this similar sort of memory, it would be awesome.

Edit: Typos and stuff