I was thinking about Terminator 2 and how John Conner commands the Terminator not to kill anyone. So his reaction is to continue shooting people, but merely injure them rather than kill them. There's the part where he shoots the security guy in the leg and then says, "He'll live." That gave me an idea for a game: it would be an FPS where you have to shoot people to progress through the game, but you would not kill them. So basically you would need to shoot them in the arms, legs, or shoulders, and avoid hitting any major arteries. You could also do things like shoot nearby objects to make them collide with the enemies without killing them. If the enemy dies, then you have to go back to the last save point or something. So the gameplay would be similar to how you can use the tranquilizer gun in the MGS games. The difference would be that stealth wouldn’t be a concern, and you would be using real (virtual) bullets rather than tranquilizer rounds. There would be a lot of screaming. Another idea I had, although I’m not sure how well this would actually work, but perhaps you could also administer medical care to your enemies after shooting them to make sure that they don’t die later, and you would get extra health or items for doing so. I guess the point of the game is that it would be an interesting way of looking at videogame violence. The player would essentially be a pacifist, but there would still be a lot of blood. The game could be called “No License to Kill†or something like that. Thoughts?
It would be an interesting take on the modern FPS. Actually I think it'd work well as a Fallout 3 mod, since the game has a pretty good system for targeting specific body parts (except you'll obviously never want to aim for the head).
Cool idea, definitely to be aimed at a particular kind of gamer though. I'm never one for stealth tactics or taking it slow in FPS' (except CS) there's nothing worse than the obligatory stealth level where you fail if you're detected which is kind what this sounds a little like. That said, an entire game based on a the concept might be more palpable if you know what you're getting into from the get go.
How about a little back story …. (every game needs one - nothing original here) Earth has been at war with an invading force of humanoid aliens (cyborg-like). The aliens lost there planet and want to take over the earth to make use of its remaining natural resources and assimilate the most intelligent of humans; to be a part, of their hive. Over many years of constant fighting and the use of nuclear weapons - the earth has taken so much destruction that it now rotates off axis affecting the living conditions of some areas on earth making them uninhabitable. As for the aliens … its just like home (the one they destroyed by taking more from it than it could naturally give back). In these uninhabitable areas, the aliens have been gleaning resources from the earth. A coalition of scientist from all remaining nations have gathered together to find a solution and fix the earth’s axis problem. If this is not fixed, the human race will eventually become extinct. A solution is found by making use of captured alien ships which will be retrofitted for boring into the earths core. Mission will be to set explosives at exact points in the earths surface; which when imploded, will correct the axis at which the earth should be spinning - according the calculations made by the most intelligent people on earth. These scientist and engineers are working at a secret facility in retrofitting the ships. This facility also houses the main CPU for our complete data infrastructure which is also used in the war effort against the invading aliens. The alien hive leader has become aware of this secret facility and mankind’s plans to fix the earths axis. The hive leader takes an elite squad of cyborgs and attacks the facility. The hive leader kills all nonessential personnel. He/she keeps the scientist and engineers alive to assimilate them according to their hive culture. The hive leader now has possession of the ships which he/she will eventually use to move on to another planet. He/she will now have access to all our secrets and war efforts by having access to our main CPU (once they can break into it). While things look grim for mankind …. This is also an opportunity to turn the tide and win the war and save mankind from extermination. Game Play: Your mission will be two-fold; first, it will require you to infiltrate the secret facility and save all the scientists and engineers that have been assimilated into the hive. It is necessary that you save everyone because these men and women are needed to finish the retrofitting of the alien ships. They will also be needed to pilot/crew the ships and run the command center when the mission to bore into the earths crust is ready to go. Second … you have to destroy the hive leader who is at the CPU core trying to access our secrets. In destroying the hive leader you will terminate all the alien cyborgs as they are connected as one. The hive leader is their source of life/existence. Unfortunately the scientists and engineers that have been partially assimilated; are fighting along side the cyborgs, as you try to save them and progress to the CPU core. As a Commando/Special Agent - your A.I. combat suit will differentiate between alien and human cyborg. You will have a license to kill/destroy an alien, but you have to safely take down a human cyborg (the scientists/engineers) - No License to Kill. ___________________________ Instead of shooting and maiming limbs to disarm, because you need your scientists and engineers healthy to work on the ships and in the command center.... I was thinking of using a projectile that would shock the human cyborg rendering him/her unconscious, but would also disrupt and disconnect that human cyborg from the hive leader’s control. ___________________________ I was home sick today … so, I kind of had a little time to play around with ideas.. And a backstory. So … who’s going to code this?? LOL!
One of the things I liked a lot about the True Crime games was that you could take criminals out non-lethally. It added a lot more challenge to the game, rather than just running and gunning all of the time. It was pretty similar to this concept, actually, of shooting people in "neutral" places to incapacitate them, rather than killing them. As buggy as True Crime: New York City was, they implemented a fairly deep random crime system, where you'd have to neutralize petty criminals and arrest them to uncover the larger scheme (for example, a petty drug-pusher could eventually lead the player to a major drug lab). Needless to say, they wouldn't provide any "intel" when they were dead. I prefer the cop idea to the mindless killing in GTA, but it's too bad True Crime New York City basically guaranteed the death of a potentially great series (it had a great foundation, but was clearly far from finished).
Activision rushed Luxoflux to release TC: NYC before it was ready. Almost all reviews, save for Game Informer's, reflected a pretty low to mediocre score. Luxoflux did a pretty solid job with TC:SoLA, which made NYC that much more disappointing. I mean, the Xbox version had a bug which rendered one part of the game next to impossible to finish. But yeah, NYC did utilize those rather cool non-lethal takedowns. IIRC, the only fault there was that they didn't reward you for them as much as they should have. I especially liked the second part of the idea, where you would administer medical treatment in order to prolong the life of the enemy. That would add a lot of strategy.
Some interesting ideas. My idea for a story was a lot simpler. You're a secret agent/spy whose objective is to infiltrate a military base or something to recover some secret weapon. However, your license to kill has expired, and you forgot to renew it. But you still have your gun. So you have to complete the mission without killing anyone or else the spy agency will be upset. So you would use nonlethal force to incapacitate your enemies so you can complete your objectives. It would be sort of a dark comedy. Another idea I had was that the constant screaming would start to get annoying pretty fast, to the point where you might be tempted to kill people just to make them shut up. So to deal with this, the player character could put on headphones and listen to music to drown out the screaming. You would still be able to hear them a little bit, and you could hear gunfire, though it would be muffled somewhat. Just an idea.
IIRC in SWAT 4 (and maybe 3), you won't get 100% (and even fail, on the higher difficulties) for a mission if you kill even a single suspect. I finished most of 4 on the highest difficulty and enjoyed the hell out of it - excellent game, albeit probably way to slow for today's twitch shooter crowd. May be worth checking out.
Okay ... that's a cool idea - different. I like it. What style of video graphic art would you like for it to look like? Would it be realistic like COD or maybe something cartoonish? I've always liked cel-shaded video games ... they seem to have a more artistic look to them; like Okami, XIII, Viewtiful Joe. I think that type of video graphic presentation would look good with a dark comedy game like what your thinking of ... just my opinion. You given any thought to actually creating the game? There are a lot of free game development tools out there ... no need to know coding. Challenge comes from spending time getting to know the software tools. Making my own games is something I always wanted to do ... I think most of us that game have thought about it, at some time or another. I just don't have the time. Although while reading and responding to this post ... I'm getting that itch again.
I imagine it as realistic but in a surreal way, if that makes any sense. I would like to, or to make some type of game anyway. But I think I don't have the skills necessary to do that. I think to make any kind of decent game, you would need to do some programming, which is something I know very little about. However, I could do design work or write the script or something like that.
