The union of games

This started yesterday in the oddest of ways. I have had a few thoughts in this direction, but I do not remember this being so outspoken or clear. It started watching YouTube. Not sure what I was watching but something got stuck in my mind. Then my mind was thinking about the Assassins Creed series and how they always have a bird do the ‘hard’ work. That got me thinking. You see the Paris and London areas are nice, but what if it is modern days (Watchdogs: Legion) and a modern version of Paris (one or the other), now consider not an assassin but a thief and the thief does not have one animal but three. So like the Beastmaster (1982) with Marc Singer before he started hunting aliens in V, a stage where he gets support from three animals. One on land, one in the air and one in the water and it does not stop there. With the chosen animal, he also gets bonuses and that is where we almost intentionally stuff the player. They get one choice each and it has to last them the entire game, so you can select the animal and get the bonuses, but you forfeit others. For example, a cat has night-vision and gives him a large boost of agility, a dog has amazing smell and he becomes stronger, and there is the third animal a horse which makes him fast, really fast and strong, but he misses out on the other two. The same for water. With a fish he can swim underwater without end, the frog makes him agile in water and he gets infrared vision and a third animal (undetermined). The same for flight. It would be even nicer if there were 5 animals per side, more options and more replayability over time and that is what streaming needs, replayability.  The city has over half a dozen storylines, and in this each storyline has multiple sides, so that the player gets to make choices and live with consequences. But there is more (there always is), it is not merely the skills he picks up, but when he takes the view of the animal, also the way that animal sees the world giving the player a lot more to deal with. We have seen similar parts in games like Fur Fighter (Dreamcast), Fly (CBM Amiga), and a few more, but never to this degree and to such a blending of different sides. It could be awesome, but consider that on a game like Watchdogs: Legion, but the map is now 400% larger. So in Legion the map was about 3.5 kilometres each side, now we go to 7 or 10 kilometres each side. Now it becomes a whole new challenge. In that game we could run from place to place, now it becomes a whole new challenge. And it is a much harder challenge as you need to find your entrance in nearly every building (or optionally could) the cat has its ways, as does the dog, but the other animals cannot be dismissed. They all have a power bonus and that matters in the game. So it will be up to the creator to also include some level of added bonus. The cat and the hawk combined allow for one punch KO’s, the stork gives him the ability to carry much heavier loads (they used to deliver baby’s in the old days) and so on. No one has ever made a game like this and with streaming new possibilities open up, even the option to have well over twice the amount of ‘open’ houses in the beginning and add to that from there. So if you replay the game a year later you might never enter the same building again (on a mission).  

So whilst Ubisoft brings you a new iteration of something you have played for over a decade, I created the foundation of new IP in less than 24 hours. So any indie developer who reads this, have at it and good luck!