If you had $100 Million to make a game...

[Moros]

EB III!?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Genre of game: Fantasy
Type of game: Role Playing Game


Setting: A world located at the crossroads of several folds of existence, at the end of time, just before total annihilation.



The Premise: There are several folds intersecting this one planet, which happens to exist in a universe seemingly designed like clockwork. The heavens and the planets align with remarkable, perfect precision, and gateways to other realms all intersect on this one planet. The planet itself takes many forms, and is represented in all of these other realms.

These realities were all created by the Eternals, who set the universe in motion and gave it a perfectly balanced design. The Eternals created the Immortals, who are limited, yet godlike beings of extraordinary power. These Immortals ruled the celestial plane, and were given dominion over the other planes. The Immortals created the Mortals, who exist in various terrestrial planes. Below those folds lay the UnderRealm, where the Mortals go when they die, and below those folds lay the forgotten Dark Realms.

The story begins at the end of existence, where everything is set to be annihilated by an all-powerful force, greater than any Eternal being. The gateways between realms are shattered, and the entirety of existence is about to be consumed by nothingness. The Eternals wage war against this dark force, but they are consumed easily by the darkness. The Immortals fare no better, unable to even harm this all-consuming force, and the Mortals stand no chance whatsoever. All life, all existence, even time itself, is facing everlasting death.

The Eternals exist in a nonlinear temporal state, and exist within all time frames. The limitation of this, is that they cannot use temporal gateways to alter linear time, because they are nonlinear. The Eternals are swallowed up, and the Immortals hold off the coming wave of darkness for as long as they can, holding the gate even while all the rest of existence is destroyed.

Several Mortals are sent back through history to change the course of time's river, hoping to prevent this catastrophe.



The Challenge: Time as a river is an apt metaphor, because unlike certain theories about cause and effect, such as the butterfly effect, a small change to the timeline does almost nothing, and the current of time smooths out minor inconsistencies.

Like a river, the overpowering current resists changes. If you throw a pebble into a river, there is a small splash, but within a split-second, the river continues as if totally unaltered. The changes to the river are canceled out by the majority, and the smaller the change, the faster the change disappears, and the less it affects the river. Altering the mighty flow of history's river away from the falls of annihilation is a challenge that seems nearly impossible for simple mortals to complete. Even as they remove tyrants, change the course of wars, and save certain key people from death, history remains mostly unaltered, as certain events happen regardless of minor changes. When dictators are slain, their top generals continue the struggle. When certain key people are saved from death, to try to alter history, the "splashback" effect causes other people to emerge from below time's surface, canceling out the effects they otherwise might have had.

It is not enough to go back to the past to try to alter the entire future, either... time has an "eternal" quality to it, normally unnoticeable by Mortals, which allows for reciprocal changes to the Past when the Future is altered, not just alterations to the Future when the Past is changed. The reason for this is because all of existence was designed by the Eternals, and time is a masterpiece of precision clockwork. The gears of time can be thrown out of alignment in the past, but also, in the future.

In order to change the course of time, key events throughout all of history must be altered synchronously, causing the entire clock to reset and the entire course of time's river to be changed, allowing for the possibility that the final event which ends the flow of time can be changed as well.



Features:

• The story contains an interactive, reactive history, which changes slightly every time a major temporal alteration occurs.
• The setting of the Planet is represented by several different versions thereof, each inside a unique fold of existence unlike all the others.
• The game incorporates a system of elemental Magic I designed which has 30 elements.

Certain characters are more than they appear. Some of these characters are actually Avatars for the Eternals themselves, physical representations of the very beings responsible for creation. However, in their limited mortal forms, they do not remember who they are and have no greater magical power than anyone else. Finding these Eternals and awakening them, and uniting them, is a key element of the story.



I wrote this story about ten years ago and have been slightly modifying it ever since. But it will never happen because I do not have 100 million dollars or even a thousand. I also have not had time or the inspiration to write it as a series of novels (it would have to be a series... there's no way I could convey what I mean to convey in a single book), mostly because although I can see the grand scope of the overall story, I have a hard time imagining the subtle details, and I don't feel my storytelling abilities are capable of putting into words the ideas I have in mind.

It would be much easier with a group of professional story writers and, in a game setting, I feel that the story serves as an appropriate backdrop to the action, whereas as a novel, the story is the entire point, and if there are weaknesses in the story, they are more noticeable.

Anywho. I've had it sitting in my brain for a decade, it would be nice to see it come to life.

[Vladimir]

OK. Got bored while reading the premise. Care to summarize?

[Askthepizzaguy]

OK. Got bored while reading the premise. Care to summarize?

Game is boring and uninteresting. Move along.

[Beskar]

OK. Got bored while reading the premise. Care to summarize?

A Good Game.

[The Stranger]

i would make a ww1 rts in the style of Company of Heroes. But with a special option to switch to 1st person shooter in certain parts of the game. totally awesome!!!

and then i would make it into a series and have a similar game but in American Civil War setting!!!

then i would make a bunch of others which are all worse then the first two and i would totally enstrange the big community ive build up during my first 2 games. i would remove all modding possibilities and i would sell my company to the highest bidder!!!

[Hooahguy]

i would make a ww1 rts in the style of Company of Heroes. But with a special option to switch to 1st person shooter in certain parts of the game. totally awesome!!!

But wouldnt it just be putting guys in trenches and sending them on mass suicide charges towards enemy lines in the hopes that they will get to the other side.

There is a reason that there are few WW1 games...

[The Stranger]

But wouldnt it just be putting guys in trenches and sending them on mass suicide charges towards enemy lines in the hopes that they will get to the other side.

There is a reason that there are few WW1 games...

eastern front was much more mobile. and so were later parts of the war. its all about chosing the right battles ;) and even then, things like snipers, creeping barrages etc would provide tactical depth

[Subotan]

There is a reason that there are few WW1 games...

Also because it's not really that present in the American national consciousness. Certainly not to the extent it is over here.

[Jolt]

EB III!?

With 100 million dollars, I'd buy Creative Assembly from SEGA, hire certain historians as creative directors and make Europa Barbarorum the Game with a 3-5 year development cycle.

Thus an epic game would be born.

[Vladimir]

With 100 million dollars, I'd buy Creative Assembly from SEGA, hire certain historians as creative directors and make Europa Barbarorum the Game with a 3-5 year development cycle.

Thus an epic game would be born.

With 100 million dollars they'd probably laugh at you. I don't know how much the company is worth but they're making money for Sega.

For some reason I'm starting to miss Battletech. There have been similar games since then but they never seemed to catch on.

[Jolt]

With 100 million dollars they'd probably laugh at you. I don't know how much the company is worth but they're making money for Sega.

For some reason I'm starting to miss Battletech. There have been similar games since then but they never seemed to catch on.

Err. You seem to have no idea how much game companies are worth. They bought CA for 30 million dollars. Sega isn't exactly in a very strong position and refusing a 80-90 million dollar offer by one company would be seriously retarded (Triple the turnover plus the revenue and stock benefit from the games the company had made while during Sega's tutelage.

With 100 million dollars, I would make far better manegerial decisions then dish out most of my fortune into a medium-sized game developer.
A much better decision would be to buy Paradox Interactive for instance.

But the purpose of this thread is to create a single game.

[Vladimir]

Err. You seem to have no idea how much game companies are worth. They bought CA for 30 million dollars. Sega isn't exactly in a very strong position and refusing a 80-90 million dollar offer by one company would be seriously retarded (Triple the turnover plus the revenue and stock benefit from the games the company had made while during Sega's tutelage.

With 100 million dollars, I would make far better manegerial decisions then dish out most of my fortune into a medium-sized game developer.
A much better decision would be to buy Paradox Interactive for instance.

But the purpose of this thread is to create a single game.

So he'd end up with a maximum of 10 - 20 million to make his game.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I would create the matrix and just hook people up to it in exchange for all their valuables.

[Jolt]

So he'd end up with a maximum of 10 - 20 million to make his game.

Yes, which is still a lot. A great deal of money