Been playing Conquest Earth and have thought about how a cool-ish idea for a game has been ruined by allowing too much to be known early on. Basically, the Galielio (sp?) space probe sent to Jupiter has been seen as an act of war by aliens there and they come to Earth to wipe us out and convert our atmosphere to Sulphur Dioxide in order to colonise it. Now, this is all spelt out in big letters on the back of the CD case before you even enter the game, so there are no surprises. Imagine if it was like this, theres a raging civil war on earth (yeah I know, real original ) and subtley, strange things begin to happen, like entire regiments dissapearing and electronics being hacked into. Now each side blames the other until slowly (ever so slowly) they realise there are aliens studying and preparing to attack Earth. Then you go into the background of why they might be attacking Earth. Better? What does everyone think? Has anyone seen any other games where the effort to get the story out of the way quickly has killed the story line?

Your plot description reminds me of that movie, the Arrival. In it, we discover that the Greenhouse effect is the result of an alien plot to terraform our planet. Oops...gave it away.

Well, it would have been pretty cool to play Deus Ex really expecting to be working for the ''good guys'' from the get go, but it was pretty clear right off the bat that something was amiss. Still, we''ve come to expect so little from game plots that developers get away with pretty much anything. I''m just happy if a game is not filled with typos or bad dialogue.

Even in Deus Ex, which is by far one of the best-written games out there, there were some problems. Not too many typos, and the dialogue was mostly well done (if a bit wordy at times...if the ''man on the street'' was as politically savvy in real life as they were in that game, the world would be a very different place), but I was shocked when some of the voice over dialogue referred to the ''Aquinas Protocol'' as the AKInas Protocol (I''m spelling it phonetically). Haven''t these people ever heard of St.Thomas Aquinas? Anyways, now I sense I''m being overly picky...sorry.

R.

Actually, if your game when paired up with other games of the genre can only be described as plain (engine and graphics only), then story and artistic design is all you really have to work on. And in both elements, you have to keep a sense of mystery so that when something happens, its a surprise to the player, and shock value is usualy good. Its probably a bit hard to accept that John Carmack will always outdo everyone in graphics, so its up to you to take to what Carmack can''t do if you want your own niche''.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

I''ve seen here and in conversations with writer friends, where they are thinking "I''ll do something cool, and then it will be all a dream! that will suprise the player/reader"
I know everyone is just trying to find that LittleExtraSomething, but the player/reader shouldn''t feel cheated by the sudden reversal.

Deus Ex could have accomplished something like heavy_bolter suggested if instead of suddenly deserting over to enemy at about the 1/4 mark of the game, everything was normal. Good wholesome UNATCO. Then the player and the other agents start hearing odd things from the man-on-the-street about some of the missions that YOU were not involved in. Instead of fighting UNATCO, it would be more of a Fighting Corruption from the Inside. Instead of just deserting, you have to fight betrayal within the ranks, learn who to trust, work out the depth of the conspircy, not by going to far points of the globe, but by working with the different agents and managers around you.

Exactly Soakins...this is what I was trying to get at. That would have kicked ass!!

well, as far as examples where games focus too much on technology and too little on storyline are the doom and quake games. For that matter, almost everything from id software is VERY thin on story, but they sell like crazy despite that. Oh, there''s random demons wandering around a world ripped off from the Alien movies... dum de dum.. well, guess I should go through hell to kill them all. Gimme a break, that''s just pathetic. These days people will toss out a genuinely good game just because the graphics aren''t above and beyond anything already out there. Personally, I''d rather have a good, involved game that looked like it was made 3 years ago than some of these all flash and no substance peices of crap that make it so well in the industry for reasons unknown. The days of the Lucas Arts adventure games are gone. Everything has to be 3D and realistic or else it won''t even sell. It makes me sick that greatly written games are ignored just because they don''t look that interesting. Never judge a game by its graphics engine. I''ve wasted more money on cool looking games that I absolutely hate now than I can ever remember. I know this is a little off topic to the origional post, but it still kinda fits with the overall theme of the followups.

You said it.

To someone who grew up playing on the old 8 bit machines ( C64 and Spectrum) graphics are not everything.

IMHO an immersive story line is much more critical than the best graphics. However, if you can combine the two (as with Deus Ex) you get a very powerful combination.

In a few years photorealistic games will be the norm (probably). When this occurs people will be forced to develop the story again to differentiate their games from the competition.

Here''s hoping anyway

Keef

I remember reading an interview with Harvey Smith and Warren Spector, where they said their greatest disappointment with DX was that the graphics weren''t better. They used an old version of the Unreal engine and it just couldn''t compete with the crop of Quake III-based shooters coming out at the time. Still, I agree with those of you who feel graphics don''t need to be the focus of a game. We all know id''s games have always been technology demos for their latest engine. They haven''t changed their game design philosophy since Wolf3D.

I look at Half-Life and the graphics, while not as good as Jedi Knight 2 or RTCW, are not *so* bad that they detract from my enjoyment of the game. But, the ranks of enthusiast gamers encourage this kind of graphical and technology focus in game development, because they spend lots of $$$ on having the latest greatest rigs with the best graphics cards, and they want to see games that push these limits. I mean, I can sympathize with that. I don''t want to buy a Porsche and be relegated to driving through school zones for the rest of my life. But, at some point this attitude will have to change, and I think it is...gradually.

Quake''s success is a bit like the WWF''s success. Both will guarentee you the best hardcore matches, the best looking characters, the biggest realistic explosions, real looking blood. But like every successful movie that isn''t exactly like the WWF, game developers will just have to except that there is no beating Carmack on this front, but there are other niches and groups that can be considered an audience.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.