Games with Intellectual Content

[kandrathe]

Rapture may well be the most interesting setting ever to be featured in a popular video game. The bottom of the ocean is almost the definition of 'generic environment with nothing in it'.

It also makes one of the most believable reasons for "why you can't go outside".

That's the direction I'm hoping they're going with. Then again I might just be a deep sea nut.

I kind of like the art deco meets captain Nemo meets Riven theme, then add the FPS -- come screaming from the darkness whacko zombies and the unfolding psycho drama of figuring out where, what, who, and why you are there. Bioshock also generated that edge of madness feeling I had in "American McGee's Alice".

I also can accept the tactic of gently nudging you in the correct direction by flooding/destroying the places you have completed, although that leads to that sense of linear plot achievement we had discussed earlier. It is an often used vehicle for limiting a players options and sense of confusion, and for programmers not to have to worry about mixing late game powers with early game levels without an incongruous limitation (e.g. you can only fly in outland, you cannot fly in Mournhold, the Armageddon spell does not work where you need it the most).

I think the "leaving Rapture" idea would be fine and I suspect it will either be limited, like leaving the airlocks in Doom3, or the typical plot device of getting knocked out and waking up "somewhere else". Of course, then when you have achieved the goals of "somewhere else" you will somehow find yourself back in Rapture, or maybe another "somewhere else".

The video game I would love to make/play would be a MMORPG based on Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series where you can slip from the fantasy/magic realm into the technology/science realm, and powers and skills in one world translate into comparable ones in the other.

Edit: I think there might be other fiction series that would be interesting to move into 3D RPG universes such as Larry Niven's "Ringworld", Frank Herbert's "Dune" or Robert A. Heinlein's "The Lives of Lazarus Long".