The Motivations of Death

[Nuke_em_05]

Is trying something new honestly less appealing to developers than getting to chop up monsters with big swords for the eleventy billionth time?

Yaup.

Of course, it's only appealing to them because that's what gets them money from the publishers. It is more appealing to publishers because they know that "Monster Chopping with Big Swords: 11B - The Choppining" will sell really well. Whereas "not stab and/or shoot waves of faceless goons 1" is not so tried-and-true.

Get less people to buy "Choppy McChop" and more people to buy "Innovative McDifferent", and the publishers/developers will follow suit.

That, or cut out the publishers and let developers make what they want and sell it on their own. If only there was some low-cost mass-distribution channel through which they could sell games directly. It would probably involve an intricate series of tubes...

 

[mattaui]

The problem with great ideas comes down to having them dissected, violated and then slapped together with other people's great (or not so great) ideas in the horrific negazone of committees. It's the difference between a book written by a single author and a book written by six people. Yes, single individuals can develop some truly awful ideas, but I've come across precious few stories or scripts that had multiple authors that weren't just grotesque aberrations.

I felt the same way when I read about the Darksiders games, and it's how I tend to feel whenever some all-powerful entity is involved in a story. It's really hard for me to care much for a demigod/superhero unless there's just some really compelling storytelling going on. A related problem is the irredeemably awful bad guy/group/alien race. It's so much more meaningful when you have to pause and consider the other side, which then makes you consider your side or the protagonist's side.

As a side note to this, I feel the separatist(human)/renegade(charr) factions in Guild Wars 2 are very well handled in this regard. You can understand and maybe even identify completely with their motivations (why do we want peace with these people who did such horrible things to us) and yet you also can see how trying to enforce a peace treaty is necessary to avoid endless war for future generations.

 

[ExileNZ]

As soon as he brought up the living world and the dead world, I immediately thought of Soul Reaver.

The mechanics aren't so heavily based around the idea as Yahtzee's suggesting, but the story is.

 

[Bart Stikkers]

Nice, except it's pretty much the plot from Soul Music.

 

[endplanets]

To answer the question:

Game Idea:

You are the Grim Reaper and one day Mr. Reaper is carrying away the soul of some mobster who was killed after getting hit by a car. He talks with Mr. Reaper and blah blah blah Mr. Reaper must now kill off the 20 mafia leaders. But he is limited by the fact that he cannot directly kill them like he normally does, he has to do it indirectly.
That or the mob found an ancient artifact that makes them immune to Mr. Reaper's direct actions which offends him so he tries to kill them indirectly.

Mr. Reaper is invisible, can see everything and can move through walls, listen to people talk and can talk to people he has just killed. But he can only interact in the physical world by killing things.
Mr. Reaper can kill more than just humans, he can kill animals and bugs. But none of this metaphorical "killing the lights" stuff though.

So the game is a puzzle game where Mr Reaper must kill certain people/animals in certain ways to kill the mob bosses. You can kill innocent people but it will cost you points. No points are lost for killing bad cops, mob flunkies or animals/bugs.


So you can get missions like killing Mr A's family which drives him to suicide.

Kill Mr. B's rival boss. This makes the rival's flunkies want to kill Mr. B and Mr. Reaper kills Mr. B's guard dog so the flunkies can just waltz right in and kill Mr. B.

Mr. C needs surgery. You can kill the driver of the car causing a car accident, or you can kill the surgeon while he is operating.

Mr. D and Mr. E attends Mr. C's funeral with other rival mob bosses who put aside their hate to pay their respects. Mr. Reaper kills mob bosses at the funeral in a certain pattern and in certain ways to implicate Mr. D. Mr. E goes nuts and kills Mr. D in a rage which causes the other mobsters to react and shoot Mr. E dead.

 

[baba44713]

Sorry Yahtzee, but that idea sounds like an interbreed of classic RPG and whack-a-mole.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh please Mr. Croshaw, you damn well know that the "4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is just a convenient backdrop to a game where the player slaughters hoardes of dudes. It has no real point or message beyond "You're Death. How cool is that?"

And as far as the AAA publishers are concerned, that's all the effort they want (and need) to put into it.

*Ahem*
And now, my requisite pretentious rant on the nature of mass-market appeal, condensed.

As long as those stupid pigs gladly eat generic pig-shit, they will be fed from their own latrines instead of their troughs.

Or:
These games are the product of a market happy with the same recycled shit.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Dammit Yahtzee, you've envisioned another game I would like to play but most likely will not be able to due to it never getting made.

 

[Olrod]

It sounds like you should collaborate with Terry Pratchett and make a Discworld game where you're Death.

That would be the most awesomest thing ever.

 

[gardian06]

I think that every time Yahtzee comes up with a good idea for a game he should just create a kickstarter for it (considering that he himself has complained about publishers sinking far to much money into a given game), and then these games that obtain the needed support could actually get made.

I see it now: funding goal 1 he gets 1 programmer himself, and we get a timeline of a couple years.
funding goal 2 he gets 2 additional programmers, and a timeline of a year.
funding goal 3 he gets a level designer, and maybe an artist/modeler/animator, but we still have to wait a year.

If Yahtzee publicly anounces

 

[Christopher Manzano-Mallison]

This is actually a very interesting idea for a video game. Have you considered emailing Valve or some other video game company with your idea? Considering you're such a well known critic, I'm sure they'd at least listen.