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Let's make a Game Design Doc, guys!

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Storm Rider:
The problem is how you would go about fleshing out those characters in a Dead Rising context. What chance would you have to interact with them? You'd either have to have a significant proportion of the game occur before the zombie breakout, or somehow intersperse those characters with Frank before they become imperiled. The former would be difficult because where does the horror come from in the parts where the zombies aren't an issue yet, and the latter would be clumsy because in order to have enough characters to create meaningful situations where you have to choose between survivors, they'd have to create some really forced situations for exposition.

KvP:
I think it can be done. The former is the optimal choice. I mean if we're being honest we can conceive of it like Assassin's Creed II, which a lot of people (ie fuckin' idiots) complained about in terms of "build-up", but I think that's the only way to do things. Half-Life got away with a rather sizable intro sequence in which nothing happened and there wasn't much in the way of tension building.

The main thing would be, really, to have the characters as party NPCs that can hold their own but are put in compromising situations from time to time, ala the Big Choice in Mass Effect. Or you could go somewhat radical and remove the PC from direct control. Think of the first two Aliens franchise films - Some of the tensest stuff happened when there were characters that went into dangerous situations while other characters stayed behind and maintained radio contact, giving orders. It was frightening because the viewer was in the supporting characters' position - you knew if shit happened, the guys in the shit would be beyond help. You can easily exploit that kind of thing as a game designer, if you can get your players into it. It's a gamble but it's one worth making I think. Think of the ending of ME2 but with more player input besides choosing who's doing what task. I think if done right that could really be something. Of course you wouldn't fill the game with such moments - you'd pace it out like a horror movie, with the team being whittled down over the course of the game before the final section of the game, where shit gets real and you're really under the gun, and big losses start to become inevitable.

David_Dovey:
I guess I'm a fuckin' idiot?

To be fair I don't really get much time at all to play games so it's in 1 or 2-hour blocks which I'm sure made the "build-up" of AC far more excruciating than need be.

Boro_Bandito:
I think a much more simplistic and feasible mechanic in a game like Dead Rising would just be to let your character hear the survivor's while he's out in the world. Like, radio transmissions, or through walls, or screams in the distance, things that let the player know that these people are close and in imminent danger. Cries for help and conversations over radio frequencies, and if you don't get to a survivor in time you show a cinematic cut scene where they get ripped to shreds. Visuals like a father getting ripped away from his daughters arms as the zombies pour in through a gap in the barricade would be heartwrenching, to me anyway. In Dead Rising those little prompts that say "Oh hey, that guy died" did nothing to make me care about the person I didn't successfully save.

I also agree that the survivors being useless afterwards was kind of a downer too, maybe if you rescued people that could help you in some way, like people who were actually good at fighting, or scavenging for food, or fast and able to act as distractions would have been tops.

Boro_Bandito:
Also I'm going to end this poll in about 24 hours and reveal to you guys the next step.

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