Thinking about the real time shared experience happening for the community I started musing over how you can go places no one has before in creating a experience like a plague or natural disaster that would ripple across the Destiny Population.
Watching the GDC panel and the reference to all the old vintage colors and characters from Westerns to Anime I thought about the old serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and the similar currents and tones set by the old radio series. They had a central archetype for the villain.
So here's Bungie creating that same experience in science fiction opera only on the track of a scipted narrative rather than full voiced improv of radio actors hamming it up for the kids ( your grandparents now) surrounding their radios. Of course they would go with NPCs with scripted cliches and twisted motivations for all the Alien Ai.
But how do you change that up for a shared world experience? So the thought came to me that what you do is you create a shared experience in a antagonist that is changing with the community. The only way to do that is to add a human mind to equation.
So let's take a Bungie's Emperor Ming and make him more like Darth Vader in his mechanics. As Bungie you hire a voice actor full time and a team of Bungie Employees willing to get under the hood of your evil overlord and begin a constant campaign against the players.
So this antagonist is alive and acting his or hers part while Bungie tweaks and places the Ai in various locations simulating a real war campaign against the city or players abroad. Now you have an element that's constantly changing by design while engaging the population as a whole.
If you hear James Earl Jones speaking over a radio in the bar taunting the entire city of players like Tokeyo Rose in real time you are really making a water cooler moment.
Competitive players are always looking for each other, but if you had professional players acting like real Ai generals on the battle field surround by the Races they represent like we had in Reach with Firefight's short lived versus mode then they might find that engaging, especially if those generals are famous.
Anyways this is just conceptual think tanking. How do you engage massive community and keep the Ai fresh and interesting in a constant PVE game?
-
I'm in full support! DEAR BUNGIE: hire this guy, he knows what he's doing
-
I just imagined what it would be like having famous professional players control "AI" generals, and it occurred to me that many of them would probably record their gameplay and put it on Youtube. Wouldn't that be incredibly neat? You'd get to see your own conflicts through the eyes of the enemy!
-
this is an excellent idea! Not only do you have an actual evil antagonist in the game, you have an actual thinking person behind it. It, certainly, would lead to more dynamic gameplay and it would bring players together to unite against a common goal. I know that Destiny is basically that but we as players will undoubtedly scatter to the winds and stars. This will bring together hundreds, maybe even thousands of players together to battle the foe.