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If you where to make a fantasy game what would be the story behind it, would it be 1st 3rd person or overhead view and what would you be able to do in the game?

I like the 3/4 overhead view. ( sorta like Diablo ). I dont know if it would really work, but Id like to make a game in a post apoplyptic world in the flavor of Twilight 2000 where you have to do good. And try to get things working again.

Fantasy game?

Hmm, I'd take the Fable system (being developed by Big Blue Box) and transcribe it across to the Discworld. How much fun can YOU have?

Something like arcanum where you can be what ever you want....

fantasy - definitely 3rd person. But then I'd make it something like Zelda...

Daggerfall made me a huge fan of 1st-person RPG's (though I rarely have qualms with 3rd-person). So I would go with that.

I would definitely put the primary focus on an automated world, one with schedules, and with individual NPC's. A lot of effort would be spent on coming up with a better voice synthesizer that doesn't sound like Stephen Hawking, one that can replicate millions of different types of voices, and thusly I could give millions of different characters a different personality (as well as more things to say, since the game would just have to store a big txt file for conversations rather than a sound file). Combine a heavily-improved Chat-bot, and you're in business.

Story? I like what Morrowind did... set it up so that your character wasn't "born" as the Chosen Hero, but was "set up" as it, simply by following the necessary steps to become that Hero. I'd probably do something similar, though make things REALLY open-ended...

Aw, man, I'd better stop here, because if I went into length about what I'd consider the perfect fantasy RPG, I'll wind up with a post that's thirty pages long...

I always liked the Quest for Glory series myself...

Either continuing it, or at least something close to it.

Definitely first-person view, almost shooter-ish in both view and control. MMORPG all the way, and it'll have a story in either the Lunar-verse or one of original design, somewhat similar to Fallout...

SPOOFE wrote:Daggerfall made me a huge fan of 1st-person RPG's (though I rarely have qualms with 3rd-person). So I would go with that.

I would definitely put the primary focus on an automated world, one with schedules, and with individual NPC's. A lot of effort would be spent on coming up with a better voice synthesizer that doesn't sound like Stephen Hawking, one that can replicate millions of different types of voices, and thusly I could give millions of different characters a different personality (as well as more things to say, since the game would just have to store a big txt file for conversations rather than a sound file). Combine a heavily-improved Chat-bot, and you're in business.

Story? I like what Morrowind did... set it up so that your character wasn't "born" as the Chosen Hero, but was "set up" as it, simply by following the necessary steps to become that Hero. I'd probably do something similar, though make things REALLY open-ended...

Aw, man, I'd better stop here, because if I went into length about what I'd consider the perfect fantasy RPG, I'll wind up with a post that's thirty pages long...

Impresive I would like to hear more about what you would consider the perfect fantasy rpg

As for me I'd make my fantasy rpg swtichable between 1st and 3rd person view as for the story the only story line would be what you make of it as you go though the world doing what ever you would do in real life, the world would be based on our real world as much as possable, if you saved a little child for being eatten by some monster the npcs and the other popluation of the aear of the world you are in would eact like people would in the real world if you had saved a kid frombeing eatten by a bear or something or if you stabed someone in the back to get some beer money would reacted like pepole would in the real world if you pulled that kind of happy horse shit.
Not only would the game have the standred fantasy rpg races such as elves gnomes orcs humans but I'd inclued a sub program where you could make you own race to play as or as npc's

3rd person view, because most 1st person games make me nauseous after about half an hour. Something like Warhammer, where you gain abilities through your class, but you can switch classes at will in order to learn different things. Mostly freeform, have an optional storyline but make it easy to mod (like NWN) so players can add to the game themselves. No artificial level limits, no limitation on what you can learn...very unstructured overall.

I would make a game in the style of rurouni kenshin. Not in japan though. Hard to explain. Guns are there but no common and you have to use your sword(or any of the weapons you want, alot like in D&D) and skills to survive. You would run around and gain EX points build your strength and try to save the country your in. You could be peace lovin' guy or a war lord. But the game would not be linear, because I hate those RPGs, so it could take a long time to beat.(I like to roam game worlds and look around) It would be a 3rd person game. I like the idea of walking around in mid-evil europe.(I see siegfried from soul caliber ) A bunch of side quests are a must. Find new weapons and maybe a friend or two.
Fully costomized characters. Hell ya.

I would have it be 3rd person, Baldur's Gate style, set in China Mieville's world of New Crobuzon. The magic/technology system would be similar to Arcanum's, without the sharp differentiation and conflict between to two. Characters would have dozens of races, creeds, nationalities, and backgrounds to chose from, each with advantages and disadvantages. Khepri would be able to communicate with New Crobuzon's hives, Rebuilt would suffer prejudice and would be limited in their interactions with Crobuzon's citizens, but their mechanical and organic modifications would allow them combat advantages, Scabmettlers would have natural armor and would be very hard to kill, but would require a steady source of anticoagulants-

This game would rock.

Impresive I would like to hear more about what you would consider the perfect fantasy rpg

The short version: The world would be absolutely huge. So big that people can't model it. They'd have to develop a program to automatically model a world based on a map template provided, and then go back and add stuff like dungeons, cities, towns, special locations, castles, etc. to the automatically-generated map.

Let me put it this way: I think Morrowind was way too small. Daggerfall's virtual world was probably right for the minimum size requirement, I think.

Total seamlessness between areas. Morrowind got close, but suffered from Inconsistent Door syndrome... if an enemy is kicking your ass, just go through the nearest door. Bad Guy won't be able to follow you.

Constant-upkeep stats system. If you have statistics like Strength and Wisdom and such on a 0-100 scale, I seriously doubt anyone other the staunchest of weight lifters and bodybuilders would get a Strength quotient greater than 60 or 65. In order to get a Strength rating of 90, you'd need to spend hours upon hours lifting weights and excercising, basically spending the bulk of your time to bulk up. And once you're at that bulk level, you're going to need a huge amount of excercise to maintain that muscle mass. I think it's pathetic that a game can have you drop a few thousand gold pieces (again, Morrowind) to get your strength up to 90, and then your character NEVER has to do anything to keep that muscle mass from diminishing.

The above system is designed to keep players from getting 100 strength, 100 personality, 100 wisdom, 100 speed, etc.

Furthermore, one stat would affect another... how many bodybuilders do you see doing the 100-yard dash? Not many, because "strength" and "speed" aren't interchangeable. Someone that can bench-press 600 pounds won't be able to sprint at 25 miles per hour.

This would also force a character to either be a Jack of All Trades - have decent stats all around - or else specialize in only one or two attributes. Any game that allows you to become an invincible superman is a poor game, in my opinion.

Magic: This should be EXTREMELY powerful, at the cost of intense physical debilitation. Again, picking on Morrowind (despite having loved the game), magic was too simplified and too limited in what one could do. Either go all the way and allow INSANE magical abilities, or don't put it in the game to any significant degree at all.

Various stories: RPG's are getting better at this... "side-quests" are getting more and more significant all the time, becoming miniature storylines in their own right. The Perfect Fantasy RPG would have 500+ hours of game, story, and quest time to go through, not counting mini "extras" such as hunting down random, non-crucial artifacts or such.

Conversation: Ultima 6 got it closest, I think... probably one of the last non-text-based games that allowed you to use the keyboard to type (what a novel idea) conversation (well, key conversation points, but hey, it was years ago) to an NPC. As much as I appreciate the simplicity of the "conversation options" system, too often is it filled with repetitive conversations and limited options.

Enemies: More. I'm tired of seeing two dozen monsters, at most, in a game. There should be hundreds, some of which should be utterly unbeatable to all but an army of PC's or NPC's. Dragons? What business does any one man have slaying a dragon all by his lonesome? Are these ancient, wise, wicked animals truly such pussies?

Cratures: More. Wildlife. I wanna see squirrels or bunnies running away from me as I walk down the forest path. I want to go hunting for deer or bear. I want to see a pack of wolves - wolves that aren't your typical "glowing red eyed evil Tolkien-esque Warg" wolves - howling at the moon. I wanna see birds perched in a tree, crapping on whoever walks by.

Landscapes: Okay, we have thousands - even millions - of NPC's. What do they eat? Where are the huge, hundred-acre wheat fields, or the vast expanses of grazelands with hundreds of cows? Or chickens? I want to see INFRASTRUCTURE for this fantasy world... THAT is how you immerse a person into it, to see that there's a nitty-gritty face of society underneath the usual shopkeepers and merchants.

Cities: Bigger. Morrowind's cities were dinky. Vivec shouldn't even be considered a minor township. I wanna see miles of streets, alleyways, buildings, sewers, scum, filth, grandeur, grand boulevards, palaces, slums, and everything in between. The towns in Daggerfall were about the right size for a mid-sized city... let's push the envelope even more!

Mountains: Let's have some, please? And not just these tiny "bumps" that Morrowind had (note: I'm mentioning Morrowind most because they've gotten closest with that one... if Fable were out, I'm sure I'd be using that as an example instead). I want to see humongous, towering, craggy surfaces, with sheer cliffs with 500-foot drops, narrow pathways, and peaks that are almost unreachable. Think "Misty Mountains".

Oceans, rivers, lakes... More. Let's see some sailing. Incorporate Pirates of the Caribbean's sailing system (maybe without the cannons, though). Let's see some Nile- or Amazon-esque rivers, that are so wide you can barely see the other side. Let's see lakes that are truly massive... where you CAN'T see the other side. Let's have oceans that are.... well... oceans. Deep, dark blue, heavy waves, etc.

There's a partial list of what I think RPG makers should be striving for. Hopefully, they can get games to that level within five years.

EDIT: Yes, I have very high expectations for games. I'm also disappointed that no FPS so far has it set so that your character can fall down or be pushed over, something that I think should be considered a basic action, on the same level as "ducking" and "jumping".

The game that I would like would take place in the future of Earth, after a massive war. The technology is gone, all is low tech now (Roman Empire level), you know what that kind of thing is. You play as a person from the present who somehow wakes up in this future, maybe by cryo-sleep. Using your knowledge of technology, you defeat the pathetic fools who now are in control of the planet. Various underground bunkers or bases would still exist which you would be able to enter and take equipment from.

The perspective would be third person like Zelda, but the controls would not be automatic like it has. They would be like an action game. There would be no XP or anything like that. I never liked the XP/stats system that RPGs use. It is too unrealistic and leveling up is tedious and annoying. It will be possible to become stronger or faster, but this would only be by a small amount. If you run around a lot, you could gain stronger leg muscles, lifting things up will make your arms stronger. That kind of thing is it. The way you truly get stronger is to play a lot so that you're good at the game.

The world would have to be huge. Way to big to be created by humans. It would be constructed randomly based on the current geography. There would be city ruins around various places that are barely recognizable if at all that none of the people know the origin of. Pieces of tanks and airplanes and missles also. The Mig-29 sticking out of the ground in Final Fantasy 7 comes to mind. That is the source of this idea. The old Mig that no one knows the origin of.


This is the airplane from FF7. I'm not actually sure that it's Mig-29, but it looks close

I'd like to see something set in the 3rd age of ME. And maybe if you help in the Diege of Gondor you can see th fourth age. All in 3rd person.