So hypothetically, if the series were to get rebooted, what direction would you want the series to go? Would you reuse the same story lines, locations, characters? Would you lean towards horror or action? Get creative, share your thoughts.
I've been having a few ideas going for a while, which I'll share if there's any interest in this thread. So go nuts. :happy:
I'd never rehash story-lines from the games people hold most dear. If anything, for me it'd be a
Resident Evil in name only. The series has now become synonymous with action packed sequences of epic proportions, which isn't entirely bad.
The
REboot I would love to see is a literal survival horror game. No HUD, no crosshairs; absolute realism. Many of the core game mechanics would center on the usage of the darkness as both an aid and a hindrance. As in reality, you'd have to wait for your character's eyes to adjust to the dark and that makes using firearms all the more dangerous; is one kill worth blinding yourself to be mauled by dozens?
The story would be more an 'as it happens' type of thing. The narrative would focus on the protagonist's life both before the outbreak and during it. You're there when it starts and are able to choose any direction in which to flee. Do you risk the high route and block yourself into a twenty story killbox or do you run for the police station as they are scrambling units and risk being infected by recently picked up carriers? The protagonist could be a created one with one of several fixed backgrounds that alters where you are when it starts and what equipment and burdens you begin with. If you're a soldier recently returned home from Afghanistan, you have to look after your children that refuse to leave your side while you take them on a walk through a park. Do you start as the rookie police officer (a nice little wink to the much adored Leon) on his first beat where you have access to a car, a shotgun and a pistol but face being carjacked by another survivor (something more on that in a second)? Or would you want to start as most of us would start an apocalypse; witnessing it on TV?
It's something seldom covered by films; the
Dawn of the Dead is one of the few films I can recall where it begins as the outbreak begins. There might be more, but honestly, very few films (and I don't count
World War Z as a horror/zombie film) depict the initial struggles to cope;
Apocalypse kind of did that, but by then, the virus had infected a large chunk of the population.
By "a created [character]", I would love for their to be a comprehensive creation system that allows customisation of most of the body and face; the usual fare really.
The carjacking that I referenced would be one of many dynamic events, and by dynamic, I mean purely random and they can be happening to other NPCs while you attempt to escape. Vehicles, particularly larger ones, would be used as a sort of currency to purchase large quantities of weapons. If you can find a car with fuel in it, you can siphon out the fuel and use that as a currency to purchase ammo, knives etc.
The overall objective of the game is simple; survive, escape and kill. You have five in-game days to make it out of the city and that'll be difficult; depending on where you try and escape, you have one or several significant issues to overcome but I haven't figured them out.
Never would I subject this idea to being tortuously depicted on the Xbox 360 and PS3. High end PCs, Xbone and PS4 would be the only platforms that would suit this game.
(NOTE: I came up with these ideas literally as I was typing so there maybe some repetition or vague concepts. It's difficult to imagine how you'd revamp an entire game series; pondering a completely 'unique' game is elementary compared to this dilemma.)