Hello all of you guys... I'm following Subversion from the very first blog posts that occured, and always wondered where it would lead.
But reading on this thread made me wanted to react.
In the video, the only reference was "much like in Mission Impossible Serie". After reading this thread, I can only imagine your references being "Heat". Which is a great movie of course. I love that one, and I must say that the bank attack in the movie was astonishing at the theater when it was out. Even in Home Cinema, and after quite a few years now, it's still great looking, and perfect sounds.
But, thinking of a "Heat" scenario in a game would make it even less interesting. Let's take back a few examples I read here.
- If it was a FPS, it couldn't be possible to see on the other sides of the walls. If you are made up of a team, what would be the point, in a gameplay term I mean, pointing your gun on the hostages ? I'm not sure it would be fun. And even if you can swap between the characters, how would you do to be sure an hostage is not going out of the bank while you play another character ?
- With the 3 phases like mentioned before, I can clearly see the "Heat" effect. Yes, they plan everything carefully in the movie. And they stick with the plan. They scout, they calculate, they get informed. So yes, it could be done. But now, let's see this from a gameplay term again. You go to a computer, and hack systems to get informations, maps, access to the cameras, and see where are the weak points. That would just be another kind of uplink (which is great of course), but instead of having 1 game, it would have two there. For the second face, you go on the terrain, and watch and scout, evaluating the forces in places... Would it be fun ? Not sure at all. And for the third phase, you would start with your collected informations, prepare your actions on the map, and then click start. You would then just watch your strategy being applied. This kind of gameplay is of course great (there are good games, if you want only one, check Frozen Synapse, or Gratuitous Space Battles). But it wouldn't stick for this game, and would make it less interesting. It would be fun for the two first hours, and then ? When you fail, you learn and modify your actions in consequences ? Yes, probably, but it would be also mean that the level is totally scripted, and cannot react with what the player is actually doing.
I don't want to flame any one here, just giving my opinion on this video. I like the video. I like what I've seen, and by watching it carefully, I notice that Chris didn't used the guy waiting outside the bank. It could have been another solution, another way around. This way of doing things, even if less interesting or more paceful, just make things reacts with what you do, and there is for sure not just one way to beat the level, but 5 or 6. And that's what I like. Despite the graphics (I so love those kind of graphics), that's what I like the most in a game : redo the same things again and again, and having different things all the time...
I think that what Chris is doing right now is very well thought, with multiple possibilities to do things, and just that is fun enough for me. I hate scripted levels : each time you do them, you are doing the same things. Here, it seems a lot more dynamics, even if the intensity is very low just by the look of it...
Only my thoughts here
I don't mean to have right. Just saying what I think