Sounds like the game you want is this:
I haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to instailling this mod!
Update: Dark Souls, Storm of Swords, and GoT strategy game
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 On 08/08/2013 at 08:17 PM by Michael117 See More From This User » |
Gaming
I haven't been gaming as much as I usually do because I've been spending more of that time reading, but anytime I've powered up the Xbox it's been for more Dark Souls. After I beat the game last week I went right back for another playthrough. I created a new character and class. My first playthrough was with the Warrior class but I always played a light-armor character instead of a typical medium or heavy Warrior. At the start of my second playthrough I've picked the Hunter because you get a shield, sword, bow, and light armor right away which are my breads and butters for combat. Plus the stats are balanced early on in a way that allowed me to use pretty much all the weapons I want with minimal investment. I spent many of my early levels putting points into Intelligence, Faith, and Attunement because with this new character I want to be able to do basic magic, plus have the stats to use the Cursed Greatsword of Artorias once I finally build it later in the game. The sword is super powerful because the damage scales with more of your stats than other weapons, and it can kill ghosts which is convenient. My old Warrior character never got to use that awesome sword because all my mage stats were super low, and I didn't want to spend the hours it would've taken to farm for all the souls I needed to level those up.
I named my new character Meera after the character Meera Reed I like from A Song of Ice and Fire. Since I know all the workings of the game now I've been doing things differently than my first playthrough, completing areas in different orders, and finding all the equipment I know I want to use. Right now it's time to go into Blighttown to ring the second bell but I've been avoiding it for days, choosing instead to farm and waste time basically. I hate going down there and I think I'll need to put aside a few hours this weekend to slowly eek my way through again.
Reading
I've started reading A Storm of Swords, the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I bought the box set of the first four a couple months ago. These books are really long so I thought I'd never have time to catch up to the Game of Thrones TV show, but at this pace I'll finish all four and be way ahead of the TV show before it comes around. The books have been fantastic, some parts are better than the show, but some parts of the show are better than the books. I'm obsessed with both by now it seems.
I've been trying to think about how I'd make a Game of Thrones video game if I got the opportunity at some point in my career. I'd want to make a big strategy game with some systems from games like Civilization and Total War: Rome II combined, with both real-time and turn based gameplay how Rome II does, and with a heavy emphasis on political, diplomatic, and logistical consideration systems.
You'd choose a House at the beginning of the game and there would be various victory conditions like in Civ, I'm not sure how I'd define defeat conditions, I haven't thought enough about that. Instead of having Domination be the easiest condition to accomplish it would be the most difficult and dangerous. The goal wouldn't necessarily be to become King on the Iron Throne, but it could be one possible outcome. Imagine your King or Lord dies in battle and the lesser Houses who swore fealty to you splinter and your army is lost. What if your Lady or Queen could marry into a new family and attain the Iron Throne even though you technically lost the war? What if your children survive and scheme their way to victory by becoming faithful wards of a victor's house and begin secretly poisoning key people, forging letters and sending them to other Houses to sow discord, or become part of an assassin's guild, or part of a marriage pact? I want those kinds of options to be focused on in the game since they're such a huge part of the books. You can lose obviously, but with some losses and tragedies there's a possible tree of paths you can take to pick yourself back up.
When players win victories and gather massive armies I want them to only grow more aware that it may all fall apart, and when players are in the gutters far from victory I want them to still feel like they can win their way back and get revenge on their foes. Maybe defeat conditions would have to involve your whole family being killed. If your castle gets sacked and the whole family gets put to the sword, game over, all your birds are gone with one stone. That's tragic, but makes sense in the series. A single game/match could conceivably go on for quite a long time and see many ups and downs. Not as conducive to multiplayer unless you want to play matches for days straight. Single-player-only is fine for me, but it's not great if this were to be a real game. People would want multiplayer in a game like this. It would be fun to see real players scheme against each other in a Westeros sandbox, so that would have to be present.
In the Game of Thrones universe, castle sieges rarely ever go well because most of the holds in the realm are near impenetrable (like the Eyrie and Storms End), and even the "weaker" castles can be difficult to take, (like Riverrun and Winterfell) possibly requiring months or even years of siege. In the series, war is never as simple as riding out into battle and winning. While you're on the battle march, families from across the realm could be sending one another messages and changing the landscape of alliances around you to ends that may benefit you or leave you surrounded and doomed.
Plus all the holds are separated by many leagues of distance. Armies are slow to move, they need supply columns, secure connections to resources and reinforcements, and you can always be surprise attacked by guerrilla fighters on your flanks. There's plenty of risk/reward and logistics to consider if you simply want to move and supply an army, let alone lead it to victory when battle finally comes. There's even more logistics and strategy to consider if you want to control the realm. Behind the scenes people are setting up marriage pacts, deceiving, scheming, changing loyalties, plotting assassinations, sending messenger ravens with carefully chosen words, and deciding whatever benefits them most short-term and long-term. Even if you're an experienced commander with a grand army, some clever person (or alliance of persons) could be two steps ahead of you and make your seemingly unstoppable power crumble in a way you never foresaw. There's a boon of ways to rise and fall in A Song of Ice and Fire and a game should reflect that.
It would be a dream to work on a good strategy game focused on Westeros, and let players tell their own stories in it. I believe it could offer gameplay that strategy fans would appreciate, and haven't quite seen before. I could imagine trying to fit Essos and its factions into the mix but that's an entirely separate continent and a whole new set of complexities that would be put aside for an expansion pack, if at all. It wouldn't be A Song of Ice and Fire if there weren't white walkers, free-folk from beyond The Wall, and dragons but I honestly haven't thought how they'd ever fit into the game. I've only been thinking about the systems and how to make a strategy game based around the Houses south of The Wall. After all, these are only ideas being spitballed so far.
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