The Crossing is a first person shooter being made by Arkane Studios (with support from Valve) that’s based on an idea that can be classified at best as problematic and at worst as insane. However, it could open up a whole new avenue for FPSes if they pull it off.
And that’s a giant blinking neon sign “if”.
The game will apparently play like a regular linear story-based shooter, except that any of the computer-controlled bad guys on your path can be taken over by other players. So instead of fighting an AI, you’ll suddenly be fighting a real person. It’s a bit like the agents in The Matrix randomly taking over the body of anyone in the system.
At least, that’s the gist. It gets way more complicated from there. If you want to know more, The Crossing was featured in Friday’s episode of the 1UP Show (no. 61). There’s also an interview on their site.
The obvious problem for the developers to overcome is that everyone wants to be the badass hero with super strength, not the dude who gets repeatedly mowed down by said hero. Who would you rather play: Stormtrooper No. 7458 with the worst aim in the universe or the Amazing Luke Skywalker On A Path Of Destiny? Ooh, ooh, the stormtrooper please!
But this problem is not unsurmountable. It will be interesting to hear how players will be incentivized to play the supporting roles, not to mention how the two roles will be balanced out against each other. The designers sadly haven’t really gone into great detail about it yet. Producer Raphaël Colantonio:
For a mercenary [someone playing an enemy], there are no real consequences to death. You’ll just respawn, and you keep playing — and eventually, you manage to kill the Elite [the one playing the hero] and feel really cool because you did that. And, if not, you still had a blast because you were playing cooperatively with some other guys and were really trying to do that — it didn’t work this time, but you’ll invade another guy. And this time, you’ll get it.
It’s a potentially ground-breaking concept, but it’s also the sort of game that could easily be hyped to hulking Molyneux-esque proportions. For now, it’s just fun thinking about the possibilities.
On the face of it, this concept is nothing new to my mind. As far back as the original Quake, people have been making mods which let one player be a super character whilst all other players must work together to kill him. The twist is that the person who kills the super character automatically becomes the super character next round. (For a contemporary example, have a look at Hidden: Source for Half-Life 2.)
Anyway, I could be completely wrong. I’ll listen to the 1UP show and see if that can shed any more light on the game’s setup. But I’ll admit it’s a very brave decision to make a commercial title based around this concept…
Wrestlevania
January 24th, 2007
The main difference between this game and mods like Hidden is that the super character is playing through a whole string of game sessions that are part of a larger singleplayer experience with story elements, triggered events, etc., etc.
That means the role of super character isn’t being rotated between players. It also means the group cannot win very often.
Marek
January 24th, 2007
Well that’s certainly a more interesting take on things for sure. It’s an idea I’ve tossed around with friends for many years now, discussing how gaming might be able to scrap NPCs altogether–in any game genre, be it FPS, RPG, full-grid racing games, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Arkane Studios (and Valve?) manage multiplayer sessions in that case. Will you have to participate a set number of times on ‘goon duty’ before you’re allowed to play as the lead character(s)? I very much doubt it, but I agree; it’s going to be very hard to get this right, but the rewards would be massive for the whole games industry.
I think this is also indicative of the huge resurgence in interest of co-op play in modern games. Anything that can help bring that back - and mature it - would be nothing short of revolutionary.
Wrestlevania
January 25th, 2007
I’m very confused by this concept. Are the enemies above “grunt” level controlled by players too? Or friendly NPCs? If you have all these actors just running around then I don’t know how this is going to work as a linear plot-based game without either forcing players into a lot of scripted events or having any plot important character be an AI, which kind of fucks with the verisimilitude (”everyone you’re fighting is a real person!”)
I don’t think I’d want to play a single-player story if it had a ton of real guys running around in it trying to ruin it for me. If I was playing Half-Life 2 I wouldn’t get five friends over to take turns punching me in the face.
Duncan
January 25th, 2007
They should take a look at what Black Cat Games have done with Thievery UT. Thievery, which puts a team of thieves against a team of guards, was great IMHO, but I suspect a big part of why it didn’t really take off is because “nobody wants to play guard”. The balance wasn’t actually that bad, the game forced some players to be guards even if everyone wanted to be thieves (some guards could be controlled by AI if there were not enough players), but I think still almost everybody wanted to play thief and for most people the enjoyment they got from the game didn’t last very long.
In their next multiplayer sneaker Nightblade, they are introducing a third side to the equasion, and each three sides will have conflicting goals. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out, but it sounds kind of iffy to me.
Villane
January 26th, 2007
Oh man, Perfect Dark on the N64 had a mode exactly like. One player would play through the normal single player game and the others would be the NPC henchmen. That was so awesome, I played it to death.
Snubs
January 31st, 2007
This reminds me of the Monster-play feature that will be in Lord of the Rings Online, where you can inhabit a monster temporarily and try to kill a hero.
Not something to base an entire game around, but it’s a nice feature to never know if the guy around the corner is real or AI. It’s all Bladerunner and shit.
nabeel
January 31st, 2007
Whoa, spooky. I coincidentally discovered your blog just today nabeel. My entry point was “Is 2007 the year of the online game?”, which is a really interesting post to me since I’m working on a web game that’s roughly of the RuneScape type (except with some Web 2.0 philosophy sprinkled on top). The whole angle on measuring time is going to have to go straight into our pitch. Anyway, I like your blog and have it bookmarked.
Whoops, I guess I went totally off-topic in my own comments thread! I’m setting a bad example.
Marek
January 31st, 2007