A lot of us are unhappy with the current state of adventure gaming, many studios aren't delivering what a lot of us would like. But I feel that the tools needed to create the games we want are already available in the consumer domain.
For example, imagine a 3rd person adventure game with a mature, sci fi, dystopian plot, created out of the following elements.
Hand drawn 2D backgrounds (would be animated) with a gritty, stylistic design:
Similarly stylistic designs for animated characters - during conversations, large portraits of the characters overlap the screen to make conversations more interesting and to allow detailed facial expressions - like Hotel Dusk or Advanced Wars.
Rich sound effects:
http://downloads.flashkit.com/soundf...-8632_hifi.mp3
High quality electronic soundtracks:
http://downloads.flashkit.com/loops/...-7047_hifi.mp3 +
http://downloads.flashkit.com/loops/...-6885_hifi.mp3
- combined with freely available classical music recordings:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cuo/F2001-7.mp3
Amateur writers, and I'm sure there are plenty of us around here, could create the script and plot. Here's an example:
It's 2146, after a third world war a coalition of nations emerged victorious and declared they would unite to form a single world government. Dissolving all borders and creating one superstate, they established a totalitarian grip on the planet.
However, 50 years in to the reign of this union, their control is beginning to wain. Even the brutal Civil Defense Force and the shady undercover secret police (who utilise radical cosmetic surgery to infiltrate suspected traitor organisations) are unable to quell rising incidents of riots and sabotage.
The philosophical message of the story that would be revealed throughout the course of the game would be that the modern world uses conflict between nations to incite fear in order to keep its population under control. The essential premise would be that the world government realises this and plans to create a fictitious super-enemy in order to strike fear into the worlds population and would use it as a puppet to manipulate public opinion.
You play a detective in the Civil Defense Force who becomes wise to this conspiracy after finding certain clues at the scene of a murder, comited by the secret police and given blame to the fictious enemy group.
By following the clues you unravel a terrible plan to detonate a nuclear device in the heart of the capital, killing millions, that would shift allegiance back to the world government.
You then have to put a stop to it etc. etc.
This community could provide their voices for the voice acting. Programming would be the hardest, but 2D programming should be relatively more easy than 3D, and so I see no reason why such a project couldn't succeed.
All the sounds above are provided as free or shareware, the artists are just two examples, and all it would take would be to contact suitable people on deviantArt to find people willing to contribute. These are all created by amateurs.
If the studios don't have the guts to produce deep, cerebral adventures with challenging, provocative storylines, then maybe we should do it instead?
Combine all the above into one scene... you know that'd be awesome.
