FPS & MMO games?">What next for FPS & MMO games?

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

Only a few years a go the FPS had reached a lull.  The tra­di­tional cor­ridor struc­ture was blamed for stifling the genre and so, in response, many FPS’s were put into devel­op­ment that fea­tured out­side envir­on­ments.  How­ever, this was a move that missed the point.  It wasn’t that the out­sides of cor­ridors needed to be rendered, that lim­it­a­tion on old FPS’s was purely one of tech­no­logy, it was that game­play needed to evolve and thus move for­wards.  After all, merely ren­der­ing the out­sides had been mastered in the excel­lent FPS: Oper­a­tion Flashpoint.

The com­ing Oper­a­tion Flash­point 2 may have what I crave.

Many FPS’s were put into devel­op­ment that not only had open spaces, but more open stor­ies as well.  Stor­ies that told much more epic tales.  Per­son­ally, I feel that Half Life 2 is the cur­rent pin­nacle of this epic style; the Single­player story-mode FPS, in that it man­ages to rep­res­ent a large sense of space but at the same time is the most epic story telling.  But there are other not­able FPS games, espe­cially from The Golden Year:2007.  Such games as

Stalker,

Quake­Wars,

Arma-Armed Assault,

Obli­vion (a First Per­son Slasher)

Crysis.

So where now?

I feel it is mov­ing bey­ond telling the story from one point of view.  I am pre­dict­ing that the next gen­er­a­tion is going to be all about mul­ti­player co-op FPS’s.

Ima­gine Phant­asy Star Online (Dreamcast)…

3rd Per­son off­line Mul­ti­player was per­fec­ted in PSO.

…but as a FPS. Ima­gine COD4 single player but every char­ac­ter was con­trolled by a real player. Ima­gine FPS RPG’s, such as Fal­lout 3, but as a co-op FPS!

Ima­gine mul­ti­player Obli­vion! (Yes please!)

Gears of War points the way. There a single­player story is shared by two people who need to work together to achieve the dénouement.

“Cover me!”, the shout of a GOW Coop session.

Let’s take another angle on this.

What of MMO’s?  Haven’t MMO’s answered this ques­tion?  Isn’t what I describe in Star­wars Galax­ies before they borked it? The storyline was very strong and you could get a Bounty Hunter Mis­sion to hunt a PC Jedi char­ac­ter, which was gen­er­ated only once he had been spot­ted by a NPC. This hunt was the most fun in the entire game as you tracked him down and then approached for the final battle. It was only ruined when people found ways around the mech­an­ics (basic­ally drop­ping a PC house and hid­ing inside).

Thus story driv­ing game­play over multiplayer.

No. Thus far no MMO has suc­cess­fully integ­rated the twitch gam­ing of an FPS.  But, it is com­ing.  Com­ing is the com­bin­a­tion of what is good in MMO’s; the team play, the indi­vidu­al­ity, the massive choices; together with the twitch-gaming high of shoot­ing things; but for once play­ing with your friends through a story not just in an end­less deathmatch.

Quake­wars is head­ing in this dir­ec­tion with the mis­sion struc­ture and classes built into the game. Becom­ing more story driven. Becom­ing more class dependent.

Con­sider my real life. There, I play with my friends along­side me (in airsoft).

Three Darkan­gels relax after storm­ing the OpFor Base.

This real life coop mode is what we act­ively look for in games for our online lives and the lack of storyline in tra­di­tional mul­ti­player FPS’s is what is miss­ing.  What I really want is the neces­sity of two people (or more) play­ing together to com­plete an object­ive. How cool would the Oblivion-realm tower-assaults be if there was 10 of you hack­ing in and up the stairs?

Well, my ques­tion is answered in Lin­eage II, which has exactly that. It’s just miss­ing the FPS twitch.

Castle Assaults are amaz­ing in Lin­eage II.

But, that’s my point; many games have ele­ments of what I want but none have man­aged to join up the genres.  Thus I pre­dict that the next step in FPS’s, RPG’s and MMO’s is the genres slowly con­ver­ging. Look at the evid­ence: even the basic online FPS (COD4) has RPG ele­ments now and the latest MMO (Tab­ula Rasa) has FPS elements.

COD 4 RPG ele­ments — cre­ate a class (beta version).

What I fore­see is the divid­ing line between story-laden single player epics, like Half Life 2, dis­ap­pear­ing all together and becom­ing twitch-capable multiplayer-coop.

Only then will the great gam­ing moments of MMO’s, the amaz­ing imme­di­acy of FPS’s and my offline/online worlds converge.

I can’t wait, see you in 2008!

Basho

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Related Posts

• No Related Posts