Innovations I would like to see...

Gaming as it is can be amazing. However possibly more than any other form of medium, its interaction and technology melts together to from nearly unlimited potential. As another generation has been set into place, its good to wonder what might come out of it soon. Gaming doesn't need to change much, and heck it actually has some roots it needs to re-explore, however its fun to estimate or hope for some fun changes you feel have yet to be seen. Or sometimes its just about things that have yet to be properly implemented into the mainstream. Here are my personal hopes in an odd top 6 list...

6) Continue to explore online potential

Jolly cooperation time!

Dark Souls and Journey have some common grounds in breaking through to try and do something different in online play. I'm not a huge fan of forced online, so I want to be careful about what I wish for. Still its nice to see games that try new things, and push the barrier between online and solo experiences. It would be awesome if we could continue to share our adventures unconditionally by friendly anonymous gamers that are on that same quest for fun.

5) Weather. 'nuff said

Rain... Snow... Warm sunny days. These are common weather habbits most will experience and be more than familiar with. So why is it so rare that a game even tries to slap light aesthetics of basic weather on? It feels like magic if rain occurs on its own in a game. We have some strong tech now, can't we see more natural weather and even effects it may produce? I would be thrilled to have an open world game where snow can actually build up and needs some management. Of course I guess it would be great if that sort of thing was optional and didn't become a tedious chore. Maybe that sort of risk is more of the reason to its disappearance rather than tech? Still I want to see some efforts made in this area. Even something as simple as seeing tree leaves twitch to dynamic rain.

4) More Destruction!

Simply put, we've been wanting more destruction in our shooters. It doesn't have to be Red Faction or Bad company 2 amounts, though those are nice, but it would be just great if something like... Killzone went a little further. Killzone has the aesthetics down to where decals actually give the illusion of a dent, and many objects leave rubbled particle effects when shot, and certain edges or very specific objects (toilets, and couches) can actually be broken down. Amplify that up just a bit, and that's awesome. However it would be great to have more games like bad company 2 as well where they're built from the ground up to change over time, and to become a strategical difference within and fluid and living field of war you have to adapt to. Also, why am I just restricting this chatter to online talk? There should be a heck of a lot more to this destruction trait going on in campaign side of gaming. This is where the land really is built piece by piece and you don't have to account nearly as much for player vs player balance, so let the one and only guy available tear things up if they want to. I'm kind of surprised we've been going as long as we have with so little use in destructive terrain innovation.

3) Steel blade Renaissance

Despite being a person that gets a heavy does of combat fun in through First Person Shooters, there is a better way to hook me. Swords. Slashing. Maces pounding a skull inwards. Oh and kicking that guy off a cliff when he's already dead... just because I'm mean like that. :p I love sword fighting in games, when it is done right. However that boils down to Chivalry, Dragon's Dogma, and Dark Souls. Maybe Mount and Blade. 4 games with a dreamy combat system sound nice, but the real truth to it is this is kind of embarrasing. Fantasy medieval settings are one of the most oldest and cliched things to gaming, if not the most cliched thing ever to nerd culture. Yet so few games have made blade combat more complex than mashing a button. So few games have made it truly satisfying. Its been so bad its literally kept me out of RPGs for years, just because the combat on its own just sucked that badly. It was ran by numbers, not andrenaline, steel on steel, and heroic swashbucking adventures. Games like Dark Messiah occasionally come along and dress it up nicely enough that its fun, but few really pull out with an incredible experience that I know sword fighting could become. Even then, you still have the matter of the game itself to build upon. This is why I can barely put M&B here as the game just bored me, and then there's how poorly Dragon's Dogma handles it compared to Dark Souls (still good, but the two just don't compare.... DD is way too arcadey). So you have a major two step process to grab onto... make an amazing game, and make an amazing combat system, and tie the two up right so that the combat is a thrilling and deep part of the game without making it tedious. To be honest I would probably put this on the #1 spot of what I really and truly want, but I'm also ranking this by true innovation, and chivalry exists to do it really damn well already. It feels like there is that and some others that are slowly building an aim to introduce the world to deeper melee experiences, and I can hope that it might be coming into play already.

2) Lets get philosophical and spiritual...

Ok honestly this is heavily biased in what I like, but it could extend to just suggesting that games try to cover diverse themes. However I specifically want to see more religious and spiritual themed games. I want it a bit over the top as well, like any good theme. That can include the game portion of it as well, because if you know me you know I hate games taking themselves too seriously. Dante's Inferno and God of war are fine, Okami was another good example, and then there's Journey that traces around the shared spiritual aspect of reincarnation and just generally has some theme of finding something spiritual, even if its not specific to any religion. Out of those, only Journey was a "serious" game while the others could be quite silly and gamey at times... and that was still nice and they were fun themes to play within. Now some may bring up sensitivity, but Religious sensitivity shouldn't damage our will to make great art out of it. Do you think Dante really stopped his great story because it might be offensive? Did that stop great games like Okami and God of War? It certainly didn't stop bioshock from fooling with it either and becoming a big seller. If your religiously sensitive, you should stay away from it just as a strong pacifist would shooter genres. Anyways... outside of those games though it starts to become difficult to find a relevant use of religion in gaming. Assassins Creed vaguely brings it up in between throwing terms around, and comes off more as historic fiction that has to accept religion happens but nothing more. Bioshock infinite could be taken in as good use, and I appreciate what it does, but it feels like it later gets tossed out before it ever amounts to anything memorable aside from being a part of the old fashion American theme. Then "god" games are too arcadey to seriously count, as it does nothing to get you thinking on the content but rather is an excuse to feel a little "meta". I would love to see religious and spiritual content dug into a bit more within gaming. It makes incredible grounds for story telling, has plenty of tales at high scale and great power already set up, and it plays with the fabric of philosophy and inspires critical thinking. Oh and where the heck are the Ancient egyptian themed games!? I want to see a god of war style fight with Anubis!

Now outside of religion, I feel like this still applies in some way. It'd be great for games to explore new themes, and form around places that don't already get much attention in games. We've seen plenty of games that just don't care about their own themes and settings. Whether its COD or similar military shooters, Dota, generic RPG fantasy, or simple arcade games, they never really engage far into their own world or nature and never leave you thinking or impressed. I want to see new places, themes, and thought provoking bits explore, and contrary to popular belief you don't have to sacrifice the integrity of the gameplay or even cheesy "fun for the sake of fun" tones. Actually I would say some of the best and most cheesy games have a heavy theme to them. Yakuza is a somewhat arcadey brawler and free roaming game, yet its awesome in how it captures the city and life of Tokyo. Metro is russian themed, but full of fictional events and silly odd moments and dumb character writing. That's ok though, it still provides a freshing and unique experience. Meanwhile Hotline Miami supposedly explores the nature between killing and virtual killing without being so serious or hung up about it. Then Killzone explores a gothic war themed universe that revels in propaganda, war crimes, bioweapons, and conflicting interests without removing the competetive multiplayer or exciting gun blazing fun moments out of the system. Oh and lets not forget just how cheesy the cast sounds in that game as well. Unlike the push for artificial maturity, these games remain mentally engaging and philosophically different from most peers while keeping fun if not better cheesy game experiences than their peers also do. My hope is that more games end up like this and push for stronger use of themes without losing integrity as a video game. Besides having a theme might also set it up for that terribly awkward morality system that is trending in games now, and speaking of which....

1) Polished and intuitive morality

This is actually something I didn't care about so much until recently. Well... it bugged me, but I didn't have an idea on how much better it could be until recently... and I do mean really recently. Like Okami HD that I started this week recently. Morality in gaming is starting to pop up everywhere, but its nothing less than black and white or arcadey at best for most notable games. Infamous has the good and evil sides, Mass Effect has obvious color coded choices that influence the story, and possibly one of the better examples with Dishonored still breaks down the effects in binary differences based on whether or not you played like a pacifist. Look I love games being cheesy, and I don't mind good and evil stuff, but if your trying to drive home this morality idea seriously (I'm looking at you and your hypnotized fanbase Bioware) then this just wont cut it. Its not even fun, it feels robotic, drags the game on, and there's that artificially padded feeling that you haven't beaten it until you switch your chooses into another full gear. Either way though the current system is set up so that the player gets the idea that they'll be making choices A, B, or C and each time they hit one they end up pumping their meter some direction. You essentially corner the player into caring about that meter for consistency rather than the story. I think that sounds actually pretty damaging to the integrity and story of the game in question, and honestly I'm surprised entire series got off well on it. Still maybe those are just baby steps.... but its not exactly effective, and we've been able to do better so I'm hoping to see it. I want a game where the choices actually feel natural. No meter attached, no binary function, and heck maybe even ditch the idea of separate endings altogether. Instead make me choose things, and give me consequences based on them. Most of them probably short term. Give me rewards that suit the actions I've done. Certain RPGs have a radical form of this in place thankfully where they let you kill NPCs off. You get to steal their stuff, but lose a possible companion or even entire quests as a result. This is good, but it could be expanded on. Dishonored again is a nice mention for coming closer despite a binary end result. Killing people changed dialogue to suit it, and made people fear your mask rather than hunting the face under it. However being the closest to good and sparing your targets using some alternative also gave you rewards from admirers or people who gave you an alternative. If it wasn't so repetitive, and didn't bottleneck the end result, this would have been perfect! Imagine dropping loot by an NPC's door way, and later on hearing them tell an NPC friend about how they found a gift they were delighted in. Wouldn't that be so cool to hear and send a strange sense of fulfillment in you? Or how about robbing from someone, and instead of magically being busted you instead have that NPC leave town out of insecurity and you lose out on anything valuable they had to offer.

Where does Okami come into this? Well... possibly without even doing so intentionally, it kind of has a fluid and intuitive morality system, and one of the best at making it feel so good and showing me how valueable an effective system comes into play. You play the role of basically a super powerful goddess without the power, and as you progress on your adventure to collect power you get the ability to fix the natural order. However apart from a select few nobody even knows you exist, and your powers also go unnoticed when used wrong as it goes quite off hand. However whether they notice you or not as the wolf you're playing as, they notice the miracle and restoration of the world and start to regain a sense of faith and belief in miracles. This Praise powers certain character attributes like health and immediate ink storage. So doing nice side stuff basically powers you up, but you'll still get by even if you decide your not going to waste your time with praise. You get the bloom ability and get to go running around growing trees, fixing patches of land, buy food for animals, shutting down evil demon gates that choke the world, and all in addition to saving the general day within the main adventure. Many of the good things you can do are optional and don't truly effect the plot. Its mostly just to give Praise and a nicer aesthetic, like animals that cheer as you walk by, or just a more detailed and majestic cell shaded rural Japan. Its not a perfect example, as there's no real feeling of doing wrong to balance this out and the Praise bit might still be arguably arcadey, but heck this still beat Mass Effect's attempt at morality any day. It just felt so good, worked with the game's theme and story, and felt like you were actually making a difference in the world because you wanted to rather than being prodded into it. I want to see this done more, and to think so many try and stumble so hard with this "innovative" thinking while a simple and undersold PS2 game did it stealthily better is quite an embarrassment. I think morality is a mechanic that has entered gaming for good by now though, and its here to stay and improve. Again its probably ok to keep things silly and black and white in some cases (Infamous might be a fine example,  they're quite happy with radically going one way or the other with a theme of hero or villainy clear at the goal), but I think we really need to see it improve to. Seriously guys, its awesome when its done right, so lets fix the formula for the better of gaming. Thanks to the reference of Okami, and just the potential I can see in having players feel so good (or evil) in how they influence a digital world beyond poor binary functions, I'd really like to see it happen more. I think it could be one of the better possible innovations yet to be truly found. So its my #1 thing. Ok well... I'd give it up for good sword play, but again we already have Chivalry for that.