   "Brainwashed" Rough Game Concept
  I've been thinking about this game idea for a while now, and I think it could work . The game is a role playing first person shooter, in a not-too-distant future setting. You live in a highly-controlled 'brave new world'-style society.  To diverge from the generic heroic rebel character idea, the game would start out with you as a law enforcement officer of some kind. And the game would have it so you enjoy doing this for a while - the rebels you are capturing/killing would be depicted as evil(by whatever traditional means of artistry makes sense, change the lighting for them and make them ugly and bitter to you), and the government would be depicted as a good system ( Same idea, make everything light and happy if it relates to the government.)As a player, you'd get enjoyment from killing the "enemies" As time goes by, your 'perspective' meter changes according to what actions you take or things you see. Maybe at one point you read the journal of a rebel or you see some police brutality or something, and the meter starts moving to a more rebellious perspective. The perspective thing would work like this: If you are completely brainwashed by the government, everything related to rebels always seems dark, evil, ugly, etc. If you're on the other side, the goverment and police are depicted in that way. However, if you're somewhere in between, you would get glimpses of the other side  at key points in the game. Hopefully, seeing these things would drive the player to go against their superiors. At the end of the game, it wouldn't matter which side you were on -you'd still win, but there would be a sequence from the perspective of the other side, just to make you think that maybe you were fighting for the wrong thing all along ;).Questions:Would the perspective system work? Would players be willing to act as the police force for a while or would they turn on characters who act "nice" to them just because they don't like the idea of a highly-controlled society? Ideally, I'd like the players to run through the game the first time thinking they are playing the game as it was designed, but near the end they start seeing scenes from the rebel's perspective. Curious, they replay the game and look for more clues to turn their perspective. Once they figure out how the perspective system works, they may go to rebel and stay there or they could go back and forth between the two sides or whatever.  Is this reasonable?Has anyone done a system where the "mood" of the scene/certain characters depends on the main character's perspective? How do you advertise the game without giving away too much of the stuff the player is supposed to figre out?Do you think going through rebel missions where you're supposed to assassinate your previous officers (who now seem evil to you) would be fun? I do :)Should the "perspective meter" be a visible thing? Would that give away too much or it would it help gameplay? Thanks for reading all this. Have a nice day :)   
  It's a great idea, but the "mood" system seems a little odd especially with a metre. You could have occurances of things that go against the normal ideals of wha tthe government tells the main character throughout the game .. and still have the tricky bits at the end where you complete the game thinking "Did I do the right thing?" .. but the transition to the rebels could be very subtle and not on a metre.Or even put hints (eg: overheard communication) about things in previous parts of the game where you can go and find out more about what's going on .. perhaps in areas where your commander over your comm link says things like "What are you doing officer? Get back on duty, NOW!" And if you go and check them out you get other clues, perhaps a way to work in rebel objectives into your police ones, as extra rebel objectives, and eventually at a certain point going full rebel if you kill the wrong/right person (depending on how you look at it).I love the idea though. Game which are interesting and have multiple outcomes that do affect the storyline.But a clear "meter" would be odd for sure.   ;  Yeah I'm thinking a visible meter wouldn't make much sense. It would be a hidden thing.  I've been thinking about some cool stuff you could do in the game - like say theres a room with a camera, and you and some other police officers storm it and capture the rebels. At the time, it looks like you're doing the right thing. Later on in the game, you come across the tape again, and watch it with a rebel perspective. It would be awesome to see yourself in a different way later on.   ;  You've got a nice idea there.  Here's my take on it.  Quote:Would the perspective system work? Would players be willing to act as the police force for a while or would they turn on characters who act "nice" to them just because they don't like the idea of a highly-controlled society?IMO, players probably do not care about the perspective meter and will just shoot whoever they want to, generally siding with the rebels.  Quote:Should the "perspective meter" be a visible thing? Would that give away too much or it would it help gameplay? The perspective meter is good, and I think making it visible would be cool.Quote:Do you think going through rebel missions where you're supposed to assassinate your previous officers (who now seem evil to you) would be fun? I do :)Yes, I think it would be fun.The biggest problem will be to 'control' the player's actions so that the game will be played as it should be.  On one hand, maybe letting the player do whatever he wants will work.  I had a game called NARC for Xbox where you were an undercover cop.  You busted druggies and stuff and then had the choice of turning in the evidence or using them yourself.  Turning them in earned you a better rating, while using them lowered the rating and gave you an addiction which hurt you unless you took more.  The problem with using the drugs was that even though their side effects were kind of fun and could even help you sometimes(slo-mo and stuff), if your rating dropped too low you become a real cop instead of undercover, and until your rating was back you couldn't complete the missions.  Maybe using a similar technique would work.  You could make it so that at certain points in the game the player has to be aligned with one side or the other to continue.  Another way of doing it (which I think could be fun and is original afaik) would be to depict the world and players according to the player's perspective.  Say, for instance, at the beginning you are a cop.  Your perspective is skewed to like cops, so cops appear visually as "good guys".  This could mean they look clean or say nice things or whatever you can think of to make them appear friendly.  While the cops seem friendly, make the rebels seem "bad".  This could be done visually as well by making them kind of dirty and ragged (almost zombie-like).  The natural instinct, if done correctly, would be to shoot the rebels.  However, when the perspective skews to the other side (the meter shouldn't be visible here) then just, without notice, begin to draw the cops like the dirty, unclean people and vice versa.  Maybe the player sees police brutality going on in his mind, when really the cop is just issuing a speeding ticket.  Unfortunately for the player, he imagines the cop doing bad things until after he has killed him, at which point the cop is drawn to reveal that he actually was a friendly person.  At this point the rebels are shown to be innocent.  Maybe make the player blind to what the rebel is actually doing until he has hurt the cop.  You get the idea (I hope!).;  Yeah, thats exactly what I was trying to say. You put it much more clearly, thanks. :)The idea about making  up certain actions (like you said with the speeding ticket) was something I hadn't really considered. That sounds like a cool idea too.I think it would be great to have a system where after you kill someone, it gives you the other side's perspective. That would be a really interesting way to promote completing missions without killing people, heh.Thinking about this has just given me another idea: Maybe it would be interesting to drop the  dynamic perspective changing. Instead, you go through the whole game as an officer, doing missions for your commander or whatever. At the end of the game, you get a "congratulations" and credits, but the screen changes to show the rebel's perspective . You see a highly controlled police-state world where nobody is truly happy, etc. Instead of booting you to the main menu, it leaves you in-game, at the place where you killed the  rebel leader or whatever.  The game has turned completely inside-out. Your two best friends now seem like enemies (through the methods you talked about) and your first instinct is to run out of the room and shoot them. You quickly find yourself doing missions for the rebels, and the game starts over, but with a complete opposite goal. I can't decide which gameplay model would be more interesting, but they both seem like they could be pretty cool.   ;  Yeah that second one you described sounds pretty cool too.  Either way you go I think the skewed depiction of characters (visually) would do the job.   ;  Rather than having a meter that goes up and down, you could be brainwashed in several area's "Government" "Rebels" "Rich people"and then whenever you get to know more about the real situation, the brainwash goes down, until you see things simply as they are. So this would start with an angelic army giving develish rebels what they deserve and later in the game a similar scene would be a heavily armed army shooting down an undernourished rebel army.   