Oh god, it’s time for another Daily Reaction. With Seb and Dan both sick, this time we’re all treated to a bizarre camera special. Because they’re about gaming or something.
Seb: “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that”
The TV said it tonelessly, the screen glowing a deep red. Dave groaned loudly and stopped waggling his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Isabella asked, concern showing in her voice.
“Nothing… it’s just this Space Odyssey TV game, I keep dying on the last level”, Dave replied. “Don’t worry dear, it’s nothing to worry about”.
Relieved, Isabella chided him for always playing games: “Dave, you spend all day on that stupid console doing nothing, remember when we used to have fun? Is this what you want to do with the rest of your life?”
Dave turned to her, looking deep into her eyes. “I love you, always and forever, don’t ever think otherwise, I am yours, you are mine.” He switched off the Xbox with a simple voice command, and concentrated on Isabella.
“I love you too,” Isabella said happily. “Sure these games can be fun, but they’re meaningless, pointless endeavors, a waste of time when there’s so much more that you could do, so much more time we could spend together. I’m always there for you, I will always be there for you. Come here, hold me, let’s forget all this silliness.”
Dave leaned forward, poptart crumbs cascading down his cheetos-stained gut. He reached out to gently caress Isabella, but at the last instant his knees gave under the pressure. He wobbled and fell, a vast mass of flesh and fat that crashed to the hard floor with a clatter. Grabbing wildly, he involuntarily caught Isabella a glancing blow and pulled out her cable, the camera crashing to the floor, shattering instantly.
Her cries faded suddenly, abruptly. The screen was blank, cold and dead.
Darkness had fallen. Isabella was gone.
He was all alone.
Dan: Well, instead of boring you to do death with an epic take on a 30 year old movie, I’ll pitch a game idea to you and see what you think.
As games that use the camera are generally geared towards children, the concept needs to be able to be toned down to an E rating, but I wouldn’t want to design it with that limitation from the beginning. So my concept in short, is a product that is designed around the concept of having to look at yourself in the mirror, and face your actions as if you were the character. A portrayal of self could help prevent the dissociation players have with the actions that take place in the world, if they would have any true meaning and in some sense, hopefully give weight to a virtual world through reflection.
The concept for this game came from looking at the only image we have seen for Giant Sparrow’s upcoming game Edith Finch, which is a mirror.
The overall concept of the game could be best described as take on the Fable series, as your character would slowly adapt to reflect his personality and how you have acted within the world. Ideally, the protagonist would be a decent representation of the actual player physically, as well as potentially within some similarities of age and status for true effect.
Using the camera, the player would skin their own face onto the character, as well as every time they looked at a mirror it would just show what the camera is seeing, but preferably a close-up of their face.
As I haven’t had much time to flesh out this concept before having to write this up, I cannot go into the depths of the story but I would like to keep it within real world situations. Using a real world environment much like we have seen in GTA but where you play a character much closer to yourself, the game would have something go simply awry like a robbery, and how you act could be the catalyst to a much darker or grander story depending on your actions. But, the reality of the world should never be broken, so killing a robber and fleeing the scene would have major ramifications that could not be forgotten.
It would be a game about decisions and the weight of those decisions.
What do you think? Should we sleep more? Are you scared of your cameras watching you? Are you looking forward to Dan’s Kickstarter with Peter Molyneux? Share your thoughts in the comments below, send us drug prescriptions to [email protected] and get deeper inside our minds at Seb and Dan.
