RadioRadar Podcast 007: General badassery

I think that, done properly, you could make an incredible survival horror game set in Central America at the end of the 15th century. Playing as an Aztec or Cuban native in an open world environment, your main objective would be to avoid enslavement and subjugation at the hands of Christopher Columbus and his men. You would begin the game by hearing reports from outer Caribbean Islands of white men coming from the sea who speak a strange language and carry advanced technology. During this exposition, you would explore your (relatively) peaceful native village and meet your family and friends. You would also be introduced to the basic controls and gameplay, which would involve learning to make fire, hunting an animal to learn the combat system, skinning/cooking it to introduce a persistent hunger system, and tending to minor wounds using traditional herbs & medicines (essentially like Metal Gear Solid 3). Environments will consist of tribal villages and, later, colonial establishments and mines, broken up by vast forest areas which would make up the majority of the playable area (similar to Assassin's Creed 3 or Skyrim). The real game would start when, in the middle of the night, your village is suddenly raided and overtaken by the Spaniards. You would have to watch as they brutally killed anyone who opposed them, many of whom would include the friends you just met, and forcefully took your wife and daughter, either explicitly showing or implying that they are being taken to be forced into sexual slavery by Columbus himself. You would narrowly escape into the woods with nothing but the clothes on your back, a hunting knife, bow, and quiver with only a handful of arrows. You'd then spend a long, cold night in the forest, trying to forage for supplies to heal yourself and make a shelter to protect you from the elements, which would contextually affect your stamina bar along with hunger and injuries. From there, the bulk of the game would be spent trying to find where your wife and daughter were taken as well as avoiding discovery and capture by the Spaniards. Those familiar with history will know that there is no chance of saving your civilization from the Europeans' relentless colonization, which would lend an air of hopelessness to your pursuit. Acts of atrocity by the Spaniards would be commonplace to witness, and though you would occasionally be able to warn other villages of their approach and gain allies, you would often lose them just as quickly, again drilling in the hopelessness of the situation. Head-on approaches would be suicidal due to the Spaniards superior technology (ie. guns and cannons), so there would be a heavy reliance on stealth and tactical planning. For example, you'd often have to pretend to be one of the enslaved in order to get closer to potential allies or enemies carrying vital information. In the grand tradition of survival-horror, any guns you'd manage to find would have extremely limited ammo, containing only a single shot for you to use before they became useless (since most weapons would be either muskets or flintlock pistols). In addition, they would be far less accurate then your bow, and immediately draw the attention of any enemies within the nearby area. Like Deus Ex, ally and enemy deaths alike would be permanent, making it entirely possible to fail in your primary goal of rescuing your family if you aren't careful during crucial missions. Though Americans tend to have a sense of misguided admiration for Christopher Columbus, the historical truth is he and his men were inhuman monsters toward the Central American natives, which is why I believe they would make the perfect villains for a historically based survival-horror/stealth game.

PS: Sorry for the wall of text.

I'm going to need a tl;dr

Aw, I liked having Radioradar be on Wednesdays ): Though I suppose I am one of the few...

Samurai's dammit! And not hack n' slack Dynasty Warriors 17. More realistic one on one, single move duels, and pre-industrial Japan exploration, like the real samurai's use to do. And haiku's and Kanji art. And geisha's.

Here here. Take it back to the beginning of Man's time

QotW: I am surprised that the early origins of man have not been very well explored. Imagine Bethesda creating an Elder Scrolls open-world adventure where you play as a caveman emerging from his cave and venturing out into a wild untamed world. Instead of dragons you would encounter dinosaurs, discover fire, domesticate mammoths, war with other paleolithic tribes, fall in love by clubbing a potential spouse in the head and dragging them back to your cave! DLC potential too! Travel through time by becoming frozen in ice and experience important parts in homo sapien development such as helping to write the Hammurabi law, creating the Rosetta Stone, helping aliens build stone henge, becoming the spokes person for an insurance company. There's a lot of potential in our hairy ancestors...and be honest, who wouldn't want to mount a mammoth and rampage it into a small village?