So I know lot of you have your own ideas how you would make a good shadowrun game.

Personally I would do it as a one player game were you can actually, call your RL friends to help you pull off runs were they play with you in the game world for a while, I would make a parallel world which includes the matrix and a mirror world that would mimic the the in game world. The map would consist of a huge city with separate maps to be interiors of buildings (think instances like in World of Warcraft) I would also put in plenty of NPC characters for those who cant play online to help them pull off certain runs.

What are your ideas to make a game?

Hmmm, I think it would be better to make a thread directed at the problems of the Sr game until it come out, but assuming you make it more general and say "what do you want in the new SR game..."

I'd say that character customizatiion and representing character's unique abilities. An emphasis on awakened able to access astral and decker accessing the matrix. Any real-world stuff in shadowrun can really be emulated by an intricate mod of another game (such as Dystopia for HL2).

bottom of my list: Graphics. I would have preferred SR suffer growing pains on the current gen than face the risk of losing out to raising production costs versus how much money the franchise can get based on its noteriety. My biggest fear of the next gen is that originality will be thrown out the window to make sure game studios are guarenteed good return.

If by "good" you actually mean "true to canon and all of canon, and showing the whole of the SR world", then I'd have to say I would not attempt to make it. Because the people I worked for would be angry at me for pissing their money down the drain. Or i'd be facing a budget that would lead to crap going out the door.

Market of SR P&P people that that is important to >.<. Market of people that would tend to get bogged down by all the baggage because they did come up with the world, and that i'd likely drive away or simply not pull in >........................................................<.

Now if you are thinking a hypothetical situation with a bottomless vault with no fiscal resposibility constraints, that would be a different situation...

Hehe, you changed your post blakkie. I like the last one it had more ballz, but that one does have more insight.

It's always hard to create a complete picture of an entire universe, but in the case of the stuff coming out of the Vista/360 Sr game, it seems like they just aren't trying and that's a disservice.

I would have made a multiplayer co-op game (Baldur's Gate/Champions of Norrath)
Keep the timeline, only allow "level ups" at save points, and have karma and/or nuyen used to purchase things (karma for new spells/skill improvement, both for foci, nuyen for gear)
I would have lots of side "quests", and some random encounters, rather than all fixed encounters.
I would have different storylines depending on how you played (like Fallout)
I would have a way to move quickly to locations on the map (like Fallout)
I would make it for all the platforms and the PC, with an option to play online, but not an MMORPG.
There would have to be some variation from the P&P game, but you could remain a lot truer to the source than they did...

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that Fallout is the original model for a sandbox-type open-ended world, rather than GTA. They just successfully ported it into an action title.

The multiple resolutions for multiple types of characters perspective of Fallout would lend a lot to it. You could then make Faces as useful as street sams.

Also, the ability to associate amongst organizations in the game would be a good outlet for making unique paths (as was offered in Fallout).

I wouldn't say "Make fallout, but with SR", I would just say those are two things fallout did very well and RPGs in general could learn from.

Also, I'm not terribly upset that SR will be FPS-like in interface, I just hope it's morrowind and not Doom

Well they absolutely DESTROYED Battletech with their crappy Mechwarrior game. And I notice it is the same people working on Shadowrun. It looks like they are going for widest possible audience dumbest possible game as opposed to making a game that is true to Shadowrun. That is the affliction that consoles have brought to gaming. Everything is dumbed down.

One thing that I think would make for a very interesting game would be to take one player and call him "chief of security". He, instead of the GM, would control hostile NPCs.

That would reduce the mental load on the GM so he wouldn't have to administer all the rules and run tactics at the same time and give the party a bigger challenge. It would add a real human vs. human strategic dynamic instead of human vs. distracted guy.

In a Shadowrun MMORPG?

I'd shoot 98% of the population of the Internet in the face. Everything else would sort itself out after that.

I posted this on the official forums, though no one really replied to it so it kind of fell back. What really irks me about the whole thing is that what we want (an RPG) and what they want (an online, multiplayer, team-based FPS) are NOT mutually exclusive. Although this is, quite frankly, not well written, it was the first thing that immediately popped into my head when I heard of what they were doing, and is what I think they should have done:


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When I first heard of a Shadowrun game, I was hoping for a roleplaying experience, since even though I heard it was in first person, that didn't stop Deus Ex, System Shock, or the Elder Scrolls games from delivering great RPG experiences. However, what I saw was not that. I do, however, think that Shadowrun would make a great online, multiplayer, squad based FPS, but not in the way envisioned here.

Here's my idea: a mulitplayer CO-OP Deus Ex.

Here's how it would work. Players create their character, choosing which of many different possibilities to include. Decker? Street Sam? Adept? Rigger? Mage? A little bit of them all? It's possible. With their own unique character, players would join a game, where they all meet and get a call from Mr. Johnson with news of an upcoming job. They can bum around town, hear a little gossip from street npcs, etc. They then go to the meet, and get their assignment: steal a weapon prototype from the Ares complex down the street. If someone has negotiation skills, maybe they can talk the Johnson into handing out a little more nuyen in advance for gear. Whatever the players decide to do.

With the team assembled and the mission handed out, the run can begin. Players could either head straight there, or gather information before hand. Maybe talk to a fixer and get some heavier firepower with that cash you scammed from the Johnson. Or hit up your contacts and see if you can get some information on the complex, patrol routes, weaknesses in the security, computer passwords, etc. Or maybe go to a local bar and talk to the disgruntled Ares wage slave and see if he'll sell you a keycard in exchange for altering his boss's records to get this poor man out of the company (Hooray! Side-quest!). Or just stare wistfully at the looming Ares complex at the end of the street, its "TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT" sign and the hordes of guards just begging to be infiltrated. When everyone's ready, the plan can begin.

But what to do? Have the rigger drive a truck straight through the front doors, while the decker disables the alarm allowing the street sam to leap to the front guns blazing while the adept flips out and kills people, just as the mage fends off astral guards and the rigger sends some aerial drones in for air cover? Sure. Or how about all stealth-like, with the decker disabling security nodes in sequence so the team can sneak in, the rigger sending small drones through the ventilation system to scout while the mage uses invisibility and illusions on the team so they appear to be the janitors? That could work too.

However you do it, the team makes it to their objective and - oh, look at that - a new toy for your troll sammy, a fancy minigun. Hey look Mr. Troll, those Ares goons would love to see your new toy! *ALARM BLARES* Time to go! and -- oh crap, they have a tank. Time for the rigger to pull the truck around to the nearest exit while the decker delays the tank and everyone makes a hasty retreat.

With the gun in tow and everyone alive, it's mission accomplished. Players get some nuyen and karma with which to upgrade their character, who is then saved for the next run they want to take. Players could save the names of those they just played with on their Friends list, so in the future they can do more runs together and potentially build a sort of mini-story around their characters, team, and exploits (a video replay of runs would be awesome to string together a montage of a character's greatest "Hits").

Imagine that, players complete a run flawlessly, with tons of action, magic, vehicles, hacking, you name it. A recording of the run is uploaded to XBox Live, where others all over the world can see, with spectacular cinematic camera angles, how the Shotgun Kid and his posse pulled off that run that's been sitting on XBL's top 10 "Most Impossible Missions". Or you could just trade videos amongst friends of that one time the street sam charged those Renraku guards and forgot to load his gun.

Shadowrun is about having an immense amount of variety and diversity in the individual skills of the runners, who cooperate to pull off something big. It's not always about the guns and magic (though they help). It's about the overall experience and how each of these different aspects come together to create a single, unique world. You can do squad-based, you can do multiplayer, you can even do FPS, without making it yet another Halo or CS clone.


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The beauty of something like this is that it doesn't need to be Oblivion, and it doesn't need to be a persistent MMO world. A unique take on multiplayer with singleplayer-like aspects would do a lot to make the game stand out while at the same time being true enough to the Shadowrun universe and core rules that it could satisfy everyone.

Deus Ex/System Shock style RPG/FPS hybrid. I'd also toss into the mix some squad-level tactics and the commands to go with it to. For instance, if the player is the decker, you could give the command "Protect me", while you go into the matrix at the plug. On the other hand, you could tell the decker to do his stuff while you and the rest of the squad cover him. Missions would be selected ala "Deus Ex: The Invisible War", through a mission select screen, where you peruse offered jobs. Depending on the jobs you accept for what groups (and what your ratings are in various catagories, such as Agression, Lethality, Noise, etc.) will determine what future missions you are offered.

I'd probably go for a single-player RPG. No multiplayer elements whatsoever, just concentrate on making your experience while playing it feel as much like SR as possible.

Now, if I were simply making the kind of game I'd want to play, I'd definitely make a number of compromises, for the sake of having a manageable design, and keeping the focus on making this an RPG, as opposed to a cyberpunk GTA clone, or a Tron lookalike. Also because, given the inevitable heap of combat in any RPG, it'd make no sense to try to gear the game towards the archetypes that either don't leave their vehicles if they can help it, or stay away from the action. While you can make one game that'd let you play a street sam, an adept, a mage, a shaman, a PI, a face, or a B&E guy, making one about a decker or a rigger... Either would basically need a game of its own to do things right.

With that in mind, I'd likely take the ability to drive vehicles out, and follow that up with rolling the skills of deckers and drone riggers into one packgage, which would be covered by the sort of skill set a more stealthy-minded character might pick up. Hacking security systems, taking over drones, etc. I'd certainly want to include a simple Matrix overlay for most locations, but it wouldn't be a world of its own.

At that point, I think the main focus would be to make the game playable using one of two broad approaches: tech or magic, and then tayloring most locations and encounters so that they'd have something for any kind of character, and multiple ways of approaching the problem (social, stealthy, combat-oriented) while also including a few situations that only someone dedicated to a particular path would encounter / be able to deal with.

Or, to sum it up, I'd probably take an approach similar to that taken by the designers of Vampire: Bloodlines (while hopefully avoiding their mistakes) and throw in a good helping of Deus Ex...

I like Arkarys view on the game, thats how I have it planned in my head ass well. I really like the engine they used in the new ghost recon, third person shooter with an open city to roam in. (Mexico City in there case) You even have a friggen drone in Ghost recon. This could have been aproached in so many other ways.

Good stuff Arkary!

Did Deus X have a matrix?

hmm, should not be to hard to strap some simple RPG elements onto GTA.
instead of having the player aim and fire manualy. have a kind of lockon system so that the better skill, equals better chance at hitting and so on. it was pulled of nicely in a quake 1 mod based on warhammer 40000 and i still love the feel of that mod.

hmm, now that i think about it, didnt they do a smartlink kinda thing in the ghost recon for xbox 360? put the sircle over the highlighted hostiles and your assault rifle should in theory hit them and all that...

GTA with randomly generated missions (on top of some scripted ones for story. feel free to skip), cyberware and magic. presto...

at $100 a pop or there about...

Deus Ex/System Shock/GTA