I spent my Sunday yesterday carefully archiving my Fallout 2 mod, considering edits I will make to my Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 XML files, and re-visiting the immersive neon vistas of the Deus Ex mod Redsun 2020. It occurred to me as I lay in bed that night that if I suddenly was able to retire and not worry about finances, jobs, insurance, or what have you, the first thing that I'd wish to be able to do would be to become a modder. I'd have unlimited time to get good at graphics, learn some coding, and become familiar with the clunky editing software of the mid 90s. I'd go so far as to say that if I had unlimited money I'd even look for programmers and game designers associated with the old products and hire them on a private basis to help me. Hell, I could even go to a community college and take courses on programming in C.
As my fantasies began to blur with my dreams under the diamond-studded velvet of the tropical night I realized that when I re-visit old mods I enjoy I feel a lot like I feel when I have a recurring dream. I've had recurring dreams since I was a small child; dreams that took place in identical locations I would revisit night after night and remember vividly during the day.
As a child, most of my recurring dreams were nightmares. In fact, as a child, I remember being tortured by nightmares almost every night so that I consciously dreaded falling asleep. One recurring location from when I was 5 or 6 was a purple cloud in outerspace. On top of the purple cloud there were square buildings that a person might expect to find in a city; ordinary stores and that sort of thing. However, among the buildings was the mouth of a cave with a grey stone opening and utterly impenetrable darkness encompassed by the grey archway. My recurring nightmare was floating helplessly through the air towards the unknowable darkness propelled by some sinister force. As I the mouth of the cave was upon me I'd spread my arms out to catch the sides of the cave but the force would back me up and ram me forward again repeatedly until the darkness swallowed me and I'd wake up in rigid terror. Come to think of it, a lot of my nightmares as a child had to do with being pulled through space in a direction I did not want to go; perhaps I felt very helpless or disempowered as a child.
But now that I'm 25 years old my recurring dreams are ethereal and pleasant experiences which cause a bubbling of happiness and sadness deep inside my belly when I recount them. About a year ago I had a recurring dream which took place in an opulent hotel. There was a lobby with a mezzanine and elaborate escalators, stairs, and elevators leading to both levels. Within this lobby there were several bars and restaurants filled with elegant diners and I was able to get kirin ichiban beer, my favorite Japanese beer, on tap at every bar. The decor was characterized by red carpets and mahogany wood colors. From the lobby I could take an elevator up to a floor that had rooms. I always had a room at the hotel but the floor containing the rooms was something of a geometric maze and it was impossible to remember where the room was; I had to go through the maze and find it during each dream sequence to be freshly rewarded with its discovery.
The climax of each dream was not the lobby or finding the room, though. Using the elevator after I'd found my room, I could go to a VIP area at the top of the hotel characterized by tasteful dusky gold colors, carpeted floor, and dark wooden colors. I somehow feel like this look was inspired by childhood visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, perhaps by a certain furniture gallery with similar coloration. Once I was in this VIP area, I could search for a glass elevator. The glass elevator was always the true climax to my dream.
There would be a glass elevator with comfortable seats that would rise high above the roof of the hotel. It was following a structure that let it do this rather than floating in the manner of Willy Wonka's elevator. But I would have a cold kirin ichiban in hand and I would look down over a cityscape at night and in my heart I would feel an incredible feeling of peace and well being. I could tell by the lights that the city was neither Tokyo, nor Paris, nor London, but rather the city where I grew up and which I love best of all, New York City. After this point I would wake up and feel a great salty sweetness inside me and tears would be straining to burst from my closed eyes. It was a strange feeling and even now as I recall it my eyes water slightly for no apparent reason. Most dreams are rapidly forgotten but recurring dreams such as this one are seared into my memory and stay with me forever.
I think that when I revisit my old favorite games repeatedly it's a similar mental dynamic to my recurring dreams in that I can revisit old feeling and emotions when I replay them. I believe that may be why I like mods so much. For example, Deus Ex holds a very special place in my heart and I never get tired of playing it repeatedly or of playing various mods for it repeatedly. I think that in addition to the top-notch gameplay which Deus Ex offers I am also revisiting all kinds of positive emotions I first experienced when I played this game. Furthermore, some of the New York City levels in Deus Ex are very convincing so I perhaps also revisit nostalgic feelings of growing up in New York City when I play this game.
Following from this, I wonder if it would be compelling and rewarding to make in the future a Deus Ex mod that takes place in locations that have emotional importance to me, specifically New York City and certain parts of Tokyo, as I remember them in the 80s. If I wonder how I would feel if I were to replay these settings repeatedly?
Naturally, two major questions arise from this line of thought. The first question is, "Deus Ex is now literally 10 years old. Considering how mods typically require years of development how many people would actually be able to play such a mod assuming you ever completed it?" The way I see it the fact that there are still pretty active Deus Ex mod communities and abandonware sites with 20+ year old software suggests that there would always be people willing to give it a whirl. Look at such excellent mods as "Burden of 80 Proof" and "Zodiac". Besides, I feel that I'm an elitist at heart, and that way there would be no waste-of-flesh twelve year old bratty gamers to deal with. The second question is, "Even if a concept is interesting to you why would anyone else play something that has such a high degree of personal significance?" Well, I feel that a work of extreme personal significance, such as John Milius' "Conan The Barbarian" can still appeal to other people by presenting visuals that appeal to everyone or touching on themes (i.e. the philosophy of Nietzche) which are important to many people.
The truth is that memories from childhood aren't totally complete and although I have a many vivid memories of 1980s New York City I would still have to spend time reconstructing a lot of the look and feel from old movies and photo images and this would allow for a common frame of reference with other people. I also feel like a lot of people would enjoy seeing the look and feel of 80s New York. 80s New York City had a lot of ethnic neighborhoods with small family restaurants. There were still low-rent hideyholes where European immigrant descendant tailors would, in poorly lit rooms built back in the 40s, would tailor your suit cheaply. There were still dark and moldy African import stores and Chinese style fish markets in Chinatown with first generation immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Beijing. Today, New York City has lot a lot of that vitality. As the economy's improved a lot of yuppies have moved in, prices and rents have risen, and a lot of the visible parts of the city have been overrun by well-financed companies that deal in highly standardized goods (overpriced mediocre crap that is well packaged, actually) to these transient yuppies. Increasingly, although they are still to be found, there is less and less place for the mysterious low rent immigrant tailor or the family-baked Turkish pastries. I feel like it would be compelling to portray a city with that kind of diversity and indeed to have recurring locations within that setting. I think the emphasis needn't necessarily be on huge maps like a lot of mods have; it just needs to be on lovingly constructed ones.
I also feel like Tokyo could be a very compelling location for a game. The thing about Tokyo in US-based productions is that a lot of times the portrayal of Tokyo isn't always very realistic (see the portrayal of Japan in the Bond film "You Only Live Twice"). After all, the audience isn't necessarily familiar with Tokyo, so the purpose of the production is essentially more to provide an enchanting and exotic backdrop to whatever the main action is. As such, I would not, for the most part, focus on a realistic portrayal of everyday Tokyo. Instead, I would focus on the ethereal level of luxury and decadence that may be found there inside the corporate buildings if you've got the connections and the cash.
I have been fortunate in my life that certain relatives of mine in Japan were able to show me a little bit of the otherworldly experiences that can be bought in Tokyo. I'll tell about one experience I've had to demonstrate what I am talking about. I've been to a restaurant in Tokyo which would exclusively serve only executives of a certain bank, their families, and their guests. It was deep within an urban skyscraper and totally hidden from the outside. My first memory of this place is walking down a long corridor. The walls were immaculate white and soft white light seemed to glow off of every surface; it seemed like something out of a stereotypical story about someone dying in an operation and floating down a white corridor towards "the light". The floor we walked was smooth and glistening pinewood panels in the center with a flat layer of colored glass marbles on both sides of the wood path between the path and the walls. Under the marbles were white plastic panels that emitted this soft glowing light. The light must have been refracting through the marbles for the unique glowing effect.
We traveled down this pathway and branches off of it lead to private rooms until we reached our private room. The floor was of tatami and the inner walls had the same sterile glowing whiteness. The table was low to the ground in the Japanese style. Menus were printed on thick textured paper with shiny bits, entirely in Japanese, and with no prices listed. The waitress wore a traditional kimono. I remember some of the dishes. One dish was sashimi delicately arranged on snow with iridescent curls of paper as a garnish. Another was a creamy sea abalone cooked in its shell.
This episode demonstrates how in Japan a person can experience something akin to a phantasm out of a dream. It's just a question of cost and exclusivity. More to the point of this essay, I feel like a video game set in Tokyo could consist mostly of surreal scenes like the above and still seem compelling, especially to people who haven't actually visited Tokyo, i.e. a lot of gamers in the US.
As an aside, there is one aspect of 1980s Tokyo which is very dear to me and which is disappearing. That is the 100-year old traditional wooden houses that made up a lot of Nerima with paper sliding doors, separate bath houses, gardens, and small hot water boilers sitting over the sink. An amazing touch of Japan's developing country past with modernity. A relative of mine lived in one and I spent many summers there. These houses are now being torn down to make room for more poorly-planned urban sprawl and if I had the ability to make mods I'd like to represent some of these wooden houses in one.
So, I can imagine a Deus Ex mod set in the 80s that takes place in New York City and Tokyo and focuses on those two locations. I think that the basic weapons in the game would have to be changed to reflect the 80s, so the 10mm pistol would probably become a berretta 92F, etc. I think that the nanotechnology and augmentations that the player has can be taken for granted as they certainly existed in 80s science fiction but perhaps the biolectric cells would have to be replaced with 9 volt batteries or something.
I'm thinking of a storyline that mimics the landmark Chuck Norris film, "The Octagon". The player character is a top secret CIA operative with cutting edge nanotechnology. There is a major secret CIA base in New York City where he works. The player character was born in Japan to an American mother who was working for the military and a Japanese father, who was a ninja master. The player character learned how to be stealthy and how to use Low Tech Weapons from his father. However, one day, when the player character was a teenager, both his father and mother were brutally killed by Japanese RV-driving right-wing nationalists who did not approve of the interracial marriage. The main character went back to the US and ended up majoring in Government with an International Relations Concentration and a minor in Literature at Cornell University. This background ensures that the main character is familiar with New York City (a 5 hour bus ride away) and also that the main character is well-read. He is familiar with both "just war theory" but also with arguments for sovereignty, self-determination, anti-colonialism, and pacifism, and can quote various philosophers at will. I believe that this would lead to more interesting in-game dialogue between the main character and NPCs as well as more nuanced moral choices for the player to make. Finally, the main character is recruited as a CIA operative. Because of his education, sensitivity, and knowledge of international relations he is given the nano augs and groomed to undertake the most delicate missions with potentially disastrous diplomatic repercussions. The main character is at this point subconsciously driven as well to use his job as a means to get back at the people who killed his parents by being in the position to kill them as a CIA operative.
So, when this main character, the hero of a few international situations and crises, (since at this point in time virtually everyone who plays a Deus Ex mod is a super-good player who finds Deus Ex gameplay to be easy, the whole "rookie trainee" thing strikes me as being inappropriate) is in New York City at the CIA base, he gets a new assignment. The CIA suspects that someone is planning to bomb the UN building. However, they suspect that the terrorists are in fact a Japanese right wing nationalists, so the situation is extremely delicate. They assign the main character to investigate.
The main character then travels around New York City talking to characters and collecting clues while the player takes in the vistas of diverse 1980s New York. There would be the chance with some NPCs to hold philosophical discussions about the merit or demerit of the UN system, of terrorism versus freedom fighters, and the role of the United States in the world, with the main character being able to take several positions in the conversation while quoting various authors and philosophers. There would also be a lot of introspection in the manner of Chuck Norris in "The Octagon" which would be represented by the hero's face appearing in the infolink window and having the thoughts appear there. Finally, though, the trail leads the main character to Gramercy Park...
...in the middle of Gramercy Park there is the dead body of a person the main character was supposed to meet. And suddenly, NINJAS...
...spawn in the trees and bushes of Gramercy Park. They attack with katanas and throwing knives and move very fast so that they are hard to hit and also make no noise when running. This would be an extremely challenging battle. Gramercy Park is a very small park and area in New York City so the map could practically be a small arena map in effect. After the battle it turns out that the assassins were a couple of top ninjas that only could have been hired by people with certain specific knowledge, and this clue leads the main character to new NPCs in New York City. The player character can choose to kill or not to kill the NPCs and their guards and staff.
Finally, the player character returns to the CIA office and he is deployed to Japan. It seems that a crazy right wing nationalist in Japan named Seikura is training terrorist ninja and he must be stopped, but the Japanese government can't do it because Seikura has strong yakuza contacts and they keep pulling strings in the government to hamper investigation and action. So from there, the player travels to Japan. He sulks around in Neirma, meets a contact in an old wooden house, and learns that Seikura and his staff will all be in an opulent restaurant in a corporate building tonight. So the player must first breech the building security and enter the restaurant area, which would be a separate map. Then there would be a bloody and Tarantino-esque battle in the surreal restaurant with Seikura, who is actually a ninja master, and the guy who had the main character's parents killed years ago, and his most dedicated and fanatical staff. Following the battle the Japanese police equivalent of the SWAT team would be out for the character's blood and he'd have to make it back to the wooden hideout house in Neirima.
The final scene of the game would be in one of the recurring locations in New York City, perhaps an ethnic bakery or authentic French café or something, or even a large Chinatown restaurant. The main character's boss is debriefing him over food and congratulating him on a job well down. However, suddenly, NINJAS...
...descend on the position and try to kill both the boss and the main character. In a final bloody showdown, once the character kills the last remnants of Seikura's vengeful followers, the character gives a final speech while the camera angle looks down at him from a high diagonal with the blood spatters and dead ninjas strewn about. Maybe he quotes the opening lines of Heike Monogatari: "All is vanity and evanescence. The mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind", and surmises that the fatalistic worldview and rigid behavioral code of the ninjas lead them to premature action and demise at the coffee shop. He criticizes this worldview as being outdated which represents how at last he is psychologically free of the burden of guilt and grief from his parents' death many years ago. Then the credits roll to Japanese flute music.
Wouldn't that be an awesome gaming experience? Furthermore it would seem like it wouldn't be very technically difficult since the only new things required would be props, background graphics, and that sort of thing. It seems like the biggest challenge would be in creating new objects, characters, and effective atmosphere.
Hell. Even if I never actually create an actual Deus Ex mod, this would be a pretty kickass basis Shadowrun adventure to run, or even for a story!