I Have a Dream...

No offense meant to the late, great, Dr King, but that title felt fitting even though I'm going to talk about video games.

I love the Action RPG genre. It all started with pumping quarters into Gauntlet (Red Warrior sadly needed food badly a lot...) then it exploded into a full bore obsession with Diablo and all the various games that it spawned. While I love the never-ending quest for more loot and harder challenges, I'm often left wanting when it comes to the world. These type of games scream out for an larger, more open world like those seen in other more traditional RPG's and MMORPG's. What I would love to see is a sandbox-style Action RPG.

Here me out. You travel across a hex map. In each hex there's a chance of an encounter. If that encounter is monsters, then you zoom into a random map based on the environment that you're travelling in to fight or flee with the creature(s) you've stumbled upon. If that encounter is uncovering a forgotten tomb or a cave entrance, then you go into a dungeon (randomized like the early Diablo 1 levels or what you see in Torchlight II these days). There would still be set landmarks to tackle like the crypt of an ancient lich, or the castle of the evil warlord, or the den of a dragon or demon or some other such monstrosity. There could even be quest strings that lead you along an adventure path of sorts, but the choice of where to go and what to do is up to you. Not interested in tackling the Swamp Dragon? Go fight the giants of the North instead, or just explore the world. The loot system would stay like what is seen in Action RPG's, random and tailored to level and somewhat to class.

The base game would cover a set area, but it would be expandable. A new area might even include new classes, monsters, quests, and rewards tailored for that area. You could even create planar levels for super high-level content.

I wish I had the skills to do something like this, but I don't have the coding savvy and I certainly don't have the artistic ability and rendering know-how to pull something like this off. This could be a huge idea in the hands of the right company. I know I would buy such a game in a heartbeat. Then again, I may be the only person that something like this would appeal to.

Anyway, that's my dream. I dream of an Action RPG that keeps giving me more to explore rather than having to run through the same quests over and over in my search of fortune and glory. It may not be the grandest dream ever, but dammit it's mine!