Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!
Now, I was watching a stream from Fabian of Gamerthumb TV, and we got into a brief conversation about a super hero team we both like, the Green Lanterns. And because it was a gaming channel, someone brought up what was needed to make a good Green Lantern game. And me being me, that got me thinking about how to make a good one.
First off, we take a page from DC Rebirth's Green Lanterns book and start you as a brand new Green Lantern. In fact, if we pull a page from the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games, we can start your neophyte Green Lantern as an alien species, choose their gender, and choose their initial combat focus.
Now, doing things this way allows for a couple of things; first off, you're not messing with established characters, so you're not having to nerf someone like Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner to allow for a progression system; you get to build a brand new Green Lantern from the ground up the way you want to play them.
This also allows for an easy integration of gameplay and story; you've just got your Green Lantern ring, so you're entering basic training, which gives a natural way to put you into a tutorial as well as giving new players a natural exposition dump. In this way, you the player would be learning the ropes of being a Lantern at the same time the character you created is.
Now, the role of the Green Lantern in the DC universe is to police their individual sector and provide backup for other Lanterns when they are in need. Higher level Green Lanterns can be "promoted" from that job and perform other tasks, like Honor Guard, drill sergeant and a mission focused Lantern. This allows for two types of gameplay; open world and mission based. Now, you can have an open world within your sector (but not the whole universe, since the universe is VAST), and mission based, both within the sector and outside it. For example, you could be patrolling your sector as you fly through space and hear a distress call from a planet, go do your job and then go back to patrol, calling for backup if you need it. You can also provide backup if you get a distress call from another Lantern. However, once you get enough levels under your belt, you get promoted toward a mission focused Lantern, which pushes the story along.
As for gameplay, we'd need a couple of important things. We'd need dogfighting mechanics, of course, since a Green Lantern can fly through space and shoot lasers from their ring, so they'd be able to perform aerial combat without problem. We'd also need a mechanic for combating groups and mechanics for one on one combat, since this, is of course, a superhero game. And of course, since all Lanterns can fly, all combat has to function in both the air and on the ground.
You'd also need to have a mechanic on the Ring needing to be recharged. You see, a Lantern ring can get a full day's use out of a single charge, depending on the usage of it. A day of heavy conflict is going to run out of power faster, so you could implement your charge as a sort of health bar. Basically, you could use your ring's power for battle for a certain amount of time before you start to dip into the charge reserved for health. The reason for this is because one of the functions of the ring is to project a protective energy shield around a Lantern's body, so you're using the charge to both fight a battle and protect yourself at the same time. However, you can use your combat ability meter to recharge your health and vice versa in a pinch. However, when both run out, you're out of power and need a recharge.
And that's the important part; the recharge. You should be able to recharge your ring at any time, since a good Lantern has access to their personal power battery at all times, usually by creating a pocket dimension to keep it. But beware; if you're on a terrestrial planet, you could drop to the ground and hide so you've got a place to recharge. However, if you're out in space, and you run out of power, your protective energy field that keeps you alive in space fails, and you're going to run out of air real quick.
This also allows for a hub world of sorts; Mogo. Mogo is a Green Lantern who just so happens to also be a living planet, and is the current home base of the Green Lantern Corps. And after their original home base, Oa, was destroyed, the Central Power Battery was relocated to Mogo. The Central Power Battery presents a constant full charge for the rings, thus, allowing you to fly, train and level up your abilities at home base easily.
Now, for the hardest part; constructs. For those reading this who don't know, the Green Lantern Corps are able to create solid objects out of light utilizing only their willpower and imagination, and those constructs are able to do exactly what the Lantern things they should be able to do. The problem with constructs is that they're all unique to the individual Lantern based on their background and imagination. However, there is a way around this, and by simply remembering that you're a brand new Green Lantern, and not Kyle Rayner or Jon Stewart. Those two are special in terms of their constructs; Kyle's a comic book artist, so his constructs are the most creative, and Jon Stewart is a former Marine and architect, so his constructs are created as having all the parts the thing is supposed to have. But as a brand new Lantern, you'd be more focused on utility of your constructs, rather than intricacy. A construct sword is going to look like a basic sword of light, and not have all the details you'd see on a real one. However, you could implement the ability to add detail to your constructs after you've leveled this character for a while.
As for story? Well, that would be up to the writers of the game to handle that, but based on the setup I created, it would be built around the concept of rebuilding the Corps, doing the job, and the conflicts with the other Corps that you get via Green Lantern mythos.
And now, the important part for a modern game; multiplayer. This is easier to implement here than other super hero games that aren't fighting games; wars. The Green Lantern Corps sometimes fight the Red Lantern Corps and the Sinestro Corps, in addition to other conflicts. You could use your custom character to join in a conflict against them. You could also use a custom character to join other Corps in these wars to fight on either side. There would have to be a couple of exceptions, of course; you couldn't be an Orange Lantern, since there is only one, and if you're playing a male character, you can't be a Star Sapphire, since they don't recruit men. The devs could throw in events in the multiplayer wars, to illustrate the ongoing conflict in the galaxy.
But, that's my take on how to make a good Green Lantern game. If you've got any other ideas, drop a comment, but until then, stay beautiful freaks!
