Bungie wants to make Oni a 'unique' game. Most of mankind does not take well to change, so Bungie must be careful to stick to conventions that work, especially when appropriating from an established art form like anime. However, Bungie must also be ready to tackle 3D gaming and storytelling problems in innovative and exciting ways. Here are my ten suggestions (in no particular order) that might help Oni stand out from the crowd, yet be a game with mass-market appeal.
- Make the game equally fun for onlookers, old and new players.
Bungie can sell many copies simply for Oni's passive entertainment value. As in coin-op arcade games, Oni must entice people with self-running demos, animated segments revealing backstory, and killer in-game visuals. If a lone sales clerk playing against the AI starts to draw a crowd of curious shoppers, Bungie will have a winner. Similarly, players should not be having any less fun than the people staring over their shoulder.
The way to succeed is to test extensively, looking over the shoulders of first-timers and old-timers alike. Console gamers and arcade players are just as important for Oni as first-person-shooter players and anime viewers. If Bungie-loyal beta testers are the only source of user information, you cannot expect Oni to appeal to the mainstream market.
- Many short, seamless cut-scenes.
If Total Audio is working on Oni, their voice acting should be able to bring any animated character to life. With a powerful 3D engine, pre-rendered full-motion video is unnecessary and distracting. Sega's House of the Dead has many, many short cut-scenes where control of the game suddenly switches to a script with audio. Far from being distracting, Sega accomplishes within a few seconds what normally requires briefing screens and menus ('Sophie!'). One tried-and-true technique is to draw black 'cinemascope' bars at the bottom and top of the screen when the game switches to a cut-scene.
- Even more changes of angle.
Anime is all about emotion, not just the sterile description of events. Traditional anime techniques like changing the angle of the camera and slow motion are essential for Oni. When Konoko squeezes off a rocket, a split second cut of her eyes squinting will intensify the moment. The exceedingly simple 'single-white-frame' is indispensable for conveying the force of a connected punch or bullet. Konoko should die in slow motion, spraying blood from her mouth. When Konoko finishes off an opponent, loop the final kick three times from different angles. Jumping off a high ledge should cut to a low-angle to convey the moment of takeoff.
- Minimal screen clutter.
If possible, nothing should be on screen except the game world. This means no onscreen ammo counts, no 'health bars', and no overlaid maps. If Oni is operating in a hyper-realistic 3D world, why ruin it with 2D clutter? The game should look even better than TV. If real architects (rather than dungeon masters) design the levels, getting lost is less of an issue.
So how do you check what Konoko has, or where you are? Simple, just put 'you are here' maps near elevators or empty out her magazine into her hands. Use the 3D camera to your advantage and cut to close-ups when revealing details. Hit the tab key, and Konoko should pull out and unfold a map. Cut to her point-of-view, and maybe use left-and-right keys to turn pages. Press a 'check inventory' key and Konoko will unload her three last bullets into her hand. She will automatically reload before performing the next action. It is realistic, dramatic, and faithful to anime.
- Variances in walking and standing styles.
How can you tell if Konoko is injured or in the pink of health? A simple limp in her walk can go a long way. The characters in Oni are not 2-D sprites, they are 3-D models with many degrees of freedom in movement. Exploit that with expressive grimaces on their faces, make them grasp wounded arms while walking, reduce them to a hand-and-knees crawl when very badly injured, or just make them pant when they've had a few bruises. If every body part is individually damageable, programming would be horrendous but conveying damage would be a conceptually simple task. In addition, the possibility of taking out opponents' kneecaps is delectable.
- Do it all in the eyes.
The characters in Oni must seem aware of their surroundings. Konoko and the opponents need to look around, rather than stare straight ahead. When Konoko is alone, she should glance left and right, keeping an eye out for trouble. Any noise will make her look in the direction of the noise. Allowing her to pivot around the waist will also be a nice touch, especially when shooting from mid-range. Opponents need to turn their faces towards her, rather than just look where they are going. Konoko's eyes need to narrow, open wide and blink. This will go a long way in establishing believable characters in a believable environment.
- Minimal, yet visible weaponry.
Konoko needs to remain agile for kicks and punches. Players should be limited to carrying only three weapons at any one time: two holstered and one strapped behind her. Anime characters rarely have tons of guns at their disposal (only mecha do). Picking up weapons on the floor and throwing spent guns are crucial to anime fights.
This will also negate the need for a weapon inventory. If I just look at Konoko, I should be able to tell what sort of weapons she has available. She could hold two handguns and sling a rocket launcher behind her back. If she wished to pick up a new weapon, she would have to drop the rocket launcher. This requires only a single drop/pick-up 'action' key that would drop whatever slung weapon she has (even if she is holding it in her hands) and pick up any weapon she is standing over. To toggle between her handguns and her third slung weapon, she needs another key. I believe these two keys are a worthy replacement for the traditional Marathon cycle-through-inventory keys.
- Everything not nailed down must be mobile.
That includes dropped weapons, which should travel a little distance if Konoko drops it while running. In a cooperative game, throwing loaded weapons to an unarmed ally would be beautifully cinematic. Kicking floored weapons away from enemies is another dramatic twist, as well as hurling your own spent weapons out of everybody's reach (perhaps into a stairwell).
With the same 'action' key I mentioned earlier, Konoko could pick up chairs, plants and boxes and hurl them at enemies, or simply move them around for cover. Both hands would be required, so she would have to holster and sling all her weapons before picking up any furniture. Any stationery on a desk should fly when she tips the desk over.
- Specific, not scripted fighting.
Also known as the 'Tekken vs. Virtua Fighter' debate, this calls for fight mechanics that work like Namco's Tekken 3 or Sega's Virtua Fighter series. For controlling hand-to-hand fighting, Bungie has the option of forcing users to precisely key in a predetermined sequence of punches and kicks (known to Tekken and Tekken 2 players as 'strings'). If properly executed, Konoko could produce a visually spectacular (perhaps even unblockable) series of martial arts moves. This would be excellent for onlookers, but is eventually detrimental to the gameplay.
Players of Virtua Fighter and advanced players of Tekken 3 use a small set of very specific moves. In Virtua Fighter, all the moves require very few button pushes or joystick nudges. This has the tempo of a real fight, in which the player must second-guess the opponent's next move and dodge or intercept very specific, unpredictable attacks. Sega thus reduced the variety of possible attacks in favor of expanding the range of possible 'combos'. With Bungie's interpolation technology, performing single moves one after another will look as smooth as predetermined combos. With scripted strings, Bungie limits the players to using something the designers had to think of first.
Why limit the vocabulary of fighting strategies with strings? If the strings are unblockable, then opponents have no room to respond, and the game becomes boring. If one can block the strings, experienced players will quickly stop using strings in favor of singular, unpredictable moves. Take a page from RISC technology: simpler moves and shorter moves make better combos.
- Confusion and stealth.
Bungie already hinted that it is possible to shoot out the lights and use the cover of darkness to drop grenades and make invisible exits. This means that the environment must readily accept and display abuse. Lights that are shot out should remain off for the rest of the game ('emergency lighting' might be a nice touch, flooding the room in a red glow). Furthermore, shooting out the lights means nothing if the AI still knows exactly where you are. The layered AI in Oni must both be able to panic and make predictions regarding where Konoko should be.
The AI is apparently able to communicate with other opponents. This throws a tasty element of stealth in the game, where Konoko will need to perform sneak attacks and silent neck-snapping actions in order to keep away reinforcements. The AI should also to respond to sounds, such as thrown rocks (a decoy) or splashing water.
Confusion is a difficult emotion to model, but important for the dramatics of the story. If Konoko is protected by an invisible force-field, the AI opponents should stop shooting her once it realizes that shooting isn't doing any good. Again, the AI should predict what ought to happen in the game, and when things do not happen as expected, they could either pause or start to panic.
There you have it. If you happen to be a Bungie employee working on Oni, I would really like to hear from you, even if just to know that you had a good laugh. I also welcome the discussion of these opinions in the OniWeb forums. You can contact me at philip@mit.edu.