Submissions by ConradTurzynski tagged ethics

In this game, you play as the commander of a small group of soldiers in a section of trench in an unnamed war (perhaps in an alternate history of earth, though the setting shouldn't really matter, all that matters is the technology has to be contextually limited). The game will be first person, and the soldiers around you would preferably all have a unique face and personality, as well as sophisticated facial motion-capture and great voice acting.

Your base consists of a central parapet, and the trench run in front of it, with your utilities behind the line. You can task your soldiers to do various activities, some they'll enjoy, some not so much, and you have to manage everything from your soldiers hunger, morale, thirst, to their equipment, to how tired, warm or cold they are.

The aim is to provide a stressful and realistic scenario in which you have to make difficult and sometimes brutal decisions to ensure your section of the line isn't broken by the (unnamed) enemy.

The game will be fully 3-D and viewed in the first person view, with no cutscenes and as little immersion breaking distractions as possible.

Managing your men (doing watch at night, cleaning equipment, keeping guard over prisoners, etc) was influenced by Fallout Shelter. There will be a set of stats that each of your men will be specifically proficient at, or generally good at a few. You'll have to put certain soldiers in certain places, and if they are good at the task you have given them, their morale will increase.

I think it'd be nice to have a sort of 'recap' phase at the end of each day (days survived being the measure of how well you do) in which you get to talk to all of your men, and generally assess the state of your base. This phase will be when you do most of your management.

While all of this stressful management is going on, you will also be able to personally lead missions to certain places to acheive certain goals. Your rescources will effect which missions you decide to lead. Certain missions will be totally up to you if you want to do them, they may seem beneficial to you. Other missions will be urgent, and will be sent to you via orders. Orders when achieved lead to extremely useful benefits (or not) such as more rations/weapons/gear/men to reinforce your base.

I'd like the game to feature equipment that ranges from borderline unusable (weaponry from past wars, lack of warm clothing for winters, etc) to cutting edge technology. Weapons will jam, weapons will backfire, weapons will kill the men that use them. Your mens lack of training will get them killed. These things you will need to manage, and your failure to do so will lead to you having to watch your men die. I'd like the combat to be similar to games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Fallout 3/New Vegas, and the squad controls to be similar to Starwars: Republic Commando.

Combat will be a nescessary part of the game (you'll have to repel enemy attacks, which will feel very sudden if you fail to scout properly) but i'd like combat to feel like something you really want to avoid.

Missions could be scavenging no-mans land for firewood/food, searching nearby derelict villages for the same reasons, and travelling backwards away from the line to the nearest city, which is a political quagmire.

The country you belong to is divided into political parties. This part of the game is up to the player to get involved in or not; but deciding to ignore the politics can have many effects on your gameplay experience, being involved in the politics can have great rewards if done so thoughtfully.

An example of this; a political party has arrived from a neighboring nation, with offerings of high-tech weaponry and armour, but only if you join their cause. It is up to you whether or not you join them and receive the benefits, but their ideals are in contrast to your nations as a whole.

This is getting super wordy, but this is the basics. It'd be like a social experiment, but also a game that highlights the horrors of world war one/two as apposed to the heroic view of soldiers we seem to have today. I'd like you to witness the futility of war, the stress of a soldiers life, and the general disregard for human lives by those at the top of our society. I'd also like people to be able to relate these ideas back to their own lives. I like the idea of games being fun, but with subtle (and not so subtle) ethical questions being asked of the player.

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