Do you have a "dream game?"

At this moment, do you have a game that you want to play... that either you don't own... or that doesn't exist?

For me...

... I love the Brothers in Arms games, and while I generally enjoy the storytelling, I absolutely love the squad tactical command aspect of the game. It's a mechanic that I wish was ubiquitous, but since it's built on a slower gameplay model....

Anyway, at this moment my "dream game" would be a Brothers in Arms-style FPS game set in the Pacific Theater (not MP!) -- following the Marines as they island-hop and commanding teams during tactical combat.

Whether it's Gearbox or not, I'd love to see a developer make this.

I have had literal dream games, that is, games that my subconscious thinks of when I'm dreaming.

One recent-ish one was an MMO that allowed players to save and reload at any time. Players then figured out that, if you try to reload into a place that's occupied by another player, you would spawn in the nearest open space (even if on the other side of a wall); this was exploited by players to clear certain instances significantly faster than intended. (This is related to polymorph teleporting in Infinity Engine game speedruns, and also to a trick in some Civilization games that allows you to reach a new land mass by entering another civilization's territory and choosing to leave when demanded.)

Or, there's at least a couple cases of Castlevania games; I believe one was like Castlevania 2, but took you into the castle. (IIRC this was before metroidvanias were a thing in that series.)

As for dream game that I'd like to play, perhaps a game that combines the best parts of Final Fantasy 5 and the SaGa series, with a job system and non-XP based leveling. (Actually combining the two is non-trivial from a game design perspective.)

Something like Age of Decadence (regarding atmosphere, choices and consequences and the turn-based combat), bt on a larger scale. But I guess there is no market for something like that.

That's an interesting one! Honestly, I've always been after an open world RPG, where you can fly dragons freely. Such a simple thing, yet I can't ever exactly find anything with this feature. I know there is Shadow of War, but that's not quite what I have in mind either.

I'd like to see a smaller-scale version of something like this. Include the choices and consequences, the turn-based combat, and add some incredible build variety, but make the game short so it can be beaten in a few hours (casually). This way, when the player gets to the end, they'll be itching for more, probably be planning their build for their next playthrough and choices they could make differently, and won't be tired of the game yet.

That's pretty much what Age of decadence is, it can be finished in a few settings, but the different questlines are radically different.

A combination of NHL 2002 and Unreal Tournament.

There would be normal playing seasons, matches, standings, rosters, trades etc. Like any other sport. You pick a team at the start and stick with it for 10 or so seasons. You could also at any time jump in and participate in the match directly when your team played (basically take control of one player) and play the FPS part yourself. Or just quick simulate the matches.

An Unreal Tournament that would actually embrace the Tournament part. Where there would be the same emphasis on the team management part as the FPS part.

There is a very mild version of this in UT 2004, where you can check how the other teams played their matches, check results etc. But the only thing it affects is which one of the 3 teams you will face in the final stages.

A Single-Player CRPG in the World of Warcraft setting, that plays like Dragon Age Origins

A retelling of Castlevania 3, except that the game would be structured like Castlevania 2. (This includes there being multiple towns, and what is the first stage in CV3 would be the starting town, with town services.)

So, the game would play like Castlevania 2, except that:
* There are 3 spirit helpers that you can find, and can play as once you find them. Their abilities would be needed to reach certain areas.
* And, of course, you can find items for the helpers. For example, there'd be some spells for Sypha that you find, which may be needed to progress, and perhaps Alucard may need to earn his bat transformation.
* Overworld environments would be as varied as those in CV3, with areas like a forest, a swamp, a bridge, a sunken city, and a couple towers (one being a clock tower with Grant at the top, of course).
* The castle at the end would be a real multi-stage dungeon. (In CV2, the castle is just a single enemy-less area followed by the final boss; I'd make it more like CV3's final dungeon, though perhaps a bit less linear.)

Saints City! A SimCity - Saints Row combination. First you build a functioning city, then you explore it in third person. When fighting enemies, buildings can be damaged and blown up. Afterwards you use your earned cash to build it up again.

Yeah, it'd be an open world set on the literal planet earth with realistic tactical shooting, racing sim driving, and the gore would be realistically modeled, and also it'd have tons of content and the AI is super smart and there's like millions of NPCs with their own schedules and dreams and ambitions and it'd also have the sweetest graphics and it'd run at 240 fps, and- you get the point.

Although if I did have to scale it to something more reasonable, it'd probably be a black comedy SimCity/Cities: Skylines game with more depth mixed with Tropico, having to define your mayor and needing to play politics at a city level having to deal with local and regional stuff.

I had a dream game, but then Elden Ring launched, so since I have it and it exists, it doesn't qualify for this thread.

Various over the years, though, admitedly, a lot of them end up falling under the banner of "That old thing I loved, but modernized".

Nowadays, if you look long enough, you can almost always find some game that scratches most of those iches that you want your dream game to scratch.

Like any modern Mortal Kombat game satisfies most of my desire to revisit the classics with modern graphics and controls.

Or Doom 2016 and Eternal in relation to the original Doom 1 and 2 (though, Doom 2016 was actually closer to my dream than Eternal, even though the later features more classic designs recreated in HD).

More recently, a retro-looking (think Valheim) The Elder Scrolls game, maybe a complete remake of Arena, keeping some of the design decisions with cities and wilderness areas (that is, randomness) but modernizing everything would be sweet and fun for me to spend some 100 hours or so.

If someone did something similar to what Nightdive did to Quake 1 to TES3 Morrowind, it would be incredibly sweet as well, specially if they could add the rest of Morrowind to the game with a new campaign (yes, I know it would be streching it too far, but it is A DREAM after all). And I'm aware of (the Aweosme) OpenMW and the other mods that could technically do this dream justice.

That would be Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen with all the original planned content, that were cut due to financial limits, which are:

- The map as a giant peninsula with two extra islands, to be traveled to after some story quests;
- The Moon, with end game randomized enemies and 'rogue like' style dungeons;
- A Tower with the same idea, probably with challenges to be done with multiplayer support (Like Ur-Dragon in Everfall, which is a surviving idea of both Moon and Tower previous ideas);
- More story quests with more choice paths leading to a conclusion; (Dragon's Dogma was being developed since DMC2/PS2 era, so yeah...);
- More monsters, more dragon species and randomized spawns based in nature animal behaviour, with day and night cicles;

Though, with all this, Bitterblack Isle probably wouldn't exist.
So the dream is that 'original idea' of the game, PLUS BBI as a third end game content option.
(Together with The Moon and The Tower).

Dragon's Dogma 2 is probably a reality at this point though, so I just hope they will keep faithfull to their original ideas when they were planning 'BBS_RPG' >> later to be released as Dragon's Dogma.