Who? Playable cast entirely new, might meet up with some familiar faces during story.
Where? a world in ruin a la the latest Resident Evil movie, maybe with some safe spots, but mostly shattered. Large part of the game is about getting true a huge metropolitan area alive, but there'll also be parts outside of the city and the city itself needs to be diverse. Grounded in reality - no Indiana Jones-like set design and sequences like RE4/RE5. Offer variety in focussing on four major location types: (1) overrun, burned, destroyed, shattered remnants of metropolitan area; (2) hastily build new safe compounds, more about opportunity and necessity then logic; (3) semi-serene countryside with some post-apocalyptic elements (4) sterile, ominous Umbrella facilities.
What?
- Next-level zombie dynamics. Confined areas have a limited amount of zombies and can be cleared for a time (repopulated after some time). Huge, open areas are all about avoiding detection (think The Walking Dead, first time Rick enters Atlanta. Attract too much attention and half the city will swarm after you. Make it (once again) about survival, a focus on ammo conservation. Implement a better system for (silent) melee takedowns and put bigger focus on silencers/silent weapons.
- Generally slow but tough zombies. Headshots really matter. Variety in dead-and-returned shamblers and alive-and-infected, somewhat fresher, faster zombies. Spice up the gore - zombies are all about truly terrific horror - don't do just bloody, pale corpses, make'm damaged. Could help in offering more variety in zombie variety in groups.
- Offer save havens. They can be like the old RE's save rooms, only the size of a small village. Designed around walled-off compounds like the FEMA constructions from Cronin's The Passage. Semi self-sufficient, survivors, where you get weapons, weapon mods, ammo and items. Improve and expand on the weapon modification system.
- More vertical variety in set design. Don't make it all about the ground level but offer levels where the player truly has to figure out how to travel higher up (from rooftop to rooftop, through ruined buildings, get to the top of a skyscraper) and lower (through sewers, metro system, sewage tunnels, submerged parking lots).
- Involve choking points in set designs (logical points where zombie mobs converge and congest) and offer a combination of optional risk/reward events around them, involving set-pieces involving big .50 cal guns and hundreds of zombies, to break up the tense 'I've only got 10 bullets left and there's 10 zombies between me and a safe place' moments.
Where? a world in ruin a la the latest Resident Evil movie, maybe with some safe spots, but mostly shattered. Large part of the game is about getting true a huge metropolitan area alive, but there'll also be parts outside of the city and the city itself needs to be diverse. Grounded in reality - no Indiana Jones-like set design and sequences like RE4/RE5. Offer variety in focussing on four major location types: (1) overrun, burned, destroyed, shattered remnants of metropolitan area; (2) hastily build new safe compounds, more about opportunity and necessity then logic; (3) semi-serene countryside with some post-apocalyptic elements (4) sterile, ominous Umbrella facilities.
What?
- Next-level zombie dynamics. Confined areas have a limited amount of zombies and can be cleared for a time (repopulated after some time). Huge, open areas are all about avoiding detection (think The Walking Dead, first time Rick enters Atlanta. Attract too much attention and half the city will swarm after you. Make it (once again) about survival, a focus on ammo conservation. Implement a better system for (silent) melee takedowns and put bigger focus on silencers/silent weapons.
- Generally slow but tough zombies. Headshots really matter. Variety in dead-and-returned shamblers and alive-and-infected, somewhat fresher, faster zombies. Spice up the gore - zombies are all about truly terrific horror - don't do just bloody, pale corpses, make'm damaged. Could help in offering more variety in zombie variety in groups.
- Offer save havens. They can be like the old RE's save rooms, only the size of a small village. Designed around walled-off compounds like the FEMA constructions from Cronin's The Passage. Semi self-sufficient, survivors, where you get weapons, weapon mods, ammo and items. Improve and expand on the weapon modification system.
- More vertical variety in set design. Don't make it all about the ground level but offer levels where the player truly has to figure out how to travel higher up (from rooftop to rooftop, through ruined buildings, get to the top of a skyscraper) and lower (through sewers, metro system, sewage tunnels, submerged parking lots).
- Involve choking points in set designs (logical points where zombie mobs converge and congest) and offer a combination of optional risk/reward events around them, involving set-pieces involving big .50 cal guns and hundreds of zombies, to break up the tense 'I've only got 10 bullets left and there's 10 zombies between me and a safe place' moments.
