Now I know there have been a ton of these already, but I've recently been playing both of the first two games and have come up with some changes that could be made for the (possible) third game. The things 3 and a half pages long, so if you have the patience to read through the whole thing feel free. Otherwise there's a summary bit at the bottom.
Ideas For Black And White 3
As much as the first two games were
![G o o d [Good]](/emoticons/g_o_o_d.gif)
games they could still be improved on. I’m going to list a few suggestions in various sections:
That Key “Feeling”
While the second Black And White was much deeper and complex than the original, it lacked that key thing that made the first so unique: actually feeling like a God when you’re playing it. The second game delivered in features but lost that feeling of “Each and every one of my choices are making a real impact on this island”. Instead it made you feel like any old mayor or military commander that so many other games have imitated in the past. There are a few reasons as to why this is:
The Toolbar
This is my biggest complaint. Of all the things that could get rid of that sense of being a god and freedom, a bloody toolbar is the most effective. The charm of the first game was that your viewpoint as a god was all from a completely unobscured first-person view, which felt like you were looking down on your followers and acting completely naturally. The introduction of a toolbar ruined that experience, because now you felt like you were playing any old “city management” game, rifling through endless tabs and moving sliders. This leads on to the other problem with the toolbar. Part of the beauty of Black And White’s morality system was that you had no idea how your actions were affecting you as a god, and also your creature. The only clues you had were subtle, eg if you become
![E v i l [Evil]](/emoticons/e_v_i_l.gif)
your hang begins to become dark and disfigured, so you had to think “how do I feel about doing this?” to use as a guideline towards what you are like as a god. When a bunch of little red words saying “
!!!” pop up after you do something then that sense of this being a test of your morality goes out of the window, and then it’s easy to just work out what is
and bad, and work around that. It would also be a
idea to get rid of Tribute, which were effectively “unlock” points which made life easier for you and made the last few levels no challenge at all.
Bring Back the Belief System
One of the main ideas of being a God is that your power stems from the worship of mortals. This meant that as a God, you could have more control over the Land, if more towns believed in you, rather than just accepting immigrants to your city, who could just as well have cultures of their own and not believe in you, even when in your city. This was really a key aspect of the feeling that you were more than a mayor. The way that you could intricate the Belief system into the third game, whilst keeping the additions of building and military of the second, is to use the city as a method of increasing belief (Maybe introduce sound clips from other towns of people saying “what a massive city! Only a God could have built that!”), but you can also use miracles and your creature to entice (or scare) the other settlements into believing in you. In contrast, the other God would use his army or city to convince other settlements to believe in him, thus giving him a wider scope of control over the island. That way it is a true “battle of the beliefs” that takes place, rather than “How many immigrants can I fit into this flat?”. That will make you feel more like a God, as you spend the game trying to convince mortals into believing in you.
Bring Back the Temple
This was one of the best parts of the first game. It served as the seat of your power, your base of operations. It was your creatures home, your save point, and your effective library of past events all rolled into one. It also changed in relation to how you were as a God, which was an interesting feature. It also served as a key tool to shaping your creature, teh three leashes were one of the most useful parts of the game. My favorite part of the Temple was the creature cave, where you could see interesting things about what your creature had done. But unfortunately the Temple was broken up into various buildings in the second game: The worshippers now went to the Alter, the facts about your creature became little percentage bars on the toolbar, and your creature pen became just another building. There was a Temple in the second game, but it was just another building and served nothing more than to build influence.
Miracles
The key aspect of any God would be the miracles he or she can create. In the first game Miracles were the key to success, you’d find yourself impatiently tapping your fingers, waiting for that meter to refill. They were really all purpose, you had miracles to replenish stocks of food, water plants, burn whole villages to the ground, etc etc. Unfortunately, miracles really took a back seat in the second game and became just little extras you could use if you were feeling like it. Sure, they looked pretty, but that’s really all they did. You could go through the entire game without once using a miracle. They just lost that necessity that they had in the first game, and the side effect of that was that you just felt more like any old mayor than a God. The solution to this would be to change the game so that you relied on your worshippers and your godly powers to give you the means to take the other villages. It would also be best to make the “miracle drawing” part of the game back to replace the lack of a toolbar.
The Creature
Now this is where the second game screwed up. The creature in the first game really was something you cared about. You’d find yourself spending ages tweaking your creature, teaching it miracles and altering its personality as you saw fit. But in the second game, you didn’t need to spend any time with it, you could just buy the miracles and the skills, and leave it there to do what it wanted, only occasionally bringing it out as an army unit. The creature just lost that charm that it had. Another thing the creatures lost were their base personalities. Every creature was different, the tiger was thick as a brick wall but excellent at fighting, the ape was smart and could easily learn spells, and the cow.....ate things. The personality of the creature really affected how you played, and how the villagers saw you. The solution to the creature problem would be to remove the option to simply “buy” skills and miracles for your creature and instead to bring back the system were every creature was unique (plus the ability to unlock creatures through silver scrolls), and you had to teach the creature its abilities yourself, thus giving you much more customization over how you wanted your creature, and making the relationship between you and your creature more personal rather than simply seeing it as another big unit.
Building
Now while I really do appreciate this addition to the game, the ability to build does make you feel more like a mayor than a God. It just became tedious after a while, repeating the same routine over and over again (“place blueprint, uproot trees, build building, repeat”) and made the game far too easy. The solution to this would be to remove the “God Building” part of the construction (your Creature is supposed to be your physical manifestation on the world, so why can you just pour chunks of wood onto the ground and just watch the building slowly rise). Instead, you place the blueprint, and an outline of the building you want appears on the ground (light blue halo thingy if your
, outline made of flames if your
). You can still supply the villagers with what they need for the building, but you can’t build it yourself. The advantage of losing the “God building” aspect is that you can place a few blueprint, and go off and do something else, rather than continuously copying and pasting the same building next to one another. Another thing to lose from the building system is the vast amount of buildings stuck in the toolbar. The solution to an absence of a toolbar would be to click on a part of the town center, which causes a window to pop up, which a list of the buildings you can currently use (this is where you can put the “industrial” “communal” and “decoration” tabs. The more towns you take over, the better buildings you unlock for use in the Land (the peak of building would be the wonders). You cannot directly take over towns through your city, but they contribute towards the “belief” that you gain from other towns, which will make it easier for you to acquire them.
The Military
Again, this was a
addition for those who wanted to have another option to take over cities, but it just made you feel like any old military commander. This is mostly because of the fact that there is nothing special or “godly” about an army. You simply had archers, standard soldiers, and catapults. The way you could change this would be to have different inhuman units that would make you seem more like a God and less like a General. For example, for the
side you could have “summoning pads” which you can use to spawn beautiful creatures such as “angels” or giant doves which, whilst not having any violent abilities, you can send to other cities to help convert them to you. You would of course need a few military
units for defence, but it would be best to focus on “conversion” units. These
units are contrasted by the units spawned from the
“Conversion chambers” where you send your unlucky villagers to be turned into hideous beings such as ogres or minotaurs which wreak havoc across the landscape and delight in torturing other people. This choice of
or bad units will give you more scope to change yourself as you see fit, whilst keeping the experience of war interesting and fresh.
Side Missions
The difference between the side missions in 1 and 2 were that the side missions in the originals were interesting and genuine puzzles, which occasionally had
humour in them. My personal favorite will always be that mission in the first land where you have to apprehend that child molester who kept stealing the villages kids. The missions in the second game however, were little more than “quicktime events” were you had to catch a certain number of sheep, or rub a bolder until the martial artist could break it. These missions were nothing special and had been done a million times before in other games, and they really were insultingly easy and I don’t remember a single challenge in Black And White 2 where you had to think to complete it. Instead of rewarding completed side missions with Tribute, give the player an addition (eg an extra miracle that would otherwise be unavailable on the land) which could really turn the tide of the conflict.
To Sum Up:
Completely remove the Toolbar.
Keep the city building part of the game, but remove the “God Building Option”.
Edit the gameplay system so that both City building and the Military part of the second game work alongside the “Belief” System from the first game.
Bring back the puzzles and charm of the first games side-quests.
Remove the Tribute part of the game.
Make each Creatures personality individual, and bring back the level of custmisation you had in the first game to shape the Creature into what you want. Also make the Creature a central part of the game, rather than just another unit.
Bring back the temple.
Give the military other more inhuman options to make it seem more like your playing as a God rather than a General.
Make many miracles and make them a central part of the game.
Make the player feel like a God.
Less of the stereotyping (I can’t count how many times the Japanese guy mentioned honor and glory in the second game.)
Thanks.
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What sort of ten year old boy spends his entire life sitting on wharves and looking at badly drawn pictures made by 30 year old women?