I went to go and see Inception tonight and I have to say it is a rather excellent film. The Dark Knight wasn’t a one off with Nolan making this film a great fun that is a deeply involved crime caper one one level and something else on the other. (There may be spoilers at some point in the article so I recommend if you haven’t seen the film don’t read on) Extraction – Inspired By the film Inception A game of Inception should not be based on the movie at all in terms of plot. It should instead be an “Inspired by” job with you taking the role of a different group of people doing a similar task of jumping into someone's mind to perform an “extraction”. The singleplayer would consists of a series of jobs in different people’s minds with different settings in each. Like in the film, you while drill down through two levels of dreams. Each level is in a different setting, from a wide open city block to perhaps a single office area. Each campaign’s levels are taken from a list, so each time you play the layout is different. What doesn’t change is what level the dreamer’s mind is militarised. Earlier levels are more forgiving than the later ones, as the mind takes less notice of strange activity. However later on, the forces you end up fighting are more heavily armed as the mind you inside has it’s defences up. I mention the mind taking notice. Basically in the film, the dreamers subconscious will eventually realise that something is wrong and seek to remove the intruders like white blood cells. In a game, this would show as a meter. It would be increased by strange activity such as using weapons, moving unusually such as taking cover or jumping and for banging into other people. The more you do this, the higher the meter, the greater the threat. At a certain point, the subconscious goes aggressive and the players then need to switch to a more aggressive role to get to the objective. Unfortunately, this combat (if taking place around certain people (like the dreamer)) will keep increasing the meter. When its full, the brain kicks you out and its game over. Due to the multiple levels, there is something else to consider. At a certain point, once the objectives of the first level are complete, members of the team will then have to go down to the next level by being knocked out. Of course the upper level’s subconscious is still going to be looking for those intruders and so someone will have to stay behind to defend them. In earlier campaigns, one player could be all that's needed to keep them off, depending on the map layout. Later on, more players would be needed to keep them from overrunning them. To balance it, the AI wouldn’t immediately start ripping the sleeping players apart. One thing that made me laugh in the film was when Tom Hardy’s character suddenly pulls out a grenade launcher from almost nowhere. Along this, there are other points where characters imagine things that are needed. This can be modelled by a two separate systems. The first is that players can map out at least four different shortcuts to summon weapons or items or tweak the world by using the DPad or on the PC the Numpad. These are set up before hand and can be almost everything. However, the more extreme (such as summoning rocket launchers or slowing time) will tweak the rate at which the awareness meter is filled. If every player call in an M60 each at the start of the first level, then the second could be much harder. The second is a player role. Player roles help to map the differing roles seen in the film such as Point Man, Forger and Architect. Point Men are specialists in combat which can be seen by their choices of weapons and the effect of call ins on the Awareness meter. Forgers can choose to become a part of the dream, allowing them to move and act with a much lower effect on the meter. Architects are the only ones who can cause major changes to the world, much like Ellen Page in the film itself. They can open up holes  to assist the team or create blocks to help defend them. All these actions can cause huge increases in Awareness if the Architect goes mental and tries to mirror the world. As for the main players moving around, it would be (yet another) cover based shooter. Its hard to describe how it would play in words but it wouldn’t have the same weight of character that Gears of War has – most of the characters are pretty wiry and its all fast moving. It would have a combination of shooting and close combat but also some acrobatics depending on the mission. Players are also able to stabilise, but not completely heal each other. Overall, the game is a co-op experience through and through with a set number of players. Each player can customise their characters to create one most representative of themselves as well as creating alternatives for certain areas and terrains. For example, in the snow during the film, the dreamers had appropriate clothes. This system also includes weapons loadouts as well which would be entirely modern day weaponry.

I went to go and see Inception tonight and I have to say it is a rather excellent film. The Dark Knight wasn’t a one off with Nolan making this film a great fun that is a deeply involved crime caper one one level and something else on the other.

(There may be spoilers at some point in the article so I recommend if you haven’t seen the film don’t read on)

Extraction – Inspired By the film Inception

A game of Inception should not be based on the movie at all in terms of plot. It should instead be an “Inspired by” job with you taking the role of a different group of people doing a similar task of jumping into someone’s mind to perform an “extraction”.

The singleplayer would consists of a series of jobs in different people’s minds with different settings in each. Like in the film, you while drill down through two levels of dreams. Each level is in a different setting, from a wide open city block to perhaps a single office area. Each campaign’s levels are taken from a list, so each time you play the layout is different. What doesn’t change is what level the dreamer’s mind is militarised. Earlier levels are more forgiving than the later ones, as the mind takes less notice of strange activity. However later on, the forces you end up fighting are more heavily armed as the mind you inside has it’s defences up.

I mention the mind taking notice. Basically in the film, the dreamers subconscious will eventually realise that something is wrong and seek to remove the intruders like white blood cells. In a game, this would show as a meter. It would be increased by strange activity such as using weapons, moving unusually such as taking cover or jumping and for banging into other people. The more you do this, the higher the meter, the greater the threat. At a certain point, the subconscious goes aggressive and the players then need to switch to a more aggressive role to get to the objective. Unfortunately, this combat (if taking place around certain people (like the dreamer)) will keep increasing the meter. When its full, the brain kicks you out and its game over.

Due to the multiple levels, there is something else to consider. At a certain point, once the objectives of the first level are complete, members of the team will then have to go down to the next level by being knocked out. Of course the upper level’s subconscious is still going to be looking for those intruders and so someone will have to stay behind to defend them. In earlier campaigns, one player could be all that’s needed to keep them off, depending on the map layout. Later on, more players would be needed to keep them from overrunning them. To balance it, the AI wouldn’t immediately start ripping the sleeping players apart.

One thing that made me laugh in the film was when Tom Hardy’s character suddenly pulls out a grenade launcher from almost nowhere. Along this, there are other points where characters imagine things that are needed. This can be modelled by a two separate systems. The first is that players can map out at least four different shortcuts to summon weapons or items or tweak the world by using the DPad or on the PC the Numpad. These are set up before hand and can be almost everything. However, the more extreme (such as summoning rocket launchers or slowing time) will tweak the rate at which the awareness meter is filled. If every player call in an M60 each at the start of the first level, then the second could be much harder.

The second is a player role. Player roles help to map the differing roles seen in the film such as Point Man, Forger and Architect. Point Men are specialists in combat which can be seen by their choices of weapons and the effect of call ins on the Awareness meter. Forgers can choose to become a part of the dream, allowing them to move and act with a much lower effect on the meter. Architects are the only ones who can cause major changes to the world, much like Ellen Page in the film itself. They can open up holes  to assist the team or create blocks to help defend them. All these actions can cause huge increases in Awareness if the Architect goes mental and tries to mirror the world.

As for the main players moving around, it would be (yet another) cover based shooter. Its hard to describe how it would play in words but it wouldn’t have the same weight of character that Gears of War has – most of the characters are pretty wiry and its all fast moving. It would have a combination of shooting and close combat but also some acrobatics depending on the mission. Players are also able to stabilise, but not completely heal each other.

Overall, the game is a co-op experience through and through with a set number of players. Each player can customise their characters to create one most representative of themselves as well as creating alternatives for certain areas and terrains. For example, in the snow during the film, the dreamers had appropriate clothes. This system also includes weapons loadouts as well which would be entirely modern day weaponry.