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As Spider-Man would say: “With great power comes great responsibility”. Super-heroes have a moral duty to help the world, but they must also balance that duty with living their ordinary lives. Super-man, Spider-man, Batman, The Incredibles, even Wolverine: they all must balance their super life with their ordinary life.

This is the basis of many super-hero stories… yet it’s almost entirely ignored in super-hero games. This game concept, tentatively called Power and Responsibility, will force the player to make tough choices between the two sides of his life. But don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of putting villains on fire and throwing them through buildings, too.

Who Are You?

This game is all about choice, starting with character creation. You’ll be able to decide your appearance, your name and your powers from a lot of options. Whether you want to play a nearly-indestructible guy made of sand who throws cars around or you want to play a nimble flying character who fights with bow and arrow, you’ll be able to. Character creation is one of the most fun parts of games like City of Heroes so this game needs that kind of customization.

You won’t be able to choose your background or gender, for the sake of the story. You’re a freelance reporter for a major online news publication — an otherwise ordinary man who discovers strange powers at the beginning of the game. You’ll meet the love of your life at the start of the game.

Indeed, a lot of the gameplay will hinge on balancing these three parts of your life: work, dates and super-heroics.

Choices, Choices, Choices…

In the game, each day will be split in day and night periods. For each period you’ll have to choose what to do, between doing your job, romancing your girlfriend or saving the world. Some missions will be more important than others (arrest a bunch of thugs robbing a 7-11 versus going to your girlfriend’s mother funeral), but you’ll have to balance your priorities to keep your life in balance.

The super-heroic missions will, of course, be the main part of the game. I’ll cover this more in the coming days, but basically it’s the action part of the game. You’ll beat up villains, arrest criminals and try to avoid damage to the city. Or maybe you won’t — the game wouldn’t give you any real responsibilities if you couldn’t make the “wrong” choices.

So, depending on your actions you’ll be good or evil. For every mission you’ll be able to choose whether you handle it as a super-hero or as a super-villain. Do you protect the bank from getting robbed by some villainous character with strange powers or do you rob it yourself, fighting any heroic fools who dare to oppose you? The choice is yours.

A broken-hearted hero (or villain) doesn’t fight well. Your relationship with your girlfriend will have an important effect on the gameplay. Keep your relationship going well and she’ll heal your wounds. Moreover, higher morale will make your power gauge (that indicates how much you can use your powers) fill up quicker. Ignore her and you could end up wounded and with no power left.

As for work, it’s where you get your information. A reporter is well informed and knows what’s going on in the city, so that’s how you learn about possible missions. The better your work-life, the more missions you’ll know about, therefore giving you better options.

While the love and work parts of the game will take the same in-game time, they’ll be much faster to play through than the super-hero part. The focus is strongly on using super-powers in cool ways, but the other dimensions are there to deepen the game.

To Be Continued…

In the next three days I’ll spend more time describing gameplay in more concrete details. Till then, tell me what you think in the comments. I’d love to know whether whether you like this approach to a super-hero game or not!

See ya tomorrow!

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