Whispering Dark - The Stealth Co-op Game

In the final episode before Christmas we tackle a stealthy challenge that promises to redefine the stealth game genre.... but no one will ever know as it's so stealthy! 

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Chapters

• 0:00 30 Second Intro
• 0:30 Main
• 3:00 30 Second Outro

Transcript

0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Blender, the podcast of hypothetical games. I'm your host, todayscot, and I'm here with Matt. Matt, how are you? I'm I'm currently waving. I can confirm he uh is definitely waving. But yes, welcome back to the podcast of Hypothetical Games where every Fortnite... We have been a bit tardy, I'll be honest, in the last... Stuff has been happening, but... every Fortnite-ish, what we do is we uh develop hypothetical video games in the case of about 20 minutes or so. We take a randomized genre, a couple of randomized mechanics... and a randomised narrative and sort of smush them together and try and make a game. We occasionally get good mechanics and genres that go together and then we get some where a dating sim comes up and yeah, no, never ever. Sometimes they just don't gel but that is the joy of the gaming blender. But Matthew, how's your gaming going at the moment? don't know if anyone heard that, but I took a big sigh in. I took sort of in, I did, I did take a big draw of air. Um, despite the fact I don't have a huge amount to apart from I am waiting to jump into the new release of, um, Bellright's new expansion pack, which added a whole new map with 14 gigabyte patch. Very exciting. I'm very much looking forward to that. Um, because, well, here's a, here's a fun question. Do you hate it when they bring out an expansion that kills all of your previous like think my main fear when they said they were releasing a new map was because it is a whole point as a city builder, it was like, do you just want to do just need to start again somewhere else? And expansions, think, have a habit of doing this where they go, let's just move everything or we've kind of told our story. Yeah. agree. think... I suppose it depends on the genre. think if it's an RPG, then I think you can get away with being almost like a separate campaign where you can take what you've done, you take your character, you have to start again from scratch, but you move to a different area and do other stuff. I feel like you can justify that. If it's a city builder... and like you and me, uh Bellright being a co-op game, we put a number of hours into making 80 hours into making that what is now basically a city. Yes, it's a medieval city, know, by medieval standards. Yes, but for the, you know, for... For the sake of continuity and for the sake of players not wanting to feel like they've just wasted hours to then have to start again, I feel like it's important that they've done the right thing. They've basically just expanded the map and said, you've still got your stuff, you can now just go over here and play. um I love the way he was saying, they've done the right thing. Neither of us have played it yet. It only came out a day ago. For all we know, it could be everything that we don't want. This is very true. This is true. That being said, it is true. That being said, I'd like to think... Well, from what I've read, from the little reviews that have come out, it seems that they've done a good... done a good. So I think what they'll do is they'll... My Spidey-Sense would tell me they're gonna just release different biomes, a bit like Valheim, and they'll start just expanding out of the map. Fahlein was an interesting game to play. I remember us playing it together and we both sort of played it and it was perfect in every way. And we kind of went, and we're done. I don't know why. We said this in a podcast a while ago that if you sometimes get to the stage with creations, worlds, I mean, I had it with Game of Thrones where you kind of go, that's nice. I'm going to part that, I'm done. For no fault of the creation at all, you just go, I've had my fill. I get a overwhelmed with the content. it enough content? I wouldn't even say overwhelmed. just say I'd had a nice taste and gone, yeah, I think I'm done. And actually, think an interesting one is No Man's Sky, which we went back to recently. And every time we go back there, we kind of go, yeah, we have done this. Jump back out. yeah, does happen. The... Oh, sorry, quick tangent because it just popped into my head just then, is have you seen... You know how we always belie the fact that the Nemesis system is locked behind a patent? Have you seen that... So Netflix is making noise now that Netflix is maybe or maybe not buying Warner Brothers... Netflix is making noise... um WB, aren't they? they buy WB, they also buy WB games. They're making noise that they will get rid of that patent. Because I think it's locked until 2036 or something like that, like another 11 years. But yet we've only had two games with the system. like, why would you patent it unless you're only going make two games? Yeah. they patterned it for protection. It's a defensive technique. That's what it clearly is. It's a business technique because it was so big. of me does wonder when was the pattern? Was the pattern about three years ago? Two years ago? No, don't think last 20 years. No, no, no, sorry. mean, when did they put the patent in? That's what I mean, I think they're 20 year patents, so if it's got 11 years left, then 2016? wow, I thought it was anyway, but my point being is obviously the monolith games has since collapsed, which is which very much upset me. Pardon me wonders, depending on when the pattern came in, maybe they had a thought that it might not come to fruition. So they thought we're just going to lock this down for the moment. I mean, I'm being very cynical here. Very, very cynical. But then again, I am. It's just frustrating, I know we've covered it but it's one of the best uh ideas for a mechanic in a video game. Excellent. many of these game mechanics come out and you go. And this is, I think this is the thing. Whenever you try a new game, there was a wonderful period of, I would say about 10 hours in the modern game size. If it's not a linear narrative game, we have 10 hours of, I wonder what's going to happen. I wonder what the game is going to throw at me. I wonder what new things I'm going to experience. And that not knowing means that every time you see something, whether it be a ripple on the horizon or a certain pixel move you think that could be something new. After that period generally that washes away and you go right okay I know the limitations of the game I know that that ripple on the horizon was actually just a graphical glitch I know that that pixel moving out in fact wasn't anything to worry about. The Nemesis system kept surprising you right up to the end with the way it worked and very few mechanics can do that. Hmm... Yeah... Yeah... All the times when... When some bloke who had been your staunchest ally through the entire thing at the last moment just goes, Nah, I'm gonna betray you. You're like, WHAT?! Trefmog the hunch turns up Master Why would you do that? who's been an enemy throughout comes back and is for some reason on your side. You're like, what is happening here? Like, what is this? I don't know if you ever heard, is a bigger tangent, sorry, it's just a fun thing. There was a character in that game in Shadow of War, which is the second one. Yeah, so Shadow of War. One of the developers, and I'm saying this off the top of my head so I'm getting all the facts wrong, but I'm gonna give you the gist. Someone who worked on the game passed away. Now, do you remember there was an orc in that game who would miraculously save you for no apparent reason? Like, he'd just turn up and go, I've saved you, and then walk off. So that was based on the developer, which was a really nice touch. However, they then tried to sell it as DLC. goodness sake it was one these ones. got it. I didn't realize this till later because I bought the wider, the expansion edition. So it was included. So it never, it never bothered me. I was never made aware of it, but I read later, they tried to sell this one specific thing as DLC because that one was tied up in microtransactions. don't know you remember that they made Monolith made the game and Warner Brothers essentially sold orc packs. It was ridiculous. I recall Warner Brothers at their finest. m Let's be honest. No, no, a joke from heavy spoilers, the YouTube channel. Apologies for plagiarism of the highest order. you do plagiarism in this content? I don't know, probably. plagiarism of speech? Verbal plagiarism? Is that a thing? Well no, no, it's not plagiarism because you referenced it. There you go. We are academically trained, Matthew. You forget, you reference that prophecy. You did. You footnoted that well. I think, are you at point now where you are ready for what I have drawn for you today? Because I have. I have. I know. I'm giving you the illusion. The illusion of choice, the illusion of free will. So as we discussed uh earlier listeners what I'm going to do now is I'm going to present Matthew with a randomized genre and a randomized mechanic, no two randomized mechanics apologies and we're going to um mainly Matthew but I'm going to help. We're going to put together a game from these bits and pieces and then probably in about 10 minutes time we're going to add a narrative as well and see if we can make it all work together. What are you not wanting other than obviously dating Sim? I would say I'm not in the mood for a action-adventure open-worldy. My brain is not transitioned to deal with a very broad genre right now. I feel that I'd struggle. I think I need something narrow. okay. Let's see how this goes then. What you have first and foremost is actually quite an open genre. You have the role-playing game. Okay, and you have an RPG. It is open in the sense that you can do a lot with it, not necessarily physically open. So, a la... Baldur's Gate 3 or Exoddition 33 to name a couple in the Skyrim, the usual... um any of the Elder Scrolls games... No. It never is. It's not that it occupies my mind every single day. So the existentialism of that game broke me. So, you have the RPG, okay? So a lot to do with that. Your two mechanics I think are quite interesting. You have stealth... and you have co-op focus. Co-op focused stealth. Mmm, a co-op focused stealth RPG game. So the only thing that this instinctively reminds me of is do you remember Assassin's Creed Unity? Let's ignore the glitches and stuff that release with, but do you remember the initial trailers that were released with that? Where it advertised co-op for the first time in the camp. It wasn't a camp. Was it a campaign? do you mean Syndicate? Because there are two characters in Syndicate. two characters, no, because that was two characters you flip between. Unity, I think, had a multiplayer option, but it was completely separate, So there were multiple of them and you could play as them. And it did look like the coolest thing in the world because you were running around with your assassin mates. Now the reality of that, of running around with your mates in a stealth game, is so much like, okay, are we all hidden? Are we all hidden? where's Barry going? Oh no. and just have one bloke just wandering left and right next to guards going, guys, don't know what the crouch button is. Yeah, one guy whose mic is turned off ah or he's sat his keyboard but he's not put his headset on and he's just... yeah. Yes we do. to play. What's the full name of game? Return to Moria. We tried to play Return to Moria with this gentleman. And this gentleman did not turn his mic on. uh he essentially, the way that game works is if you join someone else's game, you sort of join at the start no matter what point they're at. So we had to run all the way back to the start to join him so he could come over to the cave to our camp. He didn't turn his mic on and was essentially learning. And so we were stood on top of the very first thing, which is a small wall we had to climb over. And we were yelling at him, use the grab button, use the grab button. And this small dwarf who all he was doing was just jumping up and down at us, just looking at us with a vacant stare in its eye. And it was both exhilarating and entirely frustrating. So. It was funny for me because I was basically a spectator. It wasn't so funny for Matthew, was the one who trying to tell him what to do and getting... I did, I did, I did. I instead listened and smiled. Yes. It was very, very funny. was very funny. just going back to that. That actually gives me an idea, not an idea of such a sort of concept. I think sometimes it can be a bit easy to communicate with stealth games via a headset or chat. So I think maybe we make proximity chat a far more specific. uh almost a feature of this game. You can only talk to each other via things. So maybe what you have to do is... Well, yeah, phasmophobia, or there's no one that does it. uh Lethal company, which me and you couldn't get on board with. Emotionally killed us. So what I'm thinking, obviously you need to steal something. That's the goal. Maybe you have a sort of set point and your characters have to go and steal RPG is fairly self-explanatory for this. You have a character, it has certain skills. Maybe you have a character who is very good at hiding in shadows. Maybe you have a character who's very good at attacking from afar. I'm kind of envisaging this, and I know they did a game like this, a sort of four player hero. Not hero, well it is a hero shooter. Called Hood, do remember that? Was it called Hood? Didn't really take off. But imagine doing that primarily with the stealth focus of taking down a fortification or whatever. Mm. playing as these sort of bandits outlaws, but you always start on separate sides of the map. So you could never develop a plan with whoever you're with. So you have to communicate by using bells, smoke signals, starting a fire, those kinds of things to just try and get your, both get your allies attention without getting essentially guards attention. And then you could only. you explain that narratively? Yeah, so why then, if they're like a band of thieves or bandits or whatever it is, how would you explain narratively why they can't, why they always start separate? Do you know what mean? it's an interesting, it's an interesting point. But maybe you just do the book, but it's realistic, isn't it? Because if you said we're going to ambush this place, actually, let's do it slightly differently. You have a little plan board at the start where you will meet up. There you can write and you have free communication, you can literally chat to each other through a plan. So you go in there, you go in there, you go in there. Once that plan is executed, you then pick your drop points and say we'll go over here because that's closer to various objectives. It might be you all decide to start together. However, the moment that planning stage is over, chat is cut. So you could decide to start with two of you together, say like if it was me and you playing with two other people would say Scott and I will start in the far corner. We'll aim to get, we'll aim to distract the guards, let you guys in. And then various points you can say, when we get to this point, we know, cause on your map you'll have, we know there's a, there's a bonfire there or something we can light. Once you see that, that is your signal, it's okay to light. And then you can add loads of funny things into this, where say the guards have fire arrows and accidentally hit the bonfire you're meant to light. So you could find yourself trying to desperately put out the bonfires, put out a fire because you know it's the signal. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. I think... the problem you don't want fall into, you don't want to fall into a game where you HAVE to have four players. So I think what you do is you make it so that you do have to have two. It to be a co-op game. But... For... Larger jobs... You can add in... You can have other crew of like... Bots that can do stuff. But when you assign them certain tasks... they based on their skills have a percentage chance rough a rough percentage chance of succeeding but you won't know if they've succeeded or not Maybe what you do is you have a... So let's say you're doing a heist, let's say it's a heist, and you need one of the bots to unlock a certain door or to disable a certain thing, and then obviously you get there and it's still active. You're like, problems. then that gives you, you then have to improvise. You see what I mean? it's like different the way I envisage it was for sort of remember Band of Brothers again, where you ran and you sort of directed your people around. I envisage say there was me and you, we'd have to start separately with bots each, but we could tell that bot to do something. And then we're given the percentage chance of whether they'd be successful. Okay. Pardon me. depends how you skin the initial plan. It depends if you split up or if you're going to stick in groups. So I suppose there's two options and you can, you can either pick predefined AI plan. So you say, we want you to do X, Y, Z. And as you said, you just get a calculation for how likely that is going to work. Or you say, and I think the way that this would have to work, it'd have to be just a drop down at the start and say, do you want to spawn with bots or do you want to support spawn separately and just have that percentage chance? Because the one thing I can understand would be a nightmare to program is how do you give that percentage chance if there are variables involved. So you'd have to say, no, we want a predefined AI. Oh, actually what you could do if you did predefined AI plan, the plan would be executed before you started. If that makes sense. So what you do is you just essentially arrive, as you said, you'd arrive at the things and go, Oh, hang on that the door, the door's not unlocked or this is missing. So you wouldn't actually even need to program your bots to be live. it's already done. You just don't know what the outcome is until you get there. Yeah, that's quite amusing. I wouldn't tell you. So I imagine there are two ways you skin it. You'd either spawn with a bot, in which case you just direct them around and you quickly get a little number rating on how likely it is for to do something and you can literally see it. That's if you want to directly control them, or you have that predefined path where it worked or didn't work. could program a few sort of maybe small indicators as to whether or not it's been successful. let's say for example in the scenario where you're setting one of the bots off an hour early to go and disable something or cut the bell rope or something and you then set off an hour later and you go, there's a lot more guards here than there were before or there's a bit of a ruckus going on over there and you're like, ahhh. you have a randomizer essentially, well not randomizer, but you have an element of they failed at this point, which meant this happened. I like, I that idea. Also, one of RPG things you can add to this is say your character gets an incredible, as you upgrade, you get a great lock pick, for example. What you could do is you could say, right, you're a rubbish AI bot and you're rubbish at unlocking doors. Take my lock pick, because if you get there with my lock pick, it's a dead set, you'll unlock the door. Yeah, think you can manage it as you would do any... a bit like in Ballersgate 3, you can move the inventory around to anyone you like um and then they can utilize those. maybe the RPG, we do slightly differently in terms of you start as a player, like say I log in, I pick my guy, this is my avatar, and I play as that person. I then get three bots who I can equip as I want, and I can upgrade them as I want. They upgrade the same way, like similar as you say to Dragon Age um or Baldur's Gate. Then if me and you want to play together, I go on and we're talking about, we go into that meeting room where we said the plan gets laid out. And then we say, right, Scott, I really like the, like the look of your bloke over there. Oh yeah. He's really good with the lock picks. We'll take him. Okay. Well, how about you? How's your guy with distracting guards? He's the best at distracting guards. Okay. We'll take him. And then you can sort of pick and choose from each other's squads who suits which ones. Cause then everyone's bringing something to the party as well. Yeah, I suppose you could have a variety of different missions and settings. So for example, you could have a setting that's set in a certain place where they speak a certain language and you've got one guy, there is one guy who speaks that language, he might not be the best thief, might not be the best sneaky guy, but he can speak to people, do you know what mean? And then you can have that sort of balancing of... going to talk to this merchant outside who will give us access or whatever, but that involves speaking. So we need to bring Terry the translator with us. uh Yeah. So, you know what I mean? So yeah, I think that would work quite nicely. It'd quite a nice sort of vibe of like getting each people. I think it was Dragon's Dock. They used to have a thing where you used to essentially send off your companion to other people's games and they would become their companion, then come back with experience. yeah think they called pawns i think I think so. I don't know whether the second kept them, but I never played the second. No, not a die. Are you ready for a narrative? Okay, so your narrative today is escape. uh Okay, uh yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical escape. It could be an escape from your past. Or an escape from something that's following you. You know what mean? It doesn't have to be a physical... I need to escape from the castle. um type deal. Yeah, although I do think it suits a physics, our game we've made suits a physical escape. let's, do it this way. You are a, I'm trying desperately not to make this Robin Hood and try and think of various different vibes off of it, but essentially you are a village that has been chased out of town. Is a village chased out of town? Does it make any sense? So no, no, no. So you're a village and you are based upon this mining area or whatever it is. Let's say there's some sort of resources that you guys have tapped into, but you've not fully excavated, whatever. Then evil king Baron comes along and says, yeah, get out. I'm going to take these things. But when they get out, you're essentially been causing trouble for the Baron. So what happens is the Baron decides, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to smoke these guys out. They're living in the forest. I'm going to smoke them out. I'm going to kill them off and send his army in. And what his army do is they make fortifications as they proceed. What you decide you're going to do essentially try and get out of reach of these people, but at the same time sort of nipping their attack in the bud. So every so often you target these fortresses and the idea is if you take down enough of these fortresses you can isolate the army. Essentially what you are is you're escaping from the Baron but at the same stage ambushing them. So that's the plan and then you'll be able to go back and then maybe the final mission is you turn up to this fortified castle that is now that was the mine and to take it out. So I'm using escape in quite literal terms because it starts as an escape, but by destroying who's chasing you, you sort of come back round to return home. I what you're trying to I do see what you're trying to No, no, no, no, I wasn't going to say that, I wasn't going say that. No, I think that could work. And I think, could we expand it so that there are different biomes, for example, and so that you're not just attacking, you're not just sneaking into fortifications, for example. Oh, yeah, I think you'd want you to have is you'd have various. Maybe what you do is you make it so you're attacking various places wherever you're trying to weaken the army and just nick them in the bud. And the escape element is always you're just trying to make sure you get out in time. Maybe there's always a time limit to watch. I hate time limits. No, no time limit. I've changed my mind. No time limit. There's a game coming out soon called Blood of the Dawnwalker, have you seen it? That's the one that has the 24 hours or something like that. Or a time limit. Yes. So there was a lot of backlash about that I read. And the developers had to come out and go, no, it's not a time limit. Every time you do certain missions, the time ticks down. It's not actual time. Because when everybody heard they went, nope, don't want to play that. Yeah, it's... you can't do everything in one playthrough. That's the whole point, which I quite like. You know, it's no different from any other game where you choose a narrative option and a certain path gets locked from you because you've chosen a certain narrative. There's no difference. So I've actually got time for that. But yeah, if you don't like not like time, you're not gonna like that game. existential threat, but that's what I sort of see it as in here. You could always take out different biomes, but the idea is you're always on the run. You're always running away until the very final mission where maybe the final mission is an assassination of the Baron or whatever, or trapping him. And you've got to get inside the castle or something along those lines. No, I like that. like that. Maybe it starts, obviously, with him taking your village and then basically building a castle atop it, and then by the time it's finished, it's the end of the game, and then you do your... you could add some missions as well, where you go literally to add some variety. There's no bots or anything. say, literally the plan is you've got to get from A to B just to, just to get out maybe early on. Oh, is in for the first, yeah. And you've got to figure it out, basically. It's a little bit tutorial-y, but you also need to kind of figure it out. like, okay, let's take the path to the left. That looks like it's less fortified or whatever. And you can have little sections where you, perhaps actually that's one thing you could add into this whole setup. You have, what's the correct word for this? Scouting ahead. There's another word that I couldn't think of. uh Reconnaissance, that was the one I was looking for. You have reconnaissance missions. So you have a chance to go and see the places and you can kind of get as close as possible and go right. And then you all, actually that would be really nice in co-op. because can you imagine me and you, we go on a big walk around, come back together and go, right, I saw this. Okay, well I saw this. that could work together. So you could really use your brain power. Hmm. I like that. I like that a lot. I'll add that in for... Sorry, I'm not... I have to take notes while I'm doing this for the sum up. I'll have do the big summary. I... No, I like that. Are you ready to name it? Because I think we fleshed that out quite nicely. thinking of names. I'm trying to draw in a of a blank at the moment. I've been desperately clawing with my mind while we've been discussing, but I am. Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, there we have an RPG game with stealth and co-op mechanics and an escape-esque narrative. So you start in a village, not any village, this particular village has a certain um resource um underneath it um that the locals have tapped into a little bit but not exploited it to its fullest extent. The local king comes and he seizes the village, throwing the villagers out and saying, no it is mine and builds, or begins to build an enormous castle atop this mine so he can exploit its riches for himself. You, and indeed any friends you want to have as it's a co-op game, decide no and you form a small band of almost these guerilla fighter-thief types. and you take on the task of eroding away and being a thorn in the side of the king by sneaking into uh certain places, sabotaging, assassination, lots of different types of missions that will be given to you in a variety of different biomes across the kingdom in an effort to weaken the king's grasp on the lands that he's taken from you. This will build up to a uh final mission at the end where you will sneak into the castle that he has built to top your village. The gameplay will start with you all reconnoitering as a team, either separately or together, your target. You'll then come back together and plan either the heist or the assassination or the robbery, whatever it is that you're going to be doing, and you can choose how you're going to go about that. Are you going to travel together as a team? Are you going to go completely separately? If there are just two of you, you can use bots from your party, which you can use with their inventories and give them items, etc. to make them better at their jobs. You can utilize those bots to do certain jobs within the heists and assassinations that you have. However, based on their abilities, they will have a certain percentage chance of succeeding. but you won't know if they succeeded or not until you get there because we're set in the medieval era. There's no phones. So we'll be utilising proximity chat for this game. And... Yeah, yeah. There's gonna be none of that. Yes, and this game is going to be called Matthew. So the first one I had, which I crossed out, was Silent But Deadly. Yeah, a bit too long, I think. That, okay, that was a fart joke, but well. Excellent. That's how we're starting this. So two more. The next one, well actually three more, to be honest, I came up with. So the first one is called Take It Back, which I don't know, it was a bit too staccato for me. So I then went to Nightfall. Nightfall. Yeah. And then my final, I thought it kind of kind of messes up both that and my next one, which was called whispers in the dark. Whispers in the dark. I don't mind whispers in the dark. Whispers in the dark can work. Whispers in the dark? Did like it. Yeah... You don't like it you do like it. Okay, but... sorry. That's what I thought. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that was Whispers in the Dark. And we hope you have enjoyed this latest episode of the Gaming Blender podcast. We do apologise for our tardiness. Annoyingly... Hold on. Oh, yes! Sorry! Yes, it is the 11th of December! And unfortunately, Matthew is going on his hollybobs and so he will not be around for a month, believe it or not. I wish I had... Can you imagine? Santa has hair on the top of his head, I'm afraid. I know, I'm sorry. I couldn't... I know, it is a high blow. So unfortunately, this episode will be the last one. for a few weeks before we then come back probably in the latter half, the second half of January. So in that vein, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas or whichever holiday you are celebrating at this time of year and a very happy New Year when it comes around. or whatever year you're celebrating this time of year. I was just being facetious following you out. Strange man. Anyway, in years. I think there's a thing there's a different new year for like every for 80 % days of the year based on culture. So there you go. Fun fact. Enjoy your December everyone! I forgot to that point. Anyway, in the meantime, I have been Scott and please do keep on blending and we will speak to you in the second half of January. Bye bye now! Bye!