Hush you cursed brain!
June 10th, 2005I’ve been listening to the Wheel of Time series on the iPod for quite some time now. I’m not exactly sure when I started (a few weeks before Thanksgiving ‘04) but I’ve been listening to it pretty much constantly since then and I’m now on book eight. It had occurred to me a few times that I’m obsessed there’s enough content there to make for a number of rich video games, but that it would be exceedingly difficult to execute. If you were to try to retell the story in video game form this would indeed be true and, I think, that’s ultimately not the way to go.
What I realized in the car today was that the best form to translate the stories into (and I don’t mean tell the stories) is actually a (real time|turn based) strategy game. The thought goes something like this: for a modern RTS to be reasonably good it has to have at least three unique groups (typically referred to as races) who have different strengths and weaknesses and who would employ different strategies. You also need around four kinds units (broadly drawn): infantry, calvary, non-combat support, and some variation on spell casters. Within each type of unit there are various individual units who are strong or weak in that role. Races, also, will be strong in some categories and weak in others, or may have gaps entirely. For example race A may have a unit that is a very strong (and thus very expensive) spell caster but no medium/weak spell casters. There’s a ton of other dynamics that go into it (early, middle, and late game units) that I won’t bother going into now.
The reason Wheel of Time (WoT) would make an excellent RTS is that it falls so neatly onto this template. You have at least three races in the form of Rand and Co., The Seanchan, and The Dark (this also falls into another general RTS rule of having sides that are good, evil, and generally neutral). Furthermore one is not massively outclassed in any given area if you’re willing to accept some tweaking. Obviously if you just take the books at face value Rand and Co. will have, well… Rand there and that won’t do because he’s just too damn powerful. Maybe maybe you let him be a final uber character that takes enormous resources to draw… but probably not. It’s my opinion that RTS games based on stories like this are best served when the major characters aren’t in the game (or only appear in the single player campaigns).
I don’t want to get into all the match ups so we’ll use spell casters (the most interesting to me) for example. Each group has spell casters, but they’re not all the same. Even this subgroup fits onto the RTS template. Rand and Co. have a large number of relatively strong spell casters in the Asha’man and the Seanchan have a large number of relatively weak spell casters in the form of Damane. That’s all well and good but the Dark is where things can get interesting. Turning an RTS into a very complex form of rock, paper, scissors gets old fast so the Dark is where you get to play around a bit. The Dark have a number (though not many) black sisters which are likely weaker than your average Asha’man, indeed possibly no stronger than a Damane, but what they also have is excellent antispell casters in the form of gholam’s. The Dark may not be particularly strong in offense using the power but are excellent in defense. Throw in a few angreal and ter’angreal along with a one off (or extremely rare) ability to use the True Power (essentially making anyone wielding it more powerful than Asha’man or Damane) and you’ve got a pretty decent balance.
I’m sure a thousand people before me have not only thought of this, but had long night debates over it. Graph paper was likely broken out and maybe even a hex map. I’m sure on a number of occasions, things came to fisticuffs and many a nerd scream was heard. In short, I doubt I’m saying anything new, but that knowledge can’t keep me from thinking about it now that the thought has come into my head. The most frustrating thing though is knowing (KNOWING) that I’ll never do anything with what I’ve been thinking about.