So I was coming up with a video game concept and I was wondering what you guys thought about it. It would be an RPG, with turnbased gameplay heavily similar to the early Final Fantasy games. There would be 8 'classes', each relying on different stats. [b]Guardian[/b] - Strength (Tank, minor healing, heavy on defense) [b]Berserker [/b]- Strength (Heavy consistent damage, low defensive) [b]Assassin [/b]- Agility (Heavy burst damage, medium defense) [b]Ranger[/b] - Agility (Good consistent damage, medium defense) [b]Arcanist [/b]- Intellect (Good consistent damage, low defense, has support abilities) [b]Warlock[/b] - Intellect (Heavy burst damage and consistent, low defense) [b]Cleric [/b]- Devotion (Good healing, low defense, has support) [b]Monk[/b] - Devotion (Decent damage, minor healing, good defense) Now there are 8 party members you can recruit throughout the game, all belonging to one of the above classes. The player character is actually none of those classes however; they are simply the "[b]Hero[/b]" class. The Hero class has the potential to become anything you want, as it can learn most of the abilities the above classes can learn. As you level you'll unlock a choice of abilities, allowing you to 'mold' your class into one of the above classes, or become a mixture of them. For example, you may choose some Guardian abilities, giving you good defensive abilities, but also choosing some Arcanist abilities, giving you good offensive spells, essentially creating somewhat of a "Shield Mage" class. Each of the characters you can recruit have their own personalities and own backstory, so they aren't simply nameless party members. You can actually choose whether or not you want them to join - it is actually possible to complete the game without recruiting a single character. If you do choose to recruit them some though, the thing is: when they fall in battle, they die permanently, similar to Fire Emblem. However, there is a way to prevent them from disappearing forever. At the beginning of the game you are given a 'Soul Shard'. When a party member dies, the Soul Shard allows you to trap their souls within the shard, binding them forever to it. This allows you to continue to use the character even after death - by forcing their soul to battle. They would have the same abilities, same stats, everything... the only difference is that they are no longer 'characters' and no longer have any personality whatsoever. You simply use them to fight in battles, but after the battle is done, they return back to the soul shard. Trapping a character in the soul shard does not go unnoticed. Your other party members will notice, and depending on how many times you do it, they may act differently towards you. The ending of the game can also change. It will change depending on how many characters you recruited (if you recruited none, that will also affect the ending), how many characters you lost, and how many you trapped within the soul shard. There are other choices throughout the game too that can affect the ending, as there are some story related events that offer multiple choices (similar to something like KOTOR or Mass Effect). The actual story revolves around a fictional kingdom that would soon be under threat by a returning evil, the generic plot of most fantasy RPGs. 'Guilds' play heavily into this however, as the kingdom has many adventurers that form guilds. The many guilds are essentially comprised of adventurers who want to do good, but some of them have different motives. You actually form a guild at the beginning of the game, and the politics between guilds (and the family that rules the kingdom) is an important part of the plot. Overall, there are some problems and obstacles to overcome in designing a game like this. The game's difficulty needs to be so it is possible to complete the game without recruiting anyone, but at the same time, making it so it isn't too easy when you do recruit people. Another problem is that seeing as you can choose to not recruit people, and the fact that they can die, this leads to many different combinations of parties, which in effect means there will be many different versions of single conversations. Even if the game was short in length, the amount of dialogue would be massive. I'm currently in Comp Sci in Uni so I'm well aware of possible complications. I was just wondering what you guys thought about it, would you play it, etc. Feel free to ask any questions as well.