“This doesn't really describe the game itself, more rather the technology.”
That's harsh. I personally think that both are around, and I've tried to refrain myself from talking about tech in the review itself, though I can't deny that it's something I'm interested in (in the case of random AIs, what can be done with the generator is imo more interesting than a thorough description than the thousands of parameters that dev have fed into it and balanced over the year to make sure that it generates credible characters).
“Would this game also have some elements of Shenmue?”
Any game which has never been released on the PC platform, you can safely bet that I've never played. But as theraje's comment point out, there are some games which I've never played which introduced some concepts which I use here (e.g. I've played Trine, but not the Lost Vikings). I'll try to base my answer on your example.
“Shenmue was a good game, it did focus on intangeable emotional aspcets rather than hard-coded interactions. Searching the house and finding various pointless--but sentimental--items.”
Emotional aspects can be introduced through hard-coded interactions. As an example, those items which you mention have been placed here by the developer in order to create a form of experience, and that's definitely a form of hard-coded (= written in stone, will be the same each time you start a new game) interactions with the player.
Again, I have never played the game, but I can imagine that this way : pictures of relatives, necklaces, flowers, religious icons that characters value a lot, even though they have no objective value. They will stop by a little while to watch them from time to time with a sad/happy look, will feel greatly upset if they disappear and look for them everywhere, will fight for them if needed... This is totally a kind of behaviors which would be present in this game.
One result which I'd like to achieve is that IAs don't look like they're following precise rules, and stop being so focused in everything they do and walking for everything. That the behavioral rules they follow be more subtle, and a little bit random between a large pack of choice. As an example, suppose that a character is doing work at home. During his work, he sometimes sighs, puts the pen on the desk, looks at a photograph on said desk, stare at it for some time, then go back to writing. With current AIs, that would be like this :
* Character performs work for some time, his eyes permanently fixed on the work in strict monotasking behavior.
* Character decides to stop work.
* Character takes a look around, as if it was the first time he was here.
* Character notices the photograph.
* Character stands up, walks 30 cm to go in front of the photograph.
* Character takes the photograph, sighs.
* Character puts the photograph back on the desk.
* Character does random action unrelated to his previous work.
Taking a look around shouldn't be an action that requires focus. Whatever we're doing, we have some level of consciousness of our environment.
But I digress...
“Your pitch tells me nothing of the story, or what shape it takes other than "it's innovative!", which I heard regularly in that transition period between the 90's and the early 2000's.”
Read read read.
“[Neolander :] The scenario of Nastria takes place in a not-so-distant future, maybe a few decades of technical evolution beyond us. Energy sources have become cleaner, chirurgy and nanofabrication have improved to the point where wealthy people can buy themselves computers with neural interfaces, and corporations have grown so big and powerful that they are now considered governments in their own right. One day, a leak occurs: one of the top 5 corporations has researched and created some piece of techology, codenamed "artifact", that provides some extreme power, though the nature of this power is unknown. The player embodies a character who is linked to this leak in one way or the other, and its actions will determine the evolution of this initial intrigue.
[... The characters are] a lawyer, a janitor, an industrial spy, an engineer, a researcher, a policeman, a human resource manager, a politician, and... the mysterious character who caused the leak within the corporation. This last one must be unlocked by going sufficiently far with other characters, though, to avoid unnecessary early plot spoilers. ”
Going beyond required an in-depth description of the universe or of each individual character's plot, I think. An description of each character, as offered by the game's main menu would have disrupted the flow of the review and as such become boring. Describing the universe beyond "it's a good ol' cyberpunk settings" usually takes at least half of good tabletop RPG manuals, so again I thought it was a bit too much.
I could have given more details on what exactly has happened in that corporation (that I know, actually :)), but I was not comfortable with spoilers in reviews, even for nonexistent games :'(
“The idea of your player moving about after you've quit could fall into the category of "that's technical cool, but not fun to play". If you return to your character, after having murded a tramp, and your player is in a supermarket buying milk, you're going to have difficulty remembering where you are, what you were doing, what you are supposed to be doing (in the story) and likewise. It seems like a disconnect to have a role playing game, where by 'someone else' is playing your charcter when you're not there. Yes, you can switch the feature off, but if there has to be an option, that means that the idea is not sound enough (or supported by other features enough) to begin with. You would need some kind of feature that let the player track what it is they should be doing, and discovering where their player has been whilst you've been away. (kind of like the "flashbacks" when you load your game in later Pokemon titles).”
Yeah, how to solve this problem was not clear in my mind, and I've written it a bit too quickly because I wanted to rush a version of this text out of the door in order to get feedback. I knew that it was far from finished, because this part changed regularly in my mind before I wrote it on paper, and changed again when I copied it on the computer (I usually planned a hybrid system where the character doesn't move if the player hasn't seen it move with another character, but that sounded too arbitrary to me one second thought : if the player just crosses the character's way on the road, without noticing it in the middle of the road, why should it count ?).
Your "flashback" idea sounds very interesting, although the last Pokemon I've ever played was Yellow. I'd imagine it this way :
* When selecting the character, there is some sort of visual transition to white on black text : "While you were away...", then fades to black.
* The game automatically draws some sort of comic about what the character has been doing, based on slides composed on one picture and one chunk of text (e.g. picture of character walking in a corridor + "Martin left his room...", picture of character giving back a key at the entrance of an hotel + "...gave back the key..."). This tries to summarize the main events of the character's actions : if the character has not been played for a long time, the game gives less details to keep the slide session short. The exact apparence of these "slides" is consistent with the global visual identity of the game, as many metaphors can be used : speed drawing, web page scrolling, etc... I think I'd mostly center this around player voyeurism. After all, we've picked this character among other because of an FBI-like psychological profile.
Neolander added on
-usually +used to
Neolander added on
PS...
“So, I'm sure you have somthing more clear in mind that you're sure of, but your pitch is not really identifying why it is I would want to play this game, asides the whizz-bang technology.”
Hope my answers satisfy you better then. I like answering questions better than writing complex heaps of text that are based on nothing, maybe it has an influence on writing quality too.