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I’ve thought about this a few times, mostly while playing RDR2. A new take on Oregon trail could work. It’s an RPG. It’s a puzzle. There could be a combat element, you could choose what your specialty is among the camp, it could be a hunting game, a survival game. How is this not a remake we’ve already gotten?
Yeah, a modernised, simulationist attempt at the experience of travelling the Oregon trail today... Man, could be great.
Right? They could do so much with it. Hunt and craft while on the trail, when you get to town you can trade and sell, you can run into problems in town, run into problems on the trail so there’s some combat, gather supplies throughout. They could make beautiful cut scenes of the actual travel, make it cinema-level scenes a la RDR2, make a great band of travelers a la RDR2, you could become a scoundrel a la RDR2…basically make RDR2 again but oregon trail.
Oregon Trail II for Windows 95 was amazingly detailed. You could actually change routes and end up in several other locations, and it would sometimes simulate special events for the particular route you take. For example, if you try to cross the Donner Pass in 1846 you get stuck in the snow for months.
The thing about realizing it in a 3D game engine is it's a game about walking a thousand miles. In any implementation of Oregon Trail you see the oxen take three steps and that's a day gone by without incident. If anything it'd be a hilarious troll to make people walk the entire length of the trail.
Well that’s also why I was drawing comparisons to RDR2. The gameplay is a little more limited when it comes to main story missions because they have cut scenes that essentially play out a beautiful, tragic story in which you basically handle the combat and nothing else. If they had great writers, the travel could all be cut scenes, timelapse, great dialogue. That’s where the story could basically take place, and you just deal with the fun stuff.
But I say that as someone who gets engrossed mainly in the interpersonal character development/story stuff. I love RDR2 to death. Not because the gameplay is really freeing, but because the story and characters are so well developed. I just wish they built out the dialogue options a little more, instead of the few canned options you get. Cyberpunk did a pretty great job in creating that feeling that you’re diverting the entire story with your dialogue and story choices. I’ve heard BG3 would be up my alley for this reason, but honestly I like the more realistic worlds, like rdr, gta, cyberpunk—even if those are over dramatized and exaggerated, and cyberpunk is straight up sci-fi.
That is easily transferable to the Oregon trail. It’s even around the same time. You could do so much, have the player choose a path for their character. Since it wouldn’t have to be hugely open world and could stay pretty limited to the line of travel, that space on the disk could be taken up by a hugely varied branching story.
I’m getting excited just spitballing lol
RDR2 but it's Oregon trail and the animations are faster and I'm in
This is a remake, not of Dragon Age, but of Oregon Trail. The dark gritty reboot we really need.
I would unironically play the fuck out of this.
Play neo scavenger.
YOU DIED
of dysentery.
Of the blight
Wrong game, unless dragon age features that phrase too.
I know, I just don't think Dragon Age has an equivalent You're dead lol screen.
Elgin Ring