Beer Can Exorcism!
I was only lukewarm about the upcoming first-person game Geist, in which you are a wanderin’ spirit possessing all sorts of people:
You are John Raimi, a disease-control agent with the federal government, on loan to an elite counterterrorism unit. Your team is sent to investigate the shadowy Volks Corporation. When the operation goes horribly wrong, you are captured and subjected to a ghastly experiment that rips your spirit from your physical body. You now roam the halls of the Volks Corporation compound as a spectral phantom, using your powers to scare and possess any human or animal that crosses your path.
The concept is relatively cool, but I wasn’t SUPREMELY interested until I read this part of an interview with its creators. And it’s not just your plain-jane possessions we’re talking about here:
PGC: Here’s an odd one, what do you think is the craziest thing you can possess in the game?
Erik: It’s funny because after working as long as we have on a game possessing objects, nothing seems crazy anymore. It’s always interesting when it’s like, “well we really need to possess this” then you have to come up with “what would it be like to be this? How would be? How would this work?”
Note:Various answers included mousetraps (complete with dead mice), paint cans, fuses, parrots, shower heads, and beer cans.
PGC: So how do you go through and try to figure out “what would it be like to possess a beer can?”
Ted: In a case like that we already had mechanics where you could possess and object and navigate as that object, like a rolling ball or a rolling grenade and then the beer can is more of an extension of that.
It’s like a cross between Halo and the Wonder Twins.
