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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Video Game.

What if Mary Shelley was a present day video game designer?

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Due to the general setup of the characters of Frankenstein, the game would best tell the story from the perspective of Frankenstein’s Monster. He would be the best character to be used to explore the world of Frankenstein. The game would be a third-person perspective, over-the-shoulder adventure game. As a creature that is above human, you would have access to fantastic abilities in the areas of traversing and fighting. Also, as a creature that is quite literally built from parts, the ability to upgrade and attain new abilities would be introduced, introducing a great RPG element.

Themes to Explore

Some of the themes explored would be the ethics and consequences of the monster’s creation and Victor’s role in playing God.  Some more themes would include religion and politics. These could be used as story point to further conflicts and provide for some interesting obstacles in Frankenstein’s Monster’s journey to ultimately find his creator. Frankenstein the game would be a fascinating game to play, as it would throw you in the shoes of a true monster and force you to deal with the world of the game in a completely different manner. Can you just walk up to a human NPC as you would in any other game, where you might be playing as a normal human? Will that NPC treat you with hostility? Do you kill the NPC or try to reason with him or her? A few more themes to round out the experience would include purpose of life. Another would be sympathy of his towards humans, and vise versa. The idea of solitude would play an interesting role in decisions to interact with villages you come across. The Monster’s mentality would also prove an interesting story point. His rage as a true monster versus his ability to connect to his former humanity could certainly be an opportunity for interesting problems for the player to solve. The story could also play with the concept of benevolence. Albeit this would come through more in the game’s central mechanic. The game would still be called Frankenstein to honor the game’s main objective, similar to The Legend of Zelda, which doesn’t use the name of it’s lead character in the title. Some of the main storyline would include you tracking down and understanding your creator, Victor. You can do this, by intercepting letters, and interacting with their recipients.

Central Mechanic

The game would be closest to modern 3D Legend of Zelda games, where killing and fighting are not the main aspects of gameplay, and traversing the landscape is. However this would only serve as a starting point. Weapons could be implemented, however do not serve as main “battle” tools. If resorted to violence, the monster would use melee combat. Charged jumps and rams could be used to overcome environmental obstacles, as well as prove useful to quickly escape hot spots with overwhelming enemies.

The game would basically throw you in the middle of the European countryside, and would use the major plot points in the novel, as objective points. The benevolence factor would serve as the central mechanic. You could choose to pummel a scared lone traveler, threatening you with a pitchfork. Of you could hurry and get out of his sight. This could also introduce a notoriety aspect, which could serve you in your favor. Along your way, you would come across villages and towns. How you decide to interact with these villages and their residents would define how easily you can achieve your objective. You can choose to randomly terrorize the village to build notoriety, causing future encounters to alter.

Another strong core mechanic would be included which would gauge the monster’s “feelings” as you play. The sight of fire would “scare” the monster, causing crippling gameplay side effects, such as the inability to fight. The sight of a beautiful open vista would “calm” the monster, and make him “happier,” which would have various other gameplay effects.

Design

The design of the world of Frankenstein, absolutely must defy all of the current pop culture preconceptions, as a bumbling, slow moving, and crippled mass. The monster would still be larger than the humans, however, he would be more athletic in appearance, which provides for a much more satisfying player character. The general mood and design of the world would be closes to the aesthetic found in Steven Sommer’s 2004 film Van Helsing. 18th century Europe would still be the setting, however it would borrow the more stylized gothic desaturation, and use of steam punk elements from Van Helsing. The game would span a 20+ hour epic fantastic adventure, with a strong story, and enormous production value. The world would be completely free roaming with many side missions available for completion. Although their presence would be masked as “side missions” and would be more intergraded and unlabeled, for a more uninterrupted, and immersive experience.

The Graphic User Interface would be very minimal to showcase the gorgeous landscapes and to help with the overall immersion. The feelings could be displayed by faint colored vignettes around the frame. It would be interesting to leave the player to discover the meaning of say, a red vignette, versus a green one, versus the absence of one. Health could be displayed on the physical character model, and critical health could be shown by camera shakes or blurriness.

In the End

The game would capture the essence and feeling of the book, while slightly exaggerating it in various aspects, to allow it to fit better in the video game media. The intellect of the book would translate over, making it as successful, and critically acclaimed as the original source material. I hope Ubisoft sees this and actually makes it, because I really wanna play this game now, after thinking it up, heh. Writing this, also makes we much more curious to see how Electronic Art’s game adaptation of Dante’s Inferno will turn out. It could help push video games to be the socially legitimized, and respected form of art that it has so desired and deserves.