The Future of Tactics: VR
Virtual reality is the next frontier for games that have been traditionally hampered by interface. Think Starcraft: the ability to fingerdance across the keyboard is just as vital of a component of a win as picking the right cheese strategy. Think X-COM: an errant mouse-click easily leads to disaster. Think Tropico: wouldn’t it be easier to look through the eyes of a cop loyal to the corporate state than awkwardly float around a mafioso from a bird’s eye view trying to make sure it’s him that your goons execute, rather than his cousin’s milkman?
A Fading Genre
by Stu
When I imagined the future of gaming some 10 years ago, I was most excited to see what the tactical role playing game (TRPG) would evolve into.
Bored with the traditional turn-based battle screen, the combination of a playing field with positional meaning and the classic level-up, turn-based RPG system was exactly what gamers needed back then. Each map feels like a focused landscape, framed at the perfect angle for tactical command. The “slice of the world” isometric map is a unique and purposeful style—not inherently complex, but with the potential for huge depth.
Isometric RPGs were especially satisfying to me, worlds created with blocks of terrain: river, lava, rooftops, each with values that gave the environment gameplay meaning, as well as a visual stimulation of the imagination.
Standouts in the genre often involved the ground you’re standing on in more than a quantitative way. Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, gave players the ability to become a bender of the elements—geomancers could inflict status effects on their enemies based on the kind of tile they stood on.
The reality is that most modern tactics games are remakes and ports of old classics limited to handheld devices or fast-paced genre hybrids like Valkyria Chronicles that don’t hit the same notes as the classics. Many of these ports, remakes and hybrids are quality games, but I can’t help but want something fresh—the next evolutionary advancement of the tactics game. Instead, the genre has faded into near non-existence.
Check out Burbator's Minecraft adventure map! As seen on Thinknoodles YouTube.
My Final Boss 