What inspired Geneforge?

[The Crimson Coyote]

I know that Geneforge is a game based in its owen universe, in a fictional world... but! I Notice a few little similarities from Some kids Anime programs...

 

for one, you have little monsters that look like Chairmanned that breath fire, it sounds like a reference to Poke'mon. The Agents in part one, two and three look quite similar to Goku in DBz.

 

I do know that everything is inspired by something, my epic story that I am writing for instance is inspired by allot of internet fads, Anime, and B rated horror movie classics, but...

 

Was Geneforge inspired by Anime?

[Randomizer]

Jeff said once that Geneforge was originally going to be a science fiction based game. He never really mentioned what inspired it.

[Ishad Nha]

Especially in the desert areas of Geneforge 1 and 2, I am reminded of the TSR Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games "Dark Sun 1: Shattered Lands" and "Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager". These two games date from the first half of the 90s, so they are credible guesses but only guesses.

 

The feel is similar as the games use a similar format: party grouped for exploring and individual movement during combat.

[Student of Trinity]

Jeff has said he was going to do a sci-fi game, and evidently he had made the natural choice of a genetic engineering theme. I think he indicated in an interview somewhere that he got cold feet about the sci-fi genre when he remembered that his established market was pure fantasy, and that straying even into historical fantasy with Nethergate hadn't been very profitable. So he just reworked his sci-fi ideas into fantasy, and the rest was shareware gaming history.

 

Interesting how purely financial constraints seem to have helped to generate a really good and original game and world idea.

[Spidweb]

Geneforge had many different inspirations, some real world and political, some fictional.

 

Two that stand out among many are the awesome David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ and Eden books by Harry Harrison.

 

- Jeff Vogel

[The Crimson Coyote]

Quote:

Originally written by Spidweb:
Geneforge had many different inspirations, some real world and political...

Do you mean things the debates about genetic engineering being wrong, and we should not tamper with nature and that sort of thing?

If there is one lesson you hope people learned from playing Geneforge, what would it be?

[Retlaw May]

Quote:

Originally written by Spidweb:
Geneforge had many different inspirations, some real world and political, some fictional.

Two that stand out among many are the awesome David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ and Eden books by Harry Harrison.

- Jeff Vogel

Heh, someone who has actually heard of eXistenZ, wow. So many people I know have never heard of it. It was the first dvd that my family owned (think that it came with the thing).

[The Crimson Coyote]

hmm... Interesting, I did a little read up on Wikipedia about those two peaces of media. they both sound very good, how ever, the Eden Trilogy needs a few more sources as there is very little on the books.

 

(I know, I should go buy the books)

[yumabill]

I felt that the political metaphor was most fully developed in GF4, where the rebelling faction has gained access to doomsday devices, and the faction in power has a totalitarian control over the general population.

 

A handful of people with great power and other groups trying to claim some of that power....Substitute nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, germ warfare, and suddenly Geneforge becomes an allegory about our own time.

 

What's awesome about GF4 is that I played through as a Rebel and a (traitor) Loyalist before I realized that you could pursue the path of disarmament, through the Trakovites. If there is a GF5, I hope that the Trakovites play a major role.