Great Ideas: Liang Shan-Po

Besides gaming there's been a fair few viewings of films and series and between the british sitcoms and the korean revenge flicks I revisited an old japanese series I first watched a few years back called "The Water Margin", a series based on an old chinese novel. For some more info have a look HERE and HERE, but the rough idea is that in China 1000 years ago the reborn souls of 108 heroes arose to defeat the evil military commander Kao Chiu. These rebels and outlaws, based in the inpenetrable fortress of Liang Shan-Po, are led by the great swordsman Lin Chung who lost his true love due to Kao Chiu's wicked schemes. Without going much further into the specifics, I have concluded that this would make an excellent premise for a video game. Perhaps an action-RPG in the style of Jade Empire would be in order, with some more emphasis on the combat part.

The reasons I think this would be an excellent idea are as follows. The roster of characters ranges from comic reliefs through corageous heroes to vicious villains and two-faced cut-throats. It's a great epic of good versus evil, honour versus dishonour and the large state versus the small band of rebels.. kind of like Star Wars really. Each of the 26 episodes centers on either the main story and the main characters or on smaller characters and small side stories that add flesh to the saga. There are tense battles and epic swordfights against a background of poor peasants being defended by those more capable. The series also boasts several strong female characters, making for some good gender balance. With a slight supernatural element (some magic, reborn heroes etc.) the obligatory fantastical part of an RPG is also satisfied. Add to this a good theme tune and the promise in this concept seems even more plausible. To be able to truly see how cool this could be as a game, maybe even as an episodic game considering this is trendy with smaller games lately, check out the series if you can find it. Sure, it's chock full of cheese and has to be considered by the standards of the time of it's making but it's great fun none the less.

EDIT: a little research reveals that others have had similar ideas, i.e. Konami with the Suikoden games, but I would still like to see a game closer to the spirit of the TV series and less heavy on the anime/manga styling.