Originally posted by richardboegli
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UT99, 2k3 and 2k4 were barebones at best in their singleplayer campaigns. There was no real guidance, reason or rhyme to them, the one thing they got right though was the concept of 'unreal tournament' itself - It's a brutal sport in the far future.
I think you can make it feel extremely fresh by exploiting this to the max.
You create or choose a character. You're placed as a newbie in the league and are expected to work your way up, from the lower leagues all the way to the championship.
Along the way you, at first, join an existing team, probably based on your character. As you go up, teams get less focused on where they're from and more about pure skill, eventually leaving your old team (cue cutscene here showing some internal conflict) and creating your own, using your rising star as an attraction for others to join to eventually take the ultimate championship.
The first few events would be about explanation. After creation, you are pitted against one bot, an initiation match for the team you want to join. This can also be used to determine the skill level of the player, roughly, for the campaign.
After this, your team goes through lower league matches. TDM, CTF, maybe assault/onslaught punctuated with a few 'battle royale' DM matches where the player can shine individually.
Eventually, the player gets more recognition and starts getting offers to join another team, though in true sports-movie style they only want to recruit you to keep you on the bench and out of the competition (cue the evil germans from Cool Runnings). Your old team is growing distant because of your increasing skill, they feel left behind and kind of want you gone as well.
So, through some harsh times, the player forms their own team. Here the team management part starts, as well as a possible multiplayer tie-in. Pick other bots to join your team and start going through the leagues again, but this time, you get promoted. You start getting official 1on1 challenges from other bot team leaders or lone wolves, which may result in new rivalries or teammates, or another relationship with the character you fought.
Important here is one thing: You don't need to win EVERYTHING to progress, like in older games. Everything goes via leagues, which you need to win overall to progress, but you can lose individual matches, including the 1on1's. There should be more than one 'league', or season, to go through. You can even think of letting a player lose a league, but simply continuing in the next season for another chance at a promotion.
Secondly, this middle part of the campaign (forming your own team) also serves as a jump-in point for multiplayer, this game's co-op mode to be precise. You can invite friends to play through those matches with you on the same team! This forms, in my opinion, the perfect initiation for UT multiplayer.
The last part of the campaign happens when your team qualifies for the final championship. No leagues, but a bracket championship. In world it might be something that happens once every 10 years, where only the very best teams and players are elegible to join. Here the player DOES need to win every match to progress. I'm still thinking about whether this should be a stage of the game where reloading saves is a valid way to progress, or where if the team drops out, they can simply go through the leagues again for another chance next time.
This last bit has all the rivalries, friendships and other events from earlier parts come up again. Characters the player knows return, rivalries are turned up to 11 with a lot of smacktalk or even 'unsanctioned' matches for bets in between the main event, etc. - The final match is actually a series of matches in all the main gameforms, culminating in a final one on one with your main rival to determine the winner (maybe on Hyperblast?). Maybe not Xan though.
Of course, this last tournament stage is also co-op-able. You could even think about replacing some opponent teams with actual players who are also going through the campaign!
IMHO, the above needs to be refined obviously, but it would serve as the perfect singleplayer campaign to UT, and a perfect intro to the classic UT multiplayer modes. With regards to previous games, honestly, they didn't have a singleplayer mode worth talking about, so i don't count this as a rehash 'of the same' because of the added depth and story, but rather than going the insane UT3 route of 'wtf is this', UT4 should have a campaign that properly ties into how the game works while still being fun for newbies to sink their teeth into.
And, as far as i know, a game like the above has never existed, at least not within a shooter framework. I'm not talking about a random string of levels the player has to absolve with bots, i'm talking about a campaign to get the newbies invested in the franchise, and to have them understand how the game works and what it's about while at the same time giving them an honestly good singleplayer and co-op experience.
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