commented out

Relevant material: Firefly Reborn as Online Universe

Firefly is one of my favorite shows, and the source of a deep grudge between me and Fox Broadcasting. I don’t know what they were thinking for canceling such a great show. Granted, we got an excellent movie and a comic series. Now, Wired is reporting that a company called Multiverse is working on a massively multiplayer game based in the ‘Verse.

My instant reaction to squeal with delight. I want to be a Browncoat, assemble a crew, and stick it to those Alliance pigs. However, it is in my nature to remain cautiously skeptical. There are so many ways this could be fantastic, but just as many that this could be an abomination.

Optimally, I imagine something along the lines of Freelancer with more features. The ability to land and actually explore planets would be a necessity. You could play an Alliance soldier, a Bounty Hunter, a smuggler, or any range of tradesmen. Imagine questing on a home planet of your choosing until you get up the money to buy a ship, gather a crew, and start your own “legitimate business”. Or, maybe you’d rather hone your technical skills and get hired on as an engineer. There would be plenty of room for tradesmen to stay on their home world, perfecting the arts of weapon and armor crafting, ship repair, or parts makers. Of course, too much detail could slow gameplay, turning it into tedious drudgery as you struggle to find another player in a specialized class just so you can make that deal on Whitefall.

Players should probably be kept in the “normal human” range. Too many psychic River-clones running around would dull the feel of the game world, turning it into a race to amass the most psychic abilities. And what about Reavers? While I’m sure plenty of people would love the opportunity to play a Reaver, I imagine they’d be the perfect griefer class.

Overexposure of established characters would hamper the believability of the world. Part of what made Firefly so great is the believable feeling the ‘Verse had. There’s a sense that things hadn’t changed much; we just had better technology. Not every player could run a job with Mal and his crew, or even have the opportunity to meet them. Not every deal could come from Badger, or Fanty and Mingo, and not everyone is friends with Mr. Universe.

Translating an established property into a new medium is never easy. I just hope any further additions to the franchise are done with sort of care that was taken when the movie was made, and the comics were inked. Having Joss as a consultant on the project wouldn’t be a bad idea, at all. If they can pull it off, Multiverse has my fifteen bucks a month; goodbye World of Warcraft.

And hey, since Fox is involved (licensing and whatnot), maybe it could prompt them to give Firefly another chance after they botched it so badly the first time. Maybe they could even do it right.