OK, so this idea sort of came from a completely different direction than simply watching the 1990 Paul Verhoeven movie and thinking I could come up with something better than the several negligible license games that came out for it on the consoles of the day (which I guess would be the late NES/early SNES period). Instead, it came about from a discussion I was having about where the next entry in the GTA series (Grand Theft Auto for the uninitiated) should occur.
So as you could probably conclude at this point the game would be GTA with a dystopian vision of Mars as the setting, and would loosely follow the plot of the movie with various missions and requirements needed to be fulfilled before moving onto the next part of the story, usually involving the vehicular or on-foot mayhem that defines Grand Theft Auto.
In a nutshell, the story would start on Earth for a tutorial series of missions, involving Douglas Quaid (the protagonist that Arnie plays) visiting the Recall company for a "vacation" memory implant only to find out his memories are fake and ends up fighting off his work buddies and wife (all of whom are actually agents of the game's evil conglomerate owner Cohaagen sent to monitor Quaid) and escaping to Mars. At which point the game would give you a few hints on where to go next and who to look up and then leave you to it, in classic GTA style. While the game's top priority is to help the mutant Resistance of the movie and escape Cohaagen's henchmen (including his top man Richtor), you could also align yourself with all manner of corrupt organisations, crime families or citizen militias of the oppressed people of Mars for prestige, cash or what have you.
The Mars of the movie is basically a large, mostly underground structure designed explicitly for mining the planet. As such, most "roads" are in fact tunnels from one area to the next, involving corporation structures, living spaces and mining areas. The actual living habitats vary from shanty towns and slums (which is where the mutants live and where most of the action takes place) to the richer built-up areas for important Cohaagen personnel and other wealthy citizens. There exists also a further series of underground caves left behind by an advanced and ancient alien race in which lies the device that will give the planet of Mars an atmosphere which will come into play much further into the game's storyline. Another device (literally, in this case) are the gadgets that Quaid apparently left for himself in a briefcase, should the future Quaid ever figure out that his life on Earth was fabricated. These involve all manner of stealth technologies and weaponry for him to use. More of this futuristic technology becomes available to him as the game progresses.
Now there are several considerable-sized problems with this idea, beyond the simple fact that you're combining a movie/book license with the major video game series that is Rockstar's GTA (see an earlier blog entry of mine on how I feel about borrowing an existing game design/idea). The first is GTA's popular radio station line-up, a mainstay of the series since the original GTA 3 and invariably the reason why every new GTA game since has been based in a different decade (original was based on the cusp of the 21st century, Vice City was the 80s and San Andreas early 90s) is so the player would have a new era's worth of music to listen to. Since the game is based in the nearish future, the only music stations you could have would be the "classic" stations playing several decades-old music.
The second concern would be the popular fan theory of the movie, which is that everything that occurs throughout the entire movie is simply part of Quaid's "Secret Agent on Mars" vacation memory implant which he gets from the Recall company at the start of the movie. Everything weird occurs shortly after this implant is received (or rejected by Quaid's mind because of his secret memory wipe depending on which theory you follow), including the discovery that his entire life on Earth up to that point was an elaborate sham. Though this could be turned around if we set it up so the player can discover enough "evidence" that the whole thing is an implant-induced dreamworld, sort of like a secret ending if a series of hidden requirements are met (like discovering enough weird computer glitches throughout the cityscape and taking photos of them).
Best part is that most of this idea can be salvaged if the Total Recall connection falls through and GTA still decides to go ahead with a "Mars" edition. Likewise if the GTA system becomes unavailable the game can drop all non-plot-related missions and massive areas to explore and simply concentrate on following the story of the movie with a 3rd-person shooter angle. It would still be awesome to have both though. Geht yo ahss to Mahrs, indeed.
