Here are a few things I’d like to see:
A classic side scrolling Streets of Rage style game with polished up KI Gold era graphics, but built from the ground up to be this style of game and not a Tekken Force clone where a character’s basically transferred directly from the fighting game to the beat-em up.
Characters: Jago, Orchid, Thunder and Kim Wu. The goal is to fight your way through a desolate, post-apocalyptic city that’s broken up in to levels in order to get to Ultratech Tower and ultimately defeat ARIA. You’d fight several bosses along the way including Spinal, Fulgore, Sadira, and Cinder. Rash could be a bonus, hidden character.
I’d also like to see a 3D MK Shaolin Monks style co-op game with modern graphics where you fight your way through the lore that happens before, during and after the tournament that leads up to the events of the current KI. The twist is that you’d switch sides between two sets of two characters, but you’d build up their skills and powers over the course of the game, gaining new moves, new abilities, etc.
Characters: You’d start off with Jago and Sabrewulf on one side, and Cinder and Sadira on the other. Through the course of the game, you’d unlock the ability to play additional run through’s with Orchid, Maya and Tusk for the good guys, and Mira, Kan Ra, and Fulgore for the bad guys. The places you go, the story you play through, the characters you fight, etc are all dependent on which characters are chosen. The ultimate goal is to get to the KI Tournament and play out your story and what you do there.
I’d also love a KI 4 character turn-based JRPG. This could involve playing through all of the lore of the series while adding a considerable amount of additional content. The ultimate goal would be saving Earth, defeating Gargos and restoring the Ichoriens. The story would start prior to the KI Tournament and continue on toward battleing Ultratech as the mid-game goal before the invasion begins and priorities shift and uneasy alliances are formed.
The story would revolve around a variety of ideas for different characters. Kim Wu growing up and embracing her destiny, character relationships such as Jago’s estrangement from Orchid, Maya and Tusk meeting and falling in love, Sabrewulf trying to regain his humanity, the motivations behind Sadira’s lust for power, Thunder trying to save his brother from himself, Aganos trying to find some sort of mission to keep going, etc.
This would also lead in to the second half of the game where the villains and the heroes must come together to battle a greater threat, and how they’re able to coexist. Themes would involve love, betrayal, forgiveness, jealousy, evolution of opinions, backstabbing, death, remorse, new and unexpected bonds, etc.
The structure of the game would be along the lines of Dragon Age: Inquisition, where you have main story missions, but also a large number of side quests to give you the origins of several characters as well as playing out their sub plots, not just in a “here’s the Aganos mission,” but over the course of several missions, you get larger bits for one character here, but smaller bits for other characters there as well. It’d be a process of fully fleshing out the characters and giving them all an equal role in the story, not just bit parts in a story between Jago and Gargos.
Decisions would have real consequences in terms of who will be able to join your party, which story branches open up, and the ultimate ending. The ending would be predetermined in terms of the result, but how the characters end up, who lives and dies, who ends up together, who’s story is resolved in a positive, negative or somewhat ambiguous way, or not at all, would be solely determined by player choice.
Over the course of the game, you’d level up a variety of stats including attack power and health, buy and sell weapons, armor and clothing that would look different on your party, health and revive potions, potions to buff you and debuff opponents, you’d gain new special attacks, single character and multi-character combo attacks, magical attacks and spells, 5th character single summon attacks, basically anything you could find in a JRPG would be served here, but with a well defined KI twist and perhaps some new ideas as well.
Guardians would also play a huge role in this, and there would be several more of them. Some of them would be familiars that float next to your character in battle while buffing you or debuffing the opponent. Some of them would be actual monsters that you can bring in as a player controlled character that replaces a party member for a short time, and some of them would be single use massive attacks.
Characters: You’d start as Jago, but over the course of the game, you’d have the ability to add Sabrewulf, Glacius, Thunder, Orchid, Sadira, Spinal, Cinder, TJ Combo, Maya, Tusk, Kim Wu, Mira, and Aganos to your party, though your decisions will affect whether you meet them at all and whether they’d want to join you.
You can have up to four characters in your active party, but you can also send another party of four characters at various junction points to complete missions or tasks. They’ll level up at a slightly lesser rate as your active party, (but still better than characters on your bench), and they’ll also gain new items and rewards. You can call back any character from the travel party, but you have to exchange them with another from your bench or your active party.
You will also be able to switch between these two parties whenever you want, making the travel party your active party to start up the story for those characters or continue it, and you can bring the travel party back to the active party at various junction points. Sometimes the story will dictate when you switch and sometimes you will control this.
Some special battles will require the use of both parties, and switching back and forth between them in the same dungeon and in the same battle itself. Some battles will also require more than four characters, or as few as a one on one duel, which will look and play similar to an actual KI match.
I’d also love the suggestion above for a Jade Empire style game set in the KI universe. That would be amazing, and probably far more likely than a KI turn-based JRPG, but I’d definitely be happy with either one!