Game Informer posed this question, and I was curious what you fine people thought.
A Ratchet & Clank cart racer? Maybe an Elder Scrolls strategy RPG? A Legacy of Kain fighting game? An FPS set in the Metal Gear world?
Just curious. Feel free to give any reasoning too if you’d like. 
I’ve said before that I’d like to see a KI metroidvania that allows you to build out a custom fighter archetype out of upgrades discovered in-world, and uses that upgrade-driven progression to slowly tutorialize you on various aspects of fighting game strategy. So I’m just going to lazily rehash that idea here.
I always want Transformers fighting game like KI and Rising Thunder! But why Activision never make new Transformers fighting…
Would love to see Smite become a fighting game, would be rather awesome
How would you deal with what I refer to as the “Mortal Kombat Mythologies / Tekken Force” problem? That is to say just the need to be able to move left and right at will changes so much of the control dynamic with regard to spacing and blocking and movement style and speed. MK Mythologies: Sub Zero was famously bad for this and I don’t know anyone who enjoys the Tekken Force mode at Tekken.
I’m not challenging your idea because I think it has a ton of appeal. I just don’t know how you get over the fundamental control differences between a 2D fighter and a side scrolling adventure game.
Halo as an RTS!
Wait…
Legacy of Kain
I mentioned a Legacy of Kain fighting game and I still think that’d be an amazing game with great characters, a great story, and an awesome art style. I think that it could succeed as a 2D or 3D fighter, weapons based or not, or a mixture of both.
Gears of War
I also think that Gears of War’s world and art style would lend itself well to a gory, sort of Mortal Kombat style fighting game. Not sure what the story premise would be, but I’m sure they could come up with something thin, but acceptable.
Mortal Kombat
Speaking of Mortal Kombat, I’d love to see an MK turn-based RPG. There’s a ton of lore in that series, and while multiple games have taken us through the story of the first three games, I still think there’s a lot more to explore for several characters through multiple time periods in the game.
Killer Instinct
As for Killer Instinct, I could see a Dragon Age style open world RPG being a really intriguing concept. You build a party of TJ Combo, Orchid, Maya, Kim Wu and Tusk. Maybe other characters like Jago, Hisako, Thunder, Eagle & Aganos, Mira and Spinal drift in and out of your party or maybe you can keep some of them depending on the decisions you make. Or they could have their own side stories.
But you’d explore the war ravaged world created by Ultratech (complete with thugs, rioters, spies, crooked cops and military types paid by Ultratech and many more), finding new allies, learning new abilities and upgrading weapons if that’s what your character uses, destroying older Riptors and Fulgore units before new ones are made, maybe there’s a Sadira sidequest arc once she’s been defeated. You challenge other characters like Glacius, Cinder, Kan Ra, as well as a wide variety of Ultratech suits and creations and the story continues with Gargos’ invasion and a whole new slew of enemies.
I think that’d be fun!
I love card games. The only decent fighter based game I played was on Neo Geo pocket color, lol. It would need a crossover to work for KI (Snk, capcom, nintendo, have enough fighters/characters to do without a crossover…). Such a game has to be on mobile phone, though…
Card Fighter Clash (part 2 sucked btw).
I am sure it would be a hit among fg fans.
Same one I played! LOL I’m Kinda hooked on Tekken Card Tournament Though these days…
What platform is that on?
iOS and PC I believe. I think on Android too, but I’m not too sure.
Oh cool. Lemme check that one out.
sorry, no PC, I just remembered my friend did have an iOS program on his computer. Illegally. Lol. I know on the official site it says cross play between IOS & Android, but it has a * right next to it…
Back in the day I got pretty into the Star Wars CCG for a while (cause I’m a nerd). I have yet to be sucked into anything else although I always feel the pull. The only exception was the Marvel TCG game on Nintendo DS. That game was awesome, and you could basically work the system to grind for cash and collect cards by doing the same fights over and over again. This was before microtransactions. I tried Magic on PC, but I’m not that interested in the game and the idea of spending real money on packs of make believe cards was too much. for me…
But if they made a KI card game I would definitely give it a go.
Only just finding time to respond to this now, sorry.
Yeah, I realize this is a problem. But I feel like it’s probably more of a surface-level issue born of people adapting existing mechanics exactly, than a terminal flaw for the concept as a whole, and nothing that can’t be sorted out via a combination of prototyping and smart pacing/level design.
In particular, I probably wouldn’t put 8 enemies on the screen at a time. I think close melee combat against multiple enemies is often either unfun, or a justification for Batman/Mordor-style fake combat where you just mash attack and respond to counter QTEs. (Not to say those games are bad – Mordor in particular is about more macroscopic things like crowd management, dealing with captains, navigation, stealth, etc, so it makes sense to abstract away the combat.) Even some shooters, a genre where more enemies makes sense, seem to throw a hundred enemies at you because “it’s a videogame” instead of doing what makes sense wrt the mechanics and the story. (Looking at you, Tomb Raider reboot.)
If I felt like the game needed an army of mooks for the player to plow through beat-em-up style, I’d consider some combination of: not allowing them to block, giving them guard meters, giving the player character attacks that are effective against the guard of the mooks but not serious opponents, giving the player character assist moves (e.g. stun grenades) that allow them to preoccupy other mooks while they deal with one directly, etc. I’m also partial to not letting enemies walk through eachother – whilst it kinda exposes some of the absurdities of 2D combat, I feel like allowing opponents to overlap each other and all get hit by the same attack is also pretty absurd.
If I couldn’t avoid placing enemies on either side of the player character, I’d probably start considering something like a block button. The thing you risk losing here is directional inputs/blocking, which I kinda want. One idea I’m contemplating is a parry/catch-counter button which, if you also input a direction whilst pressing/holding it, makes you face the opposite direction, so you’re encouraged to parry an opponent coming at you from behind.
An advantage to modeling the game off of KI instead of SF is that KI is into the idea of strong forward-moving attacks, which could allow you to put some space between yourself and someone behind you. Giving the mooks tamer, normal-driven movesets a la SF could make their approach comparatively cautious, which buys the player character space. Special moves which strike on both sides and deal some pushback would probably also make sense, and again, assists which allow you to preoccupy a mook on one side while you take on another on the other side could also work.
So I don’t really have a single answer, I think it’s a combination of these things which requires some prototyping to figure out. But one thing’s for sure: I’d want to really play up one-on-one encounters with serious opponents and/or boss figures. That’s kinda where you can get into nitty-gritty frame trap/mixup-driven pressure, footsies, zoning, yomi and all that, which is sort-of what I’d want the player to be building their character towards, and I generally wouldn’t want that getting broken up by mooks. There are probably interesting encounters that can be built involving two or more opponents operating synergistically, too, but that’s kind-of a “see if it works in prototyping” thing as far as I’m concerned.
I’m pretty sure DH made a KI card game to prototype the combo system. Rare might’ve made one back in the day, too.