Stellaris without ten thousand DLCs.

I was recently apart of a conversation on Reddit about an ideal Teen Titans game. I concluded that the other 4 team members from the cartoon would work, but...

Beast Boy's full power isn't remotely feasible in a game unless he had a AAA project all to himself. If he's included as a playable team member along with the rest, then we'd have a few dozen animals to select from at best and controls/stats would be simple. So I'm fully on-board for Beast Boy just having a game all to himself, and it would something like this:

I'm thinking a Lego Games-style character selection, but every choice is a green animal with listed skills. Animals should be categorized based on what kind of use a given species has. Groups should be: tiny venomous bugs (good for stealth attacks, and each venom has different stat de-buffs.), small vertebrates (Some items are too big for bugs to carry, but can only be found through small tunnels.), birds of prey (For when you want to both fly and fight!), dinosaurs/giant mammals (Need I say more?), speedy athletes (To keep up with Cyborg's car, if nothing else.), and strong fish. (Whales/dolphins might be listed here because utility beats Science for the purpose of this feature.) Tempt me, and I'll list ideal species to go in each of these categories.

BB starts with 1 animal in each category, but how should more animals be unlocked? Collecting DNA samples as an old-fashion collect-a-thon ala Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 could be a good "didn't think of a better way" system. If we go a more Elder Scrolls path, using each category would fill an experience meter to unlock more animals with the same basic purpose.

The real challenge, and the main reason I'd want a dedicated Beast Boy game, is that finely crafting every animal's animations, stats, and controls would be a bankruptcy and a half. For instance, you'd think only apes could ride motorcycles, but I've dead-serious seen a video of a giraffe trying it and it got all 4 hooves in the correct position for a second or so despite being several times taller than the bike. BB once became a whale on dry-land just to body-slam a villain (I forget who), who then picked him up and threw the whale away. A big budget would allow unpredictable interactions to play out organically and there'll be no room for other Titans if that route was taken.

I would like to see a No Man's Sky kind of game, but far less cluttered, and as a true MMORPG from the start.

Basically the world should still be RNG generated and extremely big, but feel far, far more realistic:

- Galaxies come in all sizes. There are some supergalaxies with 10^14 star systems, like in NMS, but they are extremely rare. The vast majority are dwarf galaxies with around 10^8 star systems, and theres a few large galaxies like the Milky Way with around 10^11 star systems. Likewise small galaxies are unlikely to be elliptic galaxies like in NMS, much more likely are spiral galaxies, irregular galaxies, etc.

- To travel to other galaxies, you have to reach the central black hole; the larger that hole, the farther you can travel. But you get a choice where to travel; its not a linear list like in NMS. Some galaxies may not have a central black hole, other may have multiple such black holes.

- Different galaxies should have different scenarios; possibly more than one, too. Players can solve these scenarios, turning the galaxy peaceful. At random new scenarios may be reintroduced in such a galaxy.

- There are hundreds, if not thousands of different sentient races. No race is universally met everywhere. Single travellers that can be found in any place can be from any race in the game of course, but settlements of a race usually has a home galaxy, maybe spread to galaxies close by, and maybe such a race may have settled in previously empty galaxies, but none of them will be just everywhere. You can easily find galaxies that have no race settled there. Other galaxies may hold douzens of different races.

- Large cities of course can feature multiple races, plus multiple travellers from even other races. Small settlements are usually one race plus possibly a traveller or two.

- In fact the game has massive cities with skyscrapers and millions, maybe even billions of people.

- Star systems come in all kinds of configurations. Not always 2-6 planets, some of them possibly moons, and one station.

- The vast majority of planets and moons wont support life.

- There are asteroid belts and small stellar objects in every star system, they are in specific places though.

- There are pirates but they arent just everywhere either.

- Many planets cannot be landed upon (Gas giants, ice giants, superearths with too thick atmosphere and too high gravitation).

- You can create your own spaceship with high control of the details, roughly like for example in Starfield. This focuses on finding special materials, knowhow, skilled artisans etc instead of looking for the perfect drop from the perfect system as in NMS.

- Same for outposts, though obviously there you wont use the best materials or employ the best artisans for a base.

- Same for your other gear, except there will be far less flexibility; you're not designing a full building or for bases even multiple buildings, but just a space suit or a space gun etc.

- Ultimately this could also be seen as an EVE, but with a much larger gameworld and with less focus on a realistic and working economy, and far more focus on having fun adventures.

- Unlike NMS, you pick a race at the start of the game, and live with its advantages and disadvantages.

- You also get various skills and develop them over time. Such as piloting, mechanics, medicine, hacking, etc.

- Future expansions should focus on introducing new scenarios (problems that may plague a galaxy) and introducing more cooperation and competition between players. Instead of ever more factions with new rules, pointless minigames with different rules, and ever more different types of spaceships and guns and whatnot, like NMS does. Last time I played NMS I just lost interest in the game before exploring the new stuff. It was just too much stuff.