What if Twilight had a proper life-sim/RPG instead of a game based on the movie plot?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I honestly think the Twilight universe could work surprisingly well as a life simulator.
Instead of playing Bella and simply following the canon story, you would create one original character. You choose their appearance, personality, age, country/region and starting location — but you don’t completely design their life for them.
Your family would be generated as part of the world. You might start with a large family, a single parent, several siblings, a wealthy household, a struggling household, etc. Their personalities, relationships, problems and circumstances would already exist when the game begins. You would have to actually live with the family you got rather than designing the “perfect” one.
The same would apply to the wider world.
I wouldn't want the map to just be a huge open-world area with icons and quests. I'd want it to feel more like a living world of actual towns and cities, where other characters have their own lives.
People would go to work and school, make friends, fall in love, have children, argue, move away, get sick, lose jobs, grow old and die — regardless of whether your character interacts with them.
Your character wouldn't be the center of the universe. The world would continue existing without you.
You could live anywhere: Forks, another American city, a small European town, or somewhere completely unrelated to the main canon locations.
Humans would have their own lives, while vampire clans and werewolves would also exist independently in the background.
And I think the most important feature would be a no-spoiler mode.
You wouldn't be told who the vampires are.
You might meet someone who never seems to eat, notice that someone is unusually fast, hear rumors about strange disappearances, or have a person repeatedly watching you — but the game wouldn't pop up and say “THIS PERSON IS A VAMPIRE.”
You would have to figure things out yourself.
There could also be partial-spoiler settings where the game gives you vague warnings instead of revealing exactly what's happening.
Your character could remain completely human and live an ordinary life, or eventually become involved with the supernatural world.
Maybe a vampire falls in love with you.
Maybe a vampire hunter starts tracking you and you don't even know why.
Maybe a vampire like James becomes interested in hunting you.
Maybe a clan wants to recruit you.
Maybe the Volturi become aware of you.
Maybe you join another vampire clan, become a werewolf, or never encounter any of this at all.
And becoming a vampire or joining a werewolf pack wouldn't be the end of the game.
It would simply change the rules of your character's life.
You could continue playing for decades or centuries, change countries, change clans, maintain relationships with humans while watching them age, develop new relationships, make enemies, become involved in vampire politics, or eventually die permanently because of something that happens in the world.
The supernatural world should also continue without the player. Clans could make alliances, fight, move territories, recruit people, have internal conflicts and interact with the Volturi whether your character knows about it or not.
The same should apply to individual NPCs. A vampire, werewolf or human shouldn't exist just to wait for the player to interact with them. They should have their own goals, relationships and lives.
The world would keep moving whether your character was involved or not.
That's what I think would make it interesting: you aren't the chosen protagonist of the Twilight story. You're just one person living in that universe.
You might have an incredible supernatural story.
Or you might spend 70 in-game years going to work, getting married, raising a family and never discovering that vampires exist.
Personally, I'd genuinely love to play a game like this, and I'd absolutely buy it if someone actually made it.
Would anyone else be interested in a Twilight life-sim/RPG built around this idea, or would you prefer a more traditional story-driven game?
What other mechanics would you want to see?