Firstly, if you don't know what Firefly or Serenity is, look them up on Wikipedia, watch all the episodes, read the three comics, watch the movie, and we'll talk when you get back. Seriously. After the post jump, there's a bit that describes why Firefly is so great and why it deserves to be a game, but you might as well get a head start on them now. For everyone else, we all know that Firefly was prematurely cancelled, and Serenity, despite being one of the best science fiction flicks ever made, preformed pretty poorly at the box office. Despite how much hope the die-hard fans may have for some sort of reincarnation of the series, it's more than likely that we've seen the last of the crew of Serenity. Unless, of course, somebody made this video game. To summarize, it's a 3rd person MMO with some offline, singleplayer elements in it. You get to roam around in the entire Serenity-verse, choosing whatever occupation you wish, and so on and so forth. Most importantly, however, it continues the story of Serenity and her crew. What The Hell Is Firefly? For the uninitiated, here's a brief overview of of what the show was about, and what it feels like. Picture the Death Star trench run at the end of A New Hope. Think about the very end of the scene. All of Luke's friends have either retreated or been blown up, he's only a few hundred meters away from the exhaust port, and Darth Vader is about to blow him away. We all remember what happens next: suddenly, one of Vader's wingmen is hit by blaster fire and explodes, sending the other wingman into a panic that clips Vader's ship. Vader spirals off into space, and Han tells him to "blow this thing, so we can go home." And, of course, Luke does, and they do. But imagine a different ending. Imagine that Han shoots one of Vader's wingmen, but the other doesn't panic and send Vader careening into the deep recesses of space. Imagine that Vader keeps a steady course. And imagine that he blows Luke to smithereens before he can fire his proton torpedoes. The rebel base at Yavin 4 is completely destroyed. Apart from a few stray soldiers across the galaxy, and Han Solo himself, the entire Rebel Alliance is now just a memory. Now, what does Han Solo do next? He has to eat, he has to keep his ship in repair, and now, more than ever, he has to do whatever he can to evade the Empire. So he gets a few more crew members, and sets off in the hopes of making a new life for himself out on the rim. That's Firefly. Han Solo becomes Malcolm Reynolds, the Galactic Empire becomes the Interplanetary Alliance, and the Rebels become the Browncoats. Why Firefly Deserves To Be A Game Several reasons. Firstly, the TV show never got the chance it deserved. The episodes were shown out of order, the schedule constantly changed to accomodate basketball games, and the commercials made the show look like childish crap. And even though the movie was goddamned fantastic, the marketing campaign was lousy: it pushed Serenity as a continuation of a series nobody was familiar with, instead of a standalone movie (plus, nobody wants to see an action movie with a title that's synonymous with "peace".). This, of course, resulted in crappy box office numbers. Firefly never really got a fair shake. But the material is great. Really, really, great. Even though it's basically a western in space, it's really personal story about family, friendship, and losing. Neither the show or the movie ever lost sight of what was most important---the characters. While you can watch something like the new Battlestar Galactica and get grandiose space opera, Firefly was a much more personal, much more intimate show, and was all the better for it. Not to mention it mixed every damn genre known to man. There's the more obvious mix of western and science fiction, but it also combines slapstick comedy, film noir, martial arts movies, and even zombie flicks. Simply put, it was a great show, a fantastic movie, and there's gotta be more of it. So, how would the game work? Gameplay There are two different aspects of the Firefly MMO: the online MMORPG game, and the offline singleplayer game. The online MMO is your typical massively multiplayer freedomfest, but it's made even cooler thanks to the fact that, in the actual series and movie, we never really saw THAT many planets. Sure, we saw a lot of redneck backwater planets, but that was more due to the fact that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to shoot in the southern California hills and call it a "desert planet" than it is to build a bunch of sets so your show can take place in a huge and futuristic city. That being said, Firefly fans will be able to get to visit clean, pretty, totalitarian Alliance planets alongside all the poor desert-y ones. All number of occupations can be chosen, but, to be honest, the careers would be pretty much identical to the kind of stuff you could find in pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies. Smuggler, bounty hunter, entertainer, policeman, mechanic, medic...the list goes on. What sets the Firefly MMO apart from the rest is its offline, singleplayer aspect. While, in the online game, you are restricted to playing as only one personally-customized character, the offline game allows you to play as the entire crew of Serenity. The offline game will be delivered in episodic format--every month, you can basically download a new episode of Firefly, and play through it. These episodes will be very cutscene-heavy: these are characters who already have predetermined personalites that cannot be allowed to change by player intervention. During the interactive portions of the episodes, you can shoot, run around, and initiate conversation, but for the most part, noninteractive cutscenes will be used to move the story along and develop characters. This may sound terribly dull, but instead of looking at them as cutscene-heavy episodes with rare interactivity, consider them brand-new episodes of Firefly! With interactive bits! These offline episodes, when cobbled together, will further the story of Serenity trying to outrun the Alliance. After each of these episodes are released, the effects of the plot developments will transfer over from the offline portion of the game, into the online portion. If, before episode 3, the online game includes a small settlement on the planet of Beaumond, and if that settlement is destroyed during the offline story of episode 3, then after episode 3 is released, that settlement will be nothing but smoking ruins in the online mode. In the online mode, news reports may be broadwaved calling for the arrest of the crew of a transport ship, Firefly class, carrying two wanted fugitives. Essentially, you get to further the story of Serenity's crew offline, and then experience the repercussions of that story once you get back online. Story I don't know what the specifics would be, honestly. Only Joss Whedon does. Before the movie came out, he mentioned that, though Serenity would tie up all the loose ends and could act as a conclusion if it absolutely had to, he actually wanted to make a trilogy of movies, or possibly continue the TV series on a different network. So, whatever story there is, there's enough of it to keep the MMO alive for at least a few years---and to a Browncoat, a few years is a hell of a lot. Like the show, however, each episode could hypothetically be written by a different person: despite the fact that Firefly is known as Whedon's brainchild, he only wrote about a third of the episodes. Allowing other writers of the original show to contribute work would keep the episodes feeling fresh and varied: while "Our Mrs Reynolds" was pretty damn funny, most of the episodes Joss writes tend to be pretty dark. You just need a "Jaynestown" every once in a while. Most of the episodes would end with Serenity's crew flying off into space, as well. Despite the fact that this is sort of a mainstay of the series, it also serves a fun gameplay purpose: in the waiting period between episodes, Serenity and her crew will manifest within the online play mode, controlled by AI, or will be roleplayed by a couple of writers inside the game studios. If players can find them, they can interact with them. The characters will be invincible, obviously, and you won't be able to bring them in for a reward or anything, but any Serenity fan would get a hell of a charge out of seeing that familiar ship land on a planet, and then open up to reveal Mal himself. Hell, if you had a ship of your own and a crew to run it, you could follow them around until the next episode. That's all I got. In Conclusion: Watch Firefly.