Wolfman! The Mummy! The Creature from the Black Lagoon! Frank Stein! When Universal describes these characters as "Classic Monsters" they aren't joking, considering most of us weren't even born when they were last truly dominating the horror film scene. Will the crusty old devils make for a good video game setting? According to internal documents uncovered by Destructoid, we're about to find out.
Says Dtoid:
The document describes an alternate reality where monsters rule the world, broken into a number of different nations. These nations are all formed from the offspring of Universal Classic Monsters such as the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein (a vampire kingdom is mentioned but Dracula himself, curiously, is not). All the nations were to be uniquely themed towards aspects of those characters societally, governmentally and architecturally, and "analogous, though not exactly, to societies and regimes in our world." These "Monster nations" have been at war for the whole of history.
For better or worse, the game is described as being a first-person shooter, a la Call of Duty 4, which Destructoid's Conrad Zimmerman isn't too hot on. I couldn't really care less, to be-ahemarrrgh-frank. The idea of riffing off the world of Universal Classic Monsters to create an entire Monster Kingdom is just cornball enough to be awesome. TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) tried that a few years ago with the Ravenloft setting, and in the beginning before they got too terribly caught up in the story of their Dracula clone, it was actually good fun. There's nothing in this write up that mentions Dracula at all. A monster world without vampires! Sounds exactly what the world needs right now—too bad it's on ice. [Destructoid]