So I finished The Cave completely, and while playing that I came across a quote in it from the Bhagavad Gita, if you don't know what that is just follow the link. Instead of moving onto the wonderful DmC I ended up downloading a copy of that book and reading it cover to cover. That story is pretty fucking epic to put it mildly, and it got me to thinking, "Why hasn't India made a huge big budget blockbuster yet?" I went down a rabbit hole for about an hour reading about the state of Indian game development. The largest game I've been found to have been developed and published in India was a movie tie-in to Ghajini, which is a psychological thriller. The movie was highly successful, became the number 1 grossing Bollywood film upon release and currently stands still as number 7 highest grossing. The game though was a huge failure, apparently buggy and not promoted well. Sounds like movie tie in games here.

According to Sunil Kinshuk, which is sort of prolific indie game developer from India, there are about 20,000 game developers currently inside India as of 2011. He doesn't go onto talk about what they're doing but it's clear the vast majority are just outsourcers, with a much smaller number making mobile games. Since Ghajini The Game released and was a commercial and critical dud, the Indian market has more than doubled. All India really needs is one game to take off, the talent is there and the potential market is huge.

Before I'd read the Bhagavad Gita, my only knowledge of that epic was through Grant Morrison's 18 Days, which is basically the Hindu equivalent of Too Human and retells the Mahabharata in a future science fantasy epic. Presumably make it an RPG right? I don't know I'm rambling at this point but I just thought it would be cool to share the rabbit hole I jumped down with you guys. I want an epic Indian RPG where I can see a 10 minute summon animation of Karna or Ghatotkacha unleashing complete destruction, is that too much to ask for?

I got the bhagavad gita at the community college from some stoner guy handing em out (well I had to pay and we haggled for like 5 minutes), never read much of it though.

Also, if you want something similar (hindu mythology shit), go play Digital Devil Saga. The hindu influences are MANY (the final boss in DDS2 is brahman)

@Animasta said:

I got the bhagavad gita at the community college from some stoner guy handing em out (well I had to pay and we haggled for like 5 minutes), never read much of it though.

Also, if you want something similar (hindu mythology shit), go play Digital Devil Saga. The hindu influences are MANY (the final boss in DDS2 is brahman)

Yeah Smite also had a bunch of hindu figures too. I was thinking more of an Oblivion/Final Fantasy style release. Will check out Digital Devil Saga which sounds like it's up that alley of what I was looking for.

That was an interesting read duder, nice work!

I too wish there was more fiction related to mythologies of the world. Doesn't even have to be as literal as God of War. Something that takes the events and changes the setting, the character names/appearances, etc., kinda like how Enslaved and Dragon Ball are takes on Journey to the West.

Speaking of classic literature, stuff like Beowulf or the Illiad or even Shakesperean stories could make for some fantastic 'retelling-of' games/anime/comics/movies. I guess the bad example would be Dante's Inferno, but hey, people say Enslaved was great so I'm gonna go with that for the counter-example.

@TheHT: it doesn't even have to be based on a single work, or even a culture that was as culturally preserved as hindu/early english lit was.

I want a game based on aztec mythology, goddamnit

@TheHT: Dante's Inferno has a lot of problems but it's the most enjoyable character action game I played this generation so far. DmC might supplant it just from the 3 hours I put into that but yeah, despite structural problems that game was a lot better than it had any business being.