Space Monsters?

[flaghang66]

One of the things that freaked me out in NEO Scavenger was the monsters. There was the normal human element, but things like the Enfield horror terrified me when I first encountered them. I assume that there still be a struggle in this game between humanity, but will there be other things to encounter in Space?

[flaghang66]

I was reading about the line of sight discussion, and a great thought popped into my head: What if an alien sneaked aboard your ship and disguised itself as your crew? I thought it was worth sharing.

[Motorola]

Originally posted by flaghang66:

I was reading about the line of sight discussion, and a great thought popped into my head: What if an alien sneaked aboard your ship and disguised itself as your crew? I thought it was worth sharing.

As i said in a discussion already, the dev should take a look at Barotrauma and take the best mechanics from it, that include THE THING style gameplay, an alien taking same crew form and disguising itself like nothing happened, that would be so frightening and make the player play the game always on his toes :D

[flaghang66]

I've gotta check it out then. It sounds great.

[Motorola]

Yup its avery good game, it is kinda how i want some Ostranauts mechancis to be, Barotrauma is sci fi in deep sea, Ostranauts in the Deep Space :D , it would be really cool if somehow the Ostranaut dev can incorporate THE THING, Sunless Skies (mostly for the flavor and decisions in text random generated events) and Barotrauma togheter, this will be the ultimate sci fi super immersive horror rpg :D

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

It's possible for monsters to exist in space, given how the world of NEO Scavenger works.

However, a lot of the literal monsters we saw in NS are the result of generations of local legends and myths. In space, we have relatively little human history and legend to draw from, so it'll be a bit more of a blank slate.

That said, humans bring their psychological baggage wherever they go. And they have overactive imaginations. It's likely some new mythology is soon to take form :)

[Ebony Woman Enjoyer]

Yeah needs space monsters, imo.
Like, maybe one of the reasons they're in space to begin with was to contain weird genetic experiments or messed up ai cyborgs gone wrong or something.

[FateWeaver]

I think off-the-books corporate biolab ships, and research stations,(think Alien Resurrection, or Metroid: Fusion) could be fitting places for whatever horrific Resident Evil esque experiments the development team, and community, can think of.
Same goes for robotic research.
It always makes sense to put dangerous experiments far away from the population, for secrecy, and safety(especially in case of a possible outbreak situation).
Heck, already today the technology is available to create some pretty messed up monsters, if the money and will to do it was present. So it isn't like it is unrealistic.

Normal people, who usually dismiss everything such as just science fiction, or fantasy, tend to get some nasty surprises when they are completely taken unaware of what is technologically possible now.
Just look at how AI and robotics is rappidly changing the World we live in, now, today.
A ton of people I know personally dismissed what I was saying about robotics development, and how it would radically change our lives in the coming years, and that was just the people in my own personal life.

Rapid, and accurate, genetic engineering, and AI and robotics, are Pandora's boxes, in every meaning of the word. And those boxes are never going to be closed again... Probably.
Not that many of us would want them to be closed again, as the gains to our society are just too great to put back down again.

I found myself thinking about how we humans dominate this planet completely, with our numbers, over-exploiting all the natural resources, and driving surrounding species to extinction.
And thus I thought to myself, could we engineer new apex predators, specifically engineered to prey on mankind? To keep our numbers down? To force us to cooperate, so we will be more united, as humanity has usually needed a common enemy for that, in the past.
And yeah, that is pretty doable, with today's technology. Right here, right now.

Its honestly a bit astounding just how easily we are able to cut and paste working genetic traits from, and into, various different species that are widely seperated from each other, evolutionary speaking. Jellyfish bioluminescence put into cats, dogs, fish, and working flawlessly. Goats engineered to produce spider silk in their milk glands. That's pretty nuts when you stop and think about it.
Same with the neuroplasticity of human brains, adapting and incorporating cybernetic limbs and implants, as if they were a natural part of your own body.
Heck, I recently saw a cybernetics engineer, who had an amputated leg, figure out how to make his robotic leg ticklish... Yeah, ticklish... And he figured that out in the comfort of his own home's office workshop pretty much. The advantage of being both an engineer, and the test subject, he can just work on himself, figuring out what needs fixing or adjustments, and just doing it then and there.
Even realistic science fiction writers, dealing with cybernetic limbs, thought that was far fetched. More often than not portraying robotic limbs as always being numb, and unable to feel light sensation, like gentle touch. But turns out it is not only possible, but it is surprisingly easy.
But truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, as they say.

My point being, even with today's technology, we could create creatures out of most people's worst nightmares, if we set our minds and resources to do so. And we could make them work well too.
And given the game's shared setting with NEO Scavenger, having all kinds of monsters is pretty doable.

[grimjack28]

Originally posted by Daniel@BlueBottleGames:

It's possible for monsters to exist in space, given how the world of NEO Scavenger works.

However, a lot of the literal monsters we saw in NS are the result of generations of local legends and myths. In space, we have relatively little human history and legend to draw from, so it'll be a bit more of a blank slate.

That said, humans bring their psychological baggage wherever they go. And they have overactive imaginations. It's likely some new mythology is soon to take form :)

I dunno, we have a long enough history of space lore, and fear. I know that I walk around these deserted hulks and fear running into some space sick zombie astronaut or something.

There's always the unknown, like aliens and space animals. And the known like space pirates and hostile criminals and authorities.

[SpacePirateKatz666]

In the intro videos there is a hint about alien life form like weird fishes, So.. why not hostile hungry alien life form that say break out of the cargo hold ?

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

Oh yeah, if I get my way, there will absolutely be an bioengineering experiment gone awry, or a hapless captain snatched into a dark corner by a shadowy creature :)

[TruculentTonka]

Some digressions follow.

Some fascinating ideas, but since humanity made a wasteland of the Earth in NS (and, incidentally, as we are doing presently by wiping out 60% of all other mammals, birds and fish since only the 1970s) what I see as plausible in Ostranauts is humans fighting other humans out in space, and indeed the dev has already embedded code that would easily facilitate such dynamics.

From a more expansive perspective and less anthropocentric, that is the sad legacy of the last few thousand years of the history of humanity's not being predated upon by other organisms but literally wiping out all other creatures, regardless of their perceived malevolence.
Too many humans have far too much hubris. We reveal this not only in terms of engineering other organisms to satisfy our misguided wishes (read: not needs) but then incredibly we go about annihilating environments for short term profit for the few and in the process wiping out virtually all other organisms with as much of a right to exist as we delusional apes (so psychotic in fact that we would go so far as to destroy the very earth which birthed us and you think that sickness would suddenly cease when we transferred our 'civilization' to an extraterrestrial setting?). I don't think so. Now most humans can live collaboratively and peacefully...but there have always been a few not so symbiotic in orientation. What has changed over time is that once those types were banished from communities, but in today's toxic and competitive world they stand at the apex of power.

No, the enemy of humanity is, as philosophers and the wise have cautioned us for millennia, the enemy within. I believe that if there is intelligent life out there, which there likely is, they are wise enough to avoid us as they see the wreckage of our hubris and capacious destructiveness. In that is an irony when we seek "intelligent" life beyond our rare Earth of a satellite; they will not allow us to find them.

"Each of us,
A lone cell of awareness.
Imperfect and incomplete.
Genetic blends with uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that far too fleet."
-Neil Peart