Man, how I missed this kind of gameplay.

[Kain]

It flows so naturally how the story is told and you're given objetives.

For instance, you first find out there is a laser pointed towards Earth and it's possibly bad, then as you explore you hear that you could do it by making it fire against the stations shield, later on you get more instructions. It feels so natural. It's like you're an explorer or someone who's really there having to figure out what to do in his own.

And what's best is that, it's not needlessly convoluted, most of the tasks are fairly simple and if you don't know, you simply haven't found a piece of information you need. Man, that makes me more willing to actually explore and find secrets than a thousand checklists and useless collectibles.

Exploration, resource gathering, living the experience is part of the core gameplay. Playing this game, after having finished Morrowind not long ago and after been playing Gothic 2 as well, reminded about all that we lost in the name of streamlining everything.

Those games acknowledged we had brains and that we would use them.

[(N☆G) Jackal ★JJ★]

Yeah, it has been a long time since I've experienced a game where you have to actively listen to whats being said just to progress and I love how far apart the information is too.

Being told what you need to do then hours later actually being at the part was really refreshing.

[Kain]

And I can notice when that sort of gameplay crashes with my modern gamer sensibilities, the impatience of not knowing where something is and the urge to fix things now instead of later. But you have to play by the game's rules.

I think what is missing today is taking power away from the player, making the player get invested on the rules that you created. For this sort of game to work though, you would need to have some serious confidence in your audience and more importantly in your product so they get trully invested, this confidence is sorely missing today.

[Coldhands]

I agree with it not being needlessly convoluted,
I really, really wish there was some way IN GAME to track your objectives and relevant information you've found. Like, a screen in the game where you could pin logs, write notes, annotate the map, and review which keys and security codes you've got. I'm fine with System Shock leaving it to me to figure out how to proceed, but there's a level of admin involved in digesting and using the information the game gives you that has not aged well at all.

[Kain]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

I agree with it not being needlessly convoluted,
I really, really wish there was some way IN GAME to track your objectives and relevant information you've found. Like, a screen in the game where you could pin logs, write notes, annotate the map, and review which keys and security codes you've got. I'm fine with System Shock leaving it to me to figure out how to proceed, but there's a level of admin involved in digesting and using the information the game gives you that has not aged well at all.

True, that's a quality of life I think wouldn't crash with the game's design, a simple notebook ingame would suffice, more for the sake of immersion too.

[Here is my card]

In one way, at least that is how I always felt with the original System Shock, the game itself is a puzzle. Everything is a sort of a puzzle in it. The inventory is a puzzle - you have to think what to carry and what sort of an equipment you are going to need in what level. The levels itself are a puzzle, not linear walkways and halls and rooms but you have to go find your way around and find your way onward from here and there. You have to go back, solve another puzzle, then press on forward and soon return to solve another puzzle. Everything is a puzzle.

I like the first System Shock. It is a good game. The only truly struggling part is the storage-level, which is hideous if you plan to work your way around without using the regenerator/respawner. Of course after playing it a lot and memorizing everything, it gets easier.

The System Shock 2 is very different. It is not so much of a puzzle than the first one. The levels are much more linear. Easier. More logical. The first 80% of the game is absolute gem . Then it gets... because of the many-ending part. That's dull. Not a puzzle. Just dull running around and trying to survive.

[moat]

I suppose messages with codes in them could be marked [Urgent], and be filter-able.

And maybe something that can tell you when a locked door or elevator has become accessible. Even if they made it so that locked doors were coloured differently or had a padlock icon on them on the map would be sufficient. Then I can just leave a map marker by them and check every time I did something like flipping a switch.

[moat]

Originally posted by Here is my card:

The first 80% of the game is absolute gem :steamhearteyes:. Then it gets... :steamdeadpan: because of the many-ending part. That's dull. Not a puzzle. Just dull running around and trying to survive.

The Many was to SS2 as Xen was to Half-Life. But it'd be nice if Night Dive can do for The Many what Crowbar Collective did for Xen.

The hard part of The Many was it was a land of meat. You get meat switches and meat buttons and meat sphincters and there aren't any meat combination locks or meat wiring puzzles or meat logs and meat notes to put together. If I can think of a recent game that was basically a meat puzzle FPS, it would be Scorn. They did a fantastic job. It looked amazing. But it also felt kinda boring.

Games like System Shock and Dead Space do this thing where you are on a space station or giant ship and there's all kinds of industrial areas, shops, living quarters, bathrooms, bars, relaxation places, schools, they're like cities in space. Very "knowable" and familiar to our own way of life.

But some creepy meat-place can't just be some abstract body-horror place. It too, needs different places that serve different yet relatable purposes. I like how in System Shock 2, there were those creepy nurseries in Hydroponics -- that was something that they really did well because it was like a perversion of our own hospital maternity wards.

[Kain]

If they manage to improve that chapter.... and the ending itself it would be awesome. Because the game was pretty much stellar until that point and I love the idea, it was the natural conclusion I expected, it was just probably rushed due to deadlines.

[moat]

SS2's vast meatspace regions looked like just that. Big abstract crazy rooms where it was mostly platforming that you needed to get around in. You might occasionally find marooned chunks of spaceship, which I really liked to see, but I think that solving the problem would really require showcasing the life-cycle of the annelids.

Like, if my memory serves me correctly, they have those little piles of worms on the ground, there are swarm pods that either explode, shoot out bees, or poop out big worms. Those worms are basically burrowed into the skulls of human hosts and serve as the first pipe-or-shotgun Hybrids you meet, which is kinda cool.

But then there are Spiders, (which I'm not sure which part of the lifecycle they're in), and there are Rumblers, which I guess are Hybrids after they've all grown up. Then it's bigbrain time as their body is consumed and they become Psi Reavers and Greater Psi Reavers.

So I feel like there's room for some sort of egg-laying boss-spider (because you have all those egg-pods, but nothing to lay them), and cocoons where Rumblers undergo their final transformation into Psi Reavers. Then you can have places within The Many which are arranged more like an ant colony to show the varying stages of reproduction and transformation.

But since The Many are supposed to be all brilliant and wise as a hive-mind, I think it would also seem fit to show them building their own meatcathedrals or meatshrines or meatsculptures so they don't appear so one-dimensionally obsessed with reproduction and conquest. A telepathic civilization doesn't exactly need a writing system, but it stands to reason that they would still want to have some creations of their own, even if it's something that they do for their own amusement.

[Kain]

I think that would be giving the Many more personality than they need. What I like is how alien they are, so, making them worry about scriptures and such would sort of humanize them too much.

As a final battle, I don't, I think I would have preferred some sort of puzzle, like, delivering some sort of biological bomb into their hearts through stealth. I don't like how action focused the ending gets.

[moat]

Originally posted by Kain:

I think that would be giving the Many more personality than they need. What I like is how alien they are, so, making them worry about scriptures and such would sort of humanize them too much.

I would be plenty satisfied with them creating something like... a vast and creepy observatory-in-progress full of meat antennae for conversing with beings from beyond. Or seeing them in the midst of creating flesh gateways and interfaces like the ones from Mother Horse Eyes. These things don't have to be explicitly explained to us, but something that could be inferred. Or maybe they have pieces of human technology and are mimicking it with their own flesh analogs. They could be trying to develop new weapons, ways to launch their biomass or focus their psionic energies.

It's not that they have to be human, but I think they should demonstrate acts that are common between intelligent civilizations. A desire for technological development, exploration and communication with other intellects, or to travel to distant places (though we know in their case, their desire is conquest and corruption).

[Crypto Gamer]

System shock 2 was very good but they likely had budget or time constraints in the end.

The body of many basically barely any psi hypos and 100% ogranic enemies so was hard for certain build.

And the boss fight was also bad and again very hard with certain builds.
I agree boss should have been killed by some kind of enviormental stuff.
Maybe the soldier crafts some kind of biobomb and need to plant it then get out or something so any build can do it.Biotoxin whatever.

The final boss fight was very weak and some weapons could not dmg it at all so in theory you could soft lock yourself at the very end if you used certain build choices.

So hopefully enchanced edition will improve in this last 2 areas.

[Rand]

Yeah, but there isn't an on-screen waypoint handholder or a handy autocompleting task guide.
You have to (gasp) listen to and read the logs you find and (oh, no) think a little.
...
This will frustrate and infuriate many modern gamers, apparently.

[Rand]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

I agree with it not being needlessly convoluted,
I really, really wish there was some way IN GAME to track your objectives and relevant information you've found. Like, a screen in the game where you could pin logs, write notes, annotate the map, and review which keys and security codes you've got. I'm fine with System Shock leaving it to me to figure out how to proceed, but there's a level of admin involved in digesting and using the information the game gives you that has not aged well at all.

The keys you have are shown on the map page, on the bottom right.

[moat]

Honestly, I haven't been so into a game in a LONG time. I feel like a starving man binging on a banquet. In the words of a great philosopher:

Originally posted by Gordon Ramsay:

"Finally some good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ food."