Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

[LESS T_T]

Why don't you also quote the sentence after that :

There CAN be combat, if a situation is hostile, but it shouldn't be the main focus. You're not hunting for trouble, you're scouting for clues!

And actually their past job postings already indicated combat and FPS gameplay.

 

[Zer0wing]

SS3 confirmed for walking sim

I.e. System Shock with 0-1-1-1 diffculty settings?

 

[Ash]

There CAN be combat in walking sims, such as climactic battles as the story dictates, but the core focus is hunting for clues!

...that's why. Just because Deus Ex featured a couple investigative exploration levels (chateau) doesn't make it a walking sim, just as a walking sim featuring the occasional "hostile situation" doesn't make it a traditional game. The core focus is as an "exploration game" and "Hunting for clues".
I should have quoted the full post for accuracy nonetheless though. And if we're being truly honest and accurate, the game could feature plenty deep diverse gameplay regardless (puzzles, platforming, resource management etc), but the wording makes it sound like a walking sim.

 

[Infinitron]

lol overreaction city. All immersive sims feel like "exploration games" compared to traditional first person shooters.

 

[Ash]

We'll see. The wording and the context in which it was said looks to me like this is going to be a departure.
Furthermore a lot else points to it. That's actually fine if the final result turns out to feature highly engaging, deep gameplay regardless, but I just am not hopeful.

SS3 confirmed for walking sim

I.e. System Shock with 0-1-1-1 diffculty settings?

Yeah, inconsistent nonsensical shit. On combat 0 enemies stand static, never attack, and die in one hit. This not only breaks the overarching gameplay, but also story and potential immersion. Thankfully Shock 2 didn't suffer from this self-defeating design.

 

[Roguey]

System Shock 2 felt more like an exploration game than a combat game up until the final parts which happened to be terrible because it was no good as a combat game.

 

[Ash]

What are you two on about? You fight hundreds upon hundreds of enemies, and it has the same exploration to combat ratio as the average of pretty much everything else of this style (RPGs, survival horrors) traditionally-speaking. Hell a common complaint with the game is that you can't ever catch a break without getting attacked by a respawned enemy (which is silly and exaggerated, plus it's great design anyway, but never mind).

anyhow, beside the point. The quote literally said the focus of this game is more "looking for clues". That's not any Immersive Sim or System Shock focus I know (yeah yeah except Shock 1 on self-defeatist mode).

I'm pretty sure my interpretation of that quote is the more accurate one. But hey, we just can't know for sure. So we'll see.

 

[Nano]

System Shock 2 felt more like an exploration game than a combat game up until the final parts which happened to be terrible because it was no good as a combat game.

Don't know why people say this. I don't play a lot of FPSs so I don't have much to compare it to, but I enjoyed System Shock 2's combat.

 

[DeepOcean]

System Shock 2 felt more like an exploration game than a combat game up until the final parts which happened to be terrible because it was no good as a combat game.

I remember fighting alot of respawning hybrids and robots right after leaving medbay.

 

[DeepOcean]

Sure, the combat was clunky but if they are planining to make combat easy to avoid, the game will lose alot of tension. I dont want something like SOMA.

 

[V_K]

You fight hundreds upon hundreds of enemies

Or you learn the invisibility psi

 

[Ash]

True. But you do need a shit ton of modules for that. Probably not possible until you're at least half way into the game.

 

[Ash]

System Shock 2 felt more like an exploration game than a combat game up until the final parts which happened to be terrible because it was no good as a combat game.

Don't know why people say this. I don't play a lot of FPSs so I don't have much to compare it to, but I enjoyed System Shock 2's combat.

Shock 2's combat is p. good. Roguey is a special individual that thinks Bioshock's combat is better, of all fucking things. Clearly he doesn't even realise that you're fricken invincible in that game and therefore ultimately it lacks challenge, balance, meaningful choices and strategy etc. Anyway, back to Shock 2 combat: Heavily melee and projectile-based as opposed to hitscan, lots of toys to play and tinker with, reasonable resource economy balance involved (health, ammo), nice enemy attack/behaviour variety, good challenge, clear enemy weaknesses and defences. It's let down mainly by aesthetic clunkiness (which is far less important than the actual gameplay dynamics of combat), some kooky AI here and there, and level design and enemy placement more revolving around realism as opposed to combat refinement (see: doom for the opposite style of level design).

 

[Cross]

System Shock 2 felt more like an exploration game than a combat game up until the final parts which happened to be terrible because it was no good as a combat game.

Sometimes I wonder if you bother to play the games you shitpost about. If anything, you've got that backwards. The Body of the Many for example has comparatively less enemies than early areas and instead has a bunch of swimming and platforming segments.

System Shock 2 isn't exactly Deus Ex or Thief. Without the invisibility PSI power there's no way to avoid enemies, since they're spawned in frequently and close to the player, and levels aren't as spacious as those two games.

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's Roguey.

I wonder if he's ever played ANY game.

Like you can always rely on Wrong_Carlo to be wrong about every single prediction and opinion ever, Roguey will give you a bizzarro world review of any game.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Have someone played? Inspired by SS, and made on Unity too:

Played it like a year ago. Clunky, shitty optimization, just not fun. Perhaps that changed in the meantime, but a Shock clone it is certainly not.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

you can't ever catch a break without getting attacked by a respawned enemy (which is silly and exaggerated, plus it's great design anyway).

You're joking right? Having to take out the trash every hour of the day is not great design. That shit gets old real fast.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I’m with the Tron and Roguey. In fact I was literally just showing my nephew SS2 a few weeks ago, and his comment after 20 minutes was “why would anyone make a shooter with barely any combat?” (he’s young, I made sure to explain in depth the nature of exploration-driven gameplay).

 

[V_K]

System Shock 2 isn't exactly Deus Ex or Thief.

Funnily enough, to me DX felt a lot more FPS-y (to the point where I was unable to play it) than SS2. SS2 might not be completely combat-avoidable, but its pace is much slower and more cerebral than even in most ARPGs.

 

[Cross]

System Shock 2 isn't exactly Deus Ex or Thief.

Funnily enough, to me DX felt a lot more FPS-y (to the point where I was unable to play it) than SS2. SS2 might not be completely combat-avoidable, but its pace is much slower and more cerebral than even in most ARPGs.

You probably feel that way because Deus Ex was made on the Unreal Engine (an FPS engine) while SS2 was made on the Dark Engine (a stealth game engine).

But you're talking about combat feel. I was talking about the frequency of (unavoidable) combat.

 

[RoSoDude]

you can't ever catch a break without getting attacked by a respawned enemy (which is silly and exaggerated, plus it's great design anyway).

You're joking right? Having to take out the trash every hour of the day is not great design. That shit gets old real fast.

Having a dynamic threat of an enemy ambush around every corner is fantastic design. You can never let your guard down, and you're frequently put into uncomfortable positions where you have to use limited resources (med/psi hypos, ammo, disposable maintenance tools, etc) to make it out alive. This adds tension to even the most basic tasks like exploration, hacking, inventory management, researching objects, returning to a recharge station, and so on. It's integral to the design.

What people seem to miss about System Shock 2 is that it's built on intermediate failure states. The simplest example is surviving a fight with low health or with excessive resource expenditure, but there's more than that here. Getting spotted by a camera doesn't give you a game over or explode your character; it sets off an alarm that spawns enemies to your position. Failing a hack only irreparably destroys the console if you critically fail (a risk you take on explicitly); otherwise it just costs you a few nanites. Even death isn't a game over if you have a QBR machine online -- the cost of resurrection is 10 nanites, along with fresh enemy respawns on your way back to your objective. Thus, when you fire a bullet, inject a hypo, or spend a nanite, it's truly gone. Death has a permanent effect on your character's finite supply of resources, and if you're not careful the drain on your supply will bring your chances of survival to zero. Respawning enemies are absolutely crucial in making this work, otherwise we're left with Bioshock's godmode Vita chambers. There's a mile of difference between the two.

...unless you savescum like a degenerate and throw all of that out the window.

 

[Ash]

What's the new drugs old people are taking these days?

I said before that it meets the average combat focus of survival horrors, but hell, it just may be the most combat-oriented survival horror of all time. You kill twice as much shit in Shock 2 than all the survival horror classics if not more: Call of Cthulhu: dcote, Resident Evil, Silent Hill etc, and those games featured quite a bit of combat themselves (it was a core gameplay element).

It's a cerebral game, and very multi-genre, but I can only assume dementia is taking its toll up in here as it's very combat-heavy despite the fact you interact with the environment a lot, explore, manage your character, do occasional platforming segments etc. It is very much a core gameplay element, lets put it that way.

Core:

Combat
Interaction with the environment
Exploration and navigation skills
Character building and management

Secondary:

Platforming
Puzzle Solving

Tertiary:

Game Pig
Stealth
Self-imposed styles of play
Creative solutions and emergence.

Ranking based on frequency in which you must do said things, how developed and central to the gameplay said things are, and whether or not it's mandatory or optional.

 

[RoSoDude]

On the whole walking simulator issue, I have the same hope I have regarding Underworld Ascendant's extreme focus on emergent gameplay above all else -- that it's just a marketing ploy to help communicate what makes their product stand apart to a general audience, and that they're actually adhering to the hardcore principles of game design that made Looking Glass Studios' games so great. It reminds me of how Paul Neurath and co. had to convince EA that System Shock 2 wasn't reaaaally a shooter following the Columbine massacre:

When we came out in 1999, that was months after the high school shooting in Columbine. Larry Probst, who was the CEO of EA at the time, he reached out and said, ‘We may just want to walk away from doing shooters because there’s talk of those shooters causing these kinds of events.’ We had this meeting where we made our case that System Shock does not reward you for going in there and shooting everything that moves. You will lose if you do that; it’s a thinking person’s game. I think we halfway convinced them.

I remain completely agnostic as to whether this hope of mine is at all reasonable, though.

 

[DeepOcean]

yes, if your framework for comparison is Doom on Nightmare, System Shock 2 barely is a shooter, things start slow on the medical level but right after getting to the cargo bays, things start getting tense on the last difficulty.

I was running like a little girl with zero ammo, the respawning enemies were common and they consumed my bullets that on contrary to Prey and Biocock, I didnt have plenty of.

I dont remember being on an area that was straight walking simulator, if the game was like that, I would throw it on the garbage bin where shit like SOMA belongs.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

you can't ever catch a break without getting attacked by a respawned enemy (which is silly and exaggerated, plus it's great design anyway).

You're joking right? Having to take out the trash every hour of the day is not great design. That shit gets old real fast.

Having a dynamic threat

right.