11. February 2016, 19:30:31

#15

Nameless VoiceQuote

For me, a huge part of System Shock is the sense of isolation.

You are alone in a hostile environment with only extremely patchy communications from Lansing and periodic taunts from SHODAN.  There is no mission control holding your hand, no one telling you exactly what to do next.  Instead, you have a vague goal and you have to work out how to accomplish it based on the information you have and what the crew recorded in their logs.

System Shock is an immersive sim about hardware and physical modification.  Everything that your character can do is based on how you control them and the choices that you make.  Abstract things like weapon skills do not fit there, instead everything is based on the hardware that you have found and installed.  If player customisation is to be expanded, then it should be in that direction - the ability to modify and improve hardware to expand your abilities, rather than experience/skill points that make you better.  The onus needs to be on player skill, not character skill.

As others have said before, a System Shock remake needs to be a game for today, not a blind remake of the original.  The level design, architecture and texturing of the original System Shock is frankly nonsensical if you stop and look at it closely, and would make even less sense once everything is highly detailed.  Follow the basic layouts and themes of the game, but expand them into realistic environments that wouldn't look out-of-place in a modern game.  Don't intentionally make it primitive and retro so that it looks more like a fresh coat of paint on the original rather than a true remake, and certainly don't shy away from using high-quality visuals to make it work on ancient computers.

Finally, while the controls in the original game were far too complex and awkward, don't go too far in the opposite direction.  You may need to simply the controls and combine several actions on a single button for the console release, but make sure that you keep them sensible and straight-forward on the PC.  Remember that PCs have hundreds of keys available, so there's no reason not to at least have optional bindings for every action.
Far too often, modern games force the use of awkward menus for selection instead of allowing hotkeys, or use a single key that performs a dozen actions based on context, often making the player do the wrong thing because the right and wrong actions share a single button.  Don't fall into that trap.

Acknowledged by: voodoo47

11. February 2016, 19:39:55

#16

MarvinQuote

Quote by ZylonBane:

I'm basically expecting a Citadel Station that looks as detailed as the one in Alien: Isolation. But with the 90s cyberpunk aesthetic instead of 70s industrial grunge.

Yeah, no, not with kickstarter money at least.

Acknowledged by 2 members: Kolya, Join usss!

11. February 2016, 19:40:26

#17

ZylonBaneQuote

Some of SS1's puzzle areas really are quite ridiculously gamey. But if Half-Life 2 could get away with having thousands of explosive barrels all over the city without breaking immersion, I supposed a few silly repulsorlift configurations wouldn't be the end of the world.

11. February 2016, 19:59:19

#18

HikariQuote

I'm gonna agree on making it less abstract rooms all over the place, but any oddities can be explained away by shodan's renovations. After all her minions have different requirements than human ones.

Hey can they get Chicajo to OK the use of a few of his remixes? Or better yet, hire him to do a few more?

Anyone have any feelings to having a Shock2 type upgrade station thing going on, or do we want more 'implants for everything' like the original?

11. February 2016, 20:05:18

#19

voodoo47Quote

I'm very much for keeping the core mechanics intact, wrenching new stuff in forcibly sounds like a bad idea.