14. March 2016, 18:57:07

#300

OlfredQuote

What always bothered me about cyberspace is the natural move forward. Especially at the beginning when you aren't used to the controls you just bounce around. So maybe something like w,a,s,d being up,left,down,right and jump becomes a forward drift and crouch becomes backwards.
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, but hey, that's just my opinion.

When it comes to a more modern take of the virtual reality or cyberspace world. Tron Uprising (,the animated series which sadly got cancelled,) did a good job on visualising it.

14. March 2016, 19:07:04

#301

Producer_chrisQuote

Quote by fox:

Please don't stray too far from SS2's look and feel (aesthetics and gameplay). Once again I want to point at "Invisible War" as a warning and bad example. And then compare that to Human Revolution (+The Missing Link). Otherwise what's the point of using the franchise?

In terms of visible cyberspace I can't really think of an appealing way to make it look less retro as it's one of the few tropes that didn't become a reality. I guess that's not just because of hardware limitations but simply because 2D-diagrams and text-based lists still offer a better overview of the desired informations then fancy 3D-tunnels you have to maneuver through with almost zero usability. 

So if you'd want to make that more realistic I guess it should be more like todays augmanted reality-applications for engineering or architects. You know, enhancing stuff visually only when it makes sense in the context and offering text or symbols where that is the easier to comprehend solution. Offering options for zooming in and out of stuff, etc.. 

There are some interesting videos about the HoloLens on YT. If you'd replace the 80ies cyberspace with something like that in SS3, I'd consider it a reasonable update but I guess others would find that too much of a change already.

That said--look at Star Trek TNG vs. TOS, or BattleStar vs old Battlestar. You can nod back to the originals but still modernize. Like old Trek, there has been so much advancement in our world that some of Shock just isn't Sci-fi anymore. It may come off very forced if we just retro it. Unlike the Alien game, which worked because the noises, wall patterns, suit design exc, not only became the genre, but frankly were designed by Gieger, so calling back to that completely works.

14. March 2016, 19:39:40

#302

foxQuote

Quote by Producer_chris:

That said--look at Star Trek TNG vs. TOS, or BattleStar vs old Battlestar. You can nod back to the originals but still modernize. Like old Trek, there has been so much advancement in our world that some of Shock just isn't Sci-fi anymore. It may come off very forced if we just retro it. Unlike the Alien game, which worked because the noises, wall patterns, suit design exc, not only became the genre, but frankly were designed by Gieger, so calling back to that completely works.

If you really go that route, I would strongly advise you to not call it "System Shock 3" and to indicate the change of style like "The Next Generation" did instead. It would be more of a spin-off rather than a sequel.  I'm pretty sure that this is not what most people are hoping for at this point. I don't know how often I read the sentence "Might be a nice game/movie/comic/book but they really shouldn't have called it [enter franchise-name]". I haven't played "Alien: Isolation" but from what I've seen, I'd be absoultely fine with that degree of retro in SS actually. Visually the environment of the "Dead Space"-games are fitting too. A capable art-department should be able to whip something like that up even without Giger on the team.

14. March 2016, 20:23:22

#303

RocketManQuote

Chris, I get a bit of a sense that by "sticking to the original" you think we mean, "don't update the perception of the era".  As mentioned by others and yourself, we know things now that make our present view of the future a lot different than our prior views.  That's ok.  Nothing wrong with refining the reality you are portraying by replacing PDAs with tablets or something like that.  The more important considerations transcend simple details like that.  The engineering that went into the space station's architecture for example...it was very very cool in SS1.  Obviously limited by the engine but that almost made it better in some instances.  There's a style to it.  What if Shodan wins?  Cool.  I don't need a game with a happy ending.  I don't think that's really important.  I don't play a game EVER to see if I'm going to win or lose.  It's everything in between that I care about.  My personal recommendation is to try to think more holistically at first.  Once that's done, details tend to fall into place more easily, as the environment you've crafted won't feel right, unless populated a certain way. 

And I agree that cyberspace is an exception to the rule.  Cyberspace can be updated but it shouldn't be "modernized" like what Tron Legacy did to "the system" artistically.  Cyberspace is supposed to be simple and crude and high contrast and colourful.  It's supposed to be very iconic of everything it represents.  Simple primitives and wireframe walls are just fine if you decide to keep that.

Also TNG is a not so common example of how you can get things right and it doesn't have to improve or degrade as a function of time.  TNG was way better than the original AND all the ones that came after it.  In fact TNG is a great place to get inspiration for SS3 I would think... not so much stylistically or for props, but for storytelling and thematic elements and such.

14. March 2016, 20:55:37

#304

KolyaQuote

Personally I think that the icons of Cyberpunk are over and done. The lonely hacker and his fight against the mega-corporations would quickly be made out as what they are today: Antiquated ideals of the early hacker pioneers. But the themes of Cyberpunk are very much alive. The fear of technology and where it may lead us has entered the daily news, the mainstream.

Watch Dogs used contemporary topics like mass surveillance and hyper connectivity and that's where I would like to see System Shock go. But what Watch Dogs lacked, especially compared to Cyberpunk works, was any kind of personal or political perspective on those technological changes. A perspective that might show a way into the future.

In Cyberpunk this was the knowledgable hacker David prevailing against the dumb greedy corporate Goliath. His main fight though was against himself, his own curiosity in technology and what may come from it. An AI like SHODAN and the singularity it would bring are both: the goal the hacker aspires to and his nightmare.

That's a classic narrative. But it's also complete bullshit from today's perspective. No single hacker will save us from the arbitrary power that mass surveillance puts into the hands of governments and corporations. Not even a legion will do. In fact they brought us there and their ignorance to the world's diversity shapes our daily lives. If your last name is Islam you will get your Facebook account suspended. If your kid says "cooker-bomb" because it can't say "cucumber" someone will inform the secret service. You may get arrested, detained, flown in blindfolds to lawless countries and interrogated for years, if your name, friends and lifestyle pop up in some filter algorithm.

So if someone creates a game today in which a single hacker saves the world because he's packing an Oculus Rift and a Dart Gun, I'm not gonna be amused. Hackers aren't the underdogs anymore, they've become perpetrators on a global scale. It's not 1994 anymore, the internet isn't "new media" anymore and your mom is probably pirating TV shows right now. No work of science fiction can ignore the last 22 years and expect to be taken seriously today.