EA developing System Shock 3

"Xocyll" <Xocyll.DeleteThis@kingston.net> wrote in message
news:q414e2h1f0rl1uti69g26ng22m7pv3c03j@4ax.com...

>>> Not sure how I feel about it being done by EA though - not exactly a
>>> good track record there.
>>I can't really think of that many, and most of the ones I can think of are
>>flight/driving sims. One game in the CRPG mold I would like to see done
>>in
>>modern fashion, though, is Sentinel Worlds/Future Magic, if you remember
>>it--always loved that game, but maybe the concept wouldn't work redone,
>>dunno.
> Don't recall that one.
>
> Off the top of my head: Privateer (and he addon and maybe the other
> early Wing Commander titles), Ultima Underworld, Red Baron (the one by
> Dynamix), High Octane, Syndicate, Duke Nukem3D/Shadow Warrior, Arena and
> Daggerfall, Betrayal at Krondor, Alone in the Dark, Cybermage, the
> Mechwarrior 2 games, X-Com 1 and 2, Star Control 2.
>
> That's enough for now.

But nothing recent.

There will be no System Shock 3. The EA monster may call it that, but it
will be nothing more than a soul-less corporate drone dumbed-down console
title.

I just hope that Bioshock does not do a "parallel development" deal with the
console. We don't need another Deus Ex Invisible War. Or do something stupid
like use Starforce or Steam.

In article <n61Eg.95355$9d4.64072@fe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
Rob Pollard <robertapollard.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Yup. So would I. System Shock 1 has never been beaten in games design. If
>they updated the graphics engine to bring it to a modern audience a LOT of
>people will be blown away. System Shock 1 was way way ahead of its time when
>it was released.

Ditto.

Heck, I literally just finished replaying SS2 last night. I'm going
to go poking into the fan missions now, see if any of them are worthwhile.

--
Kyle Haight

In article <Di8Eg.6708$o27.633@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>,
pigdos <NA.TakeThisOut@nowhere.com> wrote:
>The demo of SSI took me away from all things Doom. The enhanced CD version
>of SSI was sweet. Hi-res graphics (well, at least as far as VGA goes) and
>spoken personnel logs.

Yeah. My System Shock CD is one of my most treasured gaming possessions.

--
Kyle Haight

In article <VypEg.976$q63.733@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>,
pigdos <NA.RemoveThis@nowhere.com> wrote:
>Don't forget about the elevator music that SS1 featured when you jumped in
>the elevator.

That was the moment I realized how truly *evil* SHODAN was... she'd
killed everybody on the station except me, but she left that awful
muzak playing in the elevator.

Evil, heartless bitch.

--
Kyle Haight

Was SS1 that good? Yes, it was.

The last paragraph sums up modern FPS game development nicely. I'd forgotten
about some of those aspects of SS1. You've got a good
handle on the English language, better than some of the natives on this
newsgroup.

--
Doug
"ShunterAlhena" <balint.farkas.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1155639679.375540.146890@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> System Shock prevails! That's the game that made me learn English and
> now I work part-time translator... guess what an impact that title had
> on me still unable to comprehend how a totally 3 dimensional
> setting, complex plot, dozens of weapons, logs, cyberjacking could have
> been overshadowed by a half-3D monotonous shoot'em'up with nothing
> happening...
> SS2 was a masterpiece, though it doesn't eclipse the first one for
> me...
> BioShock has already wet my appetite, though I did want to hear
> SHODAN's devious sound once more, but I'll settle with any survival RPG
> from the makers of the previous 2
>
> But as for ss3 NOT from Irrational... PLEASE note that a Sparq Beam is
> not an ever recharging magic gun with a single power setting, Medis are
> not +10 HP instant-pickup powerups to be found lying by the dozen in
> every room, SHODAN is not an evilugly giant robot who materializes in
> the final room with 10000 HP and a "story" is not made up of going from
> Alpha Lab 4 to Alpha Lab 5, while killing yet another seventy imps
> along the way... make a decent sequel, pretty please with sugar on top!
>
>

"Rob Pollard" wrote:

> I'm such a SS1 nut that I won a competition to get my name in SS2. You
> will find me as a dead guy in one of the cargo rooms (Rob Pollard)!

That is fantastic, Rob. I saw your name!

Listen...I'm an ol' Point 'n' Clicker "pure" Adventure gamer hold-out from
way back (that means I don't do too many First-Person Shooters and Action
games), but I rate System Shock I *and* II up there with the very best of
any Adventure game.

I would probably even say that SS I & II are the among the best ten PC games
that have ever been made.

SS I and II has something for everyone, and I mean *everyone*. From
Role-Playing gamers to First Person Shooters to Adventure gamers to Puzzle
gamers to Survival Horror fans to many even Simulator fans...the list could
go on and on.

I don't think there is a genre or sub-genre that SS I & II didn't touch on.
The story is superb. Even staid old flatulent Grandma and Grandpa Adventure
game forums continue to talk endlessly about System Shock and System Shock
II.

Why? Because of the story. The characters. The gameplay. The logical outcome
of actions taken. The music. The voiceovers. The puzzles. And last but not
least - and to use a terribly overused term - the sheer horrorific
immersiveness of the System Shock world. And if the player doesn't like the
re-spawning? For heaven's sake, hit the tilde key (or whatever) and type in
a get-around. Even Grandma & Grandpa have learned how to do this, too!

I don't play many FPS or Action games (don't even own any consoles, but have
played on them. I'm too much of a PC weenie and feel like (ahem) anything
good is worth tweaking for), but I relish Horror games (but not really
"Survival" horror).

I loved Clive Barker's Undying. I loved Alone in the Dark. I loved the
Silent Hills. I loved Azrael's Tear. I loved Realms of the Haunting.
Currently I'm, uh, *liking* (more and more - as I play it) "Call of Cthulhu:
Dark Corners of the Earth".

Veering a bit Off-Topic here:

I love - for cryin' out loud - "Uru: Complete Chronicles", which, for the
first time in Mystian history - featured a fantastic "Action-y" interface.
You have your choice - keyboard and/or mouse - and you must jump over huge
cavernous rocks and plunge to your death. Whoa! Unheard of in a P 'n' C
game, especially Myst.

I recommend it to any Action gamer that wants to see how this Mystian stuff
has evolved. Ignore the hippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo. The player doesn't have to
read all those nonsensical scribblin's from demented New-Agers. Explore.
Jump. Morph. Figure out weird puzzles. Swim. Kick little crabs around (they
don't get hurt or squish or anything) - and have a helluva lotta fun in some
of the most fantastic and beautiful game worlds you may ever see in a PC
game.

Longish recovery load-times if your miss your spot and fall into the
bottomless fiery pit-from-hell, but hey - Uru single-player is the jam. And
one can get the "Uru: Complete Chronicles" version for practically nothing
nowadays. If a feeble P 'n' C'er can get through you guys' games, and least
you could do is try one of "ours". I think you'll be pleasantly surprised -
and totally immersed in the Uru world. A few puzzles ain't gonna kill you.
Or - they just might! ¦ Þ

I come here to C.S.I.P.G.Action to read the latest, and its very refreshing
to see this thread. I'm eating it up!

Thanks to all for being here. You "killin' machines" and "Pwners" have
taught me a lot!

Mark

Quoth The Raven; pigdos <NA DeleteThis @nowhere.com> in
<gvpEg.973$q63.20@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>
> Was SS1 that good? Yes, it was.
>
> The last paragraph sums up modern FPS game development nicely. I'd
> forgotten about some of those aspects of SS1. You've got a good
> handle on the English language, better than some of the natives on
> this newsgroup.

didnt know mouse was a native?

--
Remove the _CURSING to reply to me

Some people drink at the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

Xocyll wrote:
> "chainbreaker" <noone.TakeThisOut@nowhere.com> looked up from reading the entrails
> of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>
>> Xocyll wrote:
>>>> I'd buy a remake of the original System Shock done with modern
>>>> graphics/interface.
>>>
>>> Hell yeah.
>>>
>>> Actually there are quite a few games i'd buy again with updated
>>> graphics.
>>>
>>> Not sure how I feel about it being done by EA though - not exactly a
>>> good track record there.
>>>
>>> Xocyll
>>
>> I can't really think of that many, and most of the ones I can think
>> of are flight/driving sims. One game in the CRPG mold I would like
>> to see done in modern fashion, though, is Sentinel Worlds/Future
>> Magic, if you remember it--always loved that game, but maybe the
>> concept wouldn't work redone, dunno.
>
> Don't recall that one.
>

It's sort of reminiscent of Starflight/StarCon2 in a way, except that it has
a much more developed planetside story. Which sort of begs the question,
what happened to all those great sci-fi/space opera RPGs? Back in the day
there were quite a number of very good ones.

--
chainbreaker

Werner Spahl wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, mace wrote:
>
> > It doesn't matter how often you're parroting about of these minor
> > glitches in the masterpiece because SS2 and the other LG's classics are
> > still far superior to anything else in the market. And that's surely a
> > VERY sad state of things.
>
> That may be your opinion, in my eyes Bloodlines beats SS2 all over!

Well, ok, fair enough, even though it was released SEVERAL years later
than SS2. And are there some other games too that "beat SS2 all over"
in your eyes?

> Even
> in the sorry state it was after the official patch 1.2 because the short-
> comings were bugs and not intential like crippled weapons, respawning and
> inability to provide working NPCs. How you can call all these important
> gameplay aspects "minor glitches" is beyond me!

For me 'the glitches' were merely aspects of the game that increased
the tension and forced to plan ahead more precisely.

> And I haven't even started
> about the level design . There is a great review of SS2 somewhere on the
> web that makes good fun of it . But then SS1 may have been great, I do
> not know that, I never played it, and I really liked the LG Thief games!

Well, all is not lost with you then! Even if T2 wasn't nowhere near the
masterpiece T1 was.

Werner Spahl wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, mace wrote:
>
> > Werner Spahl wrote:
> >>
> >> I have to admit I never played it at the time it was released and later on
> >> it weren't the graphics that turned me off but the control interface.
> >
> > Huh, something a little different was too much for your poor brain to
> > manage. How old are you again? 60, 70,...
>
> How often did you replay the old SS then?
>

I have been playing some of my old saves via Dosbox, but not the whole
game because it still so vividly burned to my brain.

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, Rob Pollard wrote:

> The mouse interface took a bit of getting used to, but everything was
> customizable. It allowed your character to lie down, sit down, stand and

No mouselook though IIRC and that is essential for me in any game now.

> <<Spoiler scroll down>>
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> SS1 has no characters as such. You do get some communications from a group
> holding out, but by the time you get there you find they have been toasted

That's as bad as in SS2 then. After the great NPCs in HL it was a great
dissappointment that in SS2 they bait with living NPCs but you can never
reach them in time. After the first few of them, I didn't care anymore.

--
Werner Spahl (spahl@cup.uni-muenchen.de) Freedom for
"The meaning of my life is to make me crazy" Vorlonships

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, mace wrote:

> It doesn't matter how often you're parroting about of these minor
> glitches in the masterpiece because SS2 and the other LG's classics are
> still far superior to anything else in the market. And that's surely a
> VERY sad state of things.

That may be your opinion, in my eyes Bloodlines beats SS2 all over! Even
in the sorry state it was after the official patch 1.2 because the short-
comings were bugs and not intential like crippled weapons, respawning and
inability to provide working NPCs. How you can call all these important
gameplay aspects "minor glitches" is beyond me! And I haven't even started
about the level design . There is a great review of SS2 somewhere on the
web that makes good fun of it . But then SS1 may have been great, I do
not know that, I never played it, and I really liked the LG Thief games!

--
Werner Spahl (spahl@cup.uni-muenchen.de) Freedom for
"The meaning of my life is to make me crazy" Vorlonships

Werner Spahl <spahl RemoveThis @cup.uni-muenchen.de> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, mace wrote:
>
>> It doesn't matter how often you're parroting about of these minor
>> glitches in the masterpiece because SS2 and the other LG's classics are
>> still far superior to anything else in the market. And that's surely a
>> VERY sad state of things.
>
>That may be your opinion, in my eyes Bloodlines beats SS2 all over! Even
>in the sorry state it was after the official patch 1.2 because the short-
>comings were bugs and not intential like crippled weapons, respawning and
>inability to provide working NPCs. How you can call all these important
>gameplay aspects "minor glitches" is beyond me! And I haven't even started
>about the level design . There is a great review of SS2 somewhere on the
>web that makes good fun of it . But then SS1 may have been great, I do
>not know that, I never played it, and I really liked the LG Thief games!

Uh Werner, you're saying that a 2005 game beats out a 1999 game due to
npcs etc - lets see bloodlines do as well running on a 200MHz pentium 1.

After the patch SS2 didn't have crippled weapons and respawn could be
set very low.

SS2, like SS before it wasn't meant to have npcs, it's not an inability
of Looking Glass to be able to create them, it's the games design.
Complaining about that is the equivalent of complaining that there's no
flyable aircraft in a car racing game.

SS2, unpatched, could be played and completed - Bloodlines had how many
broken quests before the official patch and your unofficial patches?

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr