Make a FPS/RPG "horror" inspired by system shock! (set in the NS universe of course)
OR someone could make a mod that'll bring a pile o' gold into the UWE office (like how Dayz brought "loadsamoney" to the Bohemia interactive office.
I've always had this 'dream' that someone one day will make a mod that's a FPS/RTS game based on the system shock 2 game say "The Many" vs. "UNN/Survivors" where the humans need to scavenge the level for various items and supplies while "The many" just needs to find corpses to assimilate into biomass in order to spawn more horrorfying abominations to hunt down the remaining human survivors!
Edit: Went nuts for hours thinking non-stop of ideas for such a mod so 8 hours later I'm sitting with what looks like 4-5 pages long realizing I ain't gonna get done with that today and in my nutty madness I forgot to get myself some dinner. O0
I will probably link a word document or some such when I get done with it tomorrow.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I've always loved the organic look to @Cory 's artwork and the unique designs they come up with..
So it would be really cool if they focused on some sort of first person experience in a living breathing, reacting alien environment, with emphasis on interaction with everything - definitely co op. (UWE often says they wish to connect the world through play)
They are so creative and that setup is just ripe for a team like them.
Someone once shared with me a very interesting and unique idea:
An MMO set in the world of Orwell's 1984. NPCs are the majority in this game, and players must either stay hidden among the NPCs and learn the system and embrace Big Brother, or else be reported for Thought Crime by other players for acting too weird. Later on you could probably join the Thought Police or the resistance fighters.
Now that's an MMO actually worth playing. Take risks with game development, dammit! No need to rehash ideas that has already been done.
This idea made me think of an old Halflife1 mod called "The Ship". Well, elements of it anyway. You act normal as much as possible and try and kill other players when no1 else is around (or security comes and hunts u down). Most sneaky frags wins.
I would love to see the RTS side evolve, along with some added L4D style gameplay. Bring on an AI expert to make bots challenging, cut out the alien team, and let the alien commander play like a dungeon master. A team of marines fight their way through linear maps, choosing paths to secure checkpoints that grant resources and/or techs, while the alien commander sets traps, spawns hordes, or spawns himself to fight the marines as a miniboss.
Someone once shared with me a very interesting and unique idea:
An MMO set in the world of Orwell's 1984. NPCs are the majority in this game, and players must either stay hidden among the NPCs and learn the system and embrace Big Brother, or else be reported for Thought Crime by other players for acting too weird. Later on you could probably join the Thought Police or the resistance fighters.
Now that's an MMO actually worth playing. Take risks with game development, dammit! No need to rehash ideas that has already been done.
This idea made me think of an old Halflife1 mod called "The Ship". Well, elements of it anyway. You act normal as much as possible and try and kill other players when no1 else is around (or security comes and hunts u down). Most sneaky frags wins.
If by "acting normal" you mean, trying to imitate the bots by randomly running away and jumping at objects :P
Think Natural Selection 2, but on a massive (almost Planetside 2) scale. Huge maps, massive numbers of tech points and long, varied technology trees that REALLY require a thought out plan of strategy in one particular direction. Maybe even a third race.
Think Natural Selection 2, but on a massive (almost Planetside 2) scale. Huge maps, massive numbers of tech points and long, varied technology trees that REALLY require a thought out plan of strategy in one particular direction. Maybe even a third race.
This but make sure you get all the good Planetside elements. Like having to drive for 30 minutes to find the battle after you spawn.
Feeling like a name- and meaningless cog in a vast uncaring world that just doesn't care about your actions?
We got that angle fully covered by Planetside2 on the one end and real-life work on the other...
TLDR version first. Then the narration of a match.
What if we had a multiplayer version of The Walking Dead/Heavy Rain set in the Natural Selection universe with a proceedurally generated ship, cast, and circumstances that is all orchestrated by an AI director that keeps the conflict hot and pushes to wrap the game up, one way or another, in about 20-30 minutes? Think "sci-fi B movie: the game." At the end of a match, all surviving players have their score increased by the number of survivors, including the ship itself. These scores persist with the player, between games. The game is heavily cinematic, in nature. Kharra may feature in the plot, but not always. There are plenty of things to go wrong on a spaceship.
Narration of a match:
The game fades in from black with a simple title "Infinity" and a random spacescape as the background. The menu options read out "New Game," "View Replays," and "Quit."
Selecting "New Game" the screen fades to black and a loading screen slowly flashes the message "Infinity is best experienced without 3rd party voicechat." Curious, you think. Why wouldn't they want me to be using 3rd party chat? While reflecting on this, you remember that this game didn't offer friends list support, yet bills itself as a multiplayer game. Odd.
The sound of a humming engine comes through your speakers and the display fades in to the interior of some kind of spacecraft. The camera automatically tours the decks and lingers on passengers and crew aboard the ship. As the half-dozen or so passengers come into focus, a readout from this ship's manifest becomes visible onscreen telling you their name and their business aboard the ship "USS Infinity" -- nothing else.
USS Infinity, you think. The blurb about this game said that every match is procedurally generated. Perhaps in other matches, the USS Infinity is a freighter, science vessel, or an attack ship instead of a light transport. Even in a single ship, how many permutations could there be? What kind of reactor drives it? What facilities does it have on board? Where are we headed, where are we traveling through, what are we carrying? Are we running from something? The game tells you nothing.
A prompt on screen allows you to "select" a crew member or to cycle through them. After looking at the lot, you notice Earl Platt, a broadly-built passenger, is no longer selectable. Is that because another player selected him? you think. The message "two minutes until auto-selection" flashes and, not wanting to lose your second pick, you land on David Morningway. You then press "a" on your gamepad (hooray big picture support!) and confirm your selection. The camera pans around your selected character for a bit. Morningway is older, unkempt, and portly, but he's the captain. There's surely some benefit to that.
While this is happening, a voice, presumably Morningway's, comes through your speakers. "What a miserable haul, that's what I hate about these deep space runs," Morningway says in voiceover. "There is plenty of people and equipment and people to bring out to the outer colonies, but there's no money to be made on the return trip. Just washouts and sob stories who bit off more than they can chew. I'm not getting paid enough to sleep with one eye open, especially with all the wear on Infinity from these long slogs." At the end of Morningway's monolog, the view fades to black and blinks in quickly, as if I just took Morningway's point of view mid-blink.
The controls are pretty standard fare, and you find myself being able to walk and look around without much issue. Contextual pop-ups show that you're able to inspect a dizzying number of controls and switches in the cockpit. Inspecting any of them gives you information on what they do. There is no HUD and you can't see your hands or your body except when looking down or when leaning in to inspect something small. I wonder how much of this is proceedurally generated? your inner game designer asks. You also reflect on the voiceover that introduced the match from Morningway's point of view. Does each character have voiceovers? How many characters are there? Are there different voiceovers to introduce each iteration of the USS Infinity? Are all of the possible characters in this match, or is this a subset of characters based on the type of ship the USS Infinity is mixed with a little random generation? Shit. This game is huge.
You hear a door open and you turn to see another character, Iwo Tanaka - First Mate, enter the room. The interface puts a focus cue on Tanaka and you press to bring up a dialog option, "..." or "everything alright?" You don't want to talk right now, so you choose silence.
"Still giving me the cold shoulder?" Tanaka asks. Woah, is silence a dialog option in this game? you think to yourself.
A few responses come up on the screen, "No. I just have nothing to say," "..." and "leave me alone." I choose "leave me alone" and hear Morningway respond "get the fuck off my bridge." Well, now I know where the M rating came from, you think to yourself.
Tanaka lingers for a bit longer and then leaves the way he came. Was that a player character? you think to yourself. This is interrupted by an alarm on the bridge panel. Leaning over to inspect it, my cursor snaps to the panel to get more detail. The selection mechanic is crisp, it seems like it's accuracy is a game mechanic. The more experienced and calm I am, the easier it is to recognize and perform an action. If I'm panicked, surprised, or inexperienced, it might be harder to figure out what I need to do and perform the task.
Looking at the panel, you see "REACTOR PRESSURE CRITICAL" and a swelling status bar showing increasingly alarming numbers. The edges of the screen go into a blurry adrenaline rush as a glow guides you to turn to the left. Above the first mate's station there is a lever that is being highlighted with a glowing outline and a callout that reads "EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN." You move across the room to pull it, running in your adrenaline-fueled haze, but you can't get there in time. The ship roils violently in a massive explosion and the power flickers out.
The game just set me up, you think to yourself. If I hadn't sent my first mate away, he might have been there to pull the lever. There's no way that was a player character. Power comes back on and your first mate re-appears as soon as the bridge airlock door opens. "What happened?" Tanaka asks, "I don't know, I need to find that out now," Morningway replies as you automatically find your feet. Certain screens and switches are highlighted with glowing callouts. You start inspecting and interacting with them and notice that Tanaka is doing the same. He must have similar proficiencies to me. I should have picked the first mate so that I could have been young. And Asian. you joke to yourself.
Your inspection reveals that the ship's reactor is offline and essential systems like atmosphere and gravity are running. A dialog option opens up "share with Tanaka," and "...". Learning your lesson, you choose "Share with Tanaka" and Morningway does as you would expect via superb voice acting. A textual question floats on-screen. "What about electricity to the cargo bay? I won't get paid if the refrigerated cargo expires."
A text dialog option opens up with a walking dead style countdown: "Ask Tanaka to check," and "...". Choosing silence, you look around the cockpit for a way to check for yourself. You hear Tanaka's voice call out over the ship's intercomm, "Passengers are to hold in place. We have experienced a shutdown. We will investigate this and report back with more information, but until then please stay put for your own safety." You see a glowing prompt that is encouraging you to turn and speak to Tanaka, but you decline and keep looking for the right panel to check power status to the cargo bay. Paydirt. The panel says that the cargo bay airlock doors are close and there is no power inside. Shit.
You are given a dialog option to "tell Tanaka" or "...". You choose to tell him: "Power to the cargo bay is knocked out. If we don't get it back up and get paid for this leg, Infinity could be grounded for good."
"You felt the explosion," Tanaka replies. "We need to make sure that the containment walls are intact. If we rad a ship full of passengers, we'll still lose Infinity and end up in prison."
A dialog box appears on your screen "of course," and a red dialog option "who cares?" A call-out appears on screen "Red dialog choices and player actions are drastic. Drastic choices are extremely risky. You have been warned." As tempted as you are to nuke a ship full of passengers you haven't met, you choose "of course."
A glowing trail calls out "reactor room" and you follow it with Tanaka through the mess, passenger quarters, and main corridor until you get to the reactor room. Along the way, you find one of the passengers, Nir Schwartz, out of his cabin. Tanaka reprimands him and orders him back to his cabin. Schwartz asks Tanaka what is going on, addressing him by his first name, "Iwo". You take a cue to shout them both down ("He is to be addressed 'First Mate Tanaka'!") and the waifish Schwartz slinks away. Was that a player character too? What the hell is going on?
Once inside the reactor room, you can confirm that the containment walls have been blown to bits by a steam explosion. "We're fucked," Tanaka quips.
"Without any lube," Morningway replies from your dialog option "I agree". Jokes you think to yourself.
"I'll set a beacon and we'll take the lifeboat," Morningway replies automatically.
After a moment's pause, Tanaka replies "The battery on the lifeboat won't get us far... I've had it rigged to help juice the refrigerated cargo..."
Dialog options show up as "Why?," "Sit and wait," and highlighted in red "run the reactor unsheilded."
<!-- Getting lazy now, cutting out the dialog and player perspective -->
You choose "why?" Tanaka says Schwartz, the courier responsible for the refrigerated cargo, promised extra payment for the extra hookup.
You choose to run unshielded and lie to the passengers, despite there being 3 other passengers, a washed out soldier, a mother, and her child. The player controlling Tanaka, who has a secret in-game friendship with Schwartz, chooses to reroute power away from the refrigerated cargo and toward ventilation that will reduce the effects of radiation exposure, putting the interests of keeping the little girl and his friend alive over his relationship with the captain and the continued operation of the Infinity.
Meanwhile, Schwartz wrestles with a drug addiction that he attempts to hide from the crew and a secret about the cargo: it is a dangerous living organism that is being kept ultra-cold to keep it from germinating and infesting the ship. The mother intuitively picks up on both Schwartz's odd behavior and asks the soldier to break into his quarters while she distracts Schwartz. The soldier learns about both of Schwartz's secrets and confronts him. This gets to Tanaka who decides to tell the captain what he's done.
The mother finds out that the captain tried to radiate the passengers and is infuriated. Tanaka comes to the captain's defense and offers her daughter the lifeboat, which has its own rad shielding, explaining that he's been diverting some reactor power to help refill the lifeboat's batteries since they aren't cooling the refrigerated cargo.
The group discussion is interrupted when a ship alarm goes off: the airlock to the cargobay has been broken, something has broken out of the cargo bay and into the rest of the ship.
The soldier reveals to the group that he was illegally smuggling his old service rifle back to earth, but it's in a electronically locked cargo crate in possibly the most dangerous area of the ship inhabited by an unknown enemy. The mother is a talented electronics specialist, and agrees to go with the soldier to help him retrieve his gun. She decides to leave her daughter in the lifeboat in the care of Tanaka, not trusting Schwartz or Morningway (played by you, remember?).
The cargo bay is thick with an undulating, mossy fungus. Un-nerving sounds of breathing and whispers can be heard everywhere. The duo sees a strange, mollusk looking creature with a pulsing abdomen suspended from the ceiling. Moving quickly, the mother completes a re-wiring challenge and unlocks the crate as the soldier is ambushed by a mossy, dog-like creature. The mother pulls the rifle from the crate but she struggles to de-activate the safety and line up her shot on the savage creature. She manages to line up a shot and put down the creature, but hits the soldier as well. He's bleeding badly.
She puts pressure on the wound as the soldier takes the rifle from her and all of the ammo he brought along (2 clips). He fires a test shot into the glowing hive and a scream rips through the ship. Back in the mess hall, the other members of the crew stand on edge, waiting for the mother and soldier to return. The mother works to walk the soldier out of the cargo bay and down the main corridor, stumbling when they fall out of step and nervously checking the sound of skittering footsteps behind them. The soldier is losing blood and it's not going well.
Once back in the mess, they find the rest of the crew, who are full of questions. Tanaka realizes that there is a first aid kit in the lifeboat and runs to get it. The mother and soldier are trying to explain what they saw, Schwartz chooses not to offer his drugs to help the soldier's pain, keeping him more lucid but robbing the soldier of focus. Tanaka runs back in screaming, the mother goes into panic and runs to the lifeboat to see that her daughter has been ripped to pieces before being attacked and killed by a skulk herself.
The skulk runs into the mess and scuffles with Schwartz, who throws it toward the soldier who picks it off easily. Schwartz is now injured and bleeding as well. The soldier passes out due to the pain and the trio agree to go to the lifeboat, clear it out with the rifle, and then shut the airlock between the lifeboat and the Infinity in order to barricade themselves inside. On the way, they are attacked again and choose to leave the soldier behind.
With the three of them barricaded inside the lifeboat and a waning battery, Schwartz, Tanaka, and Morningway come up with a plan to get to the bridge, reroute reactor power toward recharging the lifeboat, and activating a distress beacon. They can't decide who will go, and suddenly they start to hear savage beating from the other side of the lifeboat airlock. They attempt to detach the lifeboat from the ship but the infestation is holding them in place. With seconds before the creature breaks through, the three of them decide they will open the door, gun (singular) blazing and make a mad-dash for the bridge, hoping the bridge airlock door will buy them time.
Opening the lifeboat airlock, there is a massive beast on the other side. Schwartz fires blindly at the creature while the three run. Thanks to a recent hit, Schwartz is lucid and doesn't slip on the slime covered stairs that dot the path. Inside the bridge with the airlock shut, the surviving crewmen turn on a distress signal and ramp up the reactor output, hoping that irradiating the cargo bay will slow the monsters down (joke point when schwartz reveals that he believes radiation can sometimes give super powers).
The bridge crackles alive when they receive a comm from a TSA outrunner that has received their distress signal. The contingent of marines will board to extract them as soon as they power down their reactor. The trio agrees, and the beast assault on the bridge airlock door begins. The trio on the bridge communicate with the marines over the chatter of gunfire and guide them toward the bridge.
Once there, down to 2 men, the marines start running the trio back to the landing craft. Scooping up the rifles of the fallen marines along the way, the group shoot their way through the mess hall. Schwartz starts to fall apart and the other two need to decide on helping him or not. He reveals that there is important info the TSA wants on these creatures in his room, if they can only stop briefly. Tanaka picks up Schwartz and tells him that he can tell the TSA himself, but they are not stopping.
Low on ammo, the three are confronted by an enormous alien beast. The marines attack it from multiple sides and confuse it, shouting at the trio to run to the ship. Schwartz and Tanaka can do nothing that resembles running. Morningway has to decide between helping the two run, attacking the creature with the marines, or running himself. Morningway, in a fit of bravery, attacks the Onos and draws its ire. The gun jams and Morningway struggles to clear it; he's not a soldier. He's impaled and the marines retreat back to the landing craft.
Dragging a barely, conscious Schwartz with an enormous alien beast coming his way, Tanaka abandons his friend and runs to the ship. Cut to an exterior shot of the marine landing craft detaching from the Infinity as the infestation creeps along the hull toward the locking mechanism. As the marine ship flies in front of the camera, the screen fades to black.
Shit, was that a movie or a game?
It's not over. Your screen opens up to the mess hall. All of the players are there, with a number next to their name on how many people have survived in games where they have survived. Voice chat is active now and you're able to see the username of each player and all of the supporting roles they played after they died (skulks, onos, and rescuing marines). You were all actors in a crazy, one-of-a-kind match. You spend the next minutes in the room just talking about what happened.
Describe that with an acronym. I know some smartass will
Great topic!
I would like to see any kind of game from them that is not competitive focused, more emphasis on having fun possibly co-op to enjoy with friends.
If it is SP I would like to see something that gets me fully immersed, ei not shooter focused but rather focus on the exploration and interaction, btw have you guys seen this amazing looking thing
other things that might interest me could be something arcadey that doesn't get boring quickly or a game that has deception as it's main theme.
Anyway whatever it is I really hope Charlie reveals it sooner rather than later to get feedback early on and see what the vibe is from the community, after all some of us here will certainly be the first supporters/buyers and the ones to spread the word about it.
I want a game that doesn't take several months after release to become playable from start to finish on a "mid-range" rig. Hell screw the game where the hell is my gorge plushie?
Someone once shared with me a very interesting and unique idea:
An MMO set in the world of Orwell's 1984. NPCs are the majority in this game, and players must either stay hidden among the NPCs and learn the system and embrace Big Brother, or else be reported for Thought Crime by other players for acting too weird. Later on you could probably join the Thought Police or the resistance fighters.
Now that's an MMO actually worth playing. Take risks with game development, dammit! No need to rehash ideas that has already been done.
This idea made me think of an old Halflife1 mod called "The Ship". Well, elements of it anyway. You act normal as much as possible and try and kill other players when no1 else is around (or security comes and hunts u down). Most sneaky frags wins.
They have made The Ship 2 - and then they created alittle game called Assasins Creed
The Multiplayer in AS is a direct copy of The Ship´s mechanics and gameplay.
Comments
OR someone could make a mod that'll bring a pile o' gold into the UWE office (like how Dayz brought "loadsamoney" to the Bohemia interactive office.
I've always had this 'dream' that someone one day will make a mod that's a FPS/RTS game based on the system shock 2 game say "The Many" vs. "UNN/Survivors" where the humans need to scavenge the level for various items and supplies while "The many" just needs to find corpses to assimilate into biomass in order to spawn more horrorfying abominations to hunt down the remaining human survivors!
Edit: Went nuts for hours thinking non-stop of ideas for such a mod so 8 hours later I'm sitting with what looks like 4-5 pages long realizing I ain't gonna get done with that today and in my nutty madness I forgot to get myself some dinner. O0
I will probably link a word document or some such when I get done with it tomorrow.
So it would be really cool if they focused on some sort of first person experience in a living breathing, reacting alien environment, with emphasis on interaction with everything - definitely co op. (UWE often says they wish to connect the world through play)
They are so creative and that setup is just ripe for a team like them.
This idea made me think of an old Halflife1 mod called "The Ship". Well, elements of it anyway. You act normal as much as possible and try and kill other players when no1 else is around (or security comes and hunts u down). Most sneaky frags wins.
Add in a mocap dog and realistic AI that makes fish really swim away from you and I'm sold.
If by "acting normal" you mean, trying to imitate the bots by randomly running away and jumping at objects :P
Fun game though, especially on LANs
Think Natural Selection 2, but on a massive (almost Planetside 2) scale. Huge maps, massive numbers of tech points and long, varied technology trees that REALLY require a thought out plan of strategy in one particular direction. Maybe even a third race.
This but make sure you get all the good Planetside elements. Like having to drive for 30 minutes to find the battle after you spawn.
We got that angle fully covered by Planetside2 on the one end and real-life work on the other...
What if we had a multiplayer version of The Walking Dead/Heavy Rain set in the Natural Selection universe with a proceedurally generated ship, cast, and circumstances that is all orchestrated by an AI director that keeps the conflict hot and pushes to wrap the game up, one way or another, in about 20-30 minutes? Think "sci-fi B movie: the game." At the end of a match, all surviving players have their score increased by the number of survivors, including the ship itself. These scores persist with the player, between games. The game is heavily cinematic, in nature. Kharra may feature in the plot, but not always. There are plenty of things to go wrong on a spaceship.
Narration of a match:
The game fades in from black with a simple title "Infinity" and a random spacescape as the background. The menu options read out "New Game," "View Replays," and "Quit."
Selecting "New Game" the screen fades to black and a loading screen slowly flashes the message "Infinity is best experienced without 3rd party voicechat." Curious, you think. Why wouldn't they want me to be using 3rd party chat? While reflecting on this, you remember that this game didn't offer friends list support, yet bills itself as a multiplayer game. Odd.
The sound of a humming engine comes through your speakers and the display fades in to the interior of some kind of spacecraft. The camera automatically tours the decks and lingers on passengers and crew aboard the ship. As the half-dozen or so passengers come into focus, a readout from this ship's manifest becomes visible onscreen telling you their name and their business aboard the ship "USS Infinity" -- nothing else.
USS Infinity, you think. The blurb about this game said that every match is procedurally generated. Perhaps in other matches, the USS Infinity is a freighter, science vessel, or an attack ship instead of a light transport. Even in a single ship, how many permutations could there be? What kind of reactor drives it? What facilities does it have on board? Where are we headed, where are we traveling through, what are we carrying? Are we running from something? The game tells you nothing.
A prompt on screen allows you to "select" a crew member or to cycle through them. After looking at the lot, you notice Earl Platt, a broadly-built passenger, is no longer selectable. Is that because another player selected him? you think. The message "two minutes until auto-selection" flashes and, not wanting to lose your second pick, you land on David Morningway. You then press "a" on your gamepad (hooray big picture support!) and confirm your selection. The camera pans around your selected character for a bit. Morningway is older, unkempt, and portly, but he's the captain. There's surely some benefit to that.
While this is happening, a voice, presumably Morningway's, comes through your speakers. "What a miserable haul, that's what I hate about these deep space runs," Morningway says in voiceover. "There is plenty of people and equipment and people to bring out to the outer colonies, but there's no money to be made on the return trip. Just washouts and sob stories who bit off more than they can chew. I'm not getting paid enough to sleep with one eye open, especially with all the wear on Infinity from these long slogs." At the end of Morningway's monolog, the view fades to black and blinks in quickly, as if I just took Morningway's point of view mid-blink.
The controls are pretty standard fare, and you find myself being able to walk and look around without much issue. Contextual pop-ups show that you're able to inspect a dizzying number of controls and switches in the cockpit. Inspecting any of them gives you information on what they do. There is no HUD and you can't see your hands or your body except when looking down or when leaning in to inspect something small. I wonder how much of this is proceedurally generated? your inner game designer asks. You also reflect on the voiceover that introduced the match from Morningway's point of view. Does each character have voiceovers? How many characters are there? Are there different voiceovers to introduce each iteration of the USS Infinity? Are all of the possible characters in this match, or is this a subset of characters based on the type of ship the USS Infinity is mixed with a little random generation? Shit. This game is huge.
You hear a door open and you turn to see another character, Iwo Tanaka - First Mate, enter the room. The interface puts a focus cue on Tanaka and you press to bring up a dialog option, "..." or "everything alright?" You don't want to talk right now, so you choose silence.
"Still giving me the cold shoulder?" Tanaka asks. Woah, is silence a dialog option in this game? you think to yourself.
A few responses come up on the screen, "No. I just have nothing to say," "..." and "leave me alone." I choose "leave me alone" and hear Morningway respond "get the fuck off my bridge." Well, now I know where the M rating came from, you think to yourself.
Tanaka lingers for a bit longer and then leaves the way he came. Was that a player character? you think to yourself. This is interrupted by an alarm on the bridge panel. Leaning over to inspect it, my cursor snaps to the panel to get more detail. The selection mechanic is crisp, it seems like it's accuracy is a game mechanic. The more experienced and calm I am, the easier it is to recognize and perform an action. If I'm panicked, surprised, or inexperienced, it might be harder to figure out what I need to do and perform the task.
Looking at the panel, you see "REACTOR PRESSURE CRITICAL" and a swelling status bar showing increasingly alarming numbers. The edges of the screen go into a blurry adrenaline rush as a glow guides you to turn to the left. Above the first mate's station there is a lever that is being highlighted with a glowing outline and a callout that reads "EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN." You move across the room to pull it, running in your adrenaline-fueled haze, but you can't get there in time. The ship roils violently in a massive explosion and the power flickers out.
The game just set me up, you think to yourself. If I hadn't sent my first mate away, he might have been there to pull the lever. There's no way that was a player character. Power comes back on and your first mate re-appears as soon as the bridge airlock door opens. "What happened?" Tanaka asks, "I don't know, I need to find that out now," Morningway replies as you automatically find your feet. Certain screens and switches are highlighted with glowing callouts. You start inspecting and interacting with them and notice that Tanaka is doing the same. He must have similar proficiencies to me. I should have picked the first mate so that I could have been young. And Asian. you joke to yourself.
Your inspection reveals that the ship's reactor is offline and essential systems like atmosphere and gravity are running. A dialog option opens up "share with Tanaka," and "...". Learning your lesson, you choose "Share with Tanaka" and Morningway does as you would expect via superb voice acting. A textual question floats on-screen. "What about electricity to the cargo bay? I won't get paid if the refrigerated cargo expires."
A text dialog option opens up with a walking dead style countdown: "Ask Tanaka to check," and "...". Choosing silence, you look around the cockpit for a way to check for yourself. You hear Tanaka's voice call out over the ship's intercomm, "Passengers are to hold in place. We have experienced a shutdown. We will investigate this and report back with more information, but until then please stay put for your own safety." You see a glowing prompt that is encouraging you to turn and speak to Tanaka, but you decline and keep looking for the right panel to check power status to the cargo bay. Paydirt. The panel says that the cargo bay airlock doors are close and there is no power inside. Shit.
You are given a dialog option to "tell Tanaka" or "...". You choose to tell him: "Power to the cargo bay is knocked out. If we don't get it back up and get paid for this leg, Infinity could be grounded for good."
"You felt the explosion," Tanaka replies. "We need to make sure that the containment walls are intact. If we rad a ship full of passengers, we'll still lose Infinity and end up in prison."
A dialog box appears on your screen "of course," and a red dialog option "who cares?" A call-out appears on screen "Red dialog choices and player actions are drastic. Drastic choices are extremely risky. You have been warned." As tempted as you are to nuke a ship full of passengers you haven't met, you choose "of course."
A glowing trail calls out "reactor room" and you follow it with Tanaka through the mess, passenger quarters, and main corridor until you get to the reactor room. Along the way, you find one of the passengers, Nir Schwartz, out of his cabin. Tanaka reprimands him and orders him back to his cabin. Schwartz asks Tanaka what is going on, addressing him by his first name, "Iwo". You take a cue to shout them both down ("He is to be addressed 'First Mate Tanaka'!") and the waifish Schwartz slinks away. Was that a player character too? What the hell is going on?
Once inside the reactor room, you can confirm that the containment walls have been blown to bits by a steam explosion. "We're fucked," Tanaka quips.
"Without any lube," Morningway replies from your dialog option "I agree". Jokes you think to yourself.
"I'll set a beacon and we'll take the lifeboat," Morningway replies automatically.
After a moment's pause, Tanaka replies "The battery on the lifeboat won't get us far... I've had it rigged to help juice the refrigerated cargo..."
Dialog options show up as "Why?," "Sit and wait," and highlighted in red "run the reactor unsheilded."
<!-- Getting lazy now, cutting out the dialog and player perspective -->
You choose "why?" Tanaka says Schwartz, the courier responsible for the refrigerated cargo, promised extra payment for the extra hookup.
You choose to run unshielded and lie to the passengers, despite there being 3 other passengers, a washed out soldier, a mother, and her child. The player controlling Tanaka, who has a secret in-game friendship with Schwartz, chooses to reroute power away from the refrigerated cargo and toward ventilation that will reduce the effects of radiation exposure, putting the interests of keeping the little girl and his friend alive over his relationship with the captain and the continued operation of the Infinity.
Meanwhile, Schwartz wrestles with a drug addiction that he attempts to hide from the crew and a secret about the cargo: it is a dangerous living organism that is being kept ultra-cold to keep it from germinating and infesting the ship. The mother intuitively picks up on both Schwartz's odd behavior and asks the soldier to break into his quarters while she distracts Schwartz. The soldier learns about both of Schwartz's secrets and confronts him. This gets to Tanaka who decides to tell the captain what he's done.
The mother finds out that the captain tried to radiate the passengers and is infuriated. Tanaka comes to the captain's defense and offers her daughter the lifeboat, which has its own rad shielding, explaining that he's been diverting some reactor power to help refill the lifeboat's batteries since they aren't cooling the refrigerated cargo.
The group discussion is interrupted when a ship alarm goes off: the airlock to the cargobay has been broken, something has broken out of the cargo bay and into the rest of the ship.
The soldier reveals to the group that he was illegally smuggling his old service rifle back to earth, but it's in a electronically locked cargo crate in possibly the most dangerous area of the ship inhabited by an unknown enemy. The mother is a talented electronics specialist, and agrees to go with the soldier to help him retrieve his gun. She decides to leave her daughter in the lifeboat in the care of Tanaka, not trusting Schwartz or Morningway (played by you, remember?).
The cargo bay is thick with an undulating, mossy fungus. Un-nerving sounds of breathing and whispers can be heard everywhere. The duo sees a strange, mollusk looking creature with a pulsing abdomen suspended from the ceiling. Moving quickly, the mother completes a re-wiring challenge and unlocks the crate as the soldier is ambushed by a mossy, dog-like creature. The mother pulls the rifle from the crate but she struggles to de-activate the safety and line up her shot on the savage creature. She manages to line up a shot and put down the creature, but hits the soldier as well. He's bleeding badly.
She puts pressure on the wound as the soldier takes the rifle from her and all of the ammo he brought along (2 clips). He fires a test shot into the glowing hive and a scream rips through the ship. Back in the mess hall, the other members of the crew stand on edge, waiting for the mother and soldier to return. The mother works to walk the soldier out of the cargo bay and down the main corridor, stumbling when they fall out of step and nervously checking the sound of skittering footsteps behind them. The soldier is losing blood and it's not going well.
Once back in the mess, they find the rest of the crew, who are full of questions. Tanaka realizes that there is a first aid kit in the lifeboat and runs to get it. The mother and soldier are trying to explain what they saw, Schwartz chooses not to offer his drugs to help the soldier's pain, keeping him more lucid but robbing the soldier of focus. Tanaka runs back in screaming, the mother goes into panic and runs to the lifeboat to see that her daughter has been ripped to pieces before being attacked and killed by a skulk herself.
The skulk runs into the mess and scuffles with Schwartz, who throws it toward the soldier who picks it off easily. Schwartz is now injured and bleeding as well. The soldier passes out due to the pain and the trio agree to go to the lifeboat, clear it out with the rifle, and then shut the airlock between the lifeboat and the Infinity in order to barricade themselves inside. On the way, they are attacked again and choose to leave the soldier behind.
With the three of them barricaded inside the lifeboat and a waning battery, Schwartz, Tanaka, and Morningway come up with a plan to get to the bridge, reroute reactor power toward recharging the lifeboat, and activating a distress beacon. They can't decide who will go, and suddenly they start to hear savage beating from the other side of the lifeboat airlock. They attempt to detach the lifeboat from the ship but the infestation is holding them in place. With seconds before the creature breaks through, the three of them decide they will open the door, gun (singular) blazing and make a mad-dash for the bridge, hoping the bridge airlock door will buy them time.
Opening the lifeboat airlock, there is a massive beast on the other side. Schwartz fires blindly at the creature while the three run. Thanks to a recent hit, Schwartz is lucid and doesn't slip on the slime covered stairs that dot the path. Inside the bridge with the airlock shut, the surviving crewmen turn on a distress signal and ramp up the reactor output, hoping that irradiating the cargo bay will slow the monsters down (joke point when schwartz reveals that he believes radiation can sometimes give super powers).
The bridge crackles alive when they receive a comm from a TSA outrunner that has received their distress signal. The contingent of marines will board to extract them as soon as they power down their reactor. The trio agrees, and the beast assault on the bridge airlock door begins. The trio on the bridge communicate with the marines over the chatter of gunfire and guide them toward the bridge.
Once there, down to 2 men, the marines start running the trio back to the landing craft. Scooping up the rifles of the fallen marines along the way, the group shoot their way through the mess hall. Schwartz starts to fall apart and the other two need to decide on helping him or not. He reveals that there is important info the TSA wants on these creatures in his room, if they can only stop briefly. Tanaka picks up Schwartz and tells him that he can tell the TSA himself, but they are not stopping.
Low on ammo, the three are confronted by an enormous alien beast. The marines attack it from multiple sides and confuse it, shouting at the trio to run to the ship. Schwartz and Tanaka can do nothing that resembles running. Morningway has to decide between helping the two run, attacking the creature with the marines, or running himself. Morningway, in a fit of bravery, attacks the Onos and draws its ire. The gun jams and Morningway struggles to clear it; he's not a soldier. He's impaled and the marines retreat back to the landing craft.
Dragging a barely, conscious Schwartz with an enormous alien beast coming his way, Tanaka abandons his friend and runs to the ship. Cut to an exterior shot of the marine landing craft detaching from the Infinity as the infestation creeps along the hull toward the locking mechanism. As the marine ship flies in front of the camera, the screen fades to black.
Shit, was that a movie or a game?
It's not over. Your screen opens up to the mess hall. All of the players are there, with a number next to their name on how many people have survived in games where they have survived. Voice chat is active now and you're able to see the username of each player and all of the supporting roles they played after they died (skulks, onos, and rescuing marines). You were all actors in a crazy, one-of-a-kind match. You spend the next minutes in the room just talking about what happened.
Describe that with an acronym. I know some smartass will
I was just looking forward to the Occulus Rift reboot of Myst, but you sir have the sight of a prophet.
I would like to see any kind of game from them that is not competitive focused, more emphasis on having fun possibly co-op to enjoy with friends.
If it is SP I would like to see something that gets me fully immersed, ei not shooter focused but rather focus on the exploration and interaction, btw have you guys seen this amazing looking thing
other things that might interest me could be something arcadey that doesn't get boring quickly or a game that has deception as it's main theme.
Anyway whatever it is I really hope Charlie reveals it sooner rather than later to get feedback early on and see what the vibe is from the community, after all some of us here will certainly be the first supporters/buyers and the ones to spread the word about it.
At times, the game creates the feeling of a really great aliens game on its own. Itd be nice to have the whole game in a casual atmosphere.
You confuse the fact that pro are often the most active. You want to be heard as much as they are then it will require some effort of your part.
And I really don't see why the hell peoples have flagged his post. Hououou he feel he's been left aside, don't take it personal you poor things.
The Multiplayer in AS is a direct copy of The Ship´s mechanics and gameplay.
"Natural Selection" the movie!