I have to admit that while I loved the first two System Shock games, the ending of SS2 left me in a place where I didn't particularly want a direct sequel. (I thought that the SS2 ending was pretty damn stupid.) A worthy spiritual successor? Absolutely, please. In fact, I may have liked Prey even better than the System Shock games. But unless they had a really interesting story to tell, I don't need the System Shock name to get that System Shock feeling.
Though I had an idea yesterday of what could be interesting/fun in a sequel: since Shodan is software, there could be various different versions of her, perhaps with subtly different personalities. They could've experimented with different training data, which in turn could have produced a utilitarian Shodan, a paranoid Shodan, a helpful Shodan, a childlike Shodan etc. (There'd probably be three distinct Shodans in a System Shock 3.) You might introduce these different Shodans into the system and they work against one another - and you could decide which one to back. And your actions on whatever station you're exploring would then act as further training data, subtly shifting all the Shodans' personalities.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Wasn't it the very same dev that used a Kickstarter for Underworld Ascendant, which seems to have been a mess with some interesting bits at best and a disaster at worst?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Wasn't it the very same dev that used a Kickstarter for Underworld Ascendant, which seems to have been a mess with some interesting bits at best and a disaster at worst?
Yes. I'm told patch 1.4.2 for UA makes it, um, better? Playable? But that's not exactly an endorsement.
I have to admit that while I loved the first two System Shock games, the ending of SS2 left me in a place where I didn't particularly want a direct sequel. (I thought that the SS2 ending was pretty damn stupid.) A worthy spiritual successor? Absolutely, please. In fact, I may have liked Prey even better than the System Shock games. But unless they had a really interesting story to tell, I don't need the System Shock name to get that System Shock feeling.
Though I had an idea yesterday of what could be interesting/fun in a sequel: since Shodan is software, there could be various different versions of her, perhaps with subtly different personalities. They could've experimented with different training data, which in turn could have produced a utilitarian Shodan, a paranoid Shodan, a helpful Shodan, a childlike Shodan etc. (There'd probably be three distinct Shodans in a System Shock 3.) You might introduce these different Shodans into the system and they work against one another - and you could decide which one to back. And your actions on whatever station you're exploring would then act as further training data, subtly shifting all the Shodans' personalities.
So --- and sorry for the double post, but this is an interesting bit of ephemera -- the MIT LARP society, the Assassin's Guild, actually produced a semi-unofficial, semi-official 1 day long LARP scenario that was a sequel to System Shock 2. Terri Brosius actually recorded new SHODAN dialogue for them (which is why I say semi-official, ish), on freaking micro-cassette tapes.
IIRC -- and it's been a while since I played, this was in 2012? I think? The plot was that SHODAN had taken over Rebecca's body at the end of SS2 and managed to get the escape pod back to Earth. s Rebecca is put into an insane asylum because she experiences weird schizm'ing of her personality, so... exactly the premise you proposed there. I don't remember how -- more on this part later -- but somehow, SHODAN's crazy cyborgs and some remnants of the Many ended up in this same Tri-Optimum run medical facility, and the place got locked down. Our team was called in to deal with the situation.
It took us a while to find out Rebecca's situation. I do remember at one point going into a room with like... four? I think? People? One was Rebecca, but the other two were under these sort of gauzy black and green curtains; it was explained that those of us with cybernetic implants for hacking could actually "see" those as "ghosts" in our UI overlay. So Rebecca would talk to us, but then all three of the others would say different things. I think there was Original Shodan (helpful, wanted to know what was up with her space station) who was also kinda slightly merged with Rebecca, Egomaniac Logical Scientist Shodan (the usual one in control, wanted to go back to experimenting on creating new life forms), and KILL ALL HUMANS (obv.)
Unfortunately, I didn't get much more of the plot, because I was literally the only person who had played the original games, and therefore literally the only person bothering to listen to the audio logs, which were on micro-cassette and therefore pretty hard to hear when you're with 10 other people with NERF guns all yelling and fighting and you're like G U Y S. Took me ten minutes to make it clear that the goddamn passcode to get past this one goddamn door was on the stupid fucking microcassette and Y'ALL NEED TO SHUT UP SO I CAN *HEAR IT*. And then one of our party members decided the whole situation wasn't salvageable anyway so just as I had finally gotten some people to stop just Leeroy Jenkinsing every enemy and maybe consider trying to solve a puzzle, that guy set off the on-site nuke
It was really fun overall! I just wish I'd gotten more of the Plot and hadn't had an entire team of gung-ho murderhobo types. I *think* but am not sure that the reason the cyborgs & Many were at the facility is that Tri-Optimum managed to find and salvage the Von Braun, and being Tri-Optimum took stuff from it for research, and they'd *already* been keeping crap from Citadel in the same facility.
*edit* For the record, I did not go to MIT, I just had a lot of friends who did, so when I lived in Boston for grad school I would hang out with the LARP club sometimes, because they did cool shit like this.
*edit2* HEY! I actually found a bit about the game on the internet!
A proper, decently-sized demo for the System Shock remake just released on Steam. Took me just a bit under 2 hours to putz around in it before reaching the end.
The game feels good! It definitely feels like a glossed-up remake of an older title, but with that in mind, I thought it was really engaging, and got me pretty excited for the game's release. I definitely recommend giving it a whirl.
Edit: Whoops, thought this was a general System Shock thread and not specifically an SS3 thread. My bad! Still, go download this thing!
A proper, decently-sized demo for the System Shock remake just released on Steam. Took me just a bit under 2 hours to putz around in it before reaching the end.
The game feels good! It definitely feels like a glossed-up remake of an older title, but with that in mind, I thought it was really engaging, and got me pretty excited for the game's release. I definitely recommend giving it a whirl.
Edit: Whoops, thought this was a general System Shock thread and not specifically an SS3 thread. My bad! Still, go download this thing!
Bah, it still counts. I'm the Thread Czar, I say it's fine, and I'll even change the title!
oh also on "This franchise is cursed" news, Atari bought Night Dive itself for 10 mil, which I honestly think was a huge fucking mistake on Stephen Kick's part.
So did Atari buy it to kill Nightdive or to use it?
Infogrames back in the day(2000-ish) was just as infamous as EA et al. for acquiring and mishandling/murdering game dev studios, but they weren't as good at failing upwards with it than those other publishers. The last two decades have mainly involved them dumping most of their properties to stay solvent while going into and returning from bankruptcy and then pumping out cheap Atari Plug & Play boxes and crypto-currency casinos(which is a whole story in itself), and now lately they're attempting to stick their noses back into the video game industry in a multi-million dollar spendingspree to buy up as many C-tier IPs they can get a hold of.
The new CEO's stated goal is to re-release the acquired IPs in classic collections as well as creating new games using those IPs, and Nightdive already has a history of working with Atari, so we could see them making new entries/remakes in whatever "Atari" hoovers up, but my money's on they're instead simply going to be reduced to a sweat shop for Atari re-releases.
Haven't been able to play this much due to RL obligations, but so far, my only real complaint is that enemies don't seem to really react to hits at all. Even when they die, there's no reaction other than to go limp. Then when I started up another session and I spawned in the healing suites, the previous enemies I already killed were upright for a split second, only to go limp again and fall to the ground. It adds to the creepiness of the game, but not in a way I think they intended.
Posts
Or at least give us a remaster of 1/2/3! Ugh.
f
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I swear this franchise is cursed.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Though I had an idea yesterday of what could be interesting/fun in a sequel: since Shodan is software, there could be various different versions of her, perhaps with subtly different personalities. They could've experimented with different training data, which in turn could have produced a utilitarian Shodan, a paranoid Shodan, a helpful Shodan, a childlike Shodan etc. (There'd probably be three distinct Shodans in a System Shock 3.) You might introduce these different Shodans into the system and they work against one another - and you could decide which one to back. And your actions on whatever station you're exploring would then act as further training data, subtly shifting all the Shodans' personalities.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
...maybe?
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
The game has a new publisher!
That publisher is Tencent.
Take that as you will. Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/tencent-appears-to-be-the-new-owner-of-system-shock-3-and-4-websites/
C U R S E D
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
So --- and sorry for the double post, but this is an interesting bit of ephemera -- the MIT LARP society, the Assassin's Guild, actually produced a semi-unofficial, semi-official 1 day long LARP scenario that was a sequel to System Shock 2. Terri Brosius actually recorded new SHODAN dialogue for them (which is why I say semi-official, ish), on freaking micro-cassette tapes.
IIRC -- and it's been a while since I played, this was in 2012? I think? The plot was that SHODAN had taken over Rebecca's body at the end of SS2 and managed to get the escape pod back to Earth. s Rebecca is put into an insane asylum because she experiences weird schizm'ing of her personality, so... exactly the premise you proposed there. I don't remember how -- more on this part later -- but somehow, SHODAN's crazy cyborgs and some remnants of the Many ended up in this same Tri-Optimum run medical facility, and the place got locked down. Our team was called in to deal with the situation.
It took us a while to find out Rebecca's situation. I do remember at one point going into a room with like... four? I think? People? One was Rebecca, but the other two were under these sort of gauzy black and green curtains; it was explained that those of us with cybernetic implants for hacking could actually "see" those as "ghosts" in our UI overlay. So Rebecca would talk to us, but then all three of the others would say different things. I think there was Original Shodan (helpful, wanted to know what was up with her space station) who was also kinda slightly merged with Rebecca, Egomaniac Logical Scientist Shodan (the usual one in control, wanted to go back to experimenting on creating new life forms), and KILL ALL HUMANS (obv.)
Unfortunately, I didn't get much more of the plot, because I was literally the only person who had played the original games, and therefore literally the only person bothering to listen to the audio logs, which were on micro-cassette and therefore pretty hard to hear when you're with 10 other people with NERF guns all yelling and fighting and you're like G U Y S. Took me ten minutes to make it clear that the goddamn passcode to get past this one goddamn door was on the stupid fucking microcassette and Y'ALL NEED TO SHUT UP SO I CAN *HEAR IT*. And then one of our party members decided the whole situation wasn't salvageable anyway so just as I had finally gotten some people to stop just Leeroy Jenkinsing every enemy and maybe consider trying to solve a puzzle, that guy set off the on-site nuke
It was really fun overall! I just wish I'd gotten more of the Plot and hadn't had an entire team of gung-ho murderhobo types. I *think* but am not sure that the reason the cyborgs & Many were at the facility is that Tri-Optimum managed to find and salvage the Von Braun, and being Tri-Optimum took stuff from it for research, and they'd *already* been keeping crap from Citadel in the same facility.
*edit* For the record, I did not go to MIT, I just had a lot of friends who did, so when I lived in Boston for grad school I would hang out with the LARP club sometimes, because they did cool shit like this.
*edit2* HEY! I actually found a bit about the game on the internet!
https://assassin.mit.edu/web/Past_Games#Games_2010-2014 <= it's System Shock: Earth (2011)
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
A proper, decently-sized demo for the System Shock remake just released on Steam. Took me just a bit under 2 hours to putz around in it before reaching the end.
The game feels good! It definitely feels like a glossed-up remake of an older title, but with that in mind, I thought it was really engaging, and got me pretty excited for the game's release. I definitely recommend giving it a whirl.
Edit: Whoops, thought this was a general System Shock thread and not specifically an SS3 thread. My bad! Still, go download this thing!
Bah, it still counts. I'm the Thread Czar, I say it's fine, and I'll even change the title!
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Don't you fucking dare get my hopes up like this.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
https://www.systemshock.com/
I haven't had a chance to grab it yet, and apparently I somehow didn't back the Kickstarter (oh well). Reviews so far are very good!
*edit*
I dunno if you can sit in those chairs, but you CAN use the loo, apparently.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
iirc Zircon did some of the tracks?
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Infogrames back in the day(2000-ish) was just as infamous as EA et al. for acquiring and mishandling/murdering game dev studios, but they weren't as good at failing upwards with it than those other publishers. The last two decades have mainly involved them dumping most of their properties to stay solvent while going into and returning from bankruptcy and then pumping out cheap Atari Plug & Play boxes and crypto-currency casinos(which is a whole story in itself), and now lately they're attempting to stick their noses back into the video game industry in a multi-million dollar spending spree to buy up as many C-tier IPs they can get a hold of.
The new CEO's stated goal is to re-release the acquired IPs in classic collections as well as creating new games using those IPs, and Nightdive already has a history of working with Atari, so we could see them making new entries/remakes in whatever "Atari" hoovers up, but my money's on they're instead simply going to be reduced to a sweat shop for Atari re-releases.
Well that explains why. Zircon is fucking awesome.
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