Briareos H on 18/4/2012 at 14:47
There's no way anyone is going to make something like Elite/Frontier without making it a MMO, so I've come to accept that we'll never get a proper singleplayer sequel.
Anyway, I'd love to see an update of TIE Fighter and System Shock. The thing with the former is that it doesn't really require anything new gameplay-wise, just slap a new engine on it, some super hi-def graphics and you're good to go. Regarding System Shock, I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, a modern engine remake with graphics that stay extremely close to the style and atmosphere of the original, adding mouselook and only minimally remade UI would make me happy. On the other hand, I'd also love to see a new System Shock game made using something like (
http://revert3d.blogspot.fr/) Revert3D. It would have to be blocky, include a revamped cyberspace similar to the original, a complex mouse interface with a lot of augmentations and software updates, a good mapping system, audiologs and a good story. If I wasn't such a lazy ass I would already have started working on it.
faetal on 18/4/2012 at 14:55
If this kickstarter thing really takes a hold, maybe we'll start to see some decent spiritual sequels to great games which aren't stymied by publisher pressure or attempts to broaden the appeal. I'd love to see a better extraplation of the System Shock series. Bioshock was great, but never quite measured up to the horror / sci-fi setting of SS2.
FFE combat was hilarious. In my fully shielded Panther Clipper, combat basically consisted of the following:
1) See enemy.
2) Select enemy.
3) Select auto-pilot to target.
4) Watch enemy die from high speed collision.
Jason Moyer on 18/4/2012 at 15:58
After Wasteland 2 comes out, I'd like Dragon Wars HD please.
june gloom on 18/4/2012 at 18:36
Having seen this thread literally 2 minutes after getting out of bed I was prepared to link to a Mojo Nixon song. But this seems to be actually a pretty good thread (for now) so I'll just say...
While I love Fallout, and like Fallout 2, both of those games no longer quite hold up graphically, if they ever did. I'd like to see them remade with an engine that adds a little bit of graphical wizbangery, sort of like Fallout Tactics with its glowing lights and whatnot. And speaking of Fallout Tactics, I think it's high time we saw a sequel to that, one that wasn't so damn repetitive. I really liked the Florida idea they had going for FOT2; I have no idea where FO4 is going to be set but knowing Bethesda it's probably going to look basically exactly like FO3, so I'm going to have to get my post-apocalypse jungle fix elsewhere.
faetal on 18/4/2012 at 19:12
It still fails me as to why the Silent Storm engine was never picked up and used for a Fallout / Jagged Alliance / X-Com reboot. Silent Storm was itself a bit of a flawed gem, but the engine was great for scenery destruction, detail and general all round goodness.
Sulphur on 18/4/2012 at 21:08
Quote Posted by faetal
If this kickstarter thing really takes a hold, maybe we'll start to see some decent spiritual sequels to great games which aren't stymied by publisher pressure or attempts to broaden the appeal. I'd love to see a better extraplation of the System Shock series. Bioshock was great, but never quite measured up to the horror / sci-fi setting of SS2.
Kickstarter isn't going to replace pubs that can bankroll a current-day AAA project to the tune of a good 10-30 million USD. At best, you can hope for it to fund episodic releases or serve as a proof of concept for audience interest.
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Going back to nostalgic goodness, I'd mostly echo what Thirith has to say about Ultima - yes, Duck, Renz, you knew I was going to say it. The truth is, there hasn't been
anything that measures up to how the old-school Ultimas melded character, personality, world-building and non-trivial narratives into a game with the same amount of skill and care. It's a massive undertaking, and it needs more talent in areas
other than the art team than most companies can muster.
The problem is RPGs have a bit of a dichotomy on their hands - they're either too open-ended for their own good, and hence the narrative suffers for it, or are too linear and leave little freedom for exploration. It's immensely hard to balance both approaches in one game.
TW2 may have approached the narrative side of things, from what I've seen so far, but it's still rigorously linear. The joy of traipsing out and following a trail from a small hamlet that eventually snakes through a murky bog and then out into a massive city with a castle surrounded by a moat in the distance as the sun sets on the horizon is... notably absent. And so you skirt around the castle, ignore the side-show carnival and the kids running around and playing games, and move off and up, north-west, and before you know it, you're in a forest, and you're lost and evading wild creatures, and just as it begins to snow, the canopy breaks open and you're suddenly in the middle of a network of raised platforms and tree houses, populated by strange midget creatures that try their best to avoid your presence. And so on; the stories chain organically as you explore.
And of course, Skyrim provides the scratch to that itch, that's what the lot of you are going to say. The problem is the TES games provide the exploration, but not the depth; the stories are loosely written and mediocre in their characterisation, barely even grounded in the warp and weave of the world they're written in. Contrast that with an Ultima where the even the side quests are quirky affairs that are shaped and influenced by the history of the land, its people, and your companions, and it's blatantly obvious that Beth's writers are out of their depth. They keep smacking in quests that seem to have been designed-by-committee or are based on an idea that someone felt would be pretty cool, but lack character and flavour because the execution is sorely lacking.
It's slightly depressing to play a TES game or most other RPGs that exist as massive time-sink grind-a-thons, because they're blatantly hollow even when you're not comparing them to an Ultima VII: The Black Gate or a Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Execution and writing are two things that sorely need talent, and they're the two things that devs of this current day and age almost completely lack talent in.
Phatose on 19/4/2012 at 02:55
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday.
Way before it's time. Used the gold box SSI engine. Had standard turn based RPG combat, albiet with rocket launchers and lasers instead of swords. Had star ship combat, attacking other ships with your own, each crew member operating a weapon, engineering or piloting. And you could take out other ship's engines, board them, take on the crew in infantry-combat, then claim the ship and sell it. All back in 1990.
Too bad it's tied to the hopelessly campy TV show. It was actually a interesting world. Terraformed desert Mars and acid-swamp Venus, with genetically modified people as populations. Rich mercurian solar energy barons who declared themselves Sun Kings and spoke French cause dammit, they're rich. Earth was a shithole, the corporations owned much of everything.
PigLick on 19/4/2012 at 02:58
Hey Al_B, thanks for that Oolite link, I cant believe I didnt know about this before. It definitely scratches my space/trading sim itch.
