System Shock 3 Pre Alpha Gameplay Teaser 1080p

[679bc087066acRocketMan]

The thing about both SS games is that if you removed combat entirely, that is, no weapons and no enemies, the quest, story and interactivity driven elements could almost make the games stand on their own and still be acceptable, even though that was never the design intent.  There's enough density to those aspects of the games that make them good in their own right.

Having said that, and having only 2 data points to work with, there has been a slight shift towards direct FPS combat and if SS3 turns out anything like the trailer, we'll have a continuation of that linear trend into a pure FPS with a superficial coconut layer of System Shock themes on top.  My concern is that you could strip away the System Shock references and this game could very easily be Quake 4 or Prey, pretty much your FPS du jure.

Instead of showing us the newest gummy Ken from the Dr. Dreadful Food Lab and stupid turrets that look like they were designed by a first-year engineering student, it would have perhaps been nice to do what even the SS2 promo had the good sense to do in the first 5 seconds and show us some cool character interface props or interactive elements the player can use to do things in the game world:  Stuff like the implants and all the object settings in SS1 or the HUD tools (research, hacking, upgrades) in SS2. 

And instead of forcing horror and anxiety down our throats with background blockbuster music + gore + fancy physics effects, it would have been nice to evoke the SS mood that we are all so nostalgic about, which has always been an emergent property that came from acclimating to the environment, one piece at a time, through carefully exploring and unfolding the levels, story and threat level.  I know you can't do all that in a small promo video but taking the 180 degree opposite approach is hardly effective on this audience.

As K mentioned, some things are fine in their basic incarnation - a turret is a turret is a turret.  You can slap a fresh coat of paint on it but it's still just a 2-axis gun in an armoured shell.  Instead of spending so many resources "improving" stuff (see feature creep), these guys need to replay the old games again and remind themselves why they were good in the first place... even with 50 polygon AI meshes and 8 bit colour depth.  It was the feeling evoked through careful level design and prop placement, isolation achieved by a healthy respect for sparsity and simplicity (ie. sensory deprivation, not saturation), some really cool game mechanics, a sense of vulnerability achieved through decent weapon balancing, weapon entropy and lack of ammo, and a story that was told from different perspectives and put together from a state of ignorance by you, the player.  That is "the feeling" (TM).  You don't need UE5 (or whatever number we're on) to do that.  It's nice... but that's all, just nice.  Focus on what matters.

Also might be a good idea to talk to the ND team.  They just went through the tough love thing with us and came out the other end with a sore asshole.  We don't need to go through that again.

[679bc087068eeKolya]

Yep, more atmosphere and less half baked horror show would have been appropriate for a pre alpha teaser.

[679bc08706a51Gawain]

Yes. Especially since we got the horror show in the first teaser.

[679bc08706be4icemann]

Yeah I'm not liking the major gore factor. That was never part of the System Shock formula. Horror though for sure. Just not on the Doom / Quake level. And it's not like they didn't have the technology to do gore in SS1 or 2.

If they want to be really pushing the SS1 style, then it's the cyberpunk that they should be bringing back.

[679bc08706e00Hikari]

OK going off of 'go play system shock 2' I have a feeling that what we're seeing in the trailer is prequel/act 1' material to get a jumping in point and to set the stage for when the von braun survivors show up. The trailer does have a very 'you must evolve' feel. So maybe at some point the focus becomes Rebecca having to either go with her shodanification, or not. Could be a few of The Many's eggs get brought to this black site, so we get to see 'shodan experiment left to cook for almost have a century unguided' alongside 'shodan experiments that had twenty yearsof guidance if not more'.

I'm echoing what others here are saying and 'could they have gone less' WOOHOO ON RAILS FPS! YOU'RE PLAYING A SAW GAME! Less 'in your face blood and guts' and more of that 'this is a tense haunted house in space where you must use your wits' vibe.

[679bc087071a5ZylonBane]

Yeah I'm not liking the major gore factor. That was never part of the System Shock formula.

Messages written all over the walls in blood. Rooms filled with mutilated corpses. I'd say SS1 was pretty gory for a game with as primitive graphics as it had to work with.

[679bc0870746bOlfred]

And there are gibs!

I guess much about the look of the game and why it looks like other games comes down to the fact that it's using the Unreal Engine. And if you just use the base materials and shaders that come with the engine itself it all just looks the same. To give your game an original look you need to tweak them or come up with new ones till you have the look you want to achieve. And that isn't really something you do at a pre alpha stage, maybe just a little dicking around, but that's about it.

At this point I can't say much about the teaser, I usually don't form opinions that early. But I am also intrigued by the date.

[679bc08707791Chandlermaki]

I guess much about the look of the game and why it looks like other games comes down to the fact that it's using the Unreal Engine.

I thought they were using Unity?

[679bc087079dcvoodoo47]

yeah, it's quite safe to say that a game that has rotting bodies and dismembered parts lying around (SS1), and bloody limbs, hearts and stomachs scattered around medbays, and AIs throw ripped off heads at the player every once in a while (SS2) is more than a bit gory. so this has been part of both games, even if they got nothing on SoF's GHOUL system, if we are talking direct combat.

and yeah, if you have people asking "is this some sort of SS1 remake?" after seeing your SS3 trailer, you know it's time to get back to the drawing board.

on the plus side, Shodan finally looks tolerable.

[679bc08707b25RocketMan]

I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth but I think what Icemann was getting at is, despite the obvious presence of gore in both games, it was kind of muted because the games were designed so well in other areas that the player wasn't perturbed by the developer's desire to draw attention to the gore... it was just there to be noticed or not.  We were too busy researching the gore to notice whether the game was telling us "This is scary gore.  Be horrified!!!"

[679bc08707d57Twist]

They are using Unity, not Unreal. They presented about their work with Unity at GDC this year.

[679bc08707e7fRocketMan]

Tomato, Tomahto...  if they made SS3 in dark I'd be more than happy to play it, but that's me.

Geez, I hope they're actually reading this thread.

Or maybe they're like, "good, these guys don't like it... so the rest of our market should"

[679bc08708150icemann]

I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth but I think what Icemann was getting at is, despite the obvious presence of gore in both games, it was kind of muted because the games were designed so well in other areas that the player wasn't perturbed by the developer's desire to draw attention to the gore... it was just there to be noticed or not.  We were too busy researching the gore to notice whether the game was telling us "This is scary gore.  Be horrified!!!"

Yeah thats what I meant. In this one its more in your face, which is why I made the Doom and Quake comparison.

[679bc08708303Kolya]

Yeah, both games also featured gore. But I never heard anyone say: System Shock? Isn't that the game with blood dripping from its walls?

That's because the little gore there was, was means to an end: to get your imagination going, to create a horror atmosphere.

Putting it upfront like in this trailer is misunderstanding the games' strengths but also on a general level how horror works.

I hope that this is just traileritis, there were awful trailers for SS2 too. But it's not the 90s anymore. We have seen better trailers for horror games and movies since then. Compare to the Routine trailers, to get an idea what I expect an SS3 trailer to look like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOiY_QfOCwE&t=4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaZqV0o7EW4&t=173

[679bc08708596unn_atropos]

System Shock 3 Mutant Creature by Majid Smiley
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2xzDwx

[679bc08708682voodoo47]

lets hope all those dangling things are mutated guts.

[679bc08708807Kolya]

My feet look the same when I have to stand for too long...

This model certainly looks a lot better than the grey splurger in the trailer. It could work well, if you hide it in a dark area, hear it long before you see it and then only catch glimpses when it attacks.

[679bc08708931ZylonBane]

Great, now it's channeling Resident Evil. That sort of nonsensical nightmare-fuel design makes sense in certain contexts, but when the context is that humans are being genetically engineered, you have to ask the question, WTF is the intended purpose of that thing? To jump-scare visitors before dumping their own guts on the ground and dying?

[679bc08708a67icemann]

My first thought was Dead Space. Looks exactly like a Necromorph. Something out of the movie "The Thing" would be no.2.

Definitely would not correlate it with System Shock. However, if the Many somehow is still going after the end of SS2 (which would make zero sense, since they all died after the death of the Many brain in the BOTM), then sure anything goes with that.

Now with that said, SHODAN does like to do her little experiments. But I'd be expecting something more technological from her/it. Like a new version of the Cortex Reaver.

[679bc08708c73RocketMan]

She does indeed like her experiments.  But look how she's done them in the past.  On citadel, she introduced a virus (supposedly one engineered to kickstart some sort of metamorphosis) and "bred them in tumours", which makes sense since what we saw were featureless bipeds with tumourous growths on them but not too elaborate (the virus mutants).  Definitely toned down compared to this.  Plus you had plenty of logs talking about crew getting sick and changing.  Some turned into into inviso-mutants as well but even those were subtle and featureless.  What was more horrifying was the idea implied that people were slowly losing themselves, their bodies and identities, to some unknown form they could no longer relate to. 

Later on, the Many developed from the original virus and they were a highly evolved chain of beings.  At no point did they ever look like scary monsters really.  OK the rumbler a bit but even then it was still vaguely humanoid and the worm guns had to be set to HUMAN to affect them.  The idea was to blur the line between the familiar and unfamiliar.  The grunts just looked like sick humans and the reavers were floating squids... nothing too horrifying to look at.  Again it was the idea suggested by this gradual change and loss of something very personal and bound to us that frightened us.

@Kolya:  Yeah, can I play that game instead of this?

[679bc08708df4Kolya]

Basically cancer, Alzheimer and intestinal worms came together and threw a party. Things people are actually afraid of in real life.

@RocketMan No you can't, unfortunately. Routine turned into vaporware. 

[679bc08708f5bvrubayka]

Why does this monster look this way? What is this game trying to do, be scary?

[679bc0870904fThe Many]

 Why are Otherside focusing on the flesh rather the metal. It makes no sense to us.

[679bc0870925cDa9L]

I'm actually excited for this, even though the atmosphere isn't there in the trailer tbh. I don't get anywhere near the same feeling as i did when i played SS2 by seing this.

The thing about it being set before SS2, is interesting. Could it have something to do with Shodan altering a bit of space before she was defeated in SS2? Could it be be simply as a prequel of some sort ? I just don't hope it ends up with some sort of time travel.

In an early concept drawing of SS3, i remember that the Von Braun and Citadel station was together and that Citadel station was changed somehow. So assuming we are going back to the Citadel this could explain some of the style and monsters from SS1 maybe.

And just another note. The one thing i do not like about this trailer, is that it seems so ACTION oriented. Its not that its bad in it self, its actually rather good and get me hyped in a way, but its not just System Shock. This might be because i never got around to beat SS1, as that seems more in that direction. SS2 is more sneaky and spooky really

I want to see more Shodan though. I think she looks really good actually. I know she doesn't look like what she did in either SS1 or SS2, but i think she looks terrifying, and her animation seems pretty good. And that is more than what i had hoped for really