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| DarkZero 877th Post
 
Red Carpet Regular Member++
    
    
    
|  "Re(1):Doom 3: why am i always right about id?"
, posted Sun 1 Aug 12:14
quote:
If you read the Doom3 manual, you will find that one of the big new features in Doom3 is a PDA from which you read emails, data/voice logs, etc.
The PDA element was announced almost a year ago. A lot of us know about without looking at the manual.
quote:
So basically, it's taken id 11 years to come up with System Shock.
Lots of games lately have included a PDA or PDA-like element. Does this mean that Rockman.EXE, Metroid Prime, and Shin Megami Tensei 2 all ripped off System Shock, too?
Actually, now that I think of it, all of these different games must be ripping off System Shock. It's just too original an idea. It's not like these "PDA" things are anything that we have in the real world, or that game designers might even be using themselves at work. I mean, what's next, games ripping off Earthbound's "Phone (TM)" two-way vocal communication device? Or Gran Turismo's so-futuristic-I-doubt-they-will-ever-really-exist four-wheeled "automobile" vehicles?
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| Fygee 1050th Post
Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(2):Doom 3: why am i always right about id?" , posted Sun 1 Aug 17:36
quote:
If you read the Doom3 manual, you will find that one of the big new features in Doom3 is a PDA from which you read emails, data/voice logs, etc.
So basically, it's taken id 11 years to come up with System Shock.
Oh wait, you've never heard my Looking Glass/id rants. So sorry.
sorry to burst your bubble but neuromancer came up with the cyberpunk theme and pda game in 1990, developed by interplay
id rips lg while lg rips interplay
you = teh lose sp00n
Well, it didn't have spoken logs and to my knowledge, it wasn't a first person horror/RPG shooter.
But yeah, its kind of funny how similar many things are in Doom 3 to System Shock 2. Would've been pretty cool if SHODAN made a little cameo appearance or something.
I suppose this will have to serve as the second System Shock sequel we'll likely never get. :\
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| Spoon 544th Post
New Red Carpet Member
| "Re(2):Doom 3: why am i always right about id?" , posted Sun 1 Aug 19:37
quote:
If you read the Doom3 manual, you will find that one of the big new features in Doom3 is a PDA from which you read emails, data/voice logs, etc.
So basically, it's taken id 11 years to come up with System Shock.
Oh wait, you've never heard my Looking Glass/id rants. So sorry.
sorry to burst your bubble but neuromancer came up with the cyberpunk theme and pda game in 1990, developed by interplay
id rips lg while lg rips interplay
you = teh lose sp00n
For one, isn't cyberpunk as a genre old as hell? I don't think that we should put story genre into it b/c then we'll get into extremely silly discussions. Like how you only need 3 books to redevelop anime if the world were destroyed: Shakespeare's Hamlet, Homer's Odyssey, and Lolita.
I remember neuromancer being an adventure game not of the exploring dark 3D environments haunted by enemies variety... rather, it was of the text parser adventure game type?
And wth is with spelling my name in faux-1337? And "teh"? Come on, even I don't write like that... not intentionally and while sober, anyway :)
Back to Doom 3.
For such a major work we'd expect something exciting and new. It's not that the PDA type thing can no longer be done by anybody, it's just that for it to be the big new gameplay element is disappointing. Yes, we may have heard about it a year ago, but don't you hope that when you hear about ONE new game feature, it's going to be just ONE of many? HL2 announces that it's going to have a weapon that will allow you to pick up entities and toss them around: do we expect that to be the one and only trick that HL2 will bring to the player? No. Doom was a big deal back then not just because of its quality as a shooter, but because it was the game that really put network play on the map. I hoped for something equally revolutionary from its modern day sequel, and not just in its use of new technical features in graphics technology (it's not like id is the one and only company to have access to DX9 spec; see Far Cry, HL2, Chronicles of Riddick, et al). Is that a bad thing in of itself? No. But haven't we seen that new things can be done? Think about the new things which System Shock did: it wasn't just the PDA-like device, but about the uniquely configurable interface, range of movement (walk, run, jump, crouch, prone, lean, fly, skate...) and interaction with the environment (pick up objects and throw them, destroy wall panels, etc.), etc. Undying had that rock that would signal you to the presence of supernatural weirdness; sure it was still a scripted event, but that subtly interactive touch made it stand out as something else. Thief made first-person sneaking actually enjoyable in addition to not being stupid, and it wasn't just the shadowing technology that did that. Far Cry's binocular/recon system was not merely clever, but a perfect match for the large outdoor environments which the game favoured. Things like that are what I wanted. A good, tense, atmospheric shooter with a PDA is not necessarily bad, but it certainly isn't new, either. I relate it to System Shock as System Shock was the first really good FPS to have a PDA system... and it did it back in 1994! As you say, PDAs sure as heck aren't new :)
I have an enormous rant about how id has no obligation to make a good game, they just need to make a good game engine. Don't let me get started on that.
Random note: Advanced physical simulation is a great special effect, no doubt. And sometimes, it can be used to make all kinds of funny things, like see-saws, funny block pushing puzzles, etc. But the thing which has always struck me is that outside of scripted actions/events, just what is the range of interactions which the player can manually initiate with the physically simulated environment? It tends to just be push/pull/shoot. Half-Life didn't have lift/carry/throw (which later Deus Ex and System Shock 2 tried to give you). Trespasser aimed to high with too little technology, and tried to give you a free hand to mess around with the world, but it was screwed up. I remember Blade of Darkness allowed you to throw rather nicely (you swing your arm and can decide the moment of release, and the thing would fly and arc and bounce nicely), but even so. It's not like you can try pulling floorboards out and creating an angled, free-standing structure in-game (doing it in the level editor doesn't count). Ok, you could do that in Ultima 9, but Ultima 9 was screwed up anyway (loaves of bread floating in water had sufficient buoyant force to hold up a man...) While that may sound like a ludicrous thing to try doing, doesn't it feel weird to try to so accurately physically simulate a world, and yet offer the player so few ways to play with it? I think it feels weird.
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| Fygee 1052th Post
Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(1):Mmmmhh..." , posted Sun 1 Aug 21:54
quote:
Why do you feel the need to complain about this here of all places? I don't understand.
Oh, I don't know... perhaps because Doom 3 is a videogame and this is a freaking videogame board????
Explanation.....too......logical...to....compute.....
On a similar note, EA, the biggest bastard of a video game company to ever exist, has shut down a fan-based mod based on System Shock 2 that was being made, completely for free, on the Doom 3 engine, because they're afraid it will devalue a profitable franchise. Interesting, since they make no money off of SS2 anymore, and they have no plans to make another System Shock, and probably never will in our lifetimes. In fact, they're dead set in making sure a new one isn't made, as they've turned down all offers to unify the franchise properties to create a sequel.
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