next »

[FK in the Coffee]

I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread for this, especially considering how much of a buzz the game's been making across the internet.

It seems like Frictional's keeping the story and gameplay pretty under wraps so far, but they've released two extremely promising live-action teasers.








Looks to be very reminiscent of the SCP Foundation so far, and it's making me think that this is going to end up being a very different kind of horror than Amnesia.

You can find out some more extremely cryptic information over on nextfrictionalgame.com, though I'd suggest heading over to the Unfiction forum thread if you can't be bothered to decode it yourself.

[s0]

looks cool but after making like 10 atmospheric horror games i hope they step out of their comfort zone a bit.

[Satori4]

why do so, if you good at this genre...

[FK in the Coffee]

why do so, if you good at this genre...

Because it's creatively rewarding to challenge yourself and try doing something that you're not as proficient at? nah probably not

[antoniodamala]

Those trailers are cool. Definitely hooked and waiting for those games.

About the hole comfort zone I agree that variations is important for wider improving , but repetition of theme/style hones the craft a lot.

[s0]

ya but i feel like amnesia was already almost "perfect" for what they tried to achieve with it so im kinda worried they might just end up with a whole lot of rehashes of that.

they have a pretty strong design philosophy if the gdc talk i saw i anything to go by, so maybe they could try applying that to something other than a horror game? i mean obv i'm just a random guy on the internet, i cant tell them what to do, but it's what i would do if i was in their position.

[Hangedman]

Kinda getting and SCP + Routine feel.

I think it'd be neat to see them try to take on something that is still horror-y but is more open-ended, or less reliant on puzzles.

An open-ended horror game where you had to explore a big facility, searching for details about how to overcome/escape everpresent threats, would be a pretty cool conceit.

[AshfordPride]

This is what I picture when someone says a SCP Foundation game...

[Satori4]

@C.A. Sinner -  agree, probably I would be sick of making one game after another in exact same genre , even though I love it.
But I see it like if Howard Lovecraft would have started writing romantic poems, because he had written too many creepy stories with tentacles.

[Dragonmaw]

Details

[MrBones]

Amnesia: In Space.

The ending is going to be some "shocker" where you were a machine the whole time or it's all in your mind or you built it or it's some metaphor for something in your life.

Every Frictional game is similar in plot and in gameplay/aesthetic.

I do agree that they might need to step out of their comfort zone for once and try something new.

[glocks]

It kinda seems like they might be going for an H.R. Giger & Dark Seed look, which I would be totally down for!

[MA-Simon]

SCP Foundation

What is this?
Googling brings lots of disturing images but no explenation. Only questions.

[Thomas Finch]

SCP Foundation

What is this?
Googling brings lots of disturing images but no explenation. Only questions.

Secure. Contain. Protect.

It's a website where fake 'true story' articles are posted about different paranormal things happen. These things are supposed to be contained inside cells where they can't escape. It's basically stories to read if you don't want to sleep that night.

[s0]

reviving this thread after 3 years bc i just finished this game and liked it rather a lot. here's some thoughtz:

i thought the game was actually at its best when it was least like amnesia and penumbra. hiding from monsters and solving easy switch puzzles kinda got tiresome by the end of it. it feels like the game is actually slightly held back by the horror tropes and would be better off without them. also for a narrative game there aren't exactly a lot of narrative actions or choices. you spend way too much time doing "chores" (solving puzzles). there are some parts (like that one shitty "platforming" section) that don't further the plot at all amd could have been shortened or cut.

i did kinda like the tiny bits of nonlinearity and the lack of explicit direction tho (despite it being mostly linear). made it more immersive for me.

i liked the relatively "realistic" feel of the underwater facility (realistic as in "i could imagine this place to potentially exist in the future"). reminded me of doom 3 somewhat. i found some aspects of the level design too obviously "gamey" but it's ok.

thematically it draws from a bunch of scifi authors, most prominently philip k dick. as a "what is reality and what does it mean to be human?" story it doesn't reach the heights of PKD and is rather tame compared to pretty much anything he wrote. but it handles these themes well and doesn't embarrass itself with pseudointellectual bs which is a lot more than you can say for a certain other first person game with an underwater setting. i think it helps that the characters weren't written to be embodiments of some "concept" or "theme" but are just normal people stuck in a very weird situation. it makes their existential quandaries more believeable.

SPOILERS AHEAD

the WAU was a good "antagonist", very different from your typical shodan/glados videogame rogue AI and maybe a little more like the ocean in solaris. i felt like they could have placed more emphasis on the WAU and less on the ark tho. imo an AI that manages to turn itself into a living organism and develop a strange kind of half-sentience is more interesting than humans surviving in a computer simulation in space. of course those are both sides of the same coin. ultimately both catherine&simon and the WAU are trying to preserve life, albeit in very different ways. this theme is present in the game but could have been explored more imo. oh also it's weird that it's never explained what hooking up to the WAU actually does to simon. catherine's cortex chip is covered in structure gel "barnacles" too. i was almost sure there was gonna be some plot twist about how they were actually controlled by the WAU but nope, nothing.

lol that sounds like i'm hating on the game, but i'm not. it's really really good and if you like narrative games and the "progressive" end of scifi, you should play it.

[gimymblert]

so what's your opinion on that opinion?

[s0]

ok lol i disagree with pretty much 80% this video. this is gonna be a rambly post.

i didnt feel distant from the game at all, i thought it was pretty easily relateable because like i said, the characters feel like "normal" people. oh btw he's also wrong that we don't learn anything about the crew members on pathos. i made sure to read every computer and tablet i found and listen to every audio recording. there's a good amount of stuff on most of them. it almost seems like he thinks the intercoms and corpses are the only source of backstory. the game does a thing where you often find someone's corpse or someone's ID card etc before learning anything else about them. i actually liked it that way because it made me curious to find out who these people were.

i agree with him on the ludonarrative dissonance stuff, tho i think he sees it as too much of a horror game which i don't. also i disagree that it does everything it sets out to do. like i said, i think the game is best when it's least like frictional's previous games and the "horror" tropes often feel tacked on. it feels like they couldn't decide whether they wanted the game to be horror or just a narrative scifi adventure.

the theme about commodified existence is a good point and one i hadn't thought of. i don't think the game is really about that OR identity tho, at least not explicitly. i agree that the game doesn't explore some of its themes in enough depth.

he's right that soma is about the mind/body dichotomy, but imo it's actually questioning this dichotomy by presenting 2 opposing "viewpoints" (catherine and the WAU).

RAMBLING AND SPOILERS AHEAD

it's weird that catherine, unlike simon, doesn't seem to care that much about the WAU (when he tells her he killed the WAU she's just like "oh well, whatever") because they really are polar opposites. catherine never felt comfortable in her human body and probably sees this purely "mental"/virtual existence as superior to her previous one. i also think her motivations for building the ark are more selfish than she lets on. she wants to rebuild humanity in her own image. also notice how she wants to initially cover up the "continuity" suicides so she can continue her projects. i really don't think she cares much about life (in the biological sense).

the WAU on the other hand started out as an AI (i.e. a "brain" without a body, similar to the state catherine is in now) but managed create a living organic body for itself and is now concerned with preserving organic life at any cost, even if it means eternal torture for the people it's "helping". it's pretty similar to the moral dilemma of euthanasia and the few "moral choices" you have also boil down to this. it's also a bit like what bioshock does with its "two sides" thing but executed much better.

BTW the opening sentence of the errant signal video "soma is perfect for people on its wavelength but i'm not one of those people" pretty much sums up how i feel about undertale haha.

[gimymblert]

great thanks!

[s0]

oops i totally forgot the WAU created the mockingbirds ("human" robots too), including simon, so maybe ill have to backtrack a little on previous interpretation

[ProgramGamer]

Mockingbirds?..