shodan pretend to be nice at the beginning of the game and manipulates you with cyber modules as rewards or whatever
I think she’s a more interesting antagonist than fontaine in bioshock!
I think my appreciation of system shock 2 is maybe just because of how lame bioshock is!
(I still kind of love bioshock for other reasons tho)
(lmao I’m the worst sorry)
Immersive sim thread!
I like System Shock 1/2, Prey, and Bioshock 2, all for different but related reasons.
System Shock 1 and 2 are disaster areas of systems that exist primarily for flavor. They are rooted in this particular 90s space cyberpunk aesthetic that didn’t feel played out or stupid at the time. And I agree with toups, big time spooky atmosphere.
Prey is basically that - a dozen interrelated systems all for atmosphere - but with a Metroid play structure. Explore to get ability and unlock new area. I like it quite a lot as a “figure out what you can do to surmount the problem in front of you” game because there are SO many options and you can sequence-break like whoa. Plus it’s stuffed to the brim with details and that’s what I love most. I kinda disagree with the idea that it’s “hemmed in” because I was doing shit alllll out of order lol
BioShock 2 is my ideal for the narrative aspect of these games, because the antagonists are interesting and have relatable motives. It’s not about some big bad boss, it’s about a societal sickness and the failed attempt to cure it through egocentric sociology. Lamb is a much more nuanced (and ultimately hypocritical) villain than Ryan and it gives the story some genuine weight compared to 1 and Infinite. Also it’s a very serviceable and well-constructed linear immersive sim. Nothing amazing or incredible mechanically, but sometimes it’s okay to just have strong encounter and ability design.
yeah the extent to which prey anticipates sequence breaking is great, that’s the one really good thing about it
The incidental writing in prey is also really good, the level/world design is really good. A lot of things are really good about it!
It’s really just too easy and the ending is kind of a wet fart. But do any of these games ever come close to landing the ending?
For a game with literally four different plot twists, I was surprisingly not that annoyed with it, considering my vehement hatred of plot twists
idk I think the bar for incidental writing has gone wayyyyy up in the past several years and prey didn’t really impress me by comparison to the rest of the genre which has always been above average in this regard
The plot twists are all pretty fun and good though.
It’s the one time where the but it was all a dream style ending actually fits with what the game is about.
compared to what?
I was very impressed with how much detail was put into each crew member, how they all had assigned roles and locations throughout the ship, how you could use the game’s security system to track them all, how you had to kind of hack with the security system to deal with specific side quest stuff, and how it was very well integrated with the voice logs/emails you come across.
There are like a dozen little side stories that all interconnect in small little ways and are reinforced by subtle pieces of environmental storytelling. Lots of techniques used in other games but imo they add up to much more than the sum of their parts in this one.
I’ll be honest: I can’t really think of a modern AAA immersive sim with incidental writing as good as Prey. I’m open to recommendations though?
Yeah, I think what kept me from hating them was they went overboard into parody territory in how many/big they were, which doesn’t feel as annoying as “the one big revelation”
well there are almost no other AAA immersive sims, it’s pretty much just bioshock since the former designation has existed, and prey is definitely better than bioshock
good immersive sim writing is almost definitionally like “sandra from accounting says fuck you, she left your ammo in her locker” and I feel like deus ex already pretty much did that to the fullest extent. I can’t really distinguish my memories of prey’s asides from those of the more recent deus exes, but I didn’t get much of the wit or verve off of it as from any of several other recent games I played mostly for the writing (numenera, astrologaster, yakuza 0, I’m picking names out of a hat here), it was just competently going through the motions
Yeah, I think we just connected to the writing differently. I found a lot more character from the emails and audio logs than a typical game, and I love a lot of the incidental details. The D&D character sheets scattered around the station, for example. Or the strange behavior of the Looking Glass inventor. There’s more of a sense of history in Prey to me than the typical RPG, even for disposable characters.
Comparing to Yakuza 0 is maybe unfair though bc the humor of the substories is incomparably good.
yeah prey just had an impressive amount of density to its incidental writing and it’s usually multidimensional, like you can come across emails with people complaining about dr igwe and as his character is developed he is revealed to just kind of be a dweeb and maybe a snitch and you’re like damn yeah I get why the security officer couldn’t stand him. stuff like that.
Someone here mentioned Bioshock 2 and that’s the only good bioshock game
Soma, Deus Ex: HR, Alien: Isolation, Subnautica, maaaybe Hitman?
The only real problem with SS2 is that it codified audio logs and this “immersive sim” nonsense genre
The best immersive sim is Way of the Samurai 4
in what way is Soma an immersive sim?
Can we stop saying immersive sim and just stick to 0451-likes
only if we introduce a category of “24601-likes,” games in which you can steal bread