Quote from: Kimarhi on Dec 11, 2013, 12:29:31 AM
I don't really see anything pretentious about your post.
And I like your ideas.
Dead Space 1 and 2 are my games, but I really felt that the original DS started to lose its horror atmosphere when you were able to start upgrading your weapons to make killing shit easier. When you had to struggle to survive early on, I was freaked out. I couldn't believe the game started you WITHOUT a weapon.
I still love the first two games, but they became more action horror instead of survival horror and I thought they were much less intense to play.
The "swarm" can be pretty intense if done right. I still remember freaking out with mass alien spawns in the first AvP. On DC where you could only take like two hits things got intense.
I'm not against gameplay changes, but like SM said if your facing an invulnerable alien that is only so because it is scripted as hell, then that is different and lame.
If you could kill the alien numerous ways early on in the game, but have the story continue where maybe the alien egg morphed some fools and you have to kill facehuggers/chestbursters and adult aliens later, that would be cool I think. I like your ideas of having to try and hunt for the alien as it goes through its lifecycle as well.
NIFTY.
I wouldn't necessarily script the hell out of the alien. Let it free-roam. Script certain parts that would be necessary to continue the story, but basically let it be an organic haunted house story. That way there's some replay value. I can imagine a scene where you're talking with the NPC's (non-cutscene), and the impromptu motion tracker you built while you were trying to find the alien starts to go off. That'd probably a logistical nightmare in continuing the story, but I imagine it could be done.
I also like the your idea of possibly having the alien die early on, only to have the eggmorph thing happen to some of those mysteriously missing crew members. I always thought the eggmorph was more terrifying than just having a queen lay eggs.
I could also imagine a scene with a bunch of facehuggers, sort of like the swarm, Suddenly they're everywhere.
I'd like to go half the game without a weapon. You have to use your wits, manually override systems, doors, restore atmosphere to compartments, purge others to slow the alien down or attempt to get it cornered. Then when a weapon is introduced, it's because you built it during a puzzle sequence or something. Don't just hand me a pulse rifle. And since we're not space marines here (that we know of yet), we're not carrying around 3 extra canisters of fuel for the flame thrower. Go and gas it up instead of just reloading.
There's alot you could do without the alien to keep things intense
-the ships computer overrides and kills the engines, you have to get those back on and figure out why it happened (conspiracy theories)
-You have to check the ship for other facehuggers (before the chestbursting happens), and say there's cat (Daughter of Jones) setting off your motion detection.
-One of your crew members starts to go a little mad (Seeing the facehugger sets him off, and he's already a stand-offish guy)
-Figure out who is sabotaging your attempts to restore functions to the ship (More conspiracies)
-You have to examine samples from the facehugger without getting acid everywhere (Teach us a couple of things about the xeno biology that we haven't heard before, and make them realistic)
-Cabins Decompress (Randomly or on purpose?)
-Some of that cargo the ships carrying isn't on the manifest (and from one of those crates came the facehugger, so do the other contain eggs? Do we risk it and open them to find out?)
-Maybe we could relive a sequence from the original film, I'm thinking of the air-ducts. Put us in Dallas's shoes there. Have to take orders from whoever is outside the vents telling us where to go as the second signal closes in on us.
I don't know, just rolling stuff off.
Also, I wouldn't mind an RE style game, but I'd prefer humans that move and act like humans, not trained officers. They don't have all the muscle and stamina in the world. As for over the shoulder? I still think that's much more cinematic than first person. I'd even settle for fix camera's, though I can see why people wouldn't want that. Alot of the Silent Hill games weren't necessarily over the shoulder, and they worked out pretty well (the motions where the camera followed you).