System Shock/Looking Glass Thread

System Shock 2 is just Thief but in the future and without the good Thief levels, System Shock 1 is better imo

System Shock has great aesthetics and music, the story is pretty fine too. But overall it has aged like milk and the controls are abhorrent even on the enhanced edition. SS2 is a much better game overall and don't let some hipster fuck tell you otherwise. The best games developed by Looking Glass were the Thief series anyway and if I have to be honest the spiritual succesor from 2007 that I shall not name is a much better game overall.

wut

I meant that it plays and feels just like it.

Stop this meme

Death to spies? Haven't been able to get it to run, but from what I've seen it doesn't look like it holds a candle to Thief

Oh. I thought he was still talking about Thief when he said that. The only thing good about Bioshock is the setting, atmosphere and characters.

Same can be said about SS1

It seems like it's way more hardcore with how hard it tries to immerse you.

Its a very claustrophobic title

Play the enhanced version, it's the same fucking game with better controls.

As someone who semi-regularly plays both original and enhanced, play the enhanced edition first and then try the original version if you want to play the game as intended.
Here's a pastebin from a guy who speedruns and very likely knows the most about the game if you wanna know more: pastebin.com/gzagzxUD

I played with the fanmade patches. It was a pain in the ass to get it set up properly and I ran into a lot of issues, but it is possible to get it done. As far as I've read, the enhanced edition adds the same features as the fanmade patches.

Forgot to add: enjoy the game, user. I played it recently and I always thought I'd never find again another game that would make it high in my favorites list, but SS1 did it easily.

I am playing through Thief: Gold right now. There's stuff I don't like about it but the atmosphere is not overrated in the slightest.

Does anyone else not care for HD type mods? I can suspend disbelief and lose myself in fuzzy 90's graphics. Boosting a bunch of texture resolutions makes nothing look cohesive and it was unplayable to me. I've played games like STALKER that benefit from better lighting and textures, but in those cases the level geometry wasn't so completely working against the new assets.

The remake's style is like a more boring Dead Space 2. Really uninspired.

Quick question: Buying thief, yes or no?
I mean, like not buying STALKER due to money going to jews

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I seriously doubt the devs get ANY shekels from you, user.
You should just send some cookies to the devs houses.

Yeah, I bought it on GOG. But I also send copies of my GOG games to my friends. I guess I don't think about it that much.

I get the feeling you haven't played Thief or SS.

That just sounds uncanny. I never understood why people made high-res textures for low poly games. It's always a style clash. Also a lot of HD textures are just plain bad. One of the reasons I can't play the dark mod is because all the textures give me a headache. As if they just made them as high res as they possible could but didn't put the effort in to see how well they fit with the world around them.

Only if you try to trackdown a hard copy for collecting

There was some minor changes but it's not noticeable enough to be notable. However they fixed the bug where Shodan kills you lightning fast since originally it was tied to CPU speed.

Just download it, the studio is dead anyway. If you want to send the developers some money, send it to Otherside Studios.

Check out the twitter of the chick who does the voice of shodan. She is a commie fascist just like shodan.

because modders are the definition of not asking if they should but asking if they could. They're infantile retards with no sense of taste.

>>>/n/
Go here. You'll feel right at home spouting the names of political ideologies like they mean nothing.

She just seems to retweet typical "Trump is evil" libshit rather than full blown commie.

So far I actually haven't met anybody who holds a hate boner for Trump that isn't already leaning heavily into being a Leftist. I've met people who dislike him or some policies of his really pissed them off but not enough to scream DRUMPF into the night.

Yeah, but you still admit theres a difference between libs that dislike him and libs ranting about him. The most I see the shodan voice actor do is retweet random left-wing stuff. She even retweeted a cuckservative saying they need to rebuild the GOP, which is something a far left feminist/commie wouldn't do because republican is basically a swear word to them.

Easy rabbi

Finally finished the Death's Cold Embrace FM.

Any news on the upcoming System Shock 3?

Tried doing a stealthy/pacifist run on Deus Ex, though?

There's not much to say, the game doesn't even have a release date yet and they are thinking of porting it to consoles along with PC so expect downgrades.

I never got around to playing Deus Ex. I haven't really been avoiding it, I just keep forgetting about it. I guess I'll download it right now.

Pacifist run in Deus Ex is the closet you'll get to Thief. It's not quite as smooth. The levels are still fucking massive though, although they vary in linearity.

SS1 is a non-linear FPS. The actual FPS part isn't that great, lots of hitscan bullshit and very simplistic enemies. However it has amazing level design, a good feeling of exploration, great atmosphere, and ridiculous amounts of pioneering features (jetpack, skates, leaning, mantling on to ledges, toggleable shields, weapons with different ammo types for different enemies, tons of different grenade and mine types, bear in mind this is a game before DOOM 2).

SS2 is a somewhat non-linear FPS/RPG/Survival Horror hybrid. You have XP in the form of cyber modules that improve stats and determine what you can use. The actual FPS part is a lot better and there's some semi-thief sneaking elements, most enemies are non-hitscan and you can do stuff like stunlock them in melee if you can get the drop on them. There's also a magic system in the form of psi, which can do thing from tickling things with your mind to becoming an invisible vampire walking maelstrom of fire.

Both are good games. SS1 suffered for a long time without mouselook and WASD, it's only relatively recently that a mod was conjured to give it normal FPS controls. That's probably why SS2 is talked about and recommended so much more, for around 20 years SS1 had controls that most found unplayable.

The depth and inventory system in SS1 are top tier.
A bit more streamlining and polishing and it would be fucking perfect.

Also, more games need to fucking put crouch on their games, there's no fucking excuse in not putting crouch or low crouch on a game besides laziness

Someone posted a guide earlier in this thread which mentioned how SS1 is kind of balanced around keyboard aiming. Since if you have a mouse you can just flick your wrist and kill an enemy easily, where as with keyboard aiming you have to turn. Essentially making being ambushed a lot more threatening.

So is Doom and I'd still rather play it with a mouse even without mouselook, just like how I play Blood.
Best way to avoid being ambushed is to lean anyway.

Doom and Blood come off as way more action heavy than SS1.
Idk what that's suppose to mean. If you have a mouse and can flick your wrist and kill a dude off screen then ambushes don't really matter.

Sure but those actually were balanced around keyboard aiming
System Shock actually has mouse aiming
It means leaning to the sides to check corners nigger

I miss read lean as learn for some reason. As far as it being built in, from what I hear SS1 is already crazy configurable. You can disable entire elements of the game. I think I'll stick with keyboard aiming, just because I can see how it'd fit the game better. Similar to how PS1 survival horror games had tank controls making it difficult to out manoeuvre the enemies.

There's a System Shock 3 coming? But I thought what they were developing was a reboot of the first game.

Aren't the leads for SS3 already working on Underworld: Ascendant? Makes me wonder if that game will get rushed out the door for this, or if their work schedules overlap all awkwardly. Either way I smell some fuckery going on. I even decided to do a quick google search to double check my facts. Doesn't surprise me at all EA is involved.

It's both
System Shock reboot is being done inhouse by Nightdive Studios, the guys who got the publishing license and rereleased the updated original games.
System Shock 3 is being done by Otherside Entertainment, the team with the Looking Glass Veterans like Paul Neurath and Warren Spector Doug Church will forever be stuck with the fat Steamkike and making no games it seems, they're releasing a spiritual sequel to Underworld, looks more in line with Arx Fatalis if anything, if they actually pull that off SS3 might turn out half decent.

Otherside got the development rights a while after Nightdive got the publishing ones so they pretty much agreed to team up while operating independently from each other with some support inbetween.

Well, Neurath before Warren even joined the team admitted the franchise doesn't have mass appeal, if they actual deliver the basis of Underworld could be used to build SS3.
Art design wise it's certainly looking better than the fucking Reebot which looks generic as all hell now.
What?

I found an article saying EA has the trademark archive.is/CYPYq

What sense does it make to release both a reboot and the third installment of a series?

Oh no. The guy's both a a hack and pozzed.

That doesn't sound very smart.

Holy shit nigger are you for real?
What do you think Dead Space was?
EA sold the license to an insurance company

Money
Yep, Warren is pozzed but he's actually a good game designer from what I hear
Wouldn't know

What good games has he designed since Deus Ex? Has he even designed an FPS since?

None

star insurance owns the trademark, nightdive is just using it on license.

SS1 still had strafe and mouse aiming, just not mouse look. Original SS1 aiming was like the Wii/light gun games. Controls were WASD-similar, but bound really weirdly and not easily remappable. You could peak around corners and shoot easily (which was 99% of SS1's gameplay) with default controls.

I'm not brushed up at all on SS and just noticed it while browsing articles.

Deus Ex was a project that got so out of control that you can't credit a single person on it. It's also probably the only reason it was so good.

Play the EE because it is essentially the original modded with better controls and higher resolutions iirc. Do yourself a favor and download VirtualMidiSynth and find a sound-font you like because windows 7 midi is god awful. I like arachno for System Shock. Here is a sample.

comfy.moe/rqyked.webm

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I played SS1 with Gravis Ultrasound when it was released, good times

System Shock had mouse aiming, but not mouse turning. You would use the keyboard to turn, but you would point the mouse cursor on the screen and where you were pointing is where you got to shoot. So in a way, it was actually more precise because your perspective did not change why you were aiming. Imagine it like a lightgun game where you can also control the camera.

Try to at least get to The Sword mission.

Thieves Guild is probably the only Gold mission I see a lot of people collectively hate. There is a code to skip a mission if you just can't stand it.

Skip Thief 1 and go straight to 2 then play 1. Ignore what anyone else says here. I can tell from these 2 quotes right away you didn't get into Thief for the dark project.

What's so bad about the Thieve's guild map? Why do people hate it so much?

It's just backtracking. Haunted Cathedral's loot hunting was worse.

Because if you play on the hardest difficulty (the only way to play Thief) then you have to find a secret to beat the level. Haunted cathedral loot picking is easily 10x worse

The point wasn't to discuss Deus Ex's credits but Warren Spector's.

archive.fo/L0FfN

Why were they remaking SS1 instead of the superior SS2 anyway?

They never meant to make a game, this was the old Starcitizen trick all over again.

I use a Roland SC55 soundfont because most MIDIs were designed for the SC55 or Windows' synth, and what Windows uses is a terrible emulation of it.

That trick is old hat the new trick is to put the funds into making something else and selling that.

The CD inlay for Terra Nova had "coop patch coming soon!".
It never happened because the sales were too low.
Having read the history of it, years after, the higher-ups pushed for FMV cut scenes because the other games of the time had them, so they spent the budget and time on filming those, the development team themselves doing the bulk of the work, filming, editing etc, rather than improving the game itself.
Could have had coop play on release otherwise, as had been intended.

Alpha Protocol is decent and has the option of stealthily and non-lethality.
Similar story themes to deus ex.

I'd be on hiatus, on a tropical island being served by topless maidens if a group of idiots had given me 1.3 million for nothing.

This, System Shock 1 aged very poorly compared to other early first person games, even the EE is pretty abysmal. The game is just not fun.