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Shadowrun Game to Rewrite the SR Universe
adamp writes "Shadowrun has officially been confirmed as a squad-based FPS for the PC and Xbox 360. From the look of the trailer released at Microsoft's Press event yesterday, it's not the game we know and love. Fasa Interactive has decided to rewrite the universe in an attempt to not make anyone angry. It's currently not working."
If you're just using the Shadowrun name to sell copies of the game, without the intent to stay reasonably compliant with the pre-existing material, you suck.
If you cannot stay reasonably compliant with the material, then make the game you want to make and call it something else.
You have the license so you can still use the terminology and such. Just don't call it Shadowrun.
Not sure I understand... why would you want to rewrite something that's already so unique and fun? "If it ain't broke don't fix it" must not have sunken into their brains as kids.
Or... is this what we can expect from big budget, HD blockbusters now. "We can't risk alienating the stupid people if we want to have the broadest audience possible for our game..." "We need a paradigm shift?" "I know how about making one of the Shadowrunners an anthropormorphic dog, say a Hip-Hop Surfer who's totally 'In Your Face' named Poochie!"
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Sera
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I was a big fan of the Genesis Shadowrun game and although I didn't enjoy the SNES one quite as much, it still gave a good feel for the game and the setting.
I would have loved a Oblivion-type game with lots of different NPCs and missions, with hireable shadowrunner buddies and stealing random paydata in the matrix. I would have loved a Deus Ex style FPS/Adventure game. I would have even liked a top-down RPG like Neverwinter Nights.
The new game looks like a version of counterstrike with magic. Even if it does have magic, we don't need another multiplayer FPS where two teams shoot at each other and buy better weapons afterwards. I'm not impressed.
This could have been great, but instead its just a cheap money-grab using an established brand that is easier to see through than most of Paris Hilton's wardrobe.
FFS...
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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This is more like... well, imagine if that movie Stargate had been called RIFTS. No change to the plot, just call it RIFTS because there's this gate to other worlds.
To be more clear about what's happening here for the non-gamers, let's pretend we were releasing a Star Trek game. Except there was no teleporting, no Vulcans, no warp, no spaceships, no Klingons, no hot green babes... but you could use a phaser.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
FASA's strength was always creating fun, compelling (if derivative) settings. And their weakness was always in creating rules systems to actually enact a game in those settings.
(Battletech and Shadowrun were littered with tables of numbers that never quite lined up into a sane equation, supposed rules that could never really be applied in practice, and huge gaping optimization holes. I couldn't begin to tell you how many different groups of people I met who were playing "Shadowrun", by which they meant playing "a game set in the Shadowrun universe, but we rewrote all of the rules from the ground up because FASA's were so awful". I suspect that Shadowrun has been the most-rewritten game in history.)
So I'd be perfectly happy with a game that kept the setting and feel of Shadowrun, but used completely new game mechanics. But substantially altering the universe means throwing away the one genuinely good thing the game had going for it.
The Genesis game dude. The Genesis game was the good one. The SNES game had Minesweeper instead of the Matrix.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Good catch, I re-checked the Mitch Gitelman article. He says "...allowing the world we loved to unfold over time." So everyone upset appears to be missing the point entirely. He leaves himself some wriggle room if they change some pieces, but that shouldn't be a huge problem (to most people).
Then there's "We figured that if people got addicted to the game, they would forgive our trespasses and stay with us while we developed the world step-by-step." Easy to read into, but it doesn't nearly say that they'e changing anything but the year.
Yeah, the Shadowrun world everyone knows is where magic has been back for a while. It's fleshed out with high-tech and a rich new tradition of magic, plus the fractured political landscape. What we're going to get is while things have only just happened. You won't play a mage who chooses spells from a book, you're going to be the one who wrote the book. Hell, six years into the timeline the Ghost Dance has barely happened, right ? The USA is still relatively intact and people are still changing once in a while (it's been a while since I read the timeline).
A very interesting time with some fantastic dramatic possibilities. For one thing, they can do games around major events in the timeline. We know how it turns out, but that's not going to keep me out of Red Orchestra and Forgotten Battles. An RTS set during the collapse of the United States ? And RPG about getting your ass out of a dragon's way ? A Syndicate remake set during the corprate wars ? I'm not a big Shadowrun fan (I have writing credits in a Cyberpunk supplement) but there are games here I'd buy.
It's not technically the Shadowrun universe you've played in before, but you'll get to be in the history books. Sounds great. Anyone not thrilled at the prospect of another FPS, consider the possibilites of Deus Ex with magic. Or, ok FEAR or Ghost Recon. Still, ok yeah it's an FPS and I rarely finish those in single player. Maybe they're hoping the FPS fans will buy it if it's good and the Shadowrun fans will buy tit for the setting.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951