Cognisant
cackling in the trenches
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- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
- Messages
- 11,155
So did you play the game "Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines"?
If not then you suck.
If you have then let's re-imagine it with hackers instead of vampires, anonymity instead of the masquerade, evil corporations and corrupt governments instead of ancient evils, and combat with a more realistic focus on maiming and incapacitating than killing.
That last one requires the most explanation, okay y'know how enemies suicidally rush at you in most games, this is not like that, and you know how having experience playing FPS games makes you death incarnate from the beginning of any other FPS you play, this game isn't like that at all.
If you kill someone in perfect secrecy, anyone, anywhere, you automatically lose one Anonymity point, and if you're seen killing someone you lose three (you only have five)(btw the points are represented as V for Vendetta masks) furthermore the world itself becomes more dangerous (guards in latter levels that only had nightsticks will now have tazer-guns, or actual guns, or actual guns and body armour, etc, regardless if your Anonymity is restored) and it only takes one kill at any point in the game to disqualify you for the good ending.
So killing is HEAVILY discouraged, got it?
But that doesn't make guns useless, if you have a gun you can point it at someone to force their compliance, but you can only point it at one person at a time, and you can use guns (especially with silencers) to take out lights, cables, fuse boxes, cameras, etc, the game revolves around this sort of electrical infrastructure. You can shoot people to cripple them, but that's really dangerous, some NPCs will die immediately from a single direct hit (the elderly, sickly or wounded), stronger NPCs can survive a direct hit on a limb but they'll bleed out if you don't give them a first aid kit, any torso or head shots are an instant kill unless the shot hits armour.
When shooting people (you can shoot dogs, no penalty, except for being an asshole) you ideally want to either graze them (inducing temporary panic and partially incapacitating them) or hit a non-fleshy area like fingers or toes, which gives the maximum incapacity effect while causing minimal damage. Now you may be thinking shooting feet and hands won't be any harder than waltzing around popping heads like you usually do, well you're not playing a solider or an undead predator, you're playing as a teenage nerd so like in the begging of Deus Ex your aim is going to suck, but unlike Deus Ex you can't upgrade it. Later in the game you may come across automatic weapons and shotguns, but as I've explained these are more tools of utility and terror for you than actual weapons.
So the short of it is guns are cool, but not very useful, without a laser sight you're not even going to consider trying to graze someone and even then near point blank would be the only reliable way to do it, assuming the person in question stands still while you line up a shot on their hand/foot which of course they won't.
The tools you'll be using will be smart phones, laptops, pads, concealable microphones/cameras, modems, routers, tazers (the safest if not entirely safe method of incapacitation, it only lasts for a short while too) RF modules, GPS modules, a directed microwave emitter (you'll need help building it but it's one of the more useful gadgets), lock picks, a compressed air canister (for some old locks it's really that easy), electric power tools (an alarm may go off if you open a fire door, but not if you cut a hole through it), climbing/rappelling equipment, small/simple bombs (a remote detonated pipe bomb in a garbage can to distract security guards, that sort of thing) and so forth.
Getting caught by guards/police isn't game over, you lose a single Anonymity point, your equipment (unless you stashed it somewhere beforehand, like a train station locker or a concealed location where nobody else would look) and then you're back out on the street.
If not then you suck.
If you have then let's re-imagine it with hackers instead of vampires, anonymity instead of the masquerade, evil corporations and corrupt governments instead of ancient evils, and combat with a more realistic focus on maiming and incapacitating than killing.
That last one requires the most explanation, okay y'know how enemies suicidally rush at you in most games, this is not like that, and you know how having experience playing FPS games makes you death incarnate from the beginning of any other FPS you play, this game isn't like that at all.
If you kill someone in perfect secrecy, anyone, anywhere, you automatically lose one Anonymity point, and if you're seen killing someone you lose three (you only have five)(btw the points are represented as V for Vendetta masks) furthermore the world itself becomes more dangerous (guards in latter levels that only had nightsticks will now have tazer-guns, or actual guns, or actual guns and body armour, etc, regardless if your Anonymity is restored) and it only takes one kill at any point in the game to disqualify you for the good ending.
So killing is HEAVILY discouraged, got it?
But that doesn't make guns useless, if you have a gun you can point it at someone to force their compliance, but you can only point it at one person at a time, and you can use guns (especially with silencers) to take out lights, cables, fuse boxes, cameras, etc, the game revolves around this sort of electrical infrastructure. You can shoot people to cripple them, but that's really dangerous, some NPCs will die immediately from a single direct hit (the elderly, sickly or wounded), stronger NPCs can survive a direct hit on a limb but they'll bleed out if you don't give them a first aid kit, any torso or head shots are an instant kill unless the shot hits armour.
When shooting people (you can shoot dogs, no penalty, except for being an asshole) you ideally want to either graze them (inducing temporary panic and partially incapacitating them) or hit a non-fleshy area like fingers or toes, which gives the maximum incapacity effect while causing minimal damage. Now you may be thinking shooting feet and hands won't be any harder than waltzing around popping heads like you usually do, well you're not playing a solider or an undead predator, you're playing as a teenage nerd so like in the begging of Deus Ex your aim is going to suck, but unlike Deus Ex you can't upgrade it. Later in the game you may come across automatic weapons and shotguns, but as I've explained these are more tools of utility and terror for you than actual weapons.
So the short of it is guns are cool, but not very useful, without a laser sight you're not even going to consider trying to graze someone and even then near point blank would be the only reliable way to do it, assuming the person in question stands still while you line up a shot on their hand/foot which of course they won't.
The tools you'll be using will be smart phones, laptops, pads, concealable microphones/cameras, modems, routers, tazers (the safest if not entirely safe method of incapacitation, it only lasts for a short while too) RF modules, GPS modules, a directed microwave emitter (you'll need help building it but it's one of the more useful gadgets), lock picks, a compressed air canister (for some old locks it's really that easy), electric power tools (an alarm may go off if you open a fire door, but not if you cut a hole through it), climbing/rappelling equipment, small/simple bombs (a remote detonated pipe bomb in a garbage can to distract security guards, that sort of thing) and so forth.
Getting caught by guards/police isn't game over, you lose a single Anonymity point, your equipment (unless you stashed it somewhere beforehand, like a train station locker or a concealed location where nobody else would look) and then you're back out on the street.
