KickStarter Scorn - another Giger influenced horror game released after long developement

[randir14]

Early reports say the performance is awful. Skill Up said he was getting drops to the 20's with a 2080 ti and DLSS turned on.

 

[United Nations]

Kinda looks like shit to me, the weapons I've seen so far don't look too exciting either.

Somebody else compared it to Agony, now THAT I thought would be badass, but it turned out to be total shit too.

 

[toughasnails]

More informative that the gameplay video devs themselves posted, what with all the cuts...

 

[Rean]

Should have made it a point and click like Tormentum.

 

[Lovecraft's Ghost]

Slavoj Žižek is not, on the whole, a thinker to take seriously, but when he expressed his disappointment that in narrative entertainment and media when the revolution arrives in films it usually ends that is a feeling I can understand. The most intriguing part is not only not shewn but discarded as the writers could never come up with anything new. My frustration with entertainment however extends to films that deal with the beyond, or places in time and place distant beyond measure. It is the expectation that these are skipped over, that the protagonist of a story is locked away in another dimension or place this is the end of it. The alien derelict spaceship of Alien is only a small part of the film, after which the familiar returns. Even in the game Giger himself worked on, Dark Seed, there always is the mundane world and that which is so fantastically displayed is never as strange as it might visually seem. Scorn one of two games I'm looking forward to for this reason, it abandons entirely the conventional and from beginning to end, that we know of, places the audience within a rich vision of an alien world, possibly a far future Earth after bio-engineering and robotics having ran rampant. The particularities hardly matter.

Everyone, both the detractors and supporters of this project, knows it to be an exercise in ambience and aesthetics. The other game I'm looking forward is not, but this is enough for now. A high-fidelity first-person game that feels fresh, that does not feature the same old corridors and places we've seen explored a million times already. This being the case it is strange that patrons of the Codex would still find it an attractive proposition to complain about the singular focus of it. There is an abundance of dreadful clones of older shooters on the market, so many in fact that most people find it hard to keep up with them. Whatever people who resent those products enough to seek refuge in this thread, but demand great changes or arcade gameplay from this title want I'm sure it wouldn't be in the service of what makes the title stick out to begin with.

A Myst like game with those visuals would totally work.

The mechanics of Myst could never carry this game, by protracted interactions and the necessary tension that would have to be removed to insert the puzzles it would lose the core of what makes it worth playing.

 

[toughasnails]

There was a p good critique of "Prometheus" on YT years ago that I wasn't able to find since, where the author pointed out how the Alien franchise discarded the sheer "alienness" of the first movie. The depiction of the raw fact of derelict ship and the alien creature without any attempt to explain it, ground it, integrate it... It was something alien in the true sense of the word. If Alien never became a franchise, a fictional universe with its lore, and it stayed at one movie, it would've left us with the sense of universe way bigger and stranger, mystery that cannot be domesticated by human reason. But alas we can't have that and we eventually ended up with the "engineers' and xenomorphs being (p literally) humanized.

 

[Fedora Master]

The mechanics of Myst could never carry this game

Neither can shooting things. This game will be a chore before the end.

 

[toughasnails]

A Myst like game with those visuals would totally work.

The mechanics of Myst could never carry this game, by protracted interactions and the necessary tension that would have to be removed to insert the puzzles it would lose the core of what makes it worth playing.

Depends on how the puzzles are integrated, whether what you are doing feels like organic part of the world, whether it feels that you are observing the world and working within it rather than completing abstract logical tasks in order to be able to walk a bit more until you stumble on another one. That in a game where there is combat as well as other hazards and, it seems, entities which you can only avoid or run from, so the tension is always there. I could see there also being some Frictional style situations where you have to think fast, solving a "puzzle' while being tracked or chased by something or otherwise threatened...

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I played the prologue. It was interesting. The world is completely alien and I don’t think it’s a future Earth at all. It has puzzles, “moral” decisions (altho it’s not clear what each option does until you do it), shooting, environmental hazards… and a lot of surreal scenery. The area appears to be an industrial facility of unclear function, and it definitely isn’t OSHA compliant. There are bodies everywhere and no explanation how they died. There is biomechanical machinery everywhere. There are bizarre pits of fleshy material that is apparently harvested by oil derricks to power various machines. There are occasional first person cutscenes, but there’s absolutely no dialogue. You’re left to your own devices to puzzle out what happened here.

I don’t think it’s a future Earth, and quite frankly I find that explanation a lazy humanocentric copout. Why can’t it just be a weird alternate universe with different laws?

 

[Venser]

October 14

 

[Feyd Rautha]

 

[Alienman]

Kinda feel like him waking up in the morning too.

 

[Lovecraft's Ghost]

I don’t think it’s a future Earth, and quite frankly I find that explanation a lazy humanocentric copout. Why can’t it just be a weird alternate universe with different laws?

That's hardly any less anthropocentric, but the explanation of the state of things is not important and should probably not be explored if the game wants to keep the mystery alive after the credits roll. Once the curtain is pulled back, if they had an idea of what it is, this diminishes it. What is suffices. I brought it up not because I consider it the ultimate explanation but rather due to Scorn being a perfect vision of further 'progress' and not another place in an occult sense, viz. a materialist vision, this is something that could possibly be set on a future Earth. Contra for example a Buddhist hell, which I don't think I've ever seen depicted in a video game.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I don’t think it’s a future Earth, and quite frankly I find that explanation a lazy humanocentric copout. Why can’t it just be a weird alternate universe with different laws?

That's hardly any less anthropocentric, but the explanation of the state of things is not important and should probably not be explored if the game wants to keep the mystery alive after the credits roll. Once the curtain is pulled back, if they had an idea of what it is, this diminishes it. What is suffices. I brought it up not because I consider it the ultimate explanation but rather due to Scorn being a perfect vision of further 'progress' and not another place in an occult sense, viz. a materialist vision, this is something that could possibly be set on a future Earth. Contra for example a Buddhist hell, which I don't think I've ever seen depicted in a video game.

I can get the philosophy behind “a (dark) vision of progress.” I’m just tired of all vaguely original speculative fiction that isn’t explicitly fantasy but isn’t explicitly our possible future being reduced to (literally) “yet another future Earth.” It’s not just uncreative af and adds zero value, Most of the time it doesn’t make sense either. Squishworld is devoid of common building materials like glass, plastic, and steel, the design of the tools is utterly unergonomic, there’s no OSHA compliance, and some construction decisions are just plain idiotic. In the prologue you can’t visit certain areas without walking through a death trap (see the parody of this sort of thing in Galaxy Quest to get an idea why it’s absurd).

 

[toughasnails]

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I installed it but it's too damn bright at this time of the day to make anything out on the screen. I thought October would be good for horror games but I can't fucking see anything. Turn of the sun!

 

[Morgoth]

Sounds like this should be a good purchase; at a hefty discount.

 

[Kruno]

I installed it but it's too damn bright at this time of the day to make anything out on the screen. I thought October would be good for horror games but I can't fucking see anything. Turn of the sun!

they are called "blinds"!

 

[toughasnails]

Lambach
The Wall

Looks like your countrymen did well enough. Take care that their families receive extra rations of potato and vodka this month and that the team lead is awarded with a brand new tracksuit.

 

[Lambach]

Take care that their families receive extra rations of potato and vodka this month

It's rakija and bacon, you uneducated peasant.

 

[Morgoth]

SERBIA: THE GAME

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I don’t think it’s a future Earth, and quite frankly I find that explanation a lazy humanocentric copout. Why can’t it just be a weird alternate universe with different laws?

That's hardly any less anthropocentric, but the explanation of the state of things is not important and should probably not be explored if the game wants to keep the mystery alive after the credits roll. Once the curtain is pulled back, if they had an idea of what it is, this diminishes it. What is suffices. I brought it up not because I consider it the ultimate explanation but rather due to Scorn being a perfect vision of further 'progress' and not another place in an occult sense, viz. a materialist vision, this is something that could possibly be set on a future Earth. Contra for example a Buddhist hell, which I don't think I've ever seen depicted in a video game.

I can get the philosophy behind “a (dark) vision of progress.” I’m just tired of all vaguely original speculative fiction that isn’t explicitly fantasy but isn’t explicitly our possible future being reduced to (literally) “yet another future Earth.” It’s not just uncreative af and adds zero value, Most of the time it doesn’t make sense either. Squishworld is devoid of common building materials like glass, plastic, and steel, the design of the tools is utterly unergonomic, there’s no OSHA compliance, and some construction decisions are just plain idiotic. In the prologue you can’t visit certain areas without walking through a death trap (see the parody of this sort of thing in Galaxy Quest to get an idea why it’s absurd).

I have the digital artbook. Peklar confirms the world isn't "alien," but "an extrapolation of our world, we just push it to the limits." The overarching themes of the game are "existence, entropy, and the relationship between human beings and technology." He never says it's a literal future Earth, but seems to be repeating what you said about a "perfect vision of further progress." It's difficult for me to put this into words that most would understand because the game is a philosophical critique, not a materialist vision. Ironically, I think "Buddhist hell" is probably the more accurate descriptor.

 

[ferratilis]

Take care that their families receive extra rations of potato and vodka this month

It's rakija and bacon, you uneducated peasant.

 

[randir14]

Boring ass walking simulator, I almost fell asleep playing it. Not worth $40, not even worth the 5 minutes I spent torrenting it.

 

[Curratum]

A 3.5 out of 5 from GameInformer is usually the mercy mark for a shockingly mediocre game that they just didn't want to be too mean to.