• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

SOMA gameplay trailer.

E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
komplanen said:
Like I said earlier, I think the
dead body had wire(s) come out of him so I think the facility "claims" these bodies and the "soul" sort of lives on in the wires and sometimes manifests in machinery.
Click to expand...

Golaski meets his robo-double though
 
Blackage

Blackage

Member
Really wish they'd give the option of 3rd person for these games, I HATE 1st person stealth without a vision indicator. wall cling. Hated it in Alien Isolation, hate it here and I'm not even playing.

I think games like this would benefit greatly from VR since I can just turn my head and actually peek around corners properly, and know where the heck I am relative to the wall/corners/hiding spots.
 
E

EGM1966

Member
Blackage said:
Really wish they'd give the option of 3rd person for these games, I HATE 1st person stealth without a vision indicator. wall cling. Hated it in Alien Isolation, hate it here and I'm not even playing.

I think games like this would benefit greatly from VR since I can just turn my head and actually peek around corners properly, and know where the heck I am relative to the wall/corners/hiding spots.
Click to expand...
Sorry but nah, would ruin the experience IMO. First person is vital for the sense of personal threat. Third person you're observing your avatar and watching the creature get "them" if you fuck up.

First person it's coming at you if you fuck up.

Agree on VR though and I accept first person makes it clunkier to control but it's the brewer trade off for immersion vs third person perspective for a game like this.

VR though would be the best way to control first person stealth.
 
W

War Machine

Member
The Routine devs made this blog post in March:

Posted on Mar 10, 2015

0 Comments

March Status Update!

With GDC just over and a lots of awesome Gaming news about, we thought it would be a fitting time to make a small update on how Routine is doing.

In our last August Update, we talked about how we were slowly going through the game and replacing all placeholder work. Since then, we’ve managed to get through 5 sectors of the Game, adding Gameplay, Art and essential Story Elements. We may need to revisit certain bits and bobs as we get specific playtest information back, but for now its a great feeling seeing more and more of Routine being Completed!

With less and less testing/prototyping needed for this stage in Development, we’ve really managed to speed up our Workflow and it feels like Progress is going better than ever.

(click to enlarge)

• Unreal Engine 4 is FREE! will you guys be switching to it?

Routine is far too deep into development for us to switch engines but we can’t bloody wait to get our hands on it for future projects!

• Are you guys dead?

Unsurprisingly we get this question a lot, we don’t blame anyone for thinking this as we are very quiet when it comes to putting out Routine related news. We are doing fine though and Routine’s progress is going great.

• Will you guys be putting out a new video at some point?

We will absolutely do a new video or two closer to release.

(click to enlarge)

Thanks again for the INSANE amount of patience you guys are exercising, we are honestly trying our best to get the game finished as soon as possible!

-Lunar Software
Click to expand...
 
M

Metal-Geo

Member
The eerie robot stuff in the beginning was great. And I'm digging the environments a lot so far (reminds me of Doom 3). The rest felt pretty underwhelming though. Hopefully they can keep the game consistently scary, unlike Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
 
K

Kid Ska

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Holy shit, I just watched this and the two short live-action videos for SOMA and I've gotta say I love where they're going with this.
 
Castef

Castef

Banned
I fear this is another "run for your life" survival horror, a la Amnesia/Outlast.

Can't say i appreciate them that much. :(
 
Castef

Castef

Banned
Seanspeed said:
Thankfully you have the majority of other gamers that cater to that.
Click to expand...

In the survival horror genre? I disagree, there is a recent trend consisting in games with a similar mechanic.

Look at Outlast, Amnesia, Slender and so on.

I also guess that creating a survival horror with just puzzles is easier than adding a complete combat system.
 
V

Verger

Banned
Castef said:
I fear this is another "run for your life" survival horror, a la Amnesia/Outlast.

Can't say i appreciate them that much. :(
Click to expand...
If they can combine some of the fear-inducing gameplay of The Dark Descent with the Story and Narrative quality of A Machine for Pigs, plus some nice puzzle-solving design and interactions. Then I think it would be a fantastic game.

Also, I really hope they could get Jessica Curry to do the Soundtrack. Her Machine for Pigs OST was simply divine:

Kyrie
The Church Organ
Mors Praematura
Ever Mine
Dieses Herz

The Finale (with "the speech")
 
S

samueljustice00

Member
Verger said:
If they can combine some of the fear-inducing gameplay of The Dark Descent with the Story and Narrative quality of A Machine for Pigs, plus some nice puzzle-solving design and interactions. Then I think it would be a fantastic game.

Also, I really hope they could get Jessica Curry to do the Soundtrack. Her Machine for Pigs OST was simply divine
Click to expand...

I'm looking forward to hearing her work in EGTTR
 
V

Verger

Banned
Thinking about it further after watching the videos. I will be surprised, and disappointed if it turns out that the twist of
Main character is a robot
is the only twist, in fact that is almost becoming an expectation, and I'll be even doubly surprised if that "twist" doesn't turn out to be the case

I've actually been thinking that such a thing could only be the tip of the iceberg. Depending on how "deep" the Frictional writers want to take this, they could really explore very complex themes and gameplay. People note that in the trailer you can see the character's hands, but remember that
The robots themselves seem to fully believe they can see themselves and their own bodies as human
.

If that turns out to be the case, then you can imagine how things could become very complicated. Because if the character is
a robot and his "consciousness" is simulated
then anything that we as the player sees could be a fabrication, or some twisted simulation. That's not to say nothing is real, but things may not be being interpreted correctly.


Anyway, found some cool youtube vids discussing the game. Here's one summarizing things prior to the reveals this past week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdSgRGmoxlk

Another vid from the same guy talking about the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98zT4n75rWg
 
M

Mr.Monitor

Member
I really wanna like this game, the setting and theme are right up my alley, but I genuinely hate run and hide horror games. Didn't like amnesia at all for this reason, despite thinking the writing was pretty cool. It sounds like they're trying to address that but the trailer doesn't seem to support that.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
Mr.Monitor said:
I really wanna like this game, the setting and theme are right up my alley, but I genuinely hate run and hide horror games. Didn't like amnesia at all for this reason, despite thinking the writing was pretty cool. It sounds like they're trying to address that but the trailer doesn't seem to support that.
Click to expand...

I feel exactly the same, and it's why I still haven't finished Outlast and Alien, eventhough I love the latter in every other way. I'm very interested in SOMA nonetheless, but I fear it's just not going to be my kind of game.
 
B

BahamutPT

Member
They're talking about this gameplay trailer at the PlayStation stream: http://www.twitch.tv/playstation

Did we know about the "black box" inside each person which records
the last 10 seconds of that person's life?

Edit: PS4 and PC are the platforms, like we knew, but it was mentioned the game could eventually be ported to other platforms.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
E3 gameplay trailer was just posted on FB:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frictional-Games/212416275440
So this year we went to E3 for first time and did two things we have never done before.

First, we took part in an E3 show, the PC Gaming Show, and showed off a brand new trailer. You can watch that trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCBd4fmcuWY

This showcases the player's first encounter with a type of creature that roams this part of the game, and gives some hints on how to best deal with them. This clip is a bit shorter than we wanted it to be and therefore misses some build-up and is a bit hurried. But one minute was all we were allowed for the show. Still, hope you all liked it!

Second, we showed off a public demo of the game (something we only did after release for previous games).

Choosing a demo for SOMA proved to be quite difficult as we wanted to have something that we felt represented the game properly without giving away lots of spoilers. The problem is that SOMA is not the sort of game that can be easily explained in a short session. For E3 we had to make it last 15 - 20 minutes, which for us is really short indeed.

SOMA is a slow burn experience with a primary focus on the exploration of high-level concepts. Trying to showcase this is very different from showing off a game that is about exploring an environment or one that's focused on a set of core mechanics - in those sort of games it's much easier to find a short segment that serves as a good example. But for SOMA, that sort of segment really doesn't exist. SOMA is designed to carefully introduce the player to a variety of concepts and to ease the player into a certain kind of atmosphere and state of mind.

The best solution would have been to do a special map, similar to how we did with the announcement video. That way we could have tried to condense the intended experience into a shorter level. But this takes a lot of time. Setting up the announcement video took several weeks. Doing one meant for public demoing would take even longer as we'd have to make sure it was bug free and that the gameplay worked as intended. So the next best thing was to take something from the game and modify it slightly to avoid big spoilers.

But the problem was: what section from the game should we use? As I noted above, SOMA takes its time to establish concepts and atmosphere, and any 15 minute segment we just chopped out would lack the context needed to properly understand the situation at hand and to be immersed in it.

Our first plan was simply to take one of our more intense monster sequences. That would provide a quick demo that was easy to get into and would provide a thrilling experience. But the issue was that we then would fail to showcase what's special about our game. The game would just look like yet another "run from the monster"-ordeal, and making sure that people understand that SOMA is something way beyond this is very important to us.

So after much discussion we decided to rip the latter half of a level that is about 1-2 hours into the game. This part would showcase player choices, environmental storytelling, our philosophical aspects, provide an underwater revelation at the end and (if the player chose to take a particular path) would have a short monster encounter.

However, our choice of demo was not perfect. Most importantly, by itself, this part of the game isn't particularly scary. This in part is because the demo lacks a lot of the intended build-up, and in part because it wasn't (apart from a final monster encounter) designed to be all that frightening. And while SOMA doesn't focus on "run from monsters", it is a horror game and we are very much intending to induce terror in our players. Therefore it felt annoying to have a demo that didn't bring home that aspect. But still, making players whimper from fear is not really a unique concept any more, so given the choice, it felt much more important to give a taste of the disturbing feel our themes give rise to.

Another issue was that our demo took place in a section of game that we'd already showed off in our release date reveal trailer. I think this has led to a bit less coverage than we'd have had otherwise. There was quite a bit of new stuff that players could do in the demo, such as checking out black boxes on corpses, interacting in different ways with "Carl" the robot, exploring the computer system etc. and a previously unseen sequence at the end. But the demo still took place in the same locale and all of the major elements were still the same.

That said, I feel we did the best we could given the constraints we had. And judging from the reactions that we got at E3, people enjoyed it quite a lot and almost all the players came away with the right impression. Both Ian and Aaron (the Frictional Games team members that attended E3) were actually quite surprised how well most people picked up on our deeper aspects. This despite playing the game under far from optimal conditions (a well-lit, loud and crowded room is not all that great for games that thrive on immersion and introspection). Again, just like in our last round of testing, the way people connect to the themes in SOMA went way better than expected, and that makes us even more even more thrilled to unleash our creation on the world!

On that note, SOMA is less than three months from release now! So close!
Click to expand...
 
I

inm8num2

Member
Hands-on preview from PC World.

It's that cerebral horror that brings me back to Frictional's games. Where so many other genre favorites rely on jump-scares, on gore, on wresting control from the player, Frictional works its way under your skin with creeping dread. In the Penumbra games that dread came from quiet isolation. In Amnesia it came from slowly losing your mind.

In SOMA, it’s more existential. I didn't encounter a single real "scare" in my half hour with SOMA, but it stuck with me. It left me on edge.

I'd made choices. I didn't think they were the right choices.
Click to expand...
 
F

Fried Food

Banned
That enemy looks bad. Why would they show it in the trailer? Kinda removes the scare factor. Should tried to make a game without any visible enemies (don't mean make the model invisible, get creative) until the very last parts of the game.
 
M

misses bull

Banned
Fried Food said:
That enemy looks bad. Why would they show it in the trailer? Kinda removes the scare factor. Should tried to make a game without any visible enemies (don't mean make the model invisible, get creative) until the very last parts of the game.
Click to expand...

The grunt in amnesia didn't look good either

634F42F18009B76494143BBD0F49527F41C8541C
Click to expand...
 
I

inm8num2

Member
New impressions of SOMA (sounds like previewers played about 1/3 of the game).

RPS
The horror pervades the entire game, but it’s been elevated from the bumps in the night and cries in the dark of Amnesia and Penumbra. There are still monsters to avoid and grotesque scenes to confront, but in keeping with its themes, SOMA is constructed around horrors of the mind rather than of the nerves and heart. It’s a remarkably assured game – some plodding underwater wandering aside – which blinded me somewhat to the boldness of Frictional’s shift to a story-driven approach. If the remainder lives up to and continues the trend of this opening third, it will also mark a successful shift from pure horror to intelligent, creepy science fiction.
Click to expand...

Polygon

Eurogamer
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
inm8num2 said:
New impressions of SOMA (sounds like previewers played about 1/3 of the game).

RPS

The horror pervades the entire game, but it’s been elevated from the bumps in the night and cries in the dark of Amnesia and Penumbra. There are still monsters to avoid and grotesque scenes to confront, but in keeping with its themes, SOMA is constructed around horrors of the mind rather than of the nerves and heart. It’s a remarkably assured game – some plodding underwater wandering aside – which blinded me somewhat to the boldness of Frictional’s shift to a story-driven approach. If the remainder lives up to and continues the trend of this opening third, it will also mark a successful shift from pure horror to intelligent, creepy science fiction.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Sounds very promising.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Classic Disney-Style FPS MOUSE Gets a New Gameplay Trailer
Trailer
3
629
Vick replied
A 'SOMA-style' Game Is In The Works At Frictional Games
Opinion Game Dev
1
641
Blitzmangoman replied
Toys for Bob going independent
News 2 3 4
199
10K
Mibu no ookami replied
The Last of Us Online has been cancelled
News 10 11 12 13 14
678
34K
Tiago Rodrigues replied
The founders of Deliver Us Mars and Deliver Us the Moon studio KeokeN have announced that the rest of the company has been laid off
News Game Dev
23
2K
damidu replied
Top Bottom