I remember the devs mentioning they want to implement a long-term injury accumulation system. However, I don’t remember where I read about this and am currently questioning my memory. Does anyone else remember this?
Anyways, over the course of the campaign soldiers would suffer penalizing injuries that are balanced by combat experience and rudimentary prosthetics. The idea then is to research advanced treatments and prosthetics that may be just as good or better than normal body parts. There was also ideas for cybernetic augmentations and Pandoran mutations to make up for or replace body parts. Also a soldier may not need to be injured to undergo such treatments.
Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if every feature mentioned since the Fig campaign to be fully implemented at release. Rather I expect some features to be implemented in post release dlc or in expansions. Some features may be scrapped altogether, despite being interesting ideas.
From the very first video on fig PP 1st trailer me and many other was excepting something different than what we have now. I was expecting a really dark, horror, apocalyptic atmosphere, more like “Alien” (the Movie) and less like the modern X-COM.
I mean, these looks more like a frightening alien invasion:
“Interestingly, while there is still permadeath soldiers are relatively difficult to kill and are more likely to suffer permanent physical or mental scaring if defeated, resulting in the loss of limbs or seeing them resort to drink or drugs to cope with what they’ve experienced.”
I remember there was a question in survey regarding overall feel/vibe of the game: lovecraftian horror vs hard sci-fi horror and most backers choose the former. I don’t know what happened but with each next build this vibe slowly changed toward sci-fi with game being more similar to XCOM. I’m not saying it’s bad, I just say that there were apparently some vital design changes on the way. Personally I’d like PP’s world to be more sticky, muggy, dirty and oozing, with its mist and nightmare creatures, you know the drill. This feeling is present in trailer 1 posted above, it was present in backer build 1, too.
PS. Synedrion maps, while looking nice, made those earlier concepts unimportant; these maps are too clean, too sc-fi, too XCOM-y. But it’s not only the matter of Synedrion maps.
That is not that old of a preview, so perhaps there are still a few things we haven’t seen. Curious to see how the game will look at release.
@bartekb8 True, but changes in visual design might have been influenced by other things, not necessarly a change in direction. Assets from first backer were a prototype. Things like readability, support for game mechanics (hitboxes, changable bodyparts, distinction between factions etc) might have influenced the design as well.
All we have is a ‘feel’ for what is alien, or rather, less human.
I actually think that this is an issue that spans the sci-fi genre, it’s very very rare that a book/film/game will present an alien life-form in a non-human way.
It’s not, and you’re in for a treat
That’s true, but they’re anthropomorphised versions of animals not ‘alienpomorphised’ (is there a real word for that?) versions.
True for Arthrons: two arms two legs, bipedal walk, just an alien look
Tritons are, IMHO, very alien: six legged that learned to use sophisticated tool
Syrens are alien too, and you agreed to that.
Anyway whatever an alien form could be it has to follow phisics laws and some evolutionary pattern to evolve and that means some way to use tools; there is no evolutionary advandage to be a genius slug, you cannot do anything better than a stupid one, better evolve other skills, while for a primate, with the so called evolutionary tools, evolving intelligence is a big advantage over stupid primates, and we are here to prove it. That said i dont think aliens would be so radically different from our lifeforms; maybe insect like, maybe using other way to communicate than sound, but not that different from terran evolute lifeforms with some prehensile appendage and some form of advanced communication.
This is going off into philosophy now, which I’m happy to do if you are
We are here to prove that we’re at the top of the evolutionary ladder at this moment; in our snap shot of time, on our particular planet, and with it’s specific chemistry, physics and biological make up. But why do you feel that evolution would take such a similar path across the rest of the universe(s)? And then even if it does, why would we encounter evolution at the same equivalent stage in its journey?
Speaking of slugs in particular, they’re part of the mollusc phylum, and whilst they do have a nervous system, it is true that they don’t have a central brain. How that nervous system develops will depend on the benefits that those developments might bring, but molluscs as a phylum are very young on an evolutionary scale, so who knows, there may one day be a genius slug
I really liked the concept of Mordheim, the long term damage being a part of the appeal. However when I played it I was really put off by the point of view that you had to control your squad from, I found it impossible to navigate my way around and was just getting lost all the time.
If you want Lovecraft to be a thing here, it has to be psychological.
The horrors you face should affect mind and sanity, which will negatively effect performance and if pushed to far drive a guy insane and useless.
Over time troops should get various physiological conditions.
As a counter, rest between battle will reduce impact but not stop it getting worse, eventually every soilder will get various conditions.
With appropriate research, you should unlock therapy building, but by itself is useless, but further research into both the aliens and the different mental conditions then time in therapy’s will drastically reduce how often the conditions trigger, but never cure it completely.
But they will trigger so rarely by this point it be as if the are cured, but the chance still happening will make some great story moments
