A lurker's thoughts

Hey everyone!

I've been lurking on these forums for a long time now but didn't feel like I had the time to jump into the conversation. Now that I'm better settled into my new place, I hope it's not a problem if I give my two cents on what we've seen so far. As of last April I had read through most of the posts here but it's been a while since then so I apologize if I'm going over some things which have already been said.

First off, more than anything else I'm just stoked to see a new Star Control title being released. SCII was my favorite game as a kid and I still enjoy it. So thanks to Stardock and everyone here for doing this.

Second, one of the big themes I gathered from the forums so far, and from the dev notes, is that different people want different things from this game. In other words, no matter what decision the devs make, someone is going to be disappointed. As I see it, that's to be expected, both because of time and money limitations and because a game can't be everything.

With those two points out of the way, I'd like to give my perspective on (1) why I think SCII was such a good game, (3) what we've seen in the materials released so far, and (3) a few questions for the devs and other founders. I don't think my perspective is any more valid or important than anyone else's, I just hope that it can be helpful in some way to the devs.

Star Control 2, AKA a Brilliant Little Game

I feel like SCII is one of those obscure gems of a game which did so many things right. I know I'm preaching to the choir with this, so I'll focus in on a few things which, in my opinion, pushed that game from "good" to "excellent": scope, gameplay/narrative agreement, and tone. 

Scope. It's telling that I can show SCII's starmap to one of my friends today and they are amazed at how much stuff there is in the game. There are about 500 systems, each with their own star, most with planets, and each of them can be visited. In fact, there is more content in the game then you can see given the game's time limit. This isn't inherently a good thing, but it worked for SCII in that this scope demonstrated, through the mechanics, how large the game world was. It also naturally steered your course of exploration--at first you only had the fuel and resources to visit nearby star systems, by mid game you could travel around the entire sector but it was very resource-costly, and by late game you had relatively easy access to the entire map via quasispace. The game also gives narrative hints of this scope, such as the Melnorme not know where the rainbow worlds are or races on opposite sides of the sector now knowing much about each other. 

I don't know if this kind of scope is amenable to the devs' vision with SC Origins but I certainly hope that it is. 

Gameplay/Narrative Agreement. When the game tells you that the Ur-Quan are an immensely powerful race with some of the most powerful ships in the galaxy, that narrative is confirmed through gamepaly in a way which is not contrived: the Dreadnaughts and Mauraders are very powerful and the Ur-Quan have the largest spheres of influence out of all the races. This might seem trivial, but so many games don't do this or don't do it well. In contrast SCII, consistently had gameplay and narrative reinforce each other. The Druuge are described as unscrupulous and you can actually be swindled by them or sell your crew into slavery (which, in turn, has consequences for recruiting people from the starbase). The Spathi are characterized as cowardly and they act it when they talk to you, their ships are designed to fight running away, and they end up slave-shielding themselves. The Ilwrath Avenger which is described as damaged and without a cloaking device actually is damaged and doesn't have a cloaking device. The Umgah are said to be biological wizards, and not only are they wizrds but you can get huge amounts of biological data from them. You get the idea. 

Doing this requires a lot of attention to detail and limits what you can and cannot do narratively in some cases but I personally feel that the yields are worth it. I hate it when my character in an RPG is way more badass in a cutscene then when I'm actually playing, or when an enemy who is supposed to be big and scary only is because they have plot armor, or when a legendary weapon ends up being rather run-of-the-mill, and so on. Being able to trust the narrative because that narrative is reflected through gameplay is a wonderful thing.

Tone. This is the most subjective of my categories, but SCII's tone was instrumental in how much I enjoyed it. Specifically, the game managed to be both a pulpy, humorous adventure story and a dark science fiction story. For example, SCII seemed to adeptly balance its silly moments with serious and poignant ones. It was the Pkunk who gave you the vision of the create about to be killed by the Ur-Quan; you can make the Traddash watch the Three Stooges but their history is of repeated nuclear holocaust and you can make them permanently hostile to you; the ORZ are one of the more ridiculous things I've seen in a game but both the Androsynth databanks and Arilou have pretty horrifying things to say about them. In other words, the game mixed levity with serious, and sometimes very dark, material. I mean, you can send more than one race to their death or see most of the galaxy wiped clean of life. 

Similarly, the game balances arcade-style combat and planet exploration with very scifi-y sensor readouts, an actual timer, and the starmap. Those little details of seeing a planet's axial tilt, mass, and so on add, in my opinion, a lot of value to the game, as do having planets and stars generally be presented how we would expect them to occur--hot rocky planets closer to the sun, gas giants further out, organic compounds on planets with active tectonics and liquids on the surface, etc. (As a side not, having the amount of fuel needed to land be correlated to the planet's mass is another superb example of gameplay/narrative agreement). At least for me, these small scifi touches allowed me to take the game a bit more seriously then if it was just focused on the more arcade-y aspects. 

I also really enjoyed how little information you had, even at the end of the game. You were going off into the unknown, learning for yourself, and that unknown was often dangerous and unfriendly. Presenting a universe where so much is unknown or just hinted at allows your imagination to fill in the gaps and makes the setting seem larger than it actuallyly is. 

There are a lot of other things that I like about SCII, but these are the main points which I feel make the game stand out from similar titles. 

Development so far: Mostly Promising

So, the game is still in pre-alpha and a lot still hasn't been decided but I feel like we've seen enough to get a rough idea of where the game is progressing. I'd like to give my thoughts on the story so far, the art style, and the proposed gameplay.

Story. First of all, I respect the decision to not include the original races until Fred and Paul can make a new game in the universe. I'm sad that we won't see some of the old cast (I personally think that a Star Control 1 era game where you're fighting with the Alliance would be awesome), but it is what it is and this gives the devs room to create their own cast of races. Second, I think the explanation of parallel universes is a brilliant one . . . though IIRC the explanation in SCII about Orz space, Truespace, Hyperspace and Quasispace was that they were layers one on top of each other, not petals connected via Quasispace. But that's a pedantic complaint and not terribly important. 

Having the player be taking one of the first hyperspace-capable ships into space and see what's out there is a very cool premise and feel very Star Trek (which I like), though that brings up a few questions right away:

• Human technology was very primitive compared to almost every other race in SCII, and that's after a decade of fighting with the Alliance. I find the idea of Earth creating a ship which, presumably, will be a powerhouse by the end of the game pretty implausible. There might be an in-story reason why this might be the case--maybe we find a bunch of Precursor artifacts a-la SCI--but I'm overall not thrilled about the idea of going from the dumpiest ship in the galaxy to one of the best.
• Given that this is Earth's first big foray into space, we presumably have the entire space program behind us, which makes me wonder why we would be doing things like collecting resources on planets. Analyzing new forms of life or collecting resources which are not plentiful in the solar system make sense, but we shouldn't be digging Iron and Uranium out of the ground. If it was something like surveying planets for future development that would make a bit more sense to me--and give a reason to have bright, shiny resource icons on the planet. 
• Shouldn't ambassadors be handling xeno-relations after first contact and not us? Again, we have the resources of the entire human race and there are probably people more qualified to maintain good relations with the Tywom than us.