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Jonas
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Post by Jonas »

Well I don't know if DX was meant to fit into the narrow bucket which cyberpunk indeed is. But whether by design or coincidence, Deus Ex does fit perfectly into it. It's a little more historically minded than most cyberpunk is, but as long as it has enough CP-elements and enough emphasis is placed on them, it doesn't matter how much other stuff it has.

To be honest, I think the DX devs just drew a ton of inspiration from Gibson's stuff, and the game ended up being close enough to fit into the subgenre. I don't think they purposely restricted the game so it would be cyberpunk, it just ended up that way, and I doubt they feel bad about that.

I think the single most obvious part of DX which is inspired by Gibson is the AI thing. Neuromancer featured two AI's, Wintermute and Neuromancer, who - with the help of the book's protagonist - merged into one perfect entity spread across the entire internet at the end.

You should read it, it's a great book. And the reason it remains interesting in spite of placing such great emphasis on style and technology is because it does discuss some traditional philosophical sci-fi themes such as AI, individuality in general, etc. And because it features a rastafari space station!

Yah mahn.
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

And what happens when you take the cyberpunk outta Deus Ex, you get invisible war. Because it was so far into the future the technology was too out there to be cyberpunk, there was too much optimism created by the WTO and the order.

The whole conspiracy thing is just something that arose after the 1989 revolution, and later the 1991 Operation Sundevil raids. Once that happened cyberpunks hated the government and anyone else who gave CP a bad name (aka Billy Idol lol!)

I dont wanna get into the polotics..

Anyway, the "Punk" element in cyberpunk simply is non-existant and it is a falacy to call it that. If anything it should've been CyberHuman or Cyborg Culture, probably because you dont neccessarily have to be a punk to be a "Cyberpunk".. Gibson fucked up esssentially. (I like his work but he has done some pretty stupid things, like saying that the last 2 matrix films were good WTF!)

Deus Ex mostly takes the conspiracy stuff from the Xfiles, which Gibson had involvment in, this is why we have the deally with FEMA and MJ12 and the grays.

anyway im at uni so "ill check back with you later"... lol!
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Post by Jonas »

Mr_Cyberpunk wrote:Gibson fucked up esssentially. (I like his work but he has done some pretty stupid things, like saying that the last 2 matrix films were good WTF!)
The last one was pretty decent. They killed off the protagonist, that was kinda cool.

But anyway, are you sure it was Gibson himself who came up with the term "cyberpunk"? And not some litterary critic or other? I seem to recall it was another CP author (in fact the only other good CP author according to some people) who invented the term. I don't recall his name though.
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Post by Ajare »

Jonas wrote:But anyway, are you sure it was Gibson himself who came up with the term "cyberpunk"?
Click and ye shall discover.

Fucking Pakistan! *grumble grumble*
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

I love The cyberpunk project lol Eases the pain..

That is a great article.

Also I started playing Shadow Run SNES, fun game.. Except its bloody hard at the start. The MGS version is also availible too.

The essence of "Punk" in cyberpunk is clearly all but dead, it should take on a new identity as something more 21st century not 1980s!

I'd actually like to have a crack at making a PostCyberpunk game, ie. A game beyond cyberpunk. The reason, it simply leaves the Gibson way of life dead in its tracks and applies a new kind of thinking.. I am yet to see a PostCyberpunk game apart from the appualing 5th Element game..
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Post by Jonas »

Aye, I thought so.
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Post by Dragon »

nice read... so that's how the word catched on.

btw, what exactly you expect from PostCP? i mean DXIW is from the time beeing 'post' the CP (if we call it once like that) deus-ex, but i don't assume that is what you call PCP right? ;)
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Post by Jonas »

No, by post-cyberpunk, I assume he means the cyberpunkish litterature which was written after "the movement" sort of died.

I'll leave it up to him to define post-CP though. Personally, I would label The Fifth Element 100% pure comedy sci-fi (the "comedy" prefix not being a part of the genre definition, but merely an appendage to describe the mood of the movie).
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

Imagine that the world has just come out of dystopia and entered a new age of optimism. Wars have stoped and the people are united in a common goal which is to build a better society against the flaws of the old one that fell, this new world is where Cyberpunks have turned from being selfish into being concerned for the greater good of the people, not governments, not themselves not even the corporations they once worked for. Augmentation is frequently availible and used religiously (by that its worshiped for its great health benefits). In this age though, it is met by problems because after coming out of dystopia there are threats to society that are eliminated by a cyberpunk.. working for the greater good to save the world.. or at least purify it.

This is a similar scenario to todays postmodernism.

The hacking element still exists, essentially its everything about cyberpunk but instead of being about the evils its now about the global good. This is probably cause Post Cyberpunk is in a time of optimisim, whereas cyberpunk is in a time of decay. Thats not to say that conflict doesn't exist in this world.

It is extremely hard to explain, but the 5th Element is somewhat post cyberpunk (points to the big city scene as a good example) every thing after the Earth scene is purely SciFi. (the start can simply be classed as Scifi too) but corban dallas is essentially the PostCyberpunk of the film during the begining. PostCyberpunk still needs the AntiHero element.. otherwise its not cyberpunk..

Its very very difficult to explain given that i know only limited stuff about it. The wikipedia stuff may offer a bit more light, maybe reading the books it meantions. Also look at The Cyberpunk Project stuff as postcyberpunk appears somewhere in the listings.

But yeah, Jonas is right, basically all the cyberpunk writers moved on and wrote about constructive stuff that relates to the modern world.. the 21st century. Call it 21st century Cyberpunk, becuase it is more how should i put it, like today's society.. (well before 9/11 anyway)
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

Oooh i forgot another thing, post cyberpunk also respects those who aren't augmented. Cyberpunk deems there people as freaks or lower class people who live in gutters (well gibson's work does, they sell their body parts for plastic!)

but Post cyberpunk usually features a human at the start. Maybe the aquire augs, maybe they dont. Gibson's latest works dont feature a cyborg as the main char. hence he's started writing similar to postcyberpunk.

The situation is simple, Cyberpunk is considered Techno-facism.. PostCyberpunk is Techno-PostModernism.

One is about rebellion
the other about thinking how society is constructed and effected by the individuals.
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Post by Wokky »

I think I'll just stick to the all-round definition of sci-fi. Using countless *punk descriptions each with a very narrow definition strikes me as being utterly pointless.
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Post by Dragon »

Wokky wrote:I think I'll just stick to the all-round definition of sci-fi. Using countless *punk descriptions each with a very narrow definition strikes me as being utterly pointless.
i double this... somehow my head swizzels and that's no good sign. too much restrictions... i love freedom 8)
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

I also agree. That's why if there can be a change to cyberpunk.. it could become something entirely new and interesting. I'm already trying stuff for some games that is a combination of SteamPunk and Postmodernism with just a hint of Cyberpunk and Dystopia. The idea is simply to merge them together for the conflict and style, but to install a versitile storyline like that of an Epic Scifi (which probably can't be done... lol). You'd say that it accomplishes nothing but my research so far has proven otherwise with very interesting results. (concept art and draft story writing mostly at this point)

Cyberpunk isn't dead though, the situation is the "Punk" element isn't neccessary anymore, and new guidelines need to be established in the genre.

Why the world needs cyberpunk? Because it would be the first situation that CMC was actually introduced to the public and instructed us how to live in a world ruled by technology and capitalism. There is much to be learnt from cyberpunk, though you may not say this but Neuromancer was great in that it explained the potential that the Internet would oneday have. I have used neuromancer in many reports for Uni about CMC and have scored distinctions so its worth some credit.

-- I think this discussion can be finnished soon, we should just sum up what we've discovered and move back to discussing games.

Anyone played the game Uplink before, its a Hacking Sim with very little cyberpunk elements (or at least it was meant to have cyberpunk in it during production) But its a fun game, good music.
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Post by Dragon »

Mr_Cyberpunk wrote:I also agree. That's why if there can be a change to cyberpunk.. it could become something entirely new and interesting. I'm already trying stuff for some games that is a combination of SteamPunk and Postmodernism with just a hint of Cyberpunk and Dystopia. The idea is simply to merge them together for the conflict and style, but to install a versitile storyline like that of an Epic Scifi (which probably can't be done... lol). You'd say that it accomplishes nothing but my research so far has proven otherwise with very interesting results. (concept art and draft story writing mostly at this point)
why not simply try to do a story out of your guts leaving aside 'cathegories' or existing genres? i tried doing this while i wrapped up (and still am refining) my game story. to be honest i have no idea if it would fall into any cathegory as i simply payed no attention at all to it.
Anyone played the game Uplink before, its a Hacking Sim with very little cyberpunk elements (or at least it was meant to have cyberpunk in it during production) But its a fun game, good music.
i have it on my laptop. a good game but gets repetetive quickly, has a lot or nasty bugs (missions you solved but the game does not recognize you having solved it) and is very easy unless you try to do really difficult hacks like messing with banks or tracing a hacker. i didn't do such missions yet as they always got stuck resulting me in having to abandon them dropping my rank for nothing but a game bug. and yeah, the music is great. i need to place that tunes on my playlist alongside the deus-ex tunes 8)
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Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

There's a deus ex mod for it too ;) really funny, it changes all the interface to look like Deus Ex's and all the people files are characters from Deus Ex.
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