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Enlarge / Dark corridors, cyberpunk lighting, low ammo, mutated humanoids: same as it ever was.
Nobody was expecting to see a PC demo for the System Shock remake this week, least of all me. I've been waiting to revisit Citadel Station and its malevolent AI since the project's announcement nearly seven years ago. Having spent a couple hours in the first level, I'm certainly impressed but curious about some of the decisions and focus areas.
If you played and loved the original, this demo, and likely the full game, is almost certainly worth your while. You can punch 0451 into the medical storage locker like it's 1994 again, but this time at modern resolutions and frame rates, using far more comfortable controls, even a gamepad. You can blast and pipe-bash enemies, but they aren't Wolfenstein-era 2D sprites anymore. And, of course, you can play the game on Steam, GOG, or Epic, rather than having to find an ancient CD-ROM.
There are some new conveniences, like an entirely overhauled interface with better shortcuts for secondary items, like grenades and stim patches. But the beats of the story, the puzzles and enemies and traps, the very core of the innovative, quirky game is still there. You can still spend far too much time meticulously organizing your inventory and collecting scrap for junk credits, while supposedly in the midst of a humanity-endangering crisis.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Breaking nerd news: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast has done a complete about-face on their controversial plans to deauthorize the Open Gaming License 1.0 and replace it with a far more restrictive one that would have seriously compromised a lot of content creators. — Read the rest
Enlarge / Artist's conception of D&D fans holding back WotC's attempts to change the game's license. (credit: WotC)
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) owner Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has halted its attempts to update the longstanding Open Gaming License (OGL) that has dictated the legal use of the game's rules for decades. The move comes after weeks of controversy and belated attempts to partially scale back leaked plans for an OGL update.
The original OGL 1.0a, first released in the early '00s, will now "remain untouched" WotC announced in a tweet Friday. What's more, the entire D&D Systems Reference Document (SRD)—which also includes creative content like classes, spells, and monsters trademarked and copyrighted by WotC—is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, meaning it's free to use as long as proper credit is given.
WotC's full retreat in this licensing battle comes as WotC says survey feedback on the latest draft update to the license was "in such high volume and its direction is so plain," that the company felt it had to act immediately, as Executive Producer Kyle Brink wrote on the D&D Beyond blog.
With the recent kerfuffles over the forthcoming One D&D and Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's designs on revoking the original Open Gaming License, Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts could use a little chillaxing entertainment and comic relief. Will that be found in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the star-studded motion picture? — Read the rest
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It's January again, which means it's time for massive MMO Elder Scrolls Online to start its yearly marketing cycle back up. After a relatively rough launch way back in 2014, ESO has clawed its way back to the top of the MMO pile—or near the top, anyway, given that World of Warcraft is still around. — Read the rest
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The firestorms continue over the leaked Open Gaming License 2.0 (OGL 2.0) from Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. Given the extent of the backlash over the leaked draft (first reported by i09), Wizards was forced to release a laughably disingenuous statement (as a Friday news dump, no less) that inflamed the gaming community even further. — Read the rest
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