Should Soma be more like Penumbra or The Walking Dead?

[CielsTenebreuse]

Penumbra had better puzzles than Amnesia, but worse everything else. Not to say the games were bad, but not nearly as polished an experience as Amnesia was.

What would I like? A SOMA-type of game. That is, a game that stands on its own while retaining that familiar "Frictional" style identity. Penumbra and Amnesia I'd say are two incredibly different games/experiences but were similar in how they played. If SOMA can continue to build on top of that, improving the engine even more, changing/removing things, and adding new things, maybe things we'd never see coming, that's what I'd like to see. According to Frictional this game will deal with the conscious mind and its implications. And we're in for one serious head screw if it's anything like what the gameplay trailer and two "video files" on the website show.

They also say they are trying to make the game as "un-gamey" as possible, when it comes to puzzles, how you interact with your environment and so forth. Like, "oh this is clearly a puzzle that I must solve later." I'd assume less of that and more situations you would react naturally to and not immediately consider as a puzzle (whoever mentioned the water monster sections where you figure to throw body parts in the water to distract them. throw boxes around to walk on and open doors as quickly as possible, that's a good example; perhaps also the giant worm chase in the first Penumbra qualifies despite how awfully convenient the set-up is in allowing you to temporarily stall the worm at certain points and how it stalls you itself with wood-blocked passages just to increase the panic levels, heh).

And the less scripted the enemy encounters are, the better. I have no idea what sort of creatures this game will have (probably not the pleasant kind) but it'd definitely add to the immersion if encounters were more randomized. Instead of learning to dodge enemies I know will be coming based on my knowledge of the maps' layouts and trigger points I'd be dodging enemies based on my knowledge of how the enemies themselves work and think. I guess that's another thing Penumbra (the first one at least, the only one I've played) did better than Amnesia, though the enemies, especially the spiders, were annoying, their presence felt a bit more believable. In Amnesia, nearly all the enemies were scripted encounters triggered by something you did (i.e. pick up a crucial item, and in a lot of cases you see it coming the moment you pick it up), then you hide and they disappear... somewhere. Whereas in Penumbra, worm chases aside, the enemies were already there before you came along (or the obvious disturbances you caused woke them to your presence) and they attack you because you just so happen to be waltzing in their territory uninvited.