By Jim Rossignol on August 4th, 2010 at 3:35 pm.
So here’s a thing. It could be poetic justice, but it’s too early to tell. What I mean is this: I think XCOM looks great, but it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t tickle the love-strings of X-Com purists. “Nevermind,” I said, so cheerily, and having no critical or emotional attachment to the original series. “It’ll still be an entertaining take on the shooter.” Of course, if someone was to come along and give a similar treatment to my beloved Syndicate, things might be a little different. A switch would flick in my head, my worries about hypocrisy would disappear in a puff of indignation, and red mist would do hideous battle with my cool, logical implacability.
EA have just registered three trademarks for Syndicate. We already have rumours that Starbreeze are developing a Syndicate game. What are the chances it will remain a beautiful isometric dystopia? Oh, gaming future, please be kind.
04/08/2010 at 15:37 Alex Bakke says:
I’d wager the chance of it remaining isometric at around 0.31%.
04/08/2010 at 15:45 Alexander Norris says:
That’s way too high an estimate. It’s probably more like 0.0000031%.
04/08/2010 at 15:55 Rich says:
What’s your error margin?
04/08/2010 at 16:03 rocketman71 says:
@Rich: the error margin is 0.31%.
04/08/2010 at 16:03 Ben says:
The margin of error is -0.0000031%.
04/08/2010 at 16:18 Cooper says:
A p-value of 0.31% or 0.0031, provides a statistically significant result at the 99% level.
The null hypothesis (H0) “Syndicate remake will remain isometric” can be rejected.
04/08/2010 at 17:48 Alex Bakke says:
<3 – I just did null hypothesis in biology, and I understood everything you just said. Yay!
04/08/2010 at 18:37 Cinnamon says:
According to my Poisson model there is a 67% chance of it being an FPS and 27% chance of it being a third person action game. This leaves a whopping 6% probability that it is any other type of game, most likely being an isometric strategy game based on it being a sequel to one.
05/08/2010 at 09:36 Zogtee says:
Ha, I guess the shoe’s on the other foot now!
Let’s see how fun you think it is when Syndicate is mangled into an FPS. Oh, I will mock you, like you mocked me, when I wept over the unjust fate of Xcom.
04/08/2010 at 15:37 Baka says:
Does anyone have the interview with the devs of the first game where they pretty much said they wanted to create a game to fuck shit up and shoot civilians?
I think it was in a Bullfrog-Retrospective or something like that?
04/08/2010 at 16:07 Javier-de-Ass says:
Haven’t got that, but I did watch this interview with Sean Cooper recently http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-La8VlfWc Quite good, especially as to him the game pretty much only was multiplayer, but then somehow formed magically out of nowhere. Hehe.
Not worried about the new Syndicate personally, I can easily envision the game as a weird futuristic rainbow six with crazy gadgets. The main thing I’m thinking of is what kind of art style they’re going for and what sort of feel the game world will give.
04/08/2010 at 16:27 plugmonkey says:
I don’t really fancy Rainbow 6 with gadgets. I don’t want to BE a brainwashed cyborg.
It’s funny, but even though (as c-Row says further down) the run and gun gameplay of Syndicate might be closer to an FPS than the turn-based tacticalness that was X-COM, I think you can make an FPS that feels more like X-COM than you can with Syndicate.
X-COM felt claustrophobic. I felt for my soldiers and I didn’t want them to die. I felt like I was in the thick of it. Putting me directly into that environment seems to make sense.
In Syndicate, the whole point was that I wasn’t in the thick of the action. I was a long, long way away. I didn’t care about my agents. I didn’t care about the civilians. They were ants. Insignificant little ants. Putting me in the middle of it all doesn’t make sense. Why would I want to see their faces? Hear their cries? I don’t care about any of them. That’s what made it fun.
Despite you being able to make something very close to the gameplay of Syndicate with a closer in camera view, it feels very, very different.
04/08/2010 at 17:05 plugmonkey says:
Or, to put what I’ve written above slightly more concisely:
Syndicate is a god game. You can’t make me one of the grunts. I’m a god.
04/08/2010 at 17:06 Vague-rant says:
Could it work possession style like in Dungeon keeper? I miss that mechanic.
04/08/2010 at 17:27 plugmonkey says:
Maybe, but to what end? Fire more accurately? See more clearly? I don’t need to be accurate. I have a minigun. I fire it indiscriminately. If I can’t see clearly, I blow up a building. It’s in my way. Little, insignificant things. I don’t need to get closer. I don’t want to get closer. I. Am. A. GOD.
That’s what makes Syndicate feel like Syndicate. Dungeon Keeper is a bit different. You’re a good baddy. Your minions are not your slaves.
I think the only Syndicate FPS I might want to play (and this is all assuming it IS an FPS) is the one Tei describes below, which is essentially putting me in the shoes of the guy in the intro to Syndicate wars.
Kind of fun, but not really Syndicate. Even less than ‘XCOM’ is like the original.
05/08/2010 at 03:22 P7uen says:
Men of War’s possession thing is quite satisfying for those tense moments when you don’t want to entrust the lives your digi-men to people who allowed that voice acting in the game.
More of that.
04/08/2010 at 15:38 Nick says:
So is the games industry going to go the way of hollywood now and just dig up old classics and “modernize” them, almost invariably ending up much worse than the originals thus kind of makes you wonder why bother at all?
04/08/2010 at 16:27 postx says:
I hope not
04/08/2010 at 21:08 Thants says:
Just wait until they start remaking foreign games that came out a year ago.
05/08/2010 at 03:32 TheTingler says:
Coming soon: PacMan, a first-person eat-em-up from id Software!
I’m not even going to joke about that happening to Cannon Fodder…
05/08/2010 at 09:21 Chanchan says:
It’s a bit like Rule 34, but with badly remade classics.
“If a game was great, there exists shit port or remake of it.” or a similiar variation.
05/08/2010 at 09:38 jeremypeel says:
I was wondering this a couple of days ago. And the answer seems to be yes, things are heading that way.
It does seem to lead to higher-brow games than would otherwise find their way into development anywhere near mainstream publishers today though. Easy to say when your childhood memories aren’t being ruined though.
04/08/2010 at 15:39 Cooper says:
I never did manage to get that code for Sinister Theme Park to work.
04/08/2010 at 15:48 Pardoz says:
To paraphrase somebody or other on some obscure little-read games commentary site: “Yes, it will indeed a first-person shooter – it is extraordinarily sad to wave away Syndicate’s traditional genre, but c’mon, did you really think a AAA title in 2010 (or 11, or whenever it ends up being released) was going to be an isometric strategy game?”
04/08/2010 at 16:00 Baboonanza says:
Don’t make a goddamn AAA game then!
Is the industry really so blind that they can only imagine making games that cost 50m+?
Fucking idots.
04/08/2010 at 16:04 battles_atlas says:
‘Idots’ is my new favourite word
04/08/2010 at 16:11 battles_atlas says:
The gutless herd behaviour of the games industry is a marvel to behold. I remember reading an account of the difficulty IW had in convincing Activision that moving CoD from WWII to present day wouldn’t be commercial suicide. When the suits consider that reskin to be going out on a limb, Syndicate doesn’t stand a chance.
For the next few years we’ll have to watch every goddamn game get FPSed, and only when a whole year of AAA releases flops will the industry decide a new tack is called for (the annual report will blame piracy obviously). Then we’ll have a decade of every game released being an isometric shooter to look forward to.
04/08/2010 at 16:33 plugmonkey says:
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Hasn’t StarCraft II sold a million units in a day?
Ah, well. Two of my all-time favourite PC games are being turned into console games by two of my all-time favourite developers. It could be worse, and XCOM actually looks like one of the more intriguing titles on the horizon.
04/08/2010 at 19:10 Alexander Norris says:
@Baboonanza –
I was going to laugh and nod, but then I realised you have a point – EA’s already doing stuff like EA 2D, who make Flash games. Why can’t the mega-publishers open small-budget studios that make niche games? It seems like remaking an old favourite would even be a perfect way to test the waters for that type of gameplay.
04/08/2010 at 22:57 Sonic Goo says:
I was going to mention Starcraft 2 as well. Yay for developers more powerful than the suits!
05/08/2010 at 09:45 Zogtee says:
I’ve been around since before the dinosaurs and remember what Ocean did back in the C64 days. Ocean was big then, like really big. They would routinely buy up all movie licenses and turn them into games. Initially, they actually tried to make real games, but they quickly realized that they could turn out any shit, slap a movie title on it, and then watch as the cash flowed in. And so they did. No matter what the game, they would turn it into a dull platformer. Pretty much the same platformer, but with different graphics.
I mean, why even try, when people still buy it?
04/08/2010 at 15:48 Mr Chug says:
That first trade mark includes using the name for board games, toy figurines, playing cards and whatever the hell “Hand held units for playing electronic games other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor” is (a DS/PSP port maybe?). Funnily enough, I’d say those indicate a new isometric game more than anything else, since board games and handhelds don’t lend themselves to conversion from FPSs.
04/08/2010 at 15:50 JohnArr says:
Well, that’s 50p I won’t see again.
04/08/2010 at 15:51 Spatula says:
i would wager one goat to anyones in-life currency that this game, when made, will be 3rd person, include a cover mechanic, regenerating health and a large circle in place of the crosshair….
04/08/2010 at 15:57 Jason Moyer says:
How dare developers dumb down tradition hit-scan by adding a visual representation of bullet spray.
04/08/2010 at 15:58 Jim Rossignol says:
These sound like pretty radical ideas to me. I can’t see them catching on.
04/08/2010 at 16:04 Spatula says:
indeed. i have just trademarked all of the above to ensure that these cutting edge ideas never get overused. I will also require you to be online at all times, whilst wearing a boat (that’s right) to use them.
Also, you know i’m right.
04/08/2010 at 16:14 Pardoz says:
In other news, the setting will now be New York in the late 1940s, with a thinly-disguised version of the Corleone Family being the titular “Syndicate”. The devs will announce this in an interview in which they will congratulate themselves for hewing so closely to the original game’s concept and vision.
04/08/2010 at 19:07 Luou says:
Didn’t Syndicate have regenerating health? Or was that Syndicate Wars? Infinite regenerating ammo, at least.
Anyway, here’s something neat: http://swars.vexillium.org/ A Syndicate Wars port, made without access to the source code but with clever reverse engineering.
04/08/2010 at 20:32 terry says:
@Luou: With a V3 chest, health will regenerate. Nothing new under the sun..
04/08/2010 at 20:49 apa says:
@spatula: I think the word “edge” is already trademarked.
04/08/2010 at 16:03 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Oh man FPS Syndicate sounds awesome way better than the boring original
04/08/2010 at 16:08 c-Row says:
While the original game was far from being boring, I think the run and gun mechanics of the original game would translate far better into first person than the turn-based tacticalness that was X-COM.
04/08/2010 at 16:16 groovychainsaw says:
Top trolling Mad Doc! You win the ‘under the bridge’ award for the day! :-)
As others have said, it aint gonna be isometric, but could be third person and team-based. Might not be toooo much of a departure?
04/08/2010 at 16:20 Cooper says:
Oh my god. I just remembered. The persuadertron. I need to play the game again. Now.
JOIN ME MY PRETTIES.
04/08/2010 at 16:38 Cunzy1 1 says:
Persuadertron. Uzi. Persuerdatron. Uzi. Persuadertron. Uzi. Plasma Lance.
Anyone else remember the Syndicate rap?
04/08/2010 at 16:21 Jacques says:
True Isometric graphics: Unlikely, and aside from the fact that my rig (laptop + monitor, keyboard and mouse) can’t handle much more than isometric (ok, it handles just about anything before 2007) unnecessary unless it’s Sim City 5, [side note, anyone play SC4 and like it better than SC3000?] and has a shite ton of buildings (Cities XL nearly fried my vid card, my good one in the desktop). Squad based mechanics (I never played syndicate, but from the shots can I guess that I’m close?) may reemerge from an RTS format.
Subnote: while this game may or may not have ever included turn based systems, I’m glad to see them go, turns are one of my banes in PC gaming. Given this may be due to a frustrating game of UFO Alien Invasion coupled with a half a year of obsessive Medieval 2 play where the turns were extended by the fact that every dignitary had to bow when near a city, regardless of whether they really wanted to give me something or not (and think about this, 5 major cities, with maybe 5-10 diplomats a piece) and the damned awful AI screwing me over ever so many turns. May I not be a relatively peaceful trade empire? Oh yeah, total war, well I do that sometimes too.
Subsubnote: How creepy would the captcha be if it spoke like Shodan? and human was replaced with insect?
04/08/2010 at 22:18 Levictus says:
Yeah, SC4 is way better than SC3K. Primarily due to the mod/custom models support and a much better developed transportation system.
I still enjoy playing SC2K and SC3K once in a while though, just for old times sake.
I highly doubt EA will ever make a proper SC5. It will be a facebook game or something like Simcity Societies or an FPS.
04/08/2010 at 16:24 m_s0 says:
FPS Syndicate sounds like any other futuristic shooter. I hoped these were only rumors but since they’ve secured the trademark we’re pretty much fucked. Or, to be more precise, the Syndicate franchise is.
04/08/2010 at 16:35 plugmonkey says:
It was already dead. Not much harm in letting the children play with the corpse.
04/08/2010 at 16:42 Spatula says:
POst above= post of the day :-)
04/08/2010 at 17:19 Nallen says:
It’ll be like Fallout 3. Even though the series is simply dead and buried the fact that anyone DARES to use the name and DARES to do something that doesn’t match the rose tinted memories of the diehard fans will cause the meltdown of the Internets.
That said…
they better not fuck up my Synd.
04/08/2010 at 16:35 JonSmith says:
Hmm. An FPS-Syndicate. Perhaps with good writing, if we are so blessed?
Would that not be called…Deus Ex…X?
04/08/2010 at 16:46 Tei says:
It can be done.
You need the game engine to load two levels (or one with the volume duplicated). People with the persuader chip will see on the worlds. The happy, 50′s ske one. People withouth the chip, or with the chip hacked, will see the real post-cyberpunk world. You can make so people become invisible in the fake 50′s world. Somewhat like some characters can do in Ghost in the Shell, hacking the eyes of others. Everything you see can be “hacked”, so can be a lie. You see your family dead? is a lie, the hacker has put this in your vision to terrorize you, after that, you will see your dead wife raise, take your pistol, and shot to you. Gotcha!.. while you die, the 50′s fake world will disolve in the real world, and the fake image of your wife will evolve into the hacker real self.
How multiplayer would work?
You start the game with everybody armed with 50′s ske weapons, you will fullfill objectives that will help you break the code of the chip to see the real wolrd, then finanly this will end with a single objective, if you manage to hack the central server, you will dominate (literally) the enemy faction controlling his persuader chip.
But I doubt It will be built that way.
04/08/2010 at 19:55 JB says:
I like it Tei, you should get to work on that right away. Thanks.
04/08/2010 at 16:52 Jimbo says:
Starbreeze seem to make FPSs. FPS Syndicate could be alright if they keep it open-level, give you a squad you can order around and let you persuadertron everybody on the map.
04/08/2010 at 16:53 Mr Lizard says:
I saw the headline and thought Syndicate had been syndicated by a syndicate.
04/08/2010 at 17:07 The Po-po says:
Move along. Keep moving. GET DOWN!
04/08/2010 at 17:08 LintMan says:
I predict:
Syndicate – the MMO!
05/08/2010 at 21:16 destroy.all.monsters says:
If it was like Syndicate American Missions expanded (same art style, sounds) I would be down for it. I don’t know what real changes a dev could make and still have it be seen as Syndicate. The more meta game of fighting as different factions though would be lovely.
It could be done as x many people make a corp (essentially guilds) and corp vs. corp warfare occuring in different cities – similar to EVE and the original game. Essentially a constantly shifting group of alliances and wars on the earth map.
04/08/2010 at 17:10 Bluepixie says:
As someone said earlier though, the whole point of Syndicate was that you were a highly paid executive flying above the city in a blimp. You controlled the action from afar, never actually getting your hands dirty, instead with no remorse, mowing down armed cyborgs and civilians alike. Syndicate Wars took it a bit further by adding destructible buildings (incredible at the time) and a fully rotatable camera. I’m at a loss as to why they can’t just build up a beautiful 3D engine (something like WiC or CoH) but catered towards representing a huge cyber-punk city instead. There is something incredibly endearing about playing with what is a effectively a model city with it’s monorails, traffic systems and human population then causing utter chaos and destruction.
That’s what made Syndicate great.
The only way I think that 1st person would work would be if they went down the Space Hulk route. Maybe a 3D map much like Syndicate Wars then have separate 1st-person cams to direct the action more finely when needed.
Then again, if this is going to be console title, I guess you can wave any complexity goodbye. No research, no map screen, no world domination just the relentless violence of a machine without a soul. Man I hate FPS these days.
04/08/2010 at 17:11 Unaco says:
Ha Ha! Now you feel like I did when the announced XCOM. I shall revel in and relish your torment… there is nothing you can do to save your franchise… your fond childhood memories are, as I type this, being led by the dirty old man to his soundproofed van… you won’t even hear the screams, just the slight, rhythmic noise of the rocking suspension.
Oh… wait… I loved Syndicate as well! Gah! I feel violated.
04/08/2010 at 17:14 Tei says:
The Free Candy is a LIE.
05/08/2010 at 11:41 Zogtee says:
The things I said about the Xcom travesty still holds. Why dig up an old corpse, if you’re going to do something different anyway? Most of today’s gamers wont even know of the original, so what’s the point? FS, create new IP instead.
This is rape for the sake of raping.
04/08/2010 at 17:13 Walsh says:
Cyberpunk is dead, long live Cyberpunk.
04/08/2010 at 17:13 Radiant says:
Isometry be damned.
If I don’t control things from a giant airships I’ll be livid.
Dear EA
Syndicate is not call of duty.
Actually call of duty isn’t call of duty any more.
We need airships. Dystopia. Chemical controls. Research. Guns made from a gauss.
04/08/2010 at 17:29 Bluepixie says:
Brainwashed civilian armies armed with miniguns and flamers.
04/08/2010 at 17:28 Radiant says:
They could just be making a lottery simulator.
04/08/2010 at 18:15 Hodge says:
Or indeed an RSS feed reader.
04/08/2010 at 18:55 Radiant says:
Don’t you need to subscribe to an RSS feed?
Alreadypersuadedatron.
04/08/2010 at 17:35 Will Tomas says:
I honestly don’t see the big nostalgia trip some gamers have about games being isometric. Of course Syndicate was good but I hated the isometric view games of that era had then, it was deeply unsatisfying. Surely something merely looking like the old game is nowhere near as good as something that captures the essence of the game in a modern manner? Granted, it’ll probably be shite, but still…
04/08/2010 at 17:56 Jim Rossignol says:
Well, I’d be fine with Syndicate Wars camera, or even fully free modern RTS camera. Just saying the “city from above” is the essence of what made it interesting.
04/08/2010 at 18:51 Hodge says:
Muchly agree. The only thing I’ve seen recently that really seems Syndicate-ish to me is Subversion, even though it looks like it will be almost nothing like it.
Also GTA IV. Because it’s first and foremost about the city, and then game is sort of draped around it. Syndicate did that first.
05/08/2010 at 10:24 Chris says:
@Jim, RTS camera would be great and perfectly appropriate – it’s what isometric would have been if the computing power had been available.
Pity no-one’s making RTS games any more…
- Chris.
04/08/2010 at 17:39 qx says:
You know it’s going to be a FPS on the Xbox 360 yo.
The gaming industry needs to die.
04/08/2010 at 17:43 Burningpet says:
Someone should remake syndicate in the galaxy editor.
preferably the guy that is remaking Netstorm islands at war in said editor.
04/08/2010 at 17:54 Ed says:
How timely. I only just put the Amiga version of Syndicate on my phone.
Welcome to the dawning of a new empire, indeed.
SWAT 4 + Syndicate could be good. Please make that game, EA.
Generic Linear Corridor Click On People’s Faces To Kill Them powered by Unreal Engine 3 and cover mechanics, no thanks.
04/08/2010 at 17:54 fuggles says:
Weren’t you in a dirigible in the first game? I could live with an FPS setting in a dirigible, with a command table in the centre that is an isometric RTS…
Could add some interesting pressure if you got attacked on your airship at the same time…slap on blue funk!
04/08/2010 at 18:04 Walsh says:
Can someone explain to me the appeal of this game?
I hated it. It wasn’t fun for me since it’s basically a
RTSsorry RTT with only 4 units and I recall it being notoriously hard.I believe X-Com came out closely after I tried Syndicate and made me lose any interest in it.
04/08/2010 at 18:09 Cinnamon says:
The general opinion about this from some other sites is that Starbreeze could do a good job of turning Syndicate into a decent console action game compared to less optimism for XCOM. Not sure if any of these predictions are right or wrong but I don’t really see either of them properly moving forward the gameplay of the originals. Gameplay is still more interesting than the names of the games to me.
04/08/2010 at 18:12 Ubiquitous says:
All you people who say that if it’s in first person it might still be good are only half right. In order for it to be truely awesome in the first person it MUST be from the perspective of some rich dude lounging about on his giant airship. You could go view a large screen that would show you the ground, where your little pixel people do thier thing. As in the original gameplay is maintained, but the first person is injected into the game to BUILD OFF of the original. You could direct your minions from the screen or freely roam around your ship researching, or talking, or doing other cool/syndicatey stuff.
This is the only way, do not be confused. The rest are traps…
IT’S A TRAP!
04/08/2010 at 18:19 Hodge says:
There seems to be a grand conspiracy to take all of my favouritest ever games and turn them into generic action shooters.
If this trend continues, we can expect Day Of The Tentacle: Final Justice to be announced any day now.
04/08/2010 at 18:43 Freud says:
Civilization: Revenge of the Settlers
05/08/2010 at 11:44 Zogtee says:
Delta – The Ground Wars.
05/08/2010 at 14:35 Quests says:
Eye of the beholder: sex in the city.
04/08/2010 at 18:24 PatrickSwayze says:
Something like Syndicate Wars mixed with the new Kane & Lynch, a touch of free roaming, some over powered weapons, a little poo slice and some completely emotionless cyborgs whose brain chemistry I can toy with…. YES PLZ!
But I’d prefer a tactical strategy game thankyou.
Does the success of Starcraft 2 mean developers will perhaps look at the pc as a viable platform again, and that maybe we’ll get more games catered for us PC users rather than sloppy console ports which the money men deem fit for us most of the time? I hope so.
04/08/2010 at 18:32 Jim Rossignol says:
Nope, apparently you can only be called Blizzard or Valve and still regard the PC as a valid platform. (Ooh, handbags. I am bitchy today. Sorry. Not enough tea.)
04/08/2010 at 20:26 PatrickSwayze says:
Well, it looks like somebody is going to have to make an Syndicate mod for Alien Swarm then.
I might still prefer Quake 2 and Shogo over Half-life but God bless Valve, God bless them.
04/08/2010 at 21:49 Jimbo says:
Blizzard and Valve are playing with loaded dice in the PC market. I think the circumstances under which they succeed are too exceptional to be able to hold their games up as an example for other publishers to follow. If you’re fortunate enough to own WoW & Korea, or Steam, then you can do pretty much whatever you want with the rest of your business plan.
I don’t think you should get your hopes up about Starcraft 2 changing anything. I actually think we’ve been in a tiny bit of an upswing lately, with multi-plat franchises coming back to PC, but I don’t expect PC exclusives to become a big deal again any time soon.
05/08/2010 at 09:50 plugmonkey says:
I would say that largely depends on whether SCII sold a million units on day one in Korea, or if the rest of the world was involved.
Diablo 3 is also going to sell mentally.
I don’t see any reason why a new Syndicate wouldn’t do exactly the same thing, except EA Games choose not to go down that route as they are a completely Xbox and PS3 focussed. The Sims label does PC. The Games label does consoles. It seems a bit limiting to me.
Having said that, maybe we’ll get a traditional Syndicate game, and Xbox owners will get Minority Report style Kinect controls. That would rock.
(The traditional Syndicate game, not the Kinect controls. God. That would be unplayable.)
04/08/2010 at 18:38 Freud says:
Using a Persuadertron on a civilian, then cover behind the civilian in third person and play popamole. It will be grand.
04/08/2010 at 18:41 IncredibleBulk92 says:
Is there any good way to play this game on modern PCs? I was trying just last week funnily enough and it doesn’t seem like anybody has figured out how to get it to work on Windows 7 64 bit. This makes me sad.
04/08/2010 at 19:03 Hodge says:
Did you try it in DOSBox? It works fine here, but I’m not on 64-bit Win7.
04/08/2010 at 19:31 Coins says:
DosBox works like a charm, most of the time.
04/08/2010 at 19:32 Coins says:
Arg. I shall learn to refresh before posting. I shall now bow my head in shame. :(
04/08/2010 at 18:48 John Smith says:
I know this post is about Syndicate. I loved that game.
But I just want to spazz one last time about X-Com being done in first person.
!@#!@#!#!#!@#!@#!@#!@#!
04/08/2010 at 19:01 Mo says:
You know what though, I think there might be a decent chance of the game being top-down/isometric, maintain a level of tactical decision-making AND still appeal to a mainstream audience. And I’m somewhat surprised this hasn’t occurred to anyone yet. Heck I’m surprised that it *just* occurred to me…
Make it play like an arena-shmup. You know, Geometry Wars style.
I think that would be bloody fantastic. Because when you really think about how Syndicate played, it was definitely more arcade than it was strategy. A “twin stick” direct control scheme would capture this perfectly. You’d control one unit, and the rest would follow along. But you’d also be able to issue commands like, “you two: stay, you: come with me”. And then you’d be able to switch between your characters. This makes it easy to execute group commands, but also allow you to split the team up when necessary. And I could see this working well on a gamepad and mouse/keyb.
Anyone think I’m not nuts? :P
04/08/2010 at 19:27 Hodge says:
You’re nuts :-D.
I think the thing is with both Syndicate and UFO is that both games had a really unique mix of styles that sort of made them them, if you get what I mean. And if you change that mix even slightly, they turn into something else. Civilization’s the same, which is why people are getting nervous about Civ 5 and its crazy hex grids.
I think your idea of a tactical shooter with twin stick controls is brilliant (seriously, someone should make it), but it wouldn’t be Syndicate. In the same way that Darwinia isn’t Syndicate and Cannon Fodder isn’t Syndicate, even though all of those games are almost identical in terms of gameplay.
04/08/2010 at 19:59 Mo says:
Well yeah, I agree. Changing the formula around would turn it into something else. But quite frankly, I don’t see that as a bad thing. On the one hand we complain about sequelitus, but on the other we make a huge fuss over even the smallest changes. Change is a good thing. I wouldn’t want a new Syndicate game to play like the original, but I’d love for it to capture the essence of what made it so special.
So with that in mind I’d say that the idea I outlined above captures the essence of Syndicate much more than an FPS or a TPS would.
Yeah, I think I’ll end up writing this game later this year. Too much work, not enough time right now though. :(
04/08/2010 at 22:05 Nick says:
Who is nervous about Civ 5′s hex grids? As a near lifelong Civ player I can only see them being an improvement to the tedious stacks of doom..
04/08/2010 at 19:06 Finn says:
1 -Take the SC2 editor
2 -create several different cyberpunkish towns
3 -create missions on said towns controlling units like you do in SC2
4 – ????
5 – Sell it as Syndicate: Some New Trendy Name and Profit
04/08/2010 at 19:34 Slamelov says:
You are wrong, chances are 0%.
04/08/2010 at 19:58 monkeybreadman says:
For the love of god someone just take a FUCKING CHANCE. Twats
04/08/2010 at 20:00 sinister agent says:
My gut reaction was also “aargh no!”, but. EA have been showing signs in recent years of being a lot less hateful. I am … well. I’ll keep my expectations flat, but there’s some chance that this could end up being good news.
04/08/2010 at 20:04 KilgoreTrout XL says:
My biggest gripe about syndicate was that you could walk into most of the buildings in cities, but you couldn’t see inside of them, because technology hadn’t advanced that far, I guess. Any syndicate remake 2 must allow you to see the insides of buildings and have facebook support.
I played through Ultima 8 around the same time that I was playing syndicate, and I can’t think of one w/out the other. Ick.
04/08/2010 at 22:25 PatrickSwayze says:
Syndicate… on facebook… controlling your corporation, helping some of your friends, random missions against other players not on one’s friendlist…
Sounds like the best facebook game never made.
04/08/2010 at 20:15 terry says:
“Collectable toy figures”? Has Todd MacFarlane been informed?
04/08/2010 at 20:34 PatrickSwayze says:
Maybe this Syndicate will be like The Sims 3 Medieval?
Control your own family of soul-less cybernetic killing machines!
Design the layout for their hospitals and engineering decks!
Choose from a variety of career paths for various corporations that include, murderous shock trooper, cold blooded sniper, cyber assassin!
Customise your Smagent (Sim-Agent) any way you see fit, from their eye colour to the location of the input jacks and the performance and sensory enhancing drugs they take to make them more effective killing machines!
04/08/2010 at 21:35 Navagon says:
I love Syndicate, but I wouldn’t mind seeing tactical FPS missions if the rest of the game remained the same. Well not exactly the same. I’d rather you were an actual corporation that never owned a territory outright but instead had market share. So instead of taxation you get a percentage of the sales revenue. This could also mean that some missions required stealth so as to not lower the public’s opinions of your corporation. Other missions would require maximum ‘splodey.
04/08/2010 at 22:20 ZIGS says:
Regardless of all possible concerns, this is being made by Starbreeze. That alone should be enough to quell any fears
05/08/2010 at 09:56 plugmonkey says:
It is very much like the new XCOM game. I have little doubt that the new games will be good, but I’m still slightly saddened that they will be nothing at all like the old games.
I want a new Syndicate game so much more than a great game set in the Syndicate universe. Because nobody has made anything like Syndicate since the last Syndicate. The same goes for UFO.
05/08/2010 at 00:26 Johnathan Bollock says:
I’d be happy just to play Syndicate wars in high res on a modern PC. The idea of a new game makes my swimsuit area tingle.
05/08/2010 at 17:18 TRS-80 says:
From upthread: http://swars.vexillium.org/
05/08/2010 at 01:11 hmm says:
How about a Men of War style Syndicate?
05/08/2010 at 09:10 RogB says:
on a scale of ‘potential fan upset’, i’d say fucking up a syndicate remake < fucking up an xcom remake
(is this captcha getting harder, or am I becoming more robot…)
05/08/2010 at 10:36 destroy.all.monsters says:
It seems that regardless of what Starbreeze do a Men of War mod for Syndicate must be made.
WHO WILL DO THIS? IT MUST BE DONE
05/08/2010 at 11:12 The Sombrero Kid says:
ehh I’m sorry it doesn’t matter a jot whether or not it’s isometric.
My design philosophy is that a game should be first person unless there’s a compelling reason for it not to be, i can think of compelling reasons for syndicate not to be but i can’t think of a single reason why it NEEDS to be isometric.
05/08/2010 at 15:23 Ashen says:
No offense, but your design philosophy sucks.