I think Sin II is a remake of Sin, this is good!

[Onden]

Considering Legion Pharma's products, timeline, and the bits about Blade's mother, what's covered on Legion Pharma is all stuff that precedes the original Sin's timeline.

If Sin II will truly be a direct sequel to the events in Sin, doesn't it seem strange that they would hype it with storyline stuff that occured before the original Sin game?

Since Sin never sold all that spectacularly do you think they could be making Sin II as a retelling of Sin's story instead of a sequel to it? (a la Doom 3)

Personally I think I'd be more excited if it was a remake instead of a sequel. Sin actually has some truly great levels and gameplay. Unfortunately, I never got to enjoy it when it first came out because it was so damn buggy, and by the time it was really stable it was eclipsed by other games (*cough* Half-Life *cough*). Only playing it now in retrospect can I appreciate what a good game it is, but of course it's not a looker anymore and some of the gameplay elements are a bit stale. However, with updated graphics and a few tweaks Sin could be an awsome game by today's standards, but I'm thinking a sequel would not be so enaging. It always seems that games (or movies) that start with a fresh story are better than those that try to continue it.

[Onden]

http://www.legionpharma.com/about.php?U4forEverybody

Type in "doom" and read that e-mail. You're basically looking at a direct pre-cursor to Sin's storyline.

The proof is adding up. I would now bet good money that Sin II is indeed a remake/retelling of Sin. w00t!

[M3rl1n]

Originally posted by Onden:
... It always seems that games (or movies) that start with a fresh story are better than those that try to continue it.

I’d hazard to say that the reason that’s the case is because the majority of the time the people responsible for creating a sequel feel that the sequel is a free ride and don’t put as much effort/love into it.

There have been games and movies that have had sequels surpass the original, or be just as good, because they put the same amount of effort into it. It wasn’t just a cash cow.

Books are a prime example of this because generally speaking the writer isn’t interested in the money, they don’t know whether the book will be widely accepted when they start out -- they’re generally doing it because writing is something they love to do, if it's a best seller that's just a bonus.

Games and movies would be no different if suits weren’t in charge the majority of the time.

But you take independent studios who are completely in charge and you get some kickass sequels -- Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Warcraft, Diablo, Command and Conquer, etc, etc.

/Edit - personally even though remakes can be good, I think in gaming they're best left to mod teams. If I'm going to buy a 60-80 dollar game I want something fresh, and I'd like to see the story continued or explained via a prequal.

[TheDarthJedi]

personally i'd be VERY annoyed if it was just a REMAKE.

I'm thinking (and hoping) that its a sequal!
i want blade to finally GET elexis!! I want it to FINISH.
closure!

if i just end up fighting mancini again.. and chasing elexis all over again, and doing the same thing.. well..

hell, i'll still be buying the game the day it hits shelves.. but i'll complain while doing it [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] hehehe

[Onden]

Well certainly if it is a remake it won't really be a direct remake, it would more than likely be a "retelling" much like Doom 3 was to the original Doom (not that Doom had all that much of a story anyway).

Really they'd only have to keep the core stroy intact of Elexis trying to take over the world by creating U4 mutants. So who knows what the details of the story could be like. In this one, maybe you will get to capture/kill/take to bed Elexis.

[ran93r]

As much as the MP would be awesome to play in a new engine if it was just a remake of the original game, better tell the publishers to hold off sending out all those copies.

[lokidoki]

it'll be cool if it was a remake which told all the aspects which led to Elexis's Rise to power, and how john blade rose to power after th downfall of the police. I think it would be cool to see a Prequel game or movie which told us what happened before Sin 1 started, and it would be cool is SiN 1 would litterally be remade (like counter-strike was remade to the Source engine not like Half-life Source).
And i would like a sequel if the story doesn't end by the ninth episode. And if it does end by than, than i would like to see a prologue. I would be sssssooooo sweet

[ertertwert]

Was it really necessary to reply to a year old thread?

[lokidoki]

yes it was.

[ertertwert]

Good to know.

[TheDarthJedi]

c'mon everybody! lets do the time warp!!

[3rdMillhouse]

Goddamn necromancers................

[Edurad2]

i've noticed it holds a lot of sin 1 features expect they shut blade up alot, anyone notice to press the tab key to talk at key moments i found that intresting, would help if i had a friggin book to tell me all features etc, never mind yeah sin1 and the men climbing down ropes to kill ya i'm happy they kept that in, but all good !!,

[Onden]

Man I wish I would have been right about this. Some of this I've said elsewhere, so forgive me if you're reading it twice, but I wanted to collect my thoughts on this.

I really like the Sin universe and Sin's story, but Sin is not a great game even accounting for time. The beginning is great, as area few of the levels in the middle. Howevr, the latter third of the game drags like heck; at some point the game ceases to be fun. I hate to see a promissing IP used in a flawed executaion.

I think a big part of Sin Episode 1's lackluster sales was due to the fact that it was a sequel to an 8 year old game that was never really popular to begin with. It's hard to get people to buy into sequels when they never played the original.

By starting fresh with a re-imagining of Sin Ritual would have had so much room to play. As said above they could have detailed the rise of U4 and Elexis, they could flesh so much more of the story out and drastically change it if they wish. There's no need to retain any semblance to the original Sin, just as Doom 3 is only tenuosly related to the older Dooms.

As is, with Sin Episodes being a sequel, they're tied to a backstory that no one knows unless they play a (now) poor game. They're limiting their playerbase and they're constricted in what they do moving forward by the previously established story.

Dangit Ritual, why couldn't you give us the Sin that we and maybe even you always wanted instead of a middling sequel to an old, flawed game?

[Raveness]

Beyond your late assessment of the original and your hugely insightful comments on Ep#1, how would you have re-imagined SiN to be a higher quality FPS experience?

EDIT: More sense to place thoughts here.

What Ritual has not shown they are capable of, at least not yet, is simultaneously creating an imaginative and original IP, with an interesting fictional universe backstory & combining it with a compelling narrative that unfolds through the game. They have done one OR the other so far, either using someone else's franchise and creating a good story, or setting up a good backdrop but giving it a trite story. I wonder how much a slap in the face they got seeing a fan create a series of machinimas that had a better telling than their game.

Until they pull off a Half-Life, Deus Ex, Thief, or System Shock level of title I don't see why anyone would expect anything more than a good action game from them.

[Onden]

Jeez, are you incapable of not being snarky? I wasn't claming to analyze every last bit of Episode 1, what warranted that "hugely insightful" rag?

Moving on...I don't think Sin's problem is one of story telling and I should not have implied that it was. Sin's weaknesses are poor level design and unengaging gameplay (in the latter part of the game).

Similarly I don't think Episode 1's story is the game's primary weakness either. Mostly its problem is a lack of variety.

In most action oriented FPSs I firmly believe story is an excuse for the gameplay. I'd be willing to bet that when an FPS has a dam level, for example, the design team's conversation was not "there's a dam in our storyline, we need a dam level" but rather "we want a dam level, how can we work that into the story line".

By re-imagining Sin's story, I meant it gives Ritual a chance to work in better, more engaging levels, get rid of the stuff that didn't work, and add a bit more variety to the game.

Ritual has show that they can do good gameplay for the duration of a game, that said gameplay was in games with licensed IPs is, I believe, coincidence.

[Raveness]

Better, more engaging levels, such as....? More variety in the game, such as....? You sound like you have some concrete ideas laying beneath your breath, I'd rather here about those than just some vague notion of improvement.

I'm not a game designer or a creative storyteller, but I can bet you the SiN team likely considering a revamp and bailed on it for reasons unknown, one of them quite possibly being a lack of overall scope to the story and how it would unfold during the gameplay. For all we know they have pulled a Robert Jordan with SiN Episodes and are making it up as they go along.

If you have an outline or some modular level chart feel free to share it here. Heck this forum aint getting any more active with us just shaking Ritual's head and hearing the loose change jingle inside

[BishopGantry]

Originally Posted by Onden

Man I wish I would have been right about this. Some of this I've said elsewhere, so forgive me if you're reading it twice, but I wanted to collect my thoughts on this.

I really like the Sin universe and Sin's story, but Sin is not a great game even accounting for time. The beginning is great, as area few of the levels in the middle. Howevr, the latter third of the game drags like heck; at some point the game ceases to be fun. I hate to see a promissing IP used in a flawed executaion.

I think a big part of Sin Episode 1's lackluster sales was due to the fact that it was a sequel to an 8 year old game that was never really popular to begin with. It's hard to get people to buy into sequels when they never played the original.

By starting fresh with a re-imagining of Sin Ritual would have had so much room to play. As said above they could have detailed the rise of U4 and Elexis, they could flesh so much more of the story out and drastically change it if they wish. There's no need to retain any semblance to the original Sin, just as Doom 3 is only tenuosly related to the older Dooms.

As is, with Sin Episodes being a sequel, they're tied to a backstory that no one knows unless they play a (now) poor game. They're limiting their playerbase and they're constricted in what they do moving forward by the previously established story.

Dangit Ritual, why couldn't you give us the Sin that we and maybe even you always wanted instead of a middling sequel to an old, flawed game?

You wish you where right about what?

I dont really see that since you are willing to compromise the entire story, consistency and background of Sin, I dont see how you could like Sin's storytelling since you want it reimagined from scratch only keeping vague refferences to Sin, Blade, Elexis and U4, your better of with an entierly new game not based on Sinverse...

Getting 2/3's of a game right isnt to shabby, most games today cant even achive 1/3 right.

SinE has no multiplayer, only has 4 weapons, risky episodic content and had to go up against the highly anticipated HL2 Episode1 wich was released roughly on the same time as SinE was, and Valve could and did hype HL2 Ep1 over Steam and could do so better than Ritual could.

And if they are not going to keep anything and reimagine Sin, they might aswell abandon Sin and make an entierly diffrent game not named Sin? Quite puzzling reasoning Id say. It would simply no longer be Sin.
Doom3, ID could have simply called Gloom, Broom, Room or whatever.

Ritual could add in snippets of background stories and they would have a perfect medium to distribute it JC and Blade bantering, that if Blade would stop taking speech classes from Gordon Freeman that is.

Id say "No multiplayer" has a greater effect on limiting the playerbase over following a previosly already established storyline that can easily be retold using JC's and Blade's friendship. If anything Ritual should have used more elements and content from original Sin...

To me it sounds like you want a game that isnt Sin and thusly wouldnt need to be named Sin at all.

Its discouraging to see so much missing from SinE that made original Sin stand out so much as it did and still does and that the games deviate so much in apperance and gameplay...

[NodroG]

Originally Posted by Raveness

I wonder how much a slap in the face they got seeing a fan create a series of machinimas that had a better telling than their game.

Did someone do a Machinima for SiN? Got a link to it? Or are you suggesting someone should...

[Onden]

Originally Posted by BishopGantry

You wish you where right about what?

This thread was started over a year ago when I guessed (incorrectly) that Sin 2 (as we knew it at the time) was going to be a remake of Sin. This was based on the fact that the info on LegionPharma predated Sin rather than taking place after it.

I dont really see that since you are willing to compromise the entire story, consistency and background of Sin, I dont see how you could like Sin's storytelling since you want it reimagined from scratch only keeping vague refferences to Sin, Blade, Elexis and U4, your better of with an entierly new game not based on Sinverse...

Except that never said I didn't like Sin's story telling. I said I didn't like the execution; I didn't like the level design and the tedious combat later in the game. A remake would provide Ritual the ability to flesh out and experiment with the story if they wanted to. They could also certainly keep it as is, but I'm sure there is some room for tweaking.

Also, when did I say anything about only "vague" references to Blade, et al? Forgive me, but it seems like you're fabricating statements just to be contrary.

And if they are not going to keep anything and reimagine Sin, they might aswell abandon Sin and make an entierly diffrent game not named Sin? Quite puzzling reasoning Id say. It would simply no longer be Sin.
Doom3, ID could have simply called Gloom, Broom, Room or whatever.

Reimagining doesn't mean scrapping everything, it means keeping the basic story about Elexis wanting to "evolve" man via the drug U4 and Blade fighing her, but anything else inbetween is just detail that can be changed without signifcantly altering the IP. Peter Jackson's King Kong is still King Kong despite it's differences from the previous films.

I mean you mention Doom 3, well when it comes right down to it Doom 3 is pretty darn different from Doom in the details isn't it? Yet it still qualifies quite well as a reimagining of Doom doesn't it?

To suggest that changing a couple details of plot would completely invalidate the IP is ridiculous.