Syndicate Reboot is real...

I, for one, think Syndicate will make an excellent FPS. I always thought it was limited by its top-down approach. I am very much looking forward to playing a cyborg unleashing hell with a minigun, massacring civilians and police in a downtown market - with my 3 coop mates at my side.

That sentence doesn't make any sense. How were you limited by the isometric view in controlling your mind-controlled agents wreaking havoc across the cities and installations? Oh yeah, I forgot, how could one ever feel "immersion" before we got first person view. I wonder if people playing text adventures were some kind of mutants with super powers called immagination. But oh my, that is sooo last generation...

--------------------------------------------

But yeah, name recognition means free advertisment. So the big publishers plunder their old IPs to increase their profits. Computer gaming has officially reached Hollywood status now. Big blockbusters made with tons of money for the lowest common denominator. At least, as in film, there's a vibrant indy scene doing other stuff besides the latest fad.

If done well (Deus Ex way) this would be an awesome game. If it is going to be just a simple FPS in futuristic setting then it will probably suck. Except playing anything with 3 friends online is fun

You're being sarcastic, but in this case that is exactly what I'm saying. In a game like syndicate, I'd much rather be standing amongst the ruins of a blown-up building, or in the crowd of people about to be butchered, than seeing it all from above. For syndicate, the top-down was limiting because all these awesome things were happening and all I saw was a few clouds of dust.

Speaking only about the graphics, I consider a fps perspective to be a 100% pure upgrade to the franchise. Now we'll see what they do with the other parts.

 I agree that if the game is made correctly, it could still be worth buying. It could still be a very similar game, just with a much lower camera. However, I hold very little hope that it won't just be another bland FPS set in a world that many of us used to enjoy, but then again I'm still bitter over the gritty FPS reboot of Front Mission to believe in most game developers anymore.

To me, Fallout 3 and Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines change into First person was a major improvement.  Shadowrun on the other hand was a terrible disappointment.  It can go either way.

To me the issue with making syndicate an FPS is that it basically cuts everything that made syndicate syndicate out of the game.  Kinda like changing Elemental into a shooter.  Could you make a good shooter in the same world? Sure.  Would it have anything at all to do with Elemental? Of course not.  Though i must say, I would love to see them try for FPS city management. Dodge the rocket, start a building.

Keep in mind, I am not comparing sydicate to elemental in terms of fun, I am just highlighting the type of issue that this sort of thing causes in my opinion.

Starhawk, the successor to Warhawk, while definitely not city management, looks extremely promising.

That's the part that doesn't make sense. Remember, the story (or probably better said, the setting since the story was very minimal) of the game was, that you were the head of a nameless Cyndicate, fighting against others for controll of the world. The units you control are brainwashed and eventually enhanced (cyborgs in the end) random people with no mind of their own. Even the intro and finishing cutscene of the game show you as the mastermind controlling those poor suckers from a zeppelin above the battlefield.

So, changing the setting (player as head of the syndicate, controlling mindless and drug enhanced cyborgs) towards:

In terms of how it looks and feels - think Crysis 2 style gun-play, but set inside Mass Effect's clean, curvy sci-fi world.

In its announcement earlier this morning, EA said its goal with the new game is "to provide a challenging action shooter for today's gamers as well as fans of the original.

What does this have anything to do with the orginal? Nothing at all. The only reason it's called Syndicate is for some free advertisment from people who played or remembered the orginal and thus it's suddenly more interesting to report about.

But of course, if the only thing you seem to care about is mindless carnage and killing, be happy, you're the modern target audience for such games. The old one was a squad based isometric tactical game, the new one is a random shooter with a slightly similar setting. If it wouldn't be called Syndicate, you wouldn't even guess that it has any connection if not told about it.

Awesome.

In my opinion, Syndicate was more shooter than tactical. That's a big reason why I think going to fps won't hurt one bit.

Ah, guess here we've got to agree to disagree. When I played Syndicate it was a top down strategic game to me. It was about being an evil mastermind and controlling my puppets to do the necessary things for world domination (like random killings and brain washing with the persuadertron). That's the style of game I like, not the personal in your face of first person shooters (I also get immediatly motion sick from them ).

The metagame in Syndicate was fun but mostly pointless. The best parts were equipping your soldiers and having quite a few missions to choose from - but not quite openworld. But the tactical part of the game, in my opinion, was a pure shooter and very little tactics were needed other than "walk, shoot, repeat". Occasionally something would require you to spread out ever so slightly, and the requirement for actually thinking up a solution was probably less than that I saw in FPS games with map puzzles like Doom.

Edit: Just to be in the clear, we don't know how many strategic options the new Syndicate will have.

True. Research was especially broken, just get some territories, set funding for research and then accelerate time. You'll eventually lose some territories but before much is lost you have everything researched and can clear all the easier places with ease.

But that's no reason for me to remove that part, improve it, balance it, don't remove it.

You forgot, press both mouse buttons to drug your agents up to max.

I'd bet you some worthless internet credits, that the metagame of the new syndicate will be minimal, it will be a story focused game and no open world at all. Yeah, I'm an eternal optimist.

In its announcement earlier this morning, EA said its goal with the new game is "to provide a challenging action shooter for today's gamers as well as fans of the original.

Typical EA.

In the good ole days, developers they were perfectly capable of making a strategic and tactical game but with plenty of action and immersive views. Hidden & Dangerous is an example, that game is basically just a WW2 version of Syndicate. You have a squad, they have a selection of gear which you can specify, it's played in a large area and you can move your squad together or split them up and make chokepoints etc, and you have an objective you have to accomplish. Replace their Springfield rifles with Gauss Guns, the trucks with hover cars, and the countryside with a Blade Runner setting and you basically have a modern remake of Syndicate with first person (and third person) views.

If it was still the 90's, I would have high hopes for something like that. But that just wont happen now. Gaming is a different animal now. They are insistent that the average modern gamer is a drooling idiot moron, and although mostly true, they sure aren't going to take it upon themselves to try to improve matters. They are happy to just exploit this situation which suits them perfectly. The Baldur's Gate era of games were deep and complex and expensive and difficult and time consuming to make, so they are glad that they don't need to make complex games like that anymore. You can replace all that with blood boobs 'n bullets and it will popular.

The modern remake will just butcher the game and take only the name and a few bits like the setting and weapon names etc. It will just be Call of Syndicate. A sterile looking city and you have a professor in a building somewhere, and your squad just runs to the building and clicks FOLLOW ME! on him, and then you rush back to the LZ while enemy syndicates attack you and you unload your weapons of mass destruction at them. Like Call of Duty but weapons that can cause gigantic explosions and destruction. The locations will all be smaller than even recent games like Stalker, the AI will be dumber than even recent games (like Stalker), and there will be no ambushes or deception or cleverness to it. It will be just in and out, guns blazing, with flashy graphics huge explosions and lots of blood. Modern gamers will think it's the most Oooorsum thing they have ever seen.

What will suck more? This, X-COM the FPS, Shadowrun, or SimCity the FPS?

I think i would buy the sim city fps... that part of me that likes lame jokes would force me to play it even it if was very painful.

Or fallout the fps?

They're doing to this game exactly what's been done to X-com. Trying to rewrite it and dry-humping the memory of the old one for as much coverage as they can get.

Syndicate, at its core, was a tactical RTS. It may be have been a poor one, but that's what the foundation of the game and I suspect the setting was built on.

Feeding us another futuristic FPS with a brand logo doesn't endear me to the project at all. At least Deus Ex was remotely close to its origins, the new fad is to strip 90% of the original game out, keeping the barest essentials of the setting and the name, and replacing everything else.

I'm not that bitter though. I saw this coming when I heard the rumors. I only mourn the fact that we won't get to know what the real Syndicate, updated and rethought for 2012, would be like.

Even the premise, from the being the controlling hand of the Syndicate to now being one of their schloobs so they can weave an "epic tale of something because Mass Effect and Deus Ex seem to do well with it."

Bleh. No thanks. I can wait for whatever this will be, to end up as a $10 title over Christmas one day.

If they do it as a FPS, and say, make it so you can pause and then jump into anyone in your squad, then it might be cool. If they limit it to controlling just one guy in a FPS futuristic world, it's gonna blow. Yet another case of them cashing in on a classic name to make another sh!tty FPS...

I reckon Arma 3 is going to make 99.9999% of other FPS's obsolete anyway. Some RTS's too.

back to modded oblivion, and FfH2 i guess

Is Syndicate that old old old top down super-vga game from like the mid-late 90s?

I can't wait for the FPS Final Fantasy Tactics.  It has to be incoming soon.

Is this going to be a sequel to Syndicate or Syndicate wars? (I only played wars)

That doesn't matter, since the "sequel" will have mostly nothing to do with both of them.

But they talk about Syndicate the orginal one, since it is better then Syndicate Wars (and also better recieved with higher critical acclaim).

Aye.