Deep sea cyborgs

Maybe set it out so the whole incident these characters go into was a accident? Like the AI running the facility takes some from of damage and goes berserk?

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Which book are you talking about?

Not him, and I can't remember the name, but I think there's a series where deep sea vent harnessing stations are built, but it turns out that working down there drives you insane, inducing various psychological disorders. So they get a bunch of just about functional people who already have the disorders, make them cyborgs and get them to work a few miles under the ocean

Starfish by Peter Watts. Dude also wrote Blindsight, which basically is about how super-cool and broody autistic vampires are going to inherit the Earth in order to prevent non-sentinent, super-intelligent aliens from purifying the planet for health reasons.

The biggest problem with most people was the ending. Without spoiling anything, they try to set up a "twist", but it's so insanely botched it's insulting. The overarching goal of the game is pretty stupid, and you're left wondering if they're ever going to come up with a better plan (they don't).

For me what ruined it was gameplay. Horror in general is difficult to pull off, because terror relies on the feeling of helplessness, but becomes incredibly boring without rules and limitations. Moreso with games, because the player needs to know what you want from them at ALL times, without making it so regimented that they feel in control. This is where they screwed up. SOMA doesn't tell you what's happening straight out (which is fine), but the fact that they can damage you by being close or even by being looked at means that you don't usually have any opportunity to experiment. And you will have to experiment(by dying repeatedly and respawning), because the monsters differ from one another in very stupid ways. The overly simplistic puzzles become much more difficult (in a bad way) while being chased, since the game is pretty inconsistent with what you can and cannot interact with.

There's a monster on the critical path that kills you immediately and you can't escape from.
There's a monster that you can only get past by running into the room it's in and crouching in a corner and then waiting.
There's a monster that can't see you at all, and so can't harm you in any way, shape, or form.
There's a monster that you need to move past at a snails pace (again, on the critical path), otherwise you die.
There's a monster that can see you regardless of where you're hiding, but is so easy to outrun and spot that you wonder why it's even in the game.

It's very strange that the game was so ineffective at teaching players what to do and how after the masterpiece that was Amnesia.

You can read this review and others like it at my Blogspot.

Look into Warframe's Grineer, their cybernetics have a very aquatic look and can get pretty gruesome.

No, that's Blindsight/Echopraxia. Starfish is the first book in the previous series about how global warming is going to kill us all.

>also

And it's a deep sea virus pandemic that kills humanity in Starfish.

Ah, brain skipped over that part.

Slightly spooky is fine. If there's one part of SOMA that holds up, it's atmosphere.

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>the second I didn't read
You missed out. Maelstrom was the best one in the series.

Starfish is just the name of the first book. The Behemoth Trilogy is the name of the series. I'd write the beta symbol but I don't know how to make it on this keyboard.

To specify

Rifters have a device in their chest that removes air from their bodies, to prevent them from being crushed by water pressure.

There's more but i can't remember it all.

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Like this but underwater:
youtube.com/watch?v=iAcAd1fUiy8

I trust that guy in your pic. Such a friendly smile!

I'm still allowing myself to be cautiously hype for that.

>Maelstrom was the best one in the series
Are you serious? I wasn't able to power through past the the first hundred pages. I love Watts but he has a curious inability to write anything that isn't set in a closed environment and even then he's hit and miss (I'm looking at you, Echopraxia).

I liked Echopraxia.

It's also the only thing of his I've ever read.

His site has most of his short stories for free.

Don't miss out on Blindsight, probably the best hard sf of our generation. The writing is a bit too technical at times and characters kinda underdeveloped, but the ideas are well worth it.

The implants removed all the air from their bodies, lungs and guts both. Their sinuses were filled with saline. They had a lung removed to fit all this in, and in the same spot they had a little device that used electrolysis or something like that to break seawater down into pure oxygen which was then fed into the aorta to keep them from suffocating. I actually really enjoyed reading about the augments they got, they seem quite grounded. Though I don't think it's ever explained where the hydrogen from the electrolysis goes. The could see and were temperature regulated with supertech divesuits and basically night vision contacts.

Read Blindsight. It's fucking great. If you're in the mood for shorter stuff you download The Island for free. It's also great.

Anything more specific idea-wise? Like designs or motivations or what?

To try and give something, you could start off with almost normal looking diving suits, like Bioshock. But the people inside are rotting, it's just the suit left. Simple things, easy to fight.

Smaller divers that are just the upper torso. Maybe they've got fish parts (or robotic mimcs) for tails. Later on, they come back INSIDE the base, walking on their hands, monkeybar-ing from the ceiling.

>Are you serious?
Man, The Secret Life of Malware had me jizzing everywhere

>The Secret Life of Malware had me jizzing everywhere
Can't ague against that. "Lenie Clarke gets raped around the country" parts were too messy to continue reading, though.

>if you only knew what was waiting for them...
>cat picture right under it

Probably just my tired brain, but this gave me a chuckle.

Eyy.
Those effects were neato.

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A film called Virus iirc and a game called Cold Fear are both good inspirations for this. You may want to look at Eclipse Phase as well, in particular the module Continuity.

pretty much the only good part of that series, even if it was just a spiritual remake of mikadoroid.

SOMA was held back by their success with Amnesia series.

Honestly, it would have been better if they had all-but removed the chased-by-monsters bits, and had only a few, and replaced most with environmental threats, or nothing. Then they could have govern the extra attention to a story that was very interesting but needed more work to make it really shine.

Think about all the creepiest or least-comfortable parts of the game. How many of them were in any way improved by a monster? How was walking in a siltstorm on the ocean floor as the sole source of light and guidance near you threatens to be torn away any less scary because SQUIDTHING? I think it may have been scarier without, where there is nothing down there but you and the lonely little lights, and if you miss even one, it will just be you. Forever.

Go play SOMA from Frictional Games. It's pretty much that.

>There's a monster that can't see you at all, and so can't harm you in any way, shape, or form.
Which one was that?

The one that looks like a walking fishstick. The gimmick was that it could hear you if you ran, but at that point you'd know not to run around ANY of the monsters. Also, there was no reason TO run, so you just complete your little task without any sort of apprehension.

That would be great, but I still think they could've made the monsters a bit more interesting.

Think of the first enemy encounter, which I thought was brilliant. In the first sequence, you face that mechanical donkey robot DARPA is always hocking. You're put in a small arena that's open enough for you to observe donkey-robot's behavior, but closed enough that it won't be able to detect you unless you're stupid. If you get hurt, there's a very visible and easily accessible health tumor. If that's not enough, the arena is so small that even from a game over screen you can get back into place within a number of seconds. The first sequence ends when you solve a fairly simple environmental puzzle.

Second sequence is an exploration segment. There's a lot of neat worldbuilding and setup, but the most important thing is that in order to trigger the third sequence, you need to understand WHAT you want to do in the third sequence, and have a pretty good idea of HOW to do it. This is so flawlessly done (without spoiling anything) that I wish I could frame sequence 2 and put it in a museum.

Final sequence begins, you understand your objective and decide to move forward. Immediately, the main obstacle of sequence three pops into frame without the need for cutscenes or taking control of the pc. You immediately understand what your struggle is and what the stakes are because they're given to you in a visual and organic way, without letting you feel in control of the situation. You can focus on the task at hand completely, BECAUSE you have already gone through the stage and explored to your heart's content in sequence 2.

You mean this guy?

It was the monster in the first section of Theta. I don't remember it having arms.

Ah, the proxy in the server room, then. I think it responded to walking, but I pretty much croutched until I was done at which point I just sprinted out of the place.

Everyone did that. That's my point. It's stupid.

There's a mod that makes all the WAU monsters completely nonaggressive. It makes the game somewhat more enjoyable, since dealing with the monsters becomes less terrifying and more tedious and annoying. Like this guy said.

I think the Construct (the first enemy) was great. The server room Proxy was also great because of the build up ("Be quiet, the proxy listens" and fuck going down those staris". The monster inside Tau was nice too, but you left him behind really fast, so was kind of pointless.

I didn't really have any trouble enjoying the story because of the monsters. Possible exception would be Terry Akers (the proxy with arms in the science department I pic related earlier) since he could open doors while you were reading journals and shit.

See, those are good calls. All those encounters have a clear purpose, progressions, narrative, and plot. So many others felt there for the sake of there-ness.

Johan Ross scared the ever-loving shit out of me. Every time even just his name came up in the game it exuded an air of menace.