Why has no one made a survival horror game set in post Judgement Day Terminator?

sXeth

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I think the key point is "survival" horror.

You don't win by surviving a Terminator. It will just keep coming after you until destroyed, even through time itself. As a few people have said, fighting back is inherent within the premise of the franchise.

Sure you could write a scenario where you get shot down in a city, and have to escape with intel to John Connor on Skynet, and have to get out of the patrolled zone and whatall, but it'd lack the personal horror touch of the machine being specifically after you as a target.

There's an atmosphere of terror in the idea of being entrapped in a war zone, but it doesn't have quite the bend to it to make a horror premise out of.
 

mad825

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Because in post Judgement Day in Terminator is like WW1. Causality rates are extremely high and you aren't expected to live
 

infohippie

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LeathermanKick25 said:
How many games these days are 20+ hours? Aside from your RPG's and some open world titles. You're lucking if you're going to get that amount of playtime. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it is the norm these days.
Most of the games I play are. Usually they involve some open world aspect. Kerbal Space Program, Far Cry series, Cities Skylines, etc. I don't play basic console style action games.
 

Darks63

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mad825 said:
Because in post Judgement Day in Terminator is like WW1. Causality rates are extremely high and you aren't expected to live
I cant imagine that humanity can sustain death rates like that in the terminator universe. i always saw it as more of a Urban guerrilla war like Stalingrad.
 

Sheen Lantern

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Chester Rabbit said:
Because...that wouldn't be very scary. The war we see in the first two Terminator movies isn't really an environment fit for a horror. It's loud, bombastic, and terrible. Not quiet enough to have any kind of tense atmosphere that would invite any kind of horror experiences involving avoiding Terminators and all the other machines.
Remind me never to hire you to make my game. Have some imagination would you? It doesn't have to be set on the battlefield.
 

Chester Rabbit

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Sheen Lantern said:
Chester Rabbit said:
Because...that wouldn't be very scary. The war we see in the first two Terminator movies isn't really an environment fit for a horror. It's loud, bombastic, and terrible. Not quiet enough to have any kind of tense atmosphere that would invite any kind of horror experiences involving avoiding Terminators and all the other machines.
Remind me never to hire you to make my game. Have some imagination would you? It doesn't have to be set on the battlefield.
Okay...Then tell me. How would you make a full survival horror game out of the war against the machines? I could see how certain parts of it could incorporate horror elements but not be built around being an entire survival horror game. Again that's not what that world was about. Don't lash out at me about "lacking an imagination" unless you are going to counter what I say with some ideas of how it would actually work. Others in this thread have made the same point as me and have explained it much better.

PS: I don't think I would want to design a game with you. With that retort of yours you come off as a total Molyneux. No time for logic and practicality, just dreaming.
 

mad825

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Darks63 said:
mad825 said:
Because in post Judgement Day in Terminator is like WW1. Causality rates are extremely high and you aren't expected to live
I cant imagine that humanity can sustain death rates like that in the terminator universe. i always saw it as more of a Urban guerrilla war like Stalingrad.
Guerrilla warfare makes sense when your enemy needs to eat,drink sleep and needs to be armed. The terminators are inhuman and the weapons they wield is made at the factory. That said, you cannot capture key strategic points with Guerrilla warfare....It's also meant to somewhat stealthy, not really possible when you're firing lasers and there's heavy enemy ground and air support.

If my memory serves me well, about 1-2 billion survived Judgement day.
 

Sheen Lantern

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Chester Rabbit said:
Don't lash out at me about "lacking an imagination" unless you are going to counter what I say with some ideas of how it would actually work.
Uh, okay. Just off the top of my head; you're a soldier fighting in the war against the machines, you get separated from the rest of your battalion. You have to maneuver through a series of environments in order to regroup with your squad, all the while with a T-600 following you, and you have to avoid it Amnesia/Alien Isolation style.



You can tell it's near by its glowing red eyes piercing through the darkness, and the interminable sound of its metallic joints scrapping together. Couple that with the uncanny valley rubber skin, tell me that wouldn't be scary.

You can disable it with weapons like plasma grenades, but only temporarily, you wouldn't have any means of actually permanently defeating it. Maybe the climax could be like the ending fight of Salvation, where you use a series of scripted events like the molten steel to progressively weaken it until it's able to be destroyed.

Others in this thread have made the same point as me and have explained it much better.
Uh, no there aren't. There are others who don't think the game would work but nobody's saying it's because the setting's too "loud".

you come off as a total Molyneux. No time for logic and practicality, just dreaming.
You're right, I must be living in some deluded fantasy world if I think that a game that involves desperately fleeing from a remorseless, unstoppable, yet eerily humanoid metallic killing machine could possibly be scary.

Once again, remind me never to hire you to make a game, god damn, you probably think tic-tac-toe is a bit risque. Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness would never have seen the light of day if you had anything to say about it. You probably would have shot them down at the developmental stage, calling Team Silent and Silicon Knights a bunch of "illogical, impractical dreamers".
 

Chester Rabbit

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Sheen Lantern said:
Chester Rabbit said:
Don't lash out at me about "lacking an imagination" unless you are going to counter what I say with some ideas of how it would actually work.
Uh, okay. Just off the top of my head; you're a soldier fighting in the war against the machines, you get separated from the rest of your battalion. You have to maneuver through a series of environments in order to regroup with your squad, all the while with a T-600 following you, and you have to avoid it Amnesia/Alien Isolation style.



You can tell it's near by its glowing red eyes piercing through the darkness, and the interminable sound of its metallic joints scrapping together. Couple that with the uncanny valley rubber skin, tell me that wouldn't be scary.

You can disable it with weapons like plasma grenades, but only temporarily, you wouldn't have any means of actually permanently defeating it. Maybe the climax could be like the ending fight of Salvation, where you use a series of scripted events like the molten steel to progressively weaken it until it's able to be destroyed.

Others in this thread have made the same point as me and have explained it much better.
Uh, no there aren't. There are others who don't think the game would work but nobody's saying it's because the setting's too "loud".

you come off as a total Molyneux. No time for logic and practicality, just dreaming.
You're right, I must be living in some deluded fantasy world if I think that a game that involves desperately fleeing from a remorseless, unstoppable, yet eerily humanoid metallic killing machine could possibly be scary.

Once again, remind me never to hire you to make a game, god damn, you probably think tic-tac-toe is a bit risque. Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness would never have seen the light of day if you had anything to say about it. You probably would have shot them down at the developmental stage, calling Team Silent and Silicon Knights a bunch of "illogical, impractical dreamers".
See here's the thing you're just not getting and for some reason only arguing with me over meanwhile many others in here are saying exactly what I am.

Do you really think you could take that concept and span it out over an entire game in the post judgment day world?

If so then please let me remind you of what this world is like.
Chaos, constant and utter chaos.

I could see what you are talking about working in small bursts to interrupt the action, with this Terminator functioning something like The Nemesis from RE3. But I do not think you could make an entire game out of this premise in this world. It does not lend itself to it.

I don't know why out of everyone in here you decided to take issue with my post. And then felt it necessary to insult me.
 

Cowabungaa

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Chester Rabbit said:
Chaos, constant and utter chaos.
The thing is that this implies that the entire Terminator universe is like that. And I don't think that. The majority of humanity is already killed off, there'd be a lot of quieter, abandoned areas. And we can have such a game set in such an area, expand on the Terminator lore. The world is bigger than downtown LA as we see it in the opening battle.

More than one movie-based game has taken that creative approach, and I believe that that actually has a higher chance of producing a good game than just copying what we see on the big screen to the videogame medium.
 

gigastar

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I suspect its because it loses the horror novelty when you can clearly see and understand just what it is youre dealing with.

I could get behind a management/tactics game in such a setting, but a horror game seems unlikely to pan out.
 

Scarim Coral

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Have you not seen this year E3 trailer Hroizon Zero Dawn?

Well ok it's not the same decription as the OP stated (some time has passed to the point that human have became tribal like and it's machine like animals were're dealing with and not humanoid killing machine).

Even then teh first game in the OP description I can think of is the Contra series especially when one of the bosses resemble the T-600 (again yes I know it isn't the same description the OP mention seeing how in Contra you were an badass comando against an entire army).
 

Cowabungaa

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gigastar said:
I suspect its because it loses the horror novelty when you can clearly see and understand just what it is youre dealing with.

I could get behind a management/tactics game in such a setting, but a horror game seems unlikely to pan out.
Alien: Isolation largely worked despite of that though, as do games like Bloodborne. The known can be even more frightening than the unknown.
 

Areloch

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I think the big problem is, is that the entire point of the future war setting is that it's an actual war.

Sheen Lantern said:
Chester Rabbit said:
Don't lash out at me about "lacking an imagination" unless you are going to counter what I say with some ideas of how it would actually work.
Uh, okay. Just off the top of my head; you're a soldier fighting in the war against the machines, you get separated from the rest of your battalion. You have to maneuver through a series of environments in order to regroup with your squad, all the while with a T-600 following you, and you have to avoid it Amnesia/Alien Isolation style.



You can tell it's near by its glowing red eyes piercing through the darkness, and the interminable sound of its metallic joints scrapping together. Couple that with the uncanny valley rubber skin, tell me that wouldn't be scary.

You can disable it with weapons like plasma grenades, but only temporarily, you wouldn't have any means of actually permanently defeating it. Maybe the climax could be like the ending fight of Salvation, where you use a series of scripted events like the molten steel to progressively weaken it until it's able to be destroyed.

Others in this thread have made the same point as me and have explained it much better.
Uh, no there aren't. There are others who don't think the game would work but nobody's saying it's because the setting's too "loud".

you come off as a total Molyneux. No time for logic and practicality, just dreaming.
You're right, I must be living in some deluded fantasy world if I think that a game that involves desperately fleeing from a remorseless, unstoppable, yet eerily humanoid metallic killing machine could possibly be scary.

Once again, remind me never to hire you to make a game, god damn, you probably think tic-tac-toe is a bit risque. Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness would never have seen the light of day if you had anything to say about it. You probably would have shot them down at the developmental stage, calling Team Silent and Silicon Knights a bunch of "illogical, impractical dreamers".
This is probably the closest we can get to a traditional horror setting, though it does strike me as weird why you'd be 1 vs 1 on a terminator. Seems like it could just call in backup and you'd be boned?

When reading the topic, the first thing that popped into my head would be something like STALKER. Heavy-ambiance, plenty of fighting and action, but also periods where it's just you going through worn down, dilapidated, destroyed buildings and towns as the remnants of the normal human world that was there before.

That setup would probably jive better with the future war setting, as you'd have your big fights when large groups of humans and skynet forces collide, and also isolated survival situations trying to find supplies or exploring. In this setup, the slightly more free-form nature could yield an interesting twist to the horror Sheen mentioned above.

Imagine you're working your way through an old industrial facility when, horror of horrors, you encounter a T-600. You lack heavy ordinance, so the best you can do is inconvenience or distract it with the gear your packing.

However, you also know that if you make TOO big of a ruckus, additional forces could be drawn to the area - human or skynet - but it's a gamble either way.

The safest bet would be to try and wave your way through the facility with as little contact with the T-600 as possible, but you may not have that choice, and in the worst case, it calls for backup and dozens of other skynet units converge on you.

That combination of localized and globalized fear of what you may have to fight could be a pretty compelling hook for the "low" sections of gameplay, while still not dropping the "high" combat aspects that the future war seems rife with.
 

Sheen Lantern

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Chester Rabbit said:
Do you really think you could take that concept and span it out over an entire game in the post judgment day world?
Uh, yes? Why couldn't you?


Chaos, constant and utter chaos
No shit. Those scenes are all depicting the front lines of the battlefield. It' not like there aren't any quiet and subtle environments in the Terminator universe, what about the scene where Reese returns to the resistance base to look at the picture of Sarah Connor?
 

w00tage

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Sheen Lantern said:
Chester Rabbit said:
Do you really think you could take that concept and span it out over an entire game in the post judgment day world?
Uh, yes? Why couldn't you?


Chaos, constant and utter chaos
No shit. Those scenes are all depicting the front lines of the battlefield. It' not like there aren't any quiet and subtle environments in the Terminator universe, what about the scene where Reese returns to the resistance base to look at the picture of Sarah Connor?
Not to jump in on your discussion, but I have to say that was my thought too. The flashback(forward?) scenes of chaos and destruction work better as high (low?) points in the lives of the survivors, which of course are the first things to come to memory.

Also for depth of gameplay, human beings need a lot of life support just to live. An attack is incredibly disruptive to the logistics of survival. It would force everyone to move to a new hideout, which then means you have to reestablish all of the survival logistics and also scout for another backup hideout. So there's plenty of strategic and logistic gameplay going on in between the fighting, and a lot of tension involved in that.

Suppose you had to ensure that if you were spotted while scouting for food or water for your group, you led the machines away from your group's area of operations for the sake of their survival? Stealth gameplay becomes paramount in the field then, as does knowing how to either lose your pursuers once you have led them away or destroy them before you head back. Strategic and tactical gameplay would also be involved in that second option, as you might have established routes just for the purpose of decoying the machines away and traps or ambush points for destroying them.

I can see a lot of good, fun gameplay in that environment. I do love me some post-apocalyptic civilization rebuilding, so I am biased toward the environment, but it does seem like you've got a full package of gameplay options there.

But as regards the OP, there's exactly one reason there - licensing and the fees the owners want. These people hire Arnold Schwartzenegger for sequels. They are not interested in any projects which do not have large dollar signs attached, especially ones which may stray from their creative control (this is huge to them, it impacts the movies they may try to sell in the future. See Disney's revocation of decades worth of Star Wars stories in order to establish the canon they would write to.)