“Perhaps the oddest thing was that, for the most part, she appeared to be in fine shape – almost eerily so. The ‘Dei Gratia’ crew found no serious weather damage, no trace of a struggle, or any other sign of trouble that would have made veteran sailors abandon ship in the middle of the ocean. Stranger still, the crew had left behind foul-weather gear, personal belongings, even their pipes – things they almost certainly would have taken, or would have been wearing during a storm.
There were other things that seemed more than a little peculiar: The form of a sleeping child was imprinted in the wet mattress of one bunk, a few barrels of alcohol had broken open or leaked in the hold, and there was a decorative sword in the captain’s cabin, its blade peppered with a reddish stain. The last entry in the Mary Celeste’s logbook was an innocuous notation made ten days earlier that suggested nothing but a routine passage – and placed the ship more than 300 miles west of its current position. The men of the Dei Gratia could not imagine how the ship had traveled so far sailing under so little canvas, nor could they explain where its crew had gone or, just as confounding why. The brigantine’s captain and crew had simply vanished into the cold salt air.”
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew
By Brian Hick
There were other things that seemed more than a little peculiar: The form of a sleeping child was imprinted in the wet mattress of one bunk, a few barrels of alcohol had broken open or leaked in the hold, and there was a decorative sword in the captain’s cabin, its blade peppered with a reddish stain. The last entry in the Mary Celeste’s logbook was an innocuous notation made ten days earlier that suggested nothing but a routine passage – and placed the ship more than 300 miles west of its current position. The men of the Dei Gratia could not imagine how the ship had traveled so far sailing under so little canvas, nor could they explain where its crew had gone or, just as confounding why. The brigantine’s captain and crew had simply vanished into the cold salt air.”
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew
By Brian Hick
I’m not exactly the most brave guy when it comes to horror. I usually just skip the scary parts of movies with it and I simply don’t play horror games alone. Truth be told I just don’t like the hole “jump scare” thing (they are cheap) and I find most horror themes “forced” in one way or another. Because of all that, generally speaking I simply avoid it. For some reason though, the mere sight of an abandoned entity drifting along unopposed in silence, resting in complete loneliness, drains the heat out of my blood in ways that other horror themes don’t manage to do it. And yet - in contrast with with what I've said at the start - I still want to see more of it, and I still want to explore it and understand it. All in all I’m sure this particular combination of mystery, “horror” and possible rewards is not considered interesting just by me.
*shivers*
Not a terrible movie if you are into this sort of thing.
EvE online recently did manage to score some points in this area. From the get go you can basically fit a small fast ship and head towards the edges of the galaxy, or if you are interested enter and stay inside wormholes exploring unknown space. Inside those places you will be looking for special sites (abandoned ships, structures, etc) using scans/probes and later on hacking said structures, via a small mini-game, to get the loot (most of the times you get "normal" items, there are some other times though that you hit the motherload and just like that you are able to afford a Dreadnought – if you manage to head back home alive to sell it). And all this will be done while trying to avoid pirates, high conflict zones between player corporations fighting over sectors, traps (bubles and gate camps) laid out over the systems and NPCs of course. The more dangerous the zone you are is, the better the rewards will (most likely) be.
Still, there’s not much depth or “soul” to it. Almost all said structures look exactly the same and there’s just no “story” behind it. Also the special sites while not bad looking end up feeling.. bland because of all this. It sometimes ends up feeling that exploration there is pretty much all about the money, or maybe I just don’t like the graphics colors and/or the 360º Third-person-unlimited-zoom camera for exploration/immersion purposes.
What mysteries lies beyond?
Elite: Dangerous is offering 400 Billion stars systems.. Jezz that’s a lot of space, and we are be able to reach the corners of the galaxy by just traveling through it with no “loading screens” - just you, the cockpit and the stars. The potencial to finally do this right is here, there’s just no denial. With a number like that though it's obvious that abandoned sectors will exist but still, it would be amazing if we could fill some of that space with something else aside from the ordinary (i.e planet looks). Unfortunately so far that’s not the impression I got.
I did read the DDA about exploration and my view about it is that their vision is just too limited at this point (especially when considering what their game offers in terms of “places to go” and how we will be able to go towards said places).
“In Elite: Dangerous explorers are players who travel out into undiscovered areas of the galaxy, hoping to find previously undiscovered systems and locations. Explorers scan and record data wherever they go, and can sell that data on to various interested authorities. Explorers can also sell on data they have discovered to other players, allowing them to sell the co-ordinates of a valuable find to the highest bidder, or keep their discoveries to exploit for themselves.” http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6418
Why limit to just that? Why not allow us to discover some weird derelicts/anomalies and maybe get/steal/salvage/hack/cut/blow up some materials from it? We could maybe use our computer to steal valuable information that’s available inside said structures.
There could also be some new modules that would allow us to “hack” the structure cargo hold (same way as in EvE) or maybe we could use drones/special lazors to chew through sectors of said derelicts in order to hopefully get something interesting out it (it would also be a good idea to avoid the “fuel tank” while doing this – there could be a special scanner in the future that would give us some insight on the ship/station/whatever structure composition, allowing us to avoid critical zones and go after the most valuable ones. And other times it would not be able to get any info whatsoever. Example; you find a very old ship model that has not been seen in decades/centuries and your computer has no data on it). Or perhaps, just an alien one.
Maybe we could also assume direct control of certain abandoned structures by accessing the mainframe, or sell to an interested person the location to do so. This could be one of the ways to populate zones that were considered at first completely abandoned (or perhaps we could just rig it to explode next time someone tries to access it, te hee). Adding some of this would certain give the game the option to start increasing its overall content by putting some logistics into play, making it desirable and certainly more profitable to start doing exploration operations with a group of players, with one supporting each other in case their ship does not carry all the necessary equipment to work with what was found (Or if they want 3 Anacondas to escort them back to safe space because they just found an alien relic with probably an amazing selling potencial).
While on the subject, it would be a really nice addition if we could have a bigger interactivity with our ship systems as we are exploring/scanning by allowing us to mess around with our cockpit more while doing said actions (DCS anyone?). Small example; let’s say you choose to go with the hacking route - make it so that when the hacking starts a keyboard pops up on the ship and we have to type IRL special “codes” on the screen (So far I’ve been just throwing ideas here, no balance/real thought taken too much into account here. Leave your personal ideas bellow if you are interested.) Also while scanning stuff, some displays on the screen with general info about the system/planet/ship/station/ possible composition/minerals/gases available/heat signatures/radio chatter/general stuff like that, would certainly go long ways to help the immersion and it would definitely reduce the "boredom" while exploring by allowing us to be more involved with the ship and the game itself.
It’s over 9000.
But most important; as we are doing all this, why not have in some cases a weird audiolog pop-up while we scan and access the computer of a derelict ship? Maybe some notes giving some insight on why this abandoned station has no one alive on it? Or just some “strange” sounds while we scan a weird anomaly/structure that just popped up on the radar? Flashes on the horizon? Distress signals with high interference? Weapon sounds coming through an anomaly you just scanned? Morse code?! What I’m asking here if for you Devs to tease us more with some questions about things we may see/hear in our travels. Give us something else to seek on the galaxy aside from money and status.
“Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand”. - Neil Armstrong
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