: I'd imagine that they would use something like System Shock 2. That's such a
: great game, more of an RPG survival-horror that happens to be first-person
: (whereas Marathon is more of a purebred FPS with a great plot.)
: Anyway, in SS2 the "terminals" are logs left by dead crewmembers
: that you find on discs. The best ones are found on corpses in locked
: rooms, and usually end with "But they can't get me in here. Someone
: please help me. What was that." But you can just as easily find these
: discs lying anywhere, in drawers, on desks or shelves, or even on the
: floor in the middle of a hallway (dropped by running crewmembers) and they
: can have anything on them (for example, personnel reports, equipment
: manifests, diary entries) and it all builds up the plot.
: These discs are done really well. To read them you have to bring up your
: inventory (which occupies the top 1/3rd of the screen) and access your PDA
: (which occupies the left 1/3rd) so you can still see the world, and
: monsters are still spawning and stalking you, but you can see them coming.
: So like in reality, whipping out your PDA and listening to and reading
: these discs as you are running down an unexplored hallway is a bad idea.
: Better to do that in a room with one door, with a couple friendly blaster
: turrets pointed at the door. If you want to listen to the audio-only, you
: can press the U key to play any recently acquired discs. If a group
: pipe-wielding alien-human hybrids jumps out and attacks you, the log will
: drone on as you fight for your life. It makes the game feel so surreal.
: The characters' voices read the text very well, and they did a good job of
: relating the text to their voices. Static is represented by random strings
: of numbers, symbols, and letters. Major breaks happen in the text, and are
: represented by the annoying shipboard AI chiming in with "System
: Error, Please Re-record Log." or something similar, and equally
: annoying (as you scream "NO, TELL ME THE DAMN ACCESS CODE. NOOOOOO.
: YOU GODDAMN AI, I'LL KILL YOU DEAD.")
: I always imagined the terminals in Marathon to be like the SS2 logs.
Reminds me of Doom 3. I left a long audio log on while walking, and got in a big fight white the guy was just talking randomly.
