Seth will possess a profusion of technical skills with which to thwart the alien menace. Resisting the temptation to return to Dungeon Siege's use-skill-gain-experience mechanic, Taylor and his team have opted to create a completely new skill system for Space Siege. At your disposal will be a collection of abilities that'll provide you with bonuses, including reduced cool-down time for power shots and an increased blast radius for your grenades. It's a system that hints at a far more tactical experience than the frenetic and often mindless mouse-clicking mayhem of its fantasy predecessors.
"The other way that Seth improves is by upgrading and customizing his gear," expands Achterman. "He can find various materials in containers, or by defeating enemies, like scraps of metal, various chemicals and pieces of alien technology. He can use combinations of those materials to upgrade his weapons or armor. Upgrades to damage, armor or critical hit chance all use the same types of materials, so you'll have to choose which upgrades are most important to you."
Now for the really exciting part: bubbling beneath Space Siege's buffed surface, searing action and intergalactic conflict will be a moral vein that centers on morality and humanity. In a twist that would have an '80s perm feeling inadequate, it'll be up to you to decide whether or not you want to equip Seth with a collection of cybernetic upgrades that'll make him a more potent killer. But here's the catch.
With a Humanity meter tracking how far away you've strayed from your original soft-tissue self, you'll find that the closer you come to becoming a distant relative to RoboCop, the more estranged you'll become from other humans onboard The Armstrong.
"When you start playing, you'll think you're in a very traditional RPG where your job is to load up your character with armor and weapons, then blast your way through the game," explains Taylor. "We thought it'd be fun to bring in a moral choice question, to give the player a choice between going down the path of cybernetic upgrades and losing their humanity, or staying human. The more upgrades you install, the more your Humanity meter will go down. As you play through the game, you'll be romanced. You might find a large gun, but you can't carry it because you're not strong enough without cybernetic upgrades. You may need a powerful robotic arm, or a lung upgrade to get through a chamber because the air is too hard on human lungs. From a gameplay perspective, the game becomes easier as you lose your humanity. The downside is that the other characters in the game start alienating you. They start treating you like Frankenstein's monster."
Faced by this moral dilemma, which will feed seamlessly into the branching plot, you'll have to choose between compromising your humanity with these cybernetic implants, losing your friends and spending your evenings alone lubricating your joints with WD-40, or opting for the harder and more morally rewarding route of maintaining your humanity. The latter choice will be akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger taking on the Predator, the former like Terminator vs. Predator.
