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Do you think Dual Universe is good sci-fi?


aliensalmon

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Just wondering what you guys think.

 

To get the ball rolling, I've decided to post something that I've posted on other forums (about movies and games):

 

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I heard from a comment of a video on this subject recently that a proper sci-fi doesn't simply use futuristic settings and technology as a backdrop, but asks about the implications of such settings or technology (e.g. Both the Terminator and Matrix series explore the consequences of creating super-smart AI.)

 

Of course there's not much of a story in Dual Universe, so perhaps the lore isn't compelling as an actual story in a movie or game. So the futuristic stuff is just a backdrop in this game. Perhaps the game isn't really an example of good sci-fi.... 

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DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.

 

For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.

 

And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.

 

Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

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8 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.

 

For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.

 

And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.

 

Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

 

Ah you raise good points. Thanks for the answer!

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I have given this question way more time than it is worth.  In my mind it boils down to the lore being overly generic to the point it barely qualifies as a garnish on a side of mash potatoes instead of the steak of a good RPG.  Dying world, random company name sends cryostasis colony ship(s), FTUE, grind, grind, grind.

 

There is such a small amount of lore that once you watch the cinematic you've covered all the lore.  Generic end of world, generic you are here now and.... go.

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It's lousy scifi. Largely because its acquaintance with science is no better than nodding, and its fiction is no more original or thought-provoking than Mills and Boon.

 

It's not even, really "Space Opera", for me; that genre generally has some sweeping grandeur to it which DU doesn't even begin to approach.

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2 hours ago, Wyndle said:

I have given this question way more time than it is worth.  In my mind it boils down to the lore being overly generic to the point it barely qualifies as a garnish on a side of mash potatoes instead of the steak of a good RPG.  Dying world, random company name sends cryostasis colony ship(s), FTUE, grind, grind, grind.

 

There is such a small amount of lore that once you watch the cinematic you've covered all the lore.  Generic end of world, generic you are here now and.... go.

Looked like they were going somewhere interesting with that shipwreck video (in 2020 iirc) but nothong since

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Do you think Dual Universe is good sci-fi?

 

Hell no! It's a pure and bland sandbox, it has the potential for us to tell good stories. But the DU setting itself is virtually not existent, at the start of beta there was some hint of something more during events, but that was quickly squashed when the previous CEO left...

 

DU is the equivalent of mom getting a big box of LEGO, yelling "VROOM! This is a spaceship!" turning the box over in the middle of the living room. "You just crashed on a new planet, you need to rebuild!"... "I'll check back on you when you're 18 and I can kick you out of the house."... 😉

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From scientific to DU, only the setting. No more.
I would call this genre - fiction for ignoramuses.
Only the maximum speed limit, depending on the mass, is worth something. In what science can you find it?
And there are plenty of other things that ignore the basic laws of physics. Not new undiscovered technologies (such as packaging of matter), but ignoring the basic science that exists now.
This is more and more like some kind of [filtered]ing fantasy with a damn shitty plot (more precisely, with its absence).

I agree that with JC there were many times more logic and connectivity. Since then, the game has turned into some kind of Frankenstein.

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2 hours ago, ColonkinYT said:

Not new undiscovered technologies (such as packaging of matter), but ignoring the basic science that exists now.
This is more and more like some kind of [filtered]ing fantasy with a damn shitty plot (more precisely, with its absence).

No offense, but how much old sci-fi just completely ignored science as it was known then? And the line between sci-fi and fantasy has always been very blurred, even 'hard' sci-fi often ignored a lot of science in favor of story. And that's not a big issue imho. It all depends on suspension of disbelief and the consumers willingness to do that. But some things require a lot more suspension then others, the NQnian physics require a rewiring of reality... 😉

 

I honestly don't care much about the NQnian physics, as long as they stay internally consistent, but as NQ is running an eternal Alpha game, they keep changing stuff around, often quite drastically. And even then, due to it's buggy state, it's internal logic is not applied consistently... Is this a floor? Nope, not today? Must be something to do with the alignments of the moons and the butterflies being in heat....

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SCIFI / Science fiction is not about Science or physics as we know it. Trying to follow Science or physics creates simulator, not a game.

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Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity.

Source: Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

 

To answer the question:

I feel DU game designers have got it all terrible wrong.

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6 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

DU setting is kinda dystopian nonsense.

 

Starting from fact, that while its all posed as players doing their own thing and choices, building civilization (hahah) -- in reality everyone slaving for omnipotent AI.

Yes the lore makes no sense. We are humanities last hope sent to rebuild a dying civilization. But on arrival we are just giving some basic tools to survive and let lose to run around like a flock of hens. And when NQ introduced tax they pretty much gave up completely on following the lore. The last thing you do when trying to rebuild a civilization, is to tax everyone to death.

 

And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?

 

And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

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First, the premise is somewhat nonsensical. Yes, wandering rouge neutron stars are a thing, but it isn't like they are close.

 

Nor would they really "collide" with Earth...Earth would be doomed long, long before a "collision" (which would happen because Earth would be drawn toward the star's immense gravity, not because the star would "collide" with the planet). 

 

The chances are infinitesimal to the point of disbelief when they could have easily picked a comet or asteroid. 

 

Roughly, the chances of such an event happening within a one million year period are around 1 in 48 million. That's just for the star to get as close as Neptune...the chance that any star (never mind a rare neutron star) actually impact the planet are vanishingly small.

 

It's about more than the premise of why people decided to flee Earth, though, it's also about the libertarian hell that follows.

 

There is no government, no law, no lore of any kind about the sort of people that survived...I get that they wanted to make a sandbox where players would craft their own stories, but it would help a lot if NQ created a compelling setting! There is no setting, really, other than some silliness about aliens leaving their crap around. 

 

It's not "good sci-fi" because there is no real theme to the game in general. If there is a "theme", it's an ironic one they didn't intend...the futility of trust? The nature of how civilization forms not because we crave order, but because we need each other to survive?

 

In a future world where every human apparently has a catheterized space suit that recycles their waste and keeps them in some unholy state of eternal life where survival doesn't matter...there can be no civilization.

 

So...technology taking to its ultimate extreme would eventually destroy civilization as we know it because self-sufficiency through advanced tech destroys our dependence on each other? 

 

Not sure that's the theme they intended...but I guess it sort of fits with how DU works...? 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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4 hours ago, Cergorach said:

No offense, but how much old sci-fi just completely ignored science as it was known then? And the line between sci-fi and fantasy has always been very blurred, even 'hard' sci-fi often ignored a lot of science in favor of story. And that's not a big issue imho. It all depends on suspension of disbelief and the consumers willingness to do that. But some things require a lot more suspension then others, the NQnian physics require a rewiring of reality... 😉

 

I honestly don't care much about the NQnian physics, as long as they stay internally consistent, but as NQ is running an eternal Alpha game, they keep changing stuff around, often quite drastically. And even then, due to it's buggy state, it's internal logic is not applied consistently... Is this a floor? Nope, not today? Must be something to do with the alignments of the moons and the butterflies being in heat....

There is a huge distinction between fudging the science for the sake of art (B movie breaking of science was typically a plot device for cheap popcorn flicks and/or lazy writers) and calling attention to the science for something but being inconsistent everywhere else that would apply.  

4 hours ago, kulkija said:

SCIFI / Science fiction is not about Science or physics as we know it. Trying to follow Science or physics creates simulator, not a game.

Source: Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

 

To answer the question:

I feel DU game designers have got it all terrible wrong.

There isn't enough consistency in what little lore there is to call it Science.  At best DU could be considered a post apocalyptical simulation with science-sounding elements.

4 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Yes the lore makes no sense. We are humanities last hope sent to rebuild a dying civilization. But on arrival we are just giving some basic tools to survive and let lose to run around like a flock of hens. And when NQ introduced tax they pretty much gave up completely on following the lore. The last thing you do when trying to rebuild a civilization, is to tax everyone to death.

 

And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?

 

And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

For a 'humanity's new start' with 'no rules,' there sure are a lot of central planning rules followed by chaotic reprisal for trying to distance from or overcome the repressive system.

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DU's lore biggest issue IMO is that it is secondary to the necessities of development. NQ has been ever tightening the belt since alpha ended and every cheap & fast solution they had to find to keep their game alive and going could not be bothered with such trivialities.

The lore started kinda all right but then, game mechanics took priority over the sci-fi flair and consistency, and "Aphelia"'s so very convenient hold grew stronger over trade, land owning, warfare...

 

We thought we had real events going on (artifacts, Lamarr...) because Beta was "the real deal" until it was not anymore and all of it was scrapped as another simulated dream.

 

We were supposed to build civilization from the ground up but FTUE said no so we got markets and institutes on planets and moons on day one.

One can only hope NQ will devote some time and money to collect and glue the pieces together and not leave us with "It works better that way" as our only comfort, looking at you NQ-Ripley...

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16 hours ago, Cergorach said:

No offense, but how much old sci-fi just completely ignored science as it was known then? And the line between sci-fi and fantasy has always been very blurred, even 'hard' sci-fi often ignored a lot of science in favor of story. And that's not a big issue imho. It all depends on suspension of disbelief and the consumers willingness to do that. But some things require a lot more suspension then others, the NQnian physics require a rewiring of reality... 😉

 

I honestly don't care much about the NQnian physics, as long as they stay internally consistent, but as NQ is running an eternal Alpha game, they keep changing stuff around, often quite drastically. And even then, due to it's buggy state, it's internal logic is not applied consistently... Is this a floor? Nope, not today? Must be something to do with the alignments of the moons and the butterflies being in heat....

Science fiction differs from just fantastic nonsense in that it does not ignore the existing physics, mathematics and other sciences. It adds what is missing, what is not yet there (not invented, not seen, not developed technology).

Relatively speaking, there are liquid engines with N thrust. And for the interest of the plot, engines with a thrust of 10N, 100N, 1000N are needed. And in science fiction, this is more or less justified (often authors use existing hypotheses that have not yet been proven, etc. Which, by the way, are strictly scientific (but may be erroneous. A vivid example is the film Interstellar. None of us have seen a black hole. But at the same time, it view, effects of time and gravity are based on scientific hypotheses.)). It does not ignore existing science.

 

What we see in places in DU suggests that this supposedly "science" fiction was written by the humanities. Which of science only learned to subtract and divide (budgets). Because in some places the fundamental foundations of the universe are being violated (by the way, we still don’t know why exactly this is the case with us. We just see how it works).

 

I already wrote about speed. Now let's talk about transmutation. Nobody is embarrassed by the fact that the weight of some things increases many times compared to the original substances? How is that in general? According to what everyday experience did we take 2 liters of plastic and get 2 liters of gold (we don’t take the chemistry of catalysis - there, purely theoretically, if you do not take into account energy consumption, you could get substances, but the mass of the starting substances can be more and not less). What is the weight gain due to? from what kind of black hole did something that doesn't exist fall out and add matter? And so periodically everywhere such inconsistencies.

 

If we turn a blind eye to them, then let's replace the engines with horses, wings with carts, spacesuits with armor, and we will go into space on horse-drawn carts. After all, in fact, with such a quality of study, little will change.

 

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not good at all.

 

like others pointed before me, the difference between fantasy and science fiction is that fantasy, as genre, is for the most part, free of any constrains ; with author pretty much free to think up whatever plot device he deems necessarity to support the narrative, be it a telekinetic priest, flying elephant or whistling shrimp, it's all a fair game.

By comparison science fiction, by definition strives to interpolate possible future events, technologies and context based on current knowledge and trends; even if it is acceptable to do so  with ample dose imagination.  In this respect science fiction is very much in line with futurism.

 

Dual Universe, is very inconsistent and arbitrary its tech. There really no coherent vision of anything. Even on visual side, ( while there should definately be some flash and flair to make things look great) it can't even get the basic engine shape or plumes to resemble anything that makes remote sense. 

 

DU has this short tired ol , we trashed the planet so we got on the ship to find a new one.  there's really no world building there, no real back story, and quite frankly no context or backstory to build any story on,  science fiction or otherwise.   For all means and purposes DU is just about being a tech demo, very interesting one, but just a demo

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6 hours ago, ColonkinYT said:

What we see in places in DU suggests that this supposedly "science" fiction was written by the humanities.

 

I remember initially they bragged about that some mega_french_sci-fi author involved name of whom i'm always forgetting. But it seems NQ had only enough money to make him interested for couple of short texts, that become irrelevant somewhere in first years of endless changes.

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On 12/23/2022 at 1:01 PM, le_souriceau said:

 

I remember initially they bragged about that some mega_french_sci-fi author involved name of whom i'm always forgetting. But it seems NQ had only enough money to make him interested for couple of short texts, that become irrelevant somewhere in first years of endless changes.

 

Actually, Alain Damasio gave his 5-part story to JC, for free, as a personal token of appreciation and to help kickstart the public interest into the game.

 

However, since Damasio kinda overdid himself, NQ had to retcon some parts of his work.

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5 minutes ago, Peregrin said:

 

Actually, Alain Damasio gave his 5-part story to JC, for free, as a personal token of appreciation and to help kickstart the public interest into the game.

 

However, since Damasio kinda overdid himself, NQ had to retcon some parts of his work.

 

Then i just got my usual cynical variant by default from depths of brain. Good to know it was actually good will thing.

 

Anyway, it feel like if it was some positive effect initially, it all kinda dessipated over all these years almost without trace.

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1 hour ago, le_souriceau said:

 

Then i just got my usual cynical variant by default from depths of brain. Good to know it was actually good will thing.

 

Anyway, it feel like if it was some positive effect initially, it all kinda dessipated over all these years almost without trace.

 

You're actually correct: this gift from Damasio (who is indeed something of a big shot in the french sci-fi litterature scene) was part of the "JC Legend", of that "vision" that was both Novaquark's strongest driving force and their most crippling factor back in the day, from 2014 to 2021. It all dissipated away when JC was kicked from his own project by a cabal of his investors, people with a more... pragmatic and money-centered mind.

 

I won't say that was entirely a bad thing, but I'd like to see the likes of Granatino or Abboud try to bring Damasio back in for free, see how that works out for them...

 

I remember a video of a french sci-fi/ gaming conference from the pre-KS time, when JC showmanned conventions to promote NQ and DU; at the end of his speech came questions and someone in the audience noted that having Alain Damasio on board was quite amazing and asked JC how he did it, and JC casually answered: "Well I just asked him, and he said 'yes'".

 

We, as a community, and NQ, as creators of a universe, lost... something along the way. But I'm still confident we can somehow find it back. And the lore is part of it.

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On 12/22/2022 at 7:38 AM, CptLoRes said:

 

 

And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?

 

And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

That’s always been my canon as well. Imagine if we didn’t migrate recently, or even AT ALL. What if the AIs simply wiped out humanity every time their attempt at creating the perfect society failed. All the wreck and ruins aren’t alien, they’re us before the most recent fall of mankind.

 

That way, from a lore perspective, you could begin to introduce robotic NPCs/actual factions. Those loyal to the architects of civilization, and those in the outer worlds grasping at the last semblance of autonomy.

 

Its such a damn good chance for quality story telling, it’s a shame they never went past the vanilla story they came up with. It COULD be retconned safely, as the opening cinematic could simply be represented as a lie we’ve been sold and not the actual nature of our existence.

 

Imagine being able to start the game in an outer Haven (lol mgs lol) outside the SZ and getting a darker, more conspiratorial sequence that casts doubt on aphelia. I think of it kind of like the B5 intro after the Shadow War started.

 

Doubt they take it that far, though.

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