What do most players expect from a good sci-fi game?

What do most players expect from a good sci-fi game?

Willingness to be fantastical, mysterious, and unusual (even to the point of being horrific at times). If the game is "it's the same world but the technology is better", I won't be interested. Too many games just make a simple tech jump and call it "sci-fi", as if that's all it takes to make it truly good.

Also, any modern pandering concepts ruin the experience as well.

Being meaningfully distinct from a Science Fantasy game.

what game

to be called Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Drone riots.

Planetmind confirmed

actual sci-fi not like magic but it's holograms and in space

hot aliens to fuck

When it's a sci-fi horror with cool gameplay elements like Dead Space or Parasite Eve, explores the implications of technology like SOMA or Metal Gear Solid 1/2, and if it's in spes it should have visuals of Alien, not Star Wars. Just no space lasers please.

Pic related is what I want. Third person with very limited resources and powerful enemies is preferable.

I don't like it as well. The fantasy equivalent is slapping dragons, elves and dwarves on top of diplomatic humans in the middle ages with white and purple magic.

What if it's the same world but the technology is worse? It worked in The Last of Us.

>The fantasy equivalent is slapping dragons, elves and dwarves on top of diplomatic humans in the middle ages with white and purple magic.

You understand my point completely. That's a solid analogy.

>What if it's the same world but the technology is worse? It worked in The Last of Us.

I don't fully agree that the technology is 'worse' in TLOU, but I would agree that the world upholding the technology has degraded. That said, if you mean something more along the lines of "ancient technology", then that certainly could be of interest. That sort of premise could have an amazing mysticism due to the age and visual images to reflect that. A marriage of earth bodies and the toils of dead peoples brought to life with even a hint of magic. Amazing man and/or alien-built structures, radiant lights, and breath-taking hide-aways; all obscured by time, and revealed to the player.

Laser beams.

no laser beams

C-Beams

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This but near the Tannhauser Gate.

WHICH ONE IS IT YOU FUCKS

Make it realistic high technology.
>no galactic empires made of a few dozen planets
>no more faster than light travel
>no more dumb aliens coming to fuck with earth for resources in abundance in the other 99.999% of the galaxy
>no more space dogfights

Plasma balls, obviously

Tachyon bolts

Internal consistency. It doesn't matter if it's nonsense, as long as it's consistent nonsense. Establish the way the world works and stick to it.

The first Mass Effect managed to do it quite well

>Plasma balls
>Not Z beams

Ethical and philosophical dilemmas

All I want is airlocks

My dream game is a space game where you just salvage random dead ships in different states of abandoned/destroyed, with a lot of airplay as the ships decompress like in dead space.

Also on the dead space subject I’d want a low percent chance of coming across an infected ship, the infection taking the form of different sci fi monster tropes with each ship.

>Game takes place in a dyson swarm

>Game is narrated by a smart guy that sounds like Elmer Fudd

This is kinda what I thought (wanted) Dead Space would be like when it was announced.