You've read Conrad's preview, seen gameplay footage, and considered Maurice's analysis. You've looked at screenshots, heard arguments both for and against, and perhaps even pronounced your own. You've found out that it's coming next February, a rather short time for a game that existed as little more than a rumor for so long. Point is, EA is trying to bring back Bullfrog's old classic Syndicate in a big way, and it's making all the usual promises to "keep true" to the original game's legacy.
It raises the question, though. Just what is Syndicate's legacy? Some would peg it at an isometric viewpoint. Others would peg it at squad-based mechanics. Still others would peg it on high-tech cyberpunk. And those truly in the know would peg it on the Persuadertron.
Me? I assert that Syndicate's true legacy, its essence, the quality that raised it to its pedestal, the greatest challenge to any game that would "keep true", is evil. Above and beyond all other things, Syndicate is about being evil.
Before you dismiss this little piece as yet another anti-New Syndicate rant from a grumpy PC gamer who can't accept change, allow me to say this: Syndicate kind of sucks.
A clarification: it's not as if Syndicate was a bad game. In fact, it was pretty great. Notice that I'm using the past tense here. Syndicate sucks in that it isn't nearly as "timeless" as some would have you believe. Eighteen years haven't been as kind to Syndicate as to, say, the original X-COM. Syndicate simply hasn't aged well, and in its original form, it offers few lessons to the school of contemporary game design.
There are lessons to be learned from it, of course. It's just that Syndicate's lessons, the most important ones, aren't rooted in camera angles, genre conventions, control schemes and platforms.
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rest at dtoid]
