[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by CaptJodan

I gotta admit, in my view the interior is a big selling point for me, though I'm hoping they don't arcade the game down as some fear here in order to give it to us (that scope, ick!). I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea...most people are concerned about racking up the tonnage, but it's a big thing, especially during an otherwise "boring" DC attack, to be able to see more than the control room. A couple of additional reasons I'm excited about this:

1. I don't foresee myself getting the chance to tour a U-boat anytime soon in my life. I'm nowhere near any museums that have them. Closest boat I have is the USS. Drum. A great tour to be sure, but not a U-boat. This gives me the chance to walk through one in some fashion.

2. I remember back when we transitioned from SH2 to SH3. What a huge, huge difference. From no 1st person vantage point of almost any sort all the way to an active control room with swinging meat! Swinging meat man! You got DCed, and the meat swung! (It's like the rolling pencil in the TB-3 in IL-2) This was a huge immersion factor I enjoyed (and still do enjoy, thanks to OM for SH4), and to expand on that immersion is a big thing.

3. People work miracles around here as long as the core of the game is relatively solid. If the convoys aren't moving about right, or the torpedoes don't have a big enough bang, or the boat seems unusually rugged, this community will hunt down these problems and fix them. Vanilla SH3 and 4 didn't exactly come out of the box as good as they ended up either, but MOST of the core of those games was good enough to make these games great with the help of this community. In contrast, SH2 was something of an exercise in futility. Mods improved it, but...come on. If the devs can make the core of this game not resemble some kind of 1st person shooter or PT Boats while dropping the ball on the convoys and other things that the community can fix, then I'd be happy*. The interiors seem to be a core feature that I'm glad is added. I hope if they sacrifice something else in order to put those interiors in, then they sacrifice something we can change.

*Note, I'm not exactly looking to give modders more work. Just that there are always compromises with a game, and no game is 100% perfect out of the box (these days, far, far less than 100%). I take comfort in the fact that the SH series at least has the ability to be modded. Some games aren't, or are limited to skins and such.

I like the way you approach this. Having a fully playable U-boat gives the long time subsim player something quite new. Sure, this may narrow the scope somewhat in some regards, but it does expand the Role Playing element of the game, a new frontier. Some people have asked, "Why U-boats? It's been done in SH3." The full interior element of SH5 gives you a different flavor, and different gameplaying experience. For me, no matter how much I like a particular game, such as SH3 or SH4, I really relish something new. I don't think SH5 will fully supplant SH3 in every way, but it will be an upgrade in some areas, and that's definitely worth a look.