Space Siege - CES 2008 Previews

Chris Taylor is looking to streamline Space Siege into non-existence, according to this new preview from CES at GameSpy:

The developers are working hard to streamline action-RPG gameplay. There's almost no inventory management; everything you destroy or loot falls apart into "scrap." Pressing the "Z" button automatically grabs all the scrap in the room and transfers it to your inventory, so you hardly have to slow down. Returning to a town to sell stuff is almost completely gone. Instead, you can use scrap to upgrade your weapons at special upgrade stations.

IGN says you'll have a robotic companion to keep you company in the lonely depths of space:

Things aren't confined strictly to Seth's abilities, however, as you'll have a robotic companion named Harvey to make things a little easier. He'll attack automatically, can be upgraded, directed during combat, and used to initiate combo attacks. These aren't the type of combos that you'd think would be in something like a fighting game, but cause special effects if you, say, use a specific attack on an enemy that was set on fire by Harvey. We didn't actually get to see any of these elemental types of attacks, but they'll be in the final game when it ships.

...and finally, on to GameSpot:

The demonstration showed off the basic premise of the game, where you'll navigate the interiors of the spaceship, blowing away hundreds of alien opponents in the process. You'll have plenty of weapons at your disposal, as well as skills and abilities. However, the true challenge in Space Siege is figuring out how much you want to turn Walker into less of a human being and more of a cybernetic organism. During the game, you'll be given choices to exchange some of Walker's organic parts for cybernetic parts. These parts may confer powerful bonuses and abilities, but they come at the price of having him become less human. The tradeoff is that the characters in the game will react differently to Walker, especially if he becomes less and less human. There are also very powerful abilities that can only be unlocked if Walker retains his humanity. So where will you draw the line? What choices will you make?