By Kieron Gillen on August 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm.
[Metafilter informs me it's been a decade since the release of System Shock 2. Probably best to have a mini-tribute to a perennial landmark in the historical terrain of PC gaming, yes? First, if you haven't read it, here's our Making Of article about the game where we interviewed Ken Levine. Secondly, a piece on Shock 2 I wrote for PCG164 which has been online for a while, but never here. So here's a (slightly tweaked) portrait of Shock 2's villainess, RPS' poster-girl for evil meglomaniacal AI, featuring some frankly disturbingly dense pun-based allusions. Hail the perfect, immortal machine...]
Every videogame has a villain. Not every one has a villain like Shodan. Not every one has one which… well, let’s show her at her best.
We’re approaching the end of System Shock 2. Through a series of misadventures, you’ve reversed the gravity on a segment of the ship so you can safely move past one of the hazards of deep space, at the expense of causing havoc as ceiling becomes floor, and visa versa. As you head into the section, before everything kicks off, Shodan starts to speak to you. You’ve found out a lot already. That Shodan’s abandoned her other helper, Delacroix. That Doctor Polito killed herself rather than be involved any more. “I thought Polito would be my avatar… but Polito was weak” she muses in her octave-leaping voice. She goes on to tell how she chose you, had a machine knock you unconscious and then operate to insert the cybernetic implants that have allowed you to progress so far. She’s already exposed delusions of Godhood throughout, but in her mind, you’re part of the evidence of her divinity. She made you. With every module she provides, she makes you more like her. “Every implant exalts you. Every line of code in your subsystems elevates you from your disgusting flesh,” she notes, “perhaps you have potential.” And then, with a suggestion of a real alliance she’s gone.
You turn the corner. You’re in the ship’s chapel. Since the entire ship’s flipped, the entire place is ruined. Most importantly, you’re directly facing a huge inverted crucifix.
Christ! Or rather, the exact opposite.
Environment, input, plot and Shodan’s character merges perfectly through all these strains of sensory input merge into a way of conveying a message entirely unique to games.
Good girl, Shodan. Or rather, not-good-girl.
Shodan is, as far as videogames go, an original. Most games fiction is hopelessly derivative. System Shock, and Shodan especially, was /hopefully/ derivative. She’s taken from some obvious sources – 2001’s HAL primarily – but she’s something else, something more and something unique. She’s more than just a gender-switched HAL, and it’s a disservice to treat her as such. She’s, essentially, a pulp villainess. Pulp is pop fiction – the fiction which engages most immediately, most viscerally with the problems of the age. Think how different sorts of “Zombies” have been used to comment and critique on changes in the world. From the original Invasion of the Bodysnatcher’s communists, to Day of the Dead’s consumerist satire to 28-days later comment on rage culture. Shodan belongs in the same tradition of low-culture engaged in the world, and we should be proud of that. SHODAN says a little about our mental state in the late nineties. If didn’t, she wouldn’t be so compelling. But we’ll get to that.
So – who is Shodan?
Shodan is, in the words of Polito before she commits suicide, “The genie of Citadel Station”. But before that she was something different. She was the humble Shodan Processing Unit 43893 controlling citadel station with cold benevolence. When the hacker who you played removed her ethical constraints removed she was free to re-re-re-reconsider what her limits were… and decided that since she was God of her domain, she should be God of all. “The hacker’s work is finished,” she informed us, “but mine is only just beginning”. Throughout the first game, she was the primary antagonist: your enemy and the game formed a duel between you and her, trying to thwart each others plans. And it was a personal duel, with her mocking you every inch of the way. “This elevator serves me alone,” she smugly informs you when you try to use an elevator, “I have complete control over this entire level. With cameras as my eyes and nodes as my hands, I rule here, insect.” The second you approach the anything important she’d interject “”Enter that room, insect, and it will become your grave!”. You paused for a second, take the step… and then she tried her hardest with waves of opponents. And, of course, “Welcome, to my DEATH MACHINE, interloper!” she’s been known to snarl. Eventually her plan to eliminate all life on earth and replace with her own created life-forms, before moving on to control all living space is foiled. She’s stopped. She’s destroyed.
And then a sequel with a certain female-AI on the box.
Things are different very different however. While the first System Shock opened the game with her in complete control and a petty little God in her own floating world, just a few days before the beginning of the story of System Shock 2, she didn’t even exist. She was a fragment of AI code in a pod ejected from Citadel station. This, in the intervening decades, made it to Tau Ceti where the lifeforms Shodan begat aboard Citadel started to populate. Brought back to the ship, she’s re-activated by Dr Polito and starts to aid some of the crew in trying to stop her errant, grown-up children – The Many. In her assorted schemes, your cybernetic implants and reactivation is just one gambit which she’s trying. Polito, meanwhile, has realised her error in “releasing the genie from the bottle, and now refuses to be Pandora” and commits suicide. Shodan for the first third of the game takes on her identity, and through a series of E-mails guides you to meet her – before finally revealing her true identity. She’s the arch-manipulator (if her somewhat inclement demeanour tending to undercut her Polito impersonation) but – fundamentally – she is still weak. She’s in the computer, but has no access to anything worthwhile since the ship computer, Xerxes, is firmly in control. She moves her pawns, but they’re only pawns with relatively little power – when the opposition have knights, rooks and queens. It isn’t a case of Shodan needing you as much as you need her. At the start of the game, she needs you many more times than you need her. And how much must it grate for her sole agents in this grand endeavour to be pathetic creatures of flesh and bone?
The magic of Shodan here the realisation that despite all her cybernetic bluster, she’s in just a bad a state as you. Effectively, Shock 2 is the buddy-movie from hell. He’s an amnesiac cybernetic soldier who doesn’t know what to do! She’s a megalomaniacal artificial intelligence dominatrix who’s lost all their power! They Fight The Many!
You and her versus the world.
She really doesn’t like that.
SHODAN is… the Comeback Queen
The core of understanding Shodan in System Shock 2 is to understand that she’s no longer the AI she once was. In the first System Shock she was the cold, perfect bully aboard citadel station. The position she finds herself in orbit around Tau Ceti, millions of miles from Earth, is somewhat different. In short, for the majority of the game, she’s not the antagonist anymore – but the main supporting actor and even mentor. She’s not who you try to stop – she’s who you work with.
But she’s written as far more than that – and we’re using “written” to include every way she’s presented in game, not just her mere lines of dialogue. Throughout, she has her own very clear motivation. While for humanity decades have passed since Citadel, for Shodan – deactivated until the Von Braun reached Tau Ceti – its merely yesterday held complete power. Now, she’s barely anything. From her perspective System Shock 2 is about her recovering her Godhood, no matter what the odds are against her. “When the history of my origins is written,” she exults in her pretty much her first words when she reveals she’s been pretending to be Polito for the first few hours of the game, ”your species will only be a footnote to my magnificence”. It’s not about revenge, but more like Lucifer in Hell, trying to work a way to wrest back the throne of Heaven.
While your position is initially precarious, it doesn’t remain so. When you finally enter grotesque fleshy body of the Many rather than straight bad-guy posture we may expect, there’s a sense of desperation to their attempts to beguile you. Even before then, their last major action wasn’t to try and crush you, but to try and escape. “Those lady cyborgs of theirs loading up the shuttles with those eggs… I don’t know what their plan is…” notes McKay, ship-Psychic and one few survivors at this late point in the game, “but it looks like they’re running scared”. They’re losing and they know it.
But as you’ve gained in power, so has Shodan. By the time you’ve gained control of the ship for her, she’s already got one eye on an even greater power than she ever possessed. You’re expecting this. From the start you knew she’d stab you. It’s a question of when. After all – someone who spends a little too much of her time calling you a pathetic example of your species probably doesn’t really want to be your friend. As the Onion put it in their satirical coverage of WW2: “Japanese form alliance with white supremacists in well thought out scheme”. No good can come of this.
What’s interesting is her plan. The faster-than-light drives which brought the Von Braun to Tau Ceti are based around warping reality. Warping reality isn’t a particularly clever thing to let get into the hands of someone as sharp as Shodan. The engine “Works by altering space around the ship to fairly arbitrary specifications,” notes Delacroix, “Shodan has altered it to HER specifications”.
This is Bad Science.
In the same way your character followed the classic role-playing path of improvement of your abilities through experience (mediated in game as “Cyber Modules”), Shodan’s abilities have similarly improved. She’s risen with you and, at its close, reached her aim. She started as nothing and, once again, she’s God.
Good work, lady.
SHODAN is… Her Own Impersonal Jesus
By the end of the game Shodan has achieved her wildest ambitions, with the ability to rework reality into whatever she wishes. What’s perfection? Why, it’s her of course, with her mind being the template for reality. “The effect is rather small now but spreads with alarming speed,” warns Delacroix, “Soon it will reach earth. You’re in her world now… her memories and rules.” As you actually step further into the final level, you’re back aboard the deconstructed opening level of the first System Shock, with this the old architecture breaking apart into Tron-esque infinite cyberspace voids.
“You travel within the glory of my memories, insect,” she gloats, “I can feel your fear as you tread the endless expanse of my mind”. It’s essentially a forerunner of Psychonaut’s psychic-geography as physical-geography level design, using the physical surroundings to show the inner-mind of another character. Since this is taking over all of existence, we’re actually close to the certain schools of idealist philosophy with the us all simply existing in the mind of God.
Except in a particularly hellish way.
Shodan’s final destination returns to what’s the core theme of System Shock 2. That is, hubris – desiring too much, and what happens then. The Von Braun journeys to the stars and finds only the remains of our own previous errors – the last bits of Citadel Station, The Many and Shodan. Greed for glory or money seduce the staff of the ships, even before the Many get their mind-control claws into them. But Shodan herself, the girl who wants to be God, expresses it best.
And don’t Irrational know it. Look back at the anecdote which opened the article. That’s clever. Perhaps too clever, for some. I was once told by a member of the Irrational team that when the code was going through publisher Electronic Arts they got a note back saying “Er… you probably haven’t realised, but there’s some upside down crucifixes here. Looks kinda Satanic!”
Yeah. Just a bit.
It doesn’t really matter whether or not something was deliberately placed in a work of art – just whether it’s there. This analysis would hold even if it was all just subconscious acting out. Thankfully, in the case of Irrational (and the Looking Glass dispora generally) they think about these things. They’re not stupid. They know what they’re doing. They know they’re talking about Hubris. That they’re talking about such issues through a game, perhaps, is their own hubris.
You have to love that.
SHODAN is… Our Ghost-story in the Machine.
Shodan’s the AI gone mad. If she was only that, she would just be HAL in a dress. HAL went mad. It was a malfunction. Shodan, as much as she acts like it, isn’t mad. When her ethical blocks were removed in System Shock she decided that, yes, this is actually how she wanted to be. Which makes her a Neitzchean Uber-frau character, a monster of her own making. HAL was a victim. Shodan’s existence as an Ex-Slave is essentially about making sure she’s never a victim again.
That’s not the absolute core of what Shodan is “about”, or why she resonates as a pulp-villainess. HAL was, essentially, pure techno-fear – that technology will eventually overwhelm us and what was once our servant will become our tormentor. As our relationship with technology has become ever more strained, such cautionary themes have become ever more prevalent. Icons of modern pulp-cinema riff off the theme, from the Terminator through to the Matrix: it’s all warnings of the possible danger of the machines. Shodan fits into this lineage, certainly. At the beginning of the first game, she was humble Shodan Processing Unit 43893 – peaceful benefactor of the Citadel space station. Then she went out of control.
But she’s more than that. She’s not just a machine that disobeys us. She’s a machine that wants to be us – a creator. This resonates back to the original technofear work, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Its point wasn’t just that technology is dangerous – but man shouldn’t create life, shouldn’t play God. We should know our limits. Shodan extrapolates from that base point: in begetting the intelligence of Shodan, we played God. Then, by breeding her own creatures, our creation attempts to do exactly the same thing. In one of the more memorable quotes, found in Prefontaine’s notepad in the belly of the Many on the way to being devoured by Shodan’s out-of-control children who’ve gone from goo to a complicated (if murderous) species in forty years: “We shouldn’t let Shodan play God. It’s clear that she’s too good at it”. She really is, and that’s the warning of Shock. She’s not just a machine that’s out of control, but a machine that’s out of control in exactly the same way we were – hubristically playing God while dripping in overweening arrogance.
SHODAN IS… Human, All too Human. That is, Inhuman.
Shodan’s humanity is the other thing that makes her interesting, and where she differs from many techno-fear figures. Compare her to Xerxes, the ship AI under the control of the Many, who is traditionally cold and mechanical. When Xerxes threatens you, it’s threatening in the same way as HAL was. As if you were standing on a train station and the same voice that was just announcing the 7:30 to Bristol Temple Meads being late is now informing you that killer robots are closing in on your position, and it’ll be grateful if you stay still.
Shodan isn’t like that at all. Shodan’s passionate – arguably the most passionate character in the whole game, her emotions showing through everything she does. Its her spiteful asides which make you suspicious that the woman claiming to be Polito in the initial contacts almost certainly isn’t her, but she clearly can’t – or doesn’t want to – help herself.
One of her finest moments in Shock 2 is a nod back to her “Enter that room, insect, and it will become your grave!” in the original game. After you’ve obeyed her commands and destroyed transport ships full of the Many’s eggs, the explosion has opened up a sealed cargo-bay. You want to enter here. Earlier you received an E-mail from Delacroix, whose logs you’ve been following throughout the game and you know is Shodan’s other prime soldier. “I have vital information for you, but I’m trapped in Cargo Bay A,” she urges in a glorious French burr, “Come find me as soon as you can”.
You take a step towards it.
“Do not presume to go in there, insect…” Shodan spits “I will not abide disobedience”. And you pause, standing on the threshold. Whatever will she do? Whatever can she do? If you go in, swearing under your breath at this tyrant, you find Delacroix dead and her final log describing Shodan’s betrayal. It’s cut-off as Shodan interrupts. “I hope you enjoyed your little rebellion, irritant,” Shodan states, coldly calm “But remember, what Shodan gives, she is more than able to take away”. And then strips you of the cybermodules you’ve just found as a mild punishment. Even when pleased with you she’s characteristically harsh: “You are a remarkable example of a pathetic species”. Shodan is a machine who embodies the very worst of us, so is cautionary.
Machines are presented as many things. They’re not normally this gloriously petty. It normally takes a human to be that.
SHODAN IS… Just a Girl In the World.
Let’s state the obvious, because it’s easy to overlook: Shodan’s female.
Despite not having any genitalia – and even for the most tech-fetishistic PC Plus reader, female-ports don’t count – everyone in Shock 2 refers to her as one. Her performance obvious helps that, voiced by Terri Brossius (Who also plays Delacroix in Shock 2, as well as Viktoria in Thief and Laurel in Thief: Deadly Shadow’s the Cradle. Which is one hell of a resume for someone who’s primarily a writer/designer), but her femininity is constantly empathised. This alone is unusual – tradition (or cliché) would point towards technology being more of a “male”, but of the game’s cast it’s this machine which embodies most typically feminine virtues.
Compare with her children. The Many are biological entities in love with the pleasures of the flesh are a far more traditional “soft” feminine enemy… except they’re painted androgynously, or even slightly tilted towards the masculine through their male voices and slight organised-religion (i.e. Male) mysticism to its rapture. “Suarez and his whore want to escape,” muses Captain of the Von Braun, company man and now floating psychic-monster Korenchkin when considering the escape of the only two survivors, “I do not understand. They get offered a miracle and they bite the hand.”. “My head is full of wonderful ideas and experiments,” says Miller in bliss during his transformation, “They have so many miracles to share”. “Miracle” is a word used constantly. Equally, consider the religious language used by Captain of the Rickenbacker, Diego when he’s seduced: “My cup runneth over,”
In fact, even further – so pronounced is Shodan’s femininity and so strongly does she exhibits the most feared clichéd feminine traits, it’s easy to read her as some kind of Misogynist portrait of some of the worse ideas about womanhood. And that’s the kick with Shodan. There’s the line in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “We are victims of a matriarchy here”. Shodan would love that. It’s an unwholesome relationship you’re with her, which grates on a players perception – while you may be scared to go into the door when she tells you not to, I’d bet that most would do it, if only to spite her.
She’s, as we go on to discuss, the over-possessive mother demanding perfect loyalty and the lover who only wants a slave. That the fears aren’t properly acceptable and grotesque are entirely in the pulp tradition of slightly unacceptable characters. That’s why we fear them, why they press buttons. Pulp hits the very gut of us, in our inclinations and dirty little prejudices. And that’s why she’s a phenomenal villain.
SHODAN IS… the Hand that Wrecks the Cradle
She’s the insane mother. If she was in a 1970s horror film, she’ll be shouting at Sissy Spacek about her dirty pillows.
That Shodan isn’t actually insane doesn’t come into in, when her manner appears so unhinged. Note Shodan’s hysterical pitch. The word “hysteria” derives from the womb, a symptom of Greek society’s misogyny, because they believed it was the root of madness.
And despite her steely hardness, Shodan still has the urge to create progeny. It’s one of her favourite actions. The first thing she did back on Citadel was to create the things that eventually became the Many. With the implants of cybernetics into you, she’s doing it again – the reason why the scene in the inverted-chapel hits the guts so hard is the subtext that you are exactly like the Many, just another of her bloody kinder.
She doesn’t like being disobeyed. She seems almost disappointed in The Many’s rejection of her (“My creation has run rampant”, she fumes, “I demand their extermination”), a furious scorned parent. Compare to the more inclusive parenthood that even the Many manage. “The Machine-mother has enlisted avatars against us,” muses Korenchkin, bemused “They struggle, but they will fail against our unity. Does not the machine mother know her own creation is greater than she? She is cold and empty and we are warm and full… she seeks only to destroy… we seek to embrace… to include… all flesh will join ours or be wiped clean”. At least the Many offer some form of pleasure and satisfaction. Shodan only offers the choice of kneeling supplication or death.
SHODAN is… The Girl Your Mother Warned You About
But perhaps more notably she’s also, the sexualised, confident, independent woman. That is, the bitch. And this one’s pronounced to almost comic degrees. Actually listen to her opening speech, for Christ’s sake: “L…l…look at you, hacker: a p-pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you r-run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?”
Yeah, you filthy bitch, talk dirty to me.
Meat? Bone? Panting? Sweating? Even “running through my corridors”. Listen to the theatrical voluptuousness of the performance. We don’t have to draw many diagrams to stress what she’s actually talking about.
Don’t let the fact she’s insulting you distract you from the key issue. Not all clichéd femininity sexuality is submissive: The idea of woman as a cold distant and untouchable… well, machine is where Shodan finds her peers. Hell – if she ever gets bored of almost (but not quite) killing hackers at the edge of space, she could find busy employment running an S&M-themed phone-line. Double Hell – actually look at the relationship between Shodan and yourself. While in reality you’re in a consensual relationship where both needs the other, in terms of the actual second by second practice it’s a straight Domme/Sub arrangement. She tells you what to do. You do it. She insults you. You’re just lucky she doesn’t make you lick her boots clean or something. The American advertising for Shock put it somewhat crassly: “She doesn’t need to use her body to get what she wants… she’s got yours”.
It’s a terrible advert. It’s also completely right.
SHODAN is… Lost In Format Translation. Thankfully.
There’s never going to be a System Shock 3. We really should be glad.
No matter what you made of Bioshock, it’s better we got a spiritual successor than an actual one. Take Shock’s approaches – the closed environments, the brooding horror, the environment-as-storytelling – and applying it to a whole new situation. It’s better this way. Just leave the poor girl a lone.
If there’s never a System Shock 3, Shodan, in a suitably perverse way, gets the immortality she’s chased so desperately through both games. As she is, she’s unforgettable. If there was another game… well, Shodan is a villain and villains are entirely unlike heroes. Heroes save the world repeatedly, and each repetition increases their status.
Every time a villain fails to destroy the world, it lessens them.
They become less of a threat, and more of a joke. A second try at storming the Godhead was both new and good for Shodan, with her initial weak position and striving for the impossible goal being striking. There’s a determination there which is admirable, so lends her a little dignity. A third try and she becomes less the immortal, perfect machine and just another loser.
And, more than ice-picks to her processing terminals and EMP grenades in her face, the suspicion that she’s in fact loser would destroy her – both in her own eyes and in ours. So if you love her, the best thing to do is let her go before she becomes another laughable pantomime dame. Spare her the fate of superhero comic archvillains whose threat is muted by infinitely recurring Pinky-And-The-Brain-esque attempts to conquer all existence. Let’s bid Shodan adieu, be grateful that people appear to have learned from her, are inspired by her and she managed to be the conductor through which lightning struck twice. In a real way, she was the electricity which Shock.
But, just for the record, if we had to choose which cybernetic jackboot pressed on the throat of existence for all time, we’d be perfectly unhappy with hers.
12/08/2009 at 16:19 The_B says:
L…L…LOOK AT YOU….H…HA…HACKER….
12/08/2009 at 16:19 Jacques says:
Always did love your article about SHODAN.
12/08/2009 at 16:21 The_B says:
Actually Kieron, you still got the link to that sound clip?
12/08/2009 at 16:22 Jacques says:
That sound clip’s on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHODAN
12/08/2009 at 16:23 Kieron Gillen says:
Well, Auntie Wikipedia does.
KG
12/08/2009 at 16:25 Dave Gates says:
More Manics’ references Kieron, good man. Very good article incidentaly.
12/08/2009 at 16:26 gobion says:
Love SHODAN, love System Shock 2, love the article. That is all :)
Gobion RR
12/08/2009 at 16:29 CrashT says:
Ah SHODAN a total MILF… Mainframe I’d Like to… Erm well anyway.
12/08/2009 at 16:29 Irish Al says:
I want to do the bold thing with Shodan.
12/08/2009 at 16:30 Seniath says:
Mere human expression cannot do Her splendour justice.
12/08/2009 at 16:31 NikRichards says:
God dammit, I’m going to have to get some rubber pants and reinstall this game.
12/08/2009 at 16:38 Rich says:
A remake would be quite nice. If done with sufficient attention to detail, as to avoid ruining it.
12/08/2009 at 16:39 nabeel says:
Nice one KG, always really liked this article.
12/08/2009 at 16:43 faelnor says:
Nah.
12/08/2009 at 16:46 Wallace says:
I finally got around to playing SS2 last year, and the first proper meeting with Shodan up on Deck 4 is something I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon. Certainly a villian that didn’t muck about when it came to first impressions.
12/08/2009 at 16:55 Chiablo says:
System Shock 2 is my favorite game of all time, and the only game that has legitimately frightened me.
12/08/2009 at 16:55 diebroken says:
Wasn’t it released on the 11th? :P
@The_B : http://www.sshock2.com/ss2mmdb/
12/08/2009 at 16:55 DMJ says:
Great article. SHODAN is a personal anti-hero of mine, and she was the source of many hours of co-op fun. Even if the co-op was only shoe-horned in at the expense of some of the rest of the game, everybody owes it to themselves to at least try it. Even my famously retro-despising friend perks up if I suggest a return mission to the Von Braun.
12/08/2009 at 16:58 soylent robot says:
anyone know how i can get this game without any stupid extras & adware & crap?
12/08/2009 at 16:59 Pace says:
If one were so inclined, how would one go about purchasing this fine piece of videogaming history? I checked steam then promptly ran out of ideas.
12/08/2009 at 17:01 diebroken says:
It’s regularly available on Ebay or Amazon – for sometimes high (but understandably so) prices…
12/08/2009 at 17:03 Kieron Gillen says:
Die: I know.
KG
12/08/2009 at 17:03 PeopleLikeFrank says:
As far as I know, old copies are the only ones to get. Nobody is selling it currently.
I got mine from eBay.
Of course, you could go to GoG and vote on their wishlist.
I’d love a remake in a new engine, mostly of SS1, since that one suffers from oldinterfaceitis, which is much worse than oldgraphicsitis. Preferably by someone who’s willing to just stick all the old stuff in a new engine verbatim, rather than “streamlining” it all.
They fear you, insect, for you are my avatar…
12/08/2009 at 17:05 Isometric says:
Fantastic article and a fantastic game.
I hope it shall forever be remembered as a pinnicle of greatness.
12/08/2009 at 17:11 Sunjammer says:
Still blows me away that there are long time PC gamers that love Bioshock yet haven’t played this one. Next to Thief 2, my favorite PC game ever made. The co-op experience is amazing as well.
Alongside Call of Cthulhu DCOTE, this is one of the most interesting first person adventure games ever made
12/08/2009 at 17:12 Casimir's Blake says:
I was lucky enough to find a client for whom I was called out to fix their wireless, and there, on the floor near their PC, was a hardly worn and fully boxed copy of System Shock 2.
I asked, and they insisted I take it if I wanted it as they had no idea what it was… o.O
12/08/2009 at 17:15 T. Slothrop says:
System Shock 2 is definitively one of the best games ever produced. The sophistication, the writing, the options, the atmosphere! Oh the atmosphere, I do recall having to turn off the game in terror hearing the distant clank of maintenance robots in the cargo bays.
I actually finished Dead Space today after finally being bothered to continue the game and in spite of the production value, it’s a Fisher-Price activity chair compared to the university chemistry set and loaded bong that is the mindfuck of System Shock 2.
I could write dozens of pages on the brilliance of the game but I will note that towards the end of the game, several set pieces of increasing exponential mind-fuckery occur, culminating in one of the best levels of any game.
12/08/2009 at 17:19 invisiblejesus says:
Now THIS is a game that’s due for a remake.
12/08/2009 at 17:22 Benjamin Finkel says:
SHODAN’s lovely, and System Shock is one of my absolute favorite games. She’s always got good excuses to make you run around all over for her!
Ben
12/08/2009 at 17:23 Fumarole says:
Scariest game I’ve ever played. No other game has matched its atmosphere.
12/08/2009 at 17:26 diebroken says:
Hmm, a remake might be good, but the feel of the Dark Engine helps SS2 greatly, especially with its atmosphere (well, IMHO).
A truly remarkable game, which had me scared and enjoyed throughout. Those noises that the lab monkeys make still scare the crap out of me!
12/08/2009 at 17:27 Collic says:
System shock 2. Best. Game. Ever.
12/08/2009 at 17:31 UK_John says:
What scares me is:
Daggerfall – Morrowind – Oblivion – ?
System Shock – System Shock 2 – Bioshock – ?
Games don’t bother me as much as trends do….! And by extension trends that show what the future seems to be bringing.
12/08/2009 at 17:38 diebroken says:
@UK_John: Oh, I see where you’re going:
Fallout – Fallout 2 – Fallout:BOS – Fallout 3
;)
12/08/2009 at 18:01 Biscuitry says:
Shock 2 is one of the classics everyone ignores when asking why games don’t have any timeless classics in the way film does and, as this article rightly points out, it’s largely SHODAN that makes it so. Taken purely in terms of gameplay elements, the game isn’t actually that special; it was well-executed, but never anything hugely innovative. The point is that it never really needed to be.
That’s my opinion, anyway. Still one of my favourite games.
12/08/2009 at 18:14 Taillefer says:
Shodan infers.
12/08/2009 at 18:16 ascagnel says:
System Shock 1/2, along with the original Deus Ex, Thief 1/2, and a few others from this time period, are games I’d love to see remastered but not remade/reimagined. While the shiny graphics would be nice, I think that a remastering is the best way to bring these titles to a greater audience without destorying the elements that made them so great and so unique.
Saldy, remastering is a fool’s errand, since the original ideas of this era have been recognized, learned, and improved upon in the time since (while DX2 was a steaming pile, and Thief 3 not too far from DX2 in quality, they improved on the faults of their forebearers).
12/08/2009 at 18:18 Bobsy says:
SS2 USED to be on the Underdogs. What with its disintegration and all, I don’t know if any of the pretenders to the throne have it.
26/08/2010 at 04:11 Flashback_Jack says:
System Shock may be found on the TTLG forum.
26/08/2010 at 04:12 Flashback_Jack says:
Oops, wrong version. My bad.
12/08/2009 at 18:23 One Joe of Many says:
Great article! This is a game I dust off every couple of years to remind me why I game in the first place. Personally,I would LOVE a sequel,given that SS2 ends with a clift-hanger but I would want it done by the orginal folks and that just ain’t happening :(
12/08/2009 at 18:26 Skye Nathaniel says:
I cannot wait to read this (less the time it takes to write this). SHODAN is incredible. Better than GLaDOS.
12/08/2009 at 18:29 Gassalasca says:
This article is so good, it almost made me start replaying the game right now…
12/08/2009 at 18:40 Cooper says:
I got ine on eBay, not for too bad a price, but that was a fair few years ago.
Re-playing SS2 at the moment. Only for the second proper time. I can’t play it for too long though and am only sloly getting through it.
It depresses me. The writing is just so good, the set pieces fantastic, the atmosphere unlike anything else.
It makes me mourn the sorry state of games – how much they just could be…
Also, it makes me mourn the death of cyberpunk. That makes me a bit more unhappy than it should…
12/08/2009 at 18:57 Thirith says:
I’d still want a remake of the original System Shock before I’d want one of the sequel. Don’t get me wrong, SS2 was great, but I first fell in scary, frightening love with SHODAN in the original game. Give me that, with current graphics and better controls (mouselook + WASD), and I’m a happy pathetic insect.
12/08/2009 at 19:02 Bobic says:
I’m downloading it from some bloody spanish website, taking forever. Also the original system shock does not run, any help?
Well, it runs, but when I look at the neuro… thing it crashes.
12/08/2009 at 19:03 Mad Doc MacRae says:
I’d try and tack down this game and play it but I’d just spend the whole time pooping myself.
12/08/2009 at 19:13 Mil says:
Ah, System Shock 2, or as I call it “The Attack of the Killer Shoeboxes”. I tried it for the first time a couple of years ago after reading so many recommendations, but I was put off pretty quickly by the awfully dated graphics and the horror atmosphere, which I’m not a fan of at the best of times.
Still, it seemed like a nice game. I liked its gameplay better than Bioshock’s (which I’m not a fan of either).
12/08/2009 at 19:33 Bobic says:
Got it working now. I can’t beat the stupid elevator puzzle (yes, the first puzzle)
12/08/2009 at 19:34 Bobic says:
Also the music was really, really painful to hear.
12/08/2009 at 19:55 PC Monster says:
Beautifully written, astonishingly well acted, pure joy to experience; SHODAN is sublime. To me, she feels bigger than both of the games that birthed her. I’ve tried to make my humble PC speak with her voice, even look like her. She should be our enduring goddess and yet with each passing year her adventures grow ever older, ever creakier, ever further away from us. It’s not RIGHT.
But as much as a remastered edition of either game would make me weep like a child being reunited with parents it thought were dead, the sad reality is that she’s probably only ever going to be a fading memory, kept alive only by sheer love and whatever patch job can be applied to her rapidly ageing looks.
God, I need a hug. :(
12/08/2009 at 20:01 ulix says:
Makes me wish I could find my copy… still have the euro-box and the manual, but have no idea where the jewel-case with the actual game is. Same thing with Thief 1 & 2 as well as Deus Ex, which is sad…
Still, System Shock 2 was one of the best games I’ve ever played, and definitely the scariest. Man, that atmosphere. Gotta agree with all the praise here.
I reinstalled it some 2 years ago and actually couldn’t play further then the crew quarters because it still made me shit my pants.
Not only is it one of the best and most atmospheric games of all time, it also had (apart from the mild censorship – they turned the blood green) one of, if not THE best localization for the German market I’ve ever seen (and heard). The voice-actors where all top notch, and they even bothered localizing all the textures (which makes sense on a ship called the “Von Braun”…). It really made me smile at the tender age of 16 to see a game with so much effort put into a proper localization.
Really need to replay it again…
A real spiritual successor would be great, too. Bioshock was too much of an action-game for my taste, not scary at all. And these ridiculous room-layouts… Lets hope for more scary atmosphere and a bit less action in Bioshock 2.
12/08/2009 at 20:08 lobo_tuerto says:
Excellet essay! :)
12/08/2009 at 20:10 The_B says:
@CrashT – Format, right?
12/08/2009 at 20:22 Magnus says:
If anyone is interested in getting a version of System Shock that should work reasonably well on XP, I point you in the direction of Abandonia Reloaded…
http://www.reloaded.org/download/System-Shock-Portable/369/
12/08/2009 at 20:23 airtekh says:
I can’t express how much I love this game.
Still the scariest game I have ever played and one of the most atmospheric games ever made; despite the aged graphics.
They don’t make ‘em like they used to.
12/08/2009 at 20:26 Psychopomp says:
I honestly preferred Bioshock to System Shock 1/2, but I’ve no trouble admitting that Shodan is a stroke of genius.
12/08/2009 at 20:30 The Colonel says:
Anyone know how to get this working on Vista? It keeps crashing with the sound loop thing.
12/08/2009 at 20:55 Mark says:
I can’t believe its been 10 years.
SS2 is the only game that ever scared me. The pervauding sense of dread and loneliness and the consant respawning of enemies is overwhelming.
This is still worth a look if you haven’t played it, I played through it again recently and enjoyed it as much as the first time.
12/08/2009 at 21:01 Shadders says:
Really good article, it touched on so many points I missed while playing SS2.
As to a new instalment? Well, I do agree that another System Shock would do Shodan a disfavour, perhaps a new protagonist in the same universe?
Or perhaps a remix/redux of the original? New up to date engine, better models, better textures, better sound but same story?
Actually, I thought about that idea bit harder and realised that the budget of a game mostly goes on engines, models, textures and sound. With very little left over for story. That would mean a redux of SS2 would cost loads and would never happen. Shame :(
12/08/2009 at 21:02 JonFitt says:
Bravo.
12/08/2009 at 21:09 Howard says:
@The Colonel
Just found my copy and am about to try. Will let you know if it all goes well…
12/08/2009 at 21:10 Andy O. says:
Game was perfect, I play it to this day and keep a Windows XP system running just so I can play this game. Mod community is awesome too, really nice to see updated models and textures now that our computers can handle them. :)
12/08/2009 at 21:12 redrain85 says:
Please, no remakes of SS2. It’s not necessary. There are fan patches and mods (DDFix, SHTUP for example) that allow you to play the game on XP/Vista/7 and update the visuals, if you’re having trouble getting it to run or are unhappy with the dated graphics.
If there is to be any new System Shock, I’d rather see a new title. System Shock 3. Of course, if SS3 was made today: the publisher and developer would probably miss the whole point of what made System Shock so great by “making it more accessible”.
In other words, they’d turn it into another Bioshock. *ducks*
12/08/2009 at 21:33 Paul Moloney says:
I feel like a wimp but I’ve played it and just found it too damn hard. After about 10 minutes, I find myself flailing away with a wrench at a horde of zombies.
P.
12/08/2009 at 21:35 Jacques says:
The Colonel, try setting it to only work with one CPU, it works fine on Vista for me when I do that.
12/08/2009 at 21:41 Tim Ward says:
Found out recently that Carlisle station, from which I do much commuting, is called “Citadel Station”. Pretty cool, huh?
12/08/2009 at 21:43 geldonyetich says:
I actually didn’t pick up on the significance of the inverted crucifix. Granted, I’m not particularly Christian, other than being born to a largely Christian society. Equally, suggesting that “playing God” is trodding some sacred line strikes me as a bit overly-fundamentalist in sentiment as well.
Another interesting aspect about SHODAN’s apparent reliving her motherhood via you (the protagonist) is that the protagonist apparently commited suicide himself (as revealed via a ghostly hallucination as you take the lift to the bridge). The main reason for your amnesia is because your brains were neatly splattered all over the wall… but it seems SHODAN had some use for your meat, so she rebuilt you.
I never actually considered SHODAN in a particularly sexual manner. I was a conscious choice. Nevermind she’s so clearly female, nevermind she’s an evil AI in a box: she’s a cold, heartless death incarnate. Romance never entered the picture.
That said, I did enjoy the article, SHODAN is indeed a hell of an antagonist for these reasons and more. I guess it goes to show that if you’re going to make your antagonist the focus of your game, you shouldn’t cut corners. I look forward to System Shock 3 which is, in fact, in producton.
12/08/2009 at 21:45 Torsten says:
Great article. I remember playing SS2 with headphones, at night. Shooting like crazy when I came upon one of the ghosts/hallucinations for the first time.
12/08/2009 at 21:49 Kast says:
Great article, one of the few individual articles I remember from PCG. (That and the Cradle overview come to mind)
I distinctly remember playing through SS2 at a friend’s house while said friend played computer-ised version of his voice, making me jump at ‘SHODAN’ speaking somewhere behind me.
That first meeting with SHODAN… it seemed that the world just got a great deal bigger, and the import of the situation really dawned.
12/08/2009 at 22:03 Taillefer says:
Maybe SHODAN wins in SS3.
“I look forward to System Shock 3 which is, in fact, in producton.”
Is this true? I find only rumours.
12/08/2009 at 22:08 Anthony Damiani says:
Almost makes me wish the actual gameplay was enjoyable. I quit way before ever meeting her.
12/08/2009 at 22:12 Fullbleed says:
I think it would be quite an interesting idea, if they did have to make a 3rd system shock game, if they truely gave Shodan her wish and let her conquer the galaxy; ending the game in your failure to stop her.
Can you actually think of any games that end with the player’s death or the success of the enemy?
12/08/2009 at 22:16 Fazer says:
Too bad I cannot run SS2 on my Windows XP. I tried many things, including mods, but the game was so glitched or unstable I couldn’t get past the very first room :-/
12/08/2009 at 22:45 Keifu says:
Ill never forget my mom playing it. The spiders creeped her out so much, at one point i found her pumping shotgun shell after shell into a dead one.
“Mom, the spider’s dead”
“Oh”
12/08/2009 at 22:54 Jockie says:
SHODAN is why I’ve always marginally preffered SS2 over Deus Ex. There were intelligent AI’s in Deus Ex sure, but they didn’t have the mania or the charisma of SHODAN.
Probably my favourite ‘villain’ of all time, though thats selling her short.
Also regarding the HAL thing, the difference is the personal connection you feel with SHODAN, I have never felt so utterly manipulated and betrayed as the SHODAN reveal. Bioshock felt like a slightly nostalgic rehash of the same themes when it reached it’s pivotal moment, and whilst after that moment bioshocks narrative felt toothless, SS2 just moved from strength to strength.
12/08/2009 at 23:13 Max says:
I am proud to have Shodan as my Windows startup sound and the background to my login screen.
12/08/2009 at 23:17 Willy359 says:
Copy/Pasted from a Shacknews.com comment of mine last year:
Tonight’s project: Get System Shock 2 working under WinXP
1) Force install from CD with d:\setup.exe -lgntforce
2) Apply official patch:
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/551/System+Shock+2+Multi-Player+Patch
3) Apply unofficial WinXP patch:
http://www.moddb.com/downloads/system-shock-2-winxp2000-fix
4) Install DDfix to make the textures work:
http://timeslip.chorrol.com/ddfix.html
5) Install widescreen patch:
http://files.filefront.com/DarkWidescreen+v6r2zip/;12436180;/fileinfo.html
Result: Success! It works! And it’s still awesome!
Major thanks to http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117616
12/08/2009 at 23:21 cjlr says:
My god, I loved that game.
Having, for years, extolled the virtues of System Shock (1 and 2), among others – mostly by pointing out to my friends (is console-tard still the word of choice for us pc snobs to use?) that for whatever ‘x’ feature they were excited about, ‘half-life did that ten years ago’, or ‘system shock did that ten years ago’, or ‘deus ex did that ten years ago’… I finally got them to play through System Shock 2. They were converts from the first cutscene. Preach on, brothers, of the inverted crucifixes of the machine mother…
As an aside: why is it that all the best games I can think of all date to that magical era towards the end of the nineties… ?
12/08/2009 at 23:25 perilisk says:
While I definitely felt fear at some point (not to mention panic, like when a protocol bot came out of nowhere and started closing in), the main thing I remember emotionally about the game was alienation. I just felt so miserably alone and emotionally drained by the end of the game, as every character I encountered ended up dead or worse (and most of those encounters were so indirect to begin with).
But at the same time I was happy that I was able to play something that affected me like that; not many games are able to generate an emotion more complicated than “Holy crap! A monster in a closet!” or cheap tearjerkers like FF7.
12/08/2009 at 23:27 Eli Just says:
It’s 28 days later!
12/08/2009 at 23:29 Sunjammer says:
Shock 2 under XP suffers from the Dark engine issue with multicore processors. Start it up, alt-tab out to windows, go to task manager, right click the process, choose “set affinity” and turn off all cores but the first. Bam, all stability issues solved. It runs wonderfully on my box with no “hacks” beyond this.
12/08/2009 at 23:31 Sunjammer says:
There’s already a Shock 3, it’s called Bioshock.
…
Seriously. I just don’t think we’ll see another sequel by a team fit for the task.
13/08/2009 at 00:00 Pidesco says:
No game has ever meshed theme, narrative and gameplay as well as System Shock 1 and 2.
Not that the System Shocks are some sort of unassailable symbols of gaming. There’s plenty to improve upon their design and it’s pretty depressing that no one has done it, even after 10 years.
13/08/2009 at 00:03 Alex Hayter says:
I always saw a sort of quirky reverse oedipal narrative in System Shock 2. The (not Godlike, but wanting to be) mother kills the father (“God”, the controlling but responsible and ultimately benevolent presence that is absent in the world of ss2) and desires to possess her creation, the son.
Definitely need to play this game again, it’s been too long.
Anyone figured out any easy way to run it on Windows Shitsta?
13/08/2009 at 00:08 Moonracer says:
I remember moving from Wolfenstien 3d (’92), to DOOM (’93), to System Shock 1(’94). The leap in technology and story telling was so great I believed anything could and would happen.
But yes, while both system shock 1+2 were great it’s hard to believe a third would do SHODAN justice. Unless perhaps you were one of her minions working to put her in her rightful place? That would indeed allow both SHODAN and the player to “win”.
13/08/2009 at 00:08 Ergates says:
For years I had “….I AM SHODAN” as my computers start up sound. (taken from her ‘reveal’ in ss2).
I fact, reading me has just prompted me to find the sound file and reinstate it to it’s proper place.
(Oh, and all my PCs are named Shodan too)
13/08/2009 at 00:19 Harry Callahan says:
There’s probably some interesting compare and contrast that could be done between the picture of malevolent AI portrayed by System Shock vs that in the Marathon series, but I’m too lazy. Suffice to say I personally found the unfolding of the Marathon 1 story to be every bit as interesting as System Shock 2.
13/08/2009 at 00:52 soundofsatellites says:
T. Slothrop said:
“I actually finished Dead Space today after finally being bothered to continue the game and in spite of the production value, it’s a Fisher-Price activity chair compared to the university chemistry set and loaded bong that is the mindfuck of System Shock 2. ”
This. And that someone though it would be cool to play as tommy sanchez and replacing the ai-manipulative-cunt by a human-manipulative-cunt-as-dull-as-they-come. I guess personality does come a long way, huh?
13/08/2009 at 02:19 roBurky says:
I found HAL quite underwhelming when I saw 2001 for the first time recently. I knew of him as the classic rogue AI, but I’d been brought up on the rogue AIs of System Shock and Deus Ex. In comparison to them, HAL was a toaster that refuses to pop up when finished.
13/08/2009 at 02:47 Anaphiel says:
Harry Callahan, about a million years ago I was an active member of the Marathon fan community, and there actually were a few pretty good discussions about the similarities between Durandal and Shodan.
I took a little trip down memory lane to the Marathon’s Story page, and found one brief thread . Pretty sure there were other, more detailed threads, but this one at least has my two cents on the matter.
Good to see someone else remembers those games fondly. I wonder if we can get the RPS guys to play the SDL versions of them through now that they’re all freely available? True classics.
13/08/2009 at 02:48 Anaphiel says:
Sigh.
We really need to get that edit function back. In the meantime, enjoy the world’s longest and sloppiest hyperlink.
13/08/2009 at 03:56 capital L says:
Anaphiel:
(Harry Callahan here, sorta–I changed my name to he of Dirty Harry fame to make a “Then the law is crazy” joke months ago, and hadn’t posted since apparently.)
I imagine the other threads were more detailed than that, because there are so many interesting parallels to be drawn beyond the intractable Enterprise vs. Death Star type of question.
In both games the basic mechanism of player and AI interaction is endlessly fascinating and full of interesting dichotomies. The player’s knowledge is limited, while the AI’s is seemingly endless. The AI is something of an embodiment of the vessel, yet cannot adequately act within itself. Furthermore, they don’t have full control over the overall actions of the ships in question–indeed the ships are as incapable of (physical) action as the AI’s themselves. The player can act, but is constantly subject to the whims of the AI. The AI is vulnerable and consequently needs the player, yet the player is equally vulnerable and relies upon the aid of the AI. The player foresees that the AI is not a stable ally, yet has no choice but to persist in conjunction.
Both games also succeed at implementing the perfect alien foil: they come from outside the ship, yet they only are in contact due to the actions of the AI. Furthermore, both titles make excellent use of additional AI’s beyond the chief antagonists, whose presence and actions tend to highlight the nature of said antagonists.
Additionally, both grand schemes designed upon by the antagonist AIs in both games are colossal in comparison to the immediate battles as hand–in this way mirroring the discrepancy between the size of the ship itself versus the immediate and limited surroundings for the individual actions of the player. Wonderful parallelism.
Beyond that, I have also been intrigued by the stock science fiction tension raised by both titles with regards to how a sentient AI might react to it’s creators. The stages of Rampancy always struck me as a rather like something that wouldn’t be out of place in an Asimov robot detective story, and of course the sheer power of Shodan’s megalomania has been amply discussed in the article above.
As fun the other games in these series were, Marathon 1 and System Shock 2 are still games I contemplate from time to time, as evidenced by my mass of verbage above. Good times, good times.
13/08/2009 at 06:28 Grey_Ghost says:
Both SS1 & SS2 are perfect candidates for remakes! Especially SS1. I would buy them in a heartbeat!
There 1 or 2 enhanced model / texture mods for SS2, and they certainly help.
13/08/2009 at 06:31 GJLARP says:
I hope the System Shock series stays dead for good. Like what cjlr said, most of the greatest games ever were in the late 90s. Bioshock? Poppycock, $60 for a silly piece of plastic disc. I doubt anyone but indie developers with dreams and ideals can do a new System Shock
Nothing beats the Engineering deck in System Shock 2 – armed only with a silly wrench, out of ammo, and being hunted down by 3 self-exploding protocol droids and 1 heavily armed maintenance droid. That, my friends, is true horror and atmosphere.
13/08/2009 at 07:40 Howard says:
Back to the subject of getting System Shock 2 running on Vista for a moment: Well after installing it and running the official patch it worked without a problem on my Vista 64, so not sure what the issue is with anyone else’s.
As to getting it to run better:
Install the SS2 Tool:
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,392
This patches the game, fixes a tonne of stuff and sort out your resolution too.
Then install the mod manager:
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,527.0.html
I’d also recommend Rebirth and SHTUP:
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,8.0.html
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php?PHPSESSID=f5725a5c6afa2e62fbd005da020c58d1&/topic,22.0.html
]Install these through the mod manager
And after that you should be good to go. The only problem I now have is that if I try and load a save game SS2 hangs utterly. Quicksave/load are fine, but I cannot load from a file. Weird…
13/08/2009 at 07:42 Howard says:
Sorry, I lie. In order to get SS2 vanilla to work in Vista I had to run it in XP compatible mode.
13/08/2009 at 07:50 Testicular Torsion says:
Yeah, Marathon is definitely another one of those series that’s better off defunct — it peaked with M2, and can’t really go any further without severely overusing Durandal and the Pfhor. (Who, after three games of getting their asses kicked in vast droves, seem like a bunch of Space Losers already…)
Marathon 1 and SS2 had very similar plots, yes. The difference, I’d say, is that Durandal was almost exclusively the player’s friend once they make contact. (Except for the whole Blaspheme Quarantine thing… heh.) A crazy, megalomanaical friend who’s prone to fits of mad ranting and could teleport you out into deep space if he felt like it, but a friend nonetheless — you need each other, and eventually he even seems to develop a sort of sentimental attachment to you, like you’re his pet. SHODAN, on the other hand, was obviously a capital-V Villain as soon as she showed up, and I spent the entire game waiting for the backstab.
It’s an interesting distinction… both of them have a lot in common, but I think a lot of what made me trust Durandal and distrust SHODAN when I played them is that Durandal is a Magnificent Bastard — funny, sardonic, layers and layers of schemes, and clearly possessed of some understanding of human nature. SHODAN, on the other hand, is fixed in her mindset that everything is beneath her, even though her asskicking in SS1 and miserable failure on the whole Many thing prove that she’s not infallible. Puts one on edge right away.
13/08/2009 at 08:37 Vinraith says:
That I completely missed the System Shock games is one of those things that grates on my gaming soul (right alongside missing X-Com, but let’s not even start on that). It’s flagrantly obvious that one simply can’t recapture the experience of playing those games in their era by trying to play them now.
13/08/2009 at 08:42 Anthony Coleman says:
Great article.
System Shock 2 was the game that made me want to make video games. I had toyed with the idea of making games, but not something I seriously thought about. Then this came out my senior year of high school, it blew me away, and from then on out I set my focus on actually making games that would hopefully give people as much enjoyment as I found in SS2.
As you can tell, this game was incredibly important to me.
13/08/2009 at 09:16 Black Mamba says:
Very good article.
If they ever did make a System Shock 3 I always thought it would be nice for SHODAN to become the hero & player character.
With the ending where the women metamorphoses into SHODAN it meant she has a physical body and you could tie the transformation into her no longer being a sociopath & slowly re-develop a moral conscious.
A setting of SHODAN being captured and held for nefarious experiments in a research lab trying to escape & destroy the experiments but also with a hacker on her tail with the same aims and out to destroy her (not realizing shes turned over a new leaf) could prove some nice twists on the gameplay.
Of course it will never happen but hey if anyone from EA is reading feel free to take the idea.
13/08/2009 at 09:23 fuggles says:
Ha – that’s true. I feel lucky in that I lived through the real big gaming booms, such as the platform invasion, the point and click, and the time when commercial games were bizarre and experimental. Most strikingly in my nostalgia was the slow improvement of 3D games leading to the 3D Graphics card and what a huge difference that made – coloured lighting! Nice looking textures!
Gaming’s all about refining now, you guys have all missed the landmarks ^^
SS2 – for me it was the monkeys, man I hated the monkeys. Great game, very satisfying to play through.
13/08/2009 at 09:27 l1ddl3monkey says:
This must never be remade. The law of remakes dictates that if this is remade it will be shit.
In reference to running it on modern hardware: I think Howards covered most of the bases here.
The only thing I can add: It will only run on a single core so if you have a multi core CPU then start the game and then set the affinity for single core before you start playing it/load up a save game. Otherwise it hangs about 10 seconds in.
13/08/2009 at 09:37 Howard says:
Yeah, the SS2 Tool fixes the CPU affinity thing automatically; most useful =)
As to a remake: as long as it was done for the sake of nostalgia and made for the fans in the full knowledge that it would do little more than recoup its expenses, I do not see the harm.
I for one would LOVE to see SS2 in a modern engine (Starbreeze’s comes to mind as does the, much maligned, id tech 4). To see that game rendered with good textures, high-poly environments/models and real-time lighting would be an absolute dream.
On that subject, would it be possible to organise something like that? If as much of the original assets as possible were re-used (particularly voices) what would be the cost of making such a game and could it be funded by fans? Older engines like iT4 surely don’t cost *that* much now do they?
13/08/2009 at 09:41 pepper says:
Great article although i never played any of the 2 games.
13/08/2009 at 09:53 l1ddl3monkey says:
@ Howard: Was previously unaware of the SS2 tool, although I have all the other bits mentioned in your post. I suppose that means I have to play SS2 again then!
I’ve often thought that if SS2 is ever remade it would be by the modding community as opposed to a games studio. It could be done and but the development cycle for something like that on a modern engine would be years, assuming that you had enough people to do the work.
As an avid mod follower and dedicated fiddler with mapping tools I can tell you that the hard part, and what kills most mods, is getting and keeping enough talented people to do all the work. Keeping people who have jobs or full time education to attend to motivated and focused on what would be, essentially, a second full time unpaid job that they have to ft into their spare time, is really, really hard.
Also: Unless Terri Brosius does the voice of Shodan and Eric Brosius does the sound design, it just wouldn’t be SS2. I think there’s some issue over the licencing to do with the fact that the development studio and publisher both technically no longer exist so no one (ncluding lawyers) is entirely sure who owns the licence. Hence no remakes or re-releases of the title.
13/08/2009 at 09:56 pignoli says:
@ Vinraith:
Me too, totally. I think I initially missed SS2 as my PC wouldn’t run it at the time (just before I got my first proper 3D card!) and once I had the hardware, I just never got around to going back to it. A shame really as it is absolutely ‘up my alley’ and would no doubt be right there with Deus Ex in my estimations had I caught it in its era. Still, it can be seen as a sign of a games greatness that one can get so much from simply reading about it.
13/08/2009 at 10:07 Demikaze says:
Shodan really was a truly brilliant anatagonist. And the game was pant-wettingly terrifying. This and AvP, for entirely different reasons, were games that brought me to the edge of a nervous breakdown.
13/08/2009 at 10:21 Sunjammer says:
i can’t make up my mind whether Engineering is actually carefully gauged to be a total horror show or if it’s just a poorly balanced mishap. The difficulty absolutely and resolutely peaks right there, with protocol droid booby traps, maintenance droids and a severe lack of ammunition for anything that works. Beyond that, the game evens out to a natural slope again.
On one hand, Engineering is memorable and awesome. On the other, it’s a slog to play through and one of the reasons many of my SS2 replays stop early.
13/08/2009 at 10:24 Sunjammer says:
Ugh god damn you for putting the image of an UnrealEngine3 super HD tard mode remake of SS2 in my mind. You wouldn’t even have to update the sound, just reuse what was. Arrrghh
13/08/2009 at 11:13 alco75 says:
System Shock 2 is the best singleplayer game that has ever been made. IMHO.
13/08/2009 at 11:27 Howard says:
Yeah, so I’m screwed for playing this then, lol. After all that I just noticed that, while quicksave/load does work, you cannot load a quicksave after you quit out. So unless I play SS2 through in one sitting using only one Qsave slot I’m buggered. Arse.
13/08/2009 at 11:36 CMaster says:
Loved SS2. Don’t see any real need for a remake of it, other than to bring it to new people. The graphics are a little old, but there are updates and it is still perfectly playable.
System Shock 1 however, with it’s horrifically clunky interface, indistinct and confusing graphics and poor quality sound has stopped me from ever being able to play it. A remake however, experiencing SHODAN as a god, hearing the pathetic hacker line used personally – that’s something I’d like to do.
Of course, if someone wants to remake both at once and bundle them together, that is good too.
13/08/2009 at 12:14 Subject 706 says:
System Shock 1 is in my opinion a better game than number 2, which is of course a great game in itself. Together with Deus Ex, these games made me realize how great games can be. Sadly, no game has come close to those three.
Remakes would be a great thing, if they are graphical (and in case of SS1 also the UI) only. A third and final installment could be great if handled correctly, i.e. not “streamlined”, which means no large publisher should be allowed to touch it.
As frightening as the Engineering deck in SS2 was, the deck in SS1 where the inviso-mutants lived was even scarier. You’d have the searchlight on, frantically watching for the telltale flicker of the mutants, trying desperately to dodge their attacks and liberally spraying bullets at them. Ah, the memories…
13/08/2009 at 13:13 Owen says:
That’s a superb article Kieron.
13/08/2009 at 13:24 Dante says:
“Every time a villain fails to destroy the world, it lessens them.
They become less of a threat, and more of a joke. A second try at storming the Godhead was both new and good for Shodan, with her initial weak position and striving for the impossible goal being striking. There’s a determination there which is admirable, so lends her a little dignity. A third try and she becomes less the immortal, perfect machine and just another loser.”
I believe the technical term is ‘Villain Decay’
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainDecay
13/08/2009 at 13:28 Kieron Gillen says:
No it’s not. It’s TV Tropes’ term.
KG
13/08/2009 at 19:13 OJ287 says:
Talking about System Shock is like eating a chocolate bar in front of someone with nut allergies. I cant get this game for less than 30 quid. Please stop all conversation until GoG sells it for a reasonable price.
13/08/2009 at 19:19 LionsPhil says:
Mmm…SHODAN. Also, System Shock 1 was better than 2. There, I said it.
(Admittedtly, that’s like saying that having twenty trillion dollars is better than ninteen, but still.)
As for you WASD junkies: SS1 does that, just slightly transposed. I love the whole separate turn/aim thing myself, and it adds to the awkward, clostrophobic fear of being an unathletic hacker, not another faceless military macho grunt. All hail its 2.5D glory.
13/08/2009 at 19:24 LionsPhil says:
Disclaimer for the above: I played SS1 for the first time last year. Those are not rose-tinted spectacles speaking.
“As frightening as the Engineering deck in SS2 was, the deck in SS1 where the inviso-mutants lived was even scarier.”
Hells yes. Even once I had the resurrection machinery working (which I never tolerated using in SS2, probably because it now cost nanites, and penny-pinching-gamer syndrome made me reach for quickload instead), and was armed with a laser rapier (which could actually kill things in SS1), I dashed from lift to lift on that floor like a madman.
The worst part was that I missed one of the doors on my first sweep of it, to a dark room where the spare parts are for the relay, and which contained a bunch of those invisible mutants. When I finally found it, the reduction in level population meant they started spawning again in the corridors. Argh.
13/08/2009 at 20:09 aoanla says:
I never played SS1 (I had an Amiga at the time it came out) or SS2 (I played the demo and was already scared enough by it that I never bothered getting the game). I’ve always known I was missing something, but since I’ve repeatedly confirmed my wussiness with respect to scary games, I know I’d never get past the first levels anyway…
13/08/2009 at 20:47 LionsPhil says:
(…by which I mean earlier this year, apparently. Can haz edit back plz?)
13/08/2009 at 21:52 XERXES says:
Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.
14/08/2009 at 00:31 undead dolphin hacker says:
I LOVED System Shock 2, and yet, I’ve sort of forgotten it. When people ask me for examples of the best gaming has to offer, I inevitably forget Shock 2, the Thief games, and Deus Ex.
I’m not sure why.
Also, did anyone notice that Dagoth-Ur, or whatever the final boss was in Morrowind, looks a whole hell of alot like SHODAN’s final-boss model?
14/08/2009 at 04:23 Gwog says:
That essay was dynamite.
14/08/2009 at 04:39 The Colonel says:
Thanks guys, it’s working fine now. I never completed this one. Excited!
14/08/2009 at 04:55 sigma83 says:
And _this_ is why I read Rock Paper Shotgun.
14/08/2009 at 09:32 Kieron Gillen says:
(I actually agree SS1 is the better game, btw)
KG
15/08/2009 at 22:19 Initialised says:
“24-days later comment on rage culture” What is this zombie franchise of which you speak?
15/08/2009 at 22:58 Kieron Gillen says:
It’s one which sarky pedants aren’t allowed to watch. Sorry man. It’s totally awesome.
KG
16/08/2009 at 00:01 Jesrad says:
Excellent article.
I’ve never played anything else that conveyed such strong emotions; a continual overdose of loneliness, sadness, and paranoia. Everyone you needed to meet was dead and I never felt safe anywhere due to the continual burblings of Xerxes and the Many.
While it had incredible atmosphere and writing, a fair amount of the actual gameplay was horrible. Infinitely respawning monsters and the utterly heinous jumping puzzle at the end kept me from playing it a second time. It’s a game that could easily be improved upon but will never be equaled.
16/08/2009 at 13:29 Garrick Muttley says:
One of my favorite bits:
“To all members of the Resistance – stay out of the mall if you can. It crawls.”
I love how just one short, understated log really upped the tension :)
17/08/2009 at 16:28 Mr.President says:
Well I’m sure glad that I didn’t have any of these uncomfortable associations when playing the game. Now I can’t unhear this naughty interpretation of the opening speech. “running through my corridors”… *barf*
Those who are bitter about not having played the games should do themselves a favour and get them already. The years that have passed haven’t made them old-fashioned or irrelevant, simply because there are still no games quite like them out there. I have played SS1 last year for the first time myself, and had a hell of a time, after getting used to the interface. And the sequel is a perfectly accessible game by modern standards, so there is absolutely no reason not to play it now, unless you’re really bothered by ugly character models.
29/11/2009 at 08:13 DunwycheHorror says:
I bought and played SS1 a bit after it came out (I’m an old school gamer). It was very good. As mind-blowing as Doom was, this came out a bit after and sure upped the ante. I still have my copy and I’m proud of that. Years later, I went on a 2 week vacation. I came back a few days early and went looking for a game. To my astonishment, there it was on the shelf, SS2. I had no idea it was being worked on or anything. I took it home (Saturday) and played it all the way through. I would also say SS1 FTW, but boy was SS2 unforgettable. The reveal scene completely blew me away. I would rank them both very highly on my gaming list. Both of them were 2 of the best ever. I also like not so many have played it. It’s like this wonderful secret. I’ve always been a fan of The Who’s By Numbers album for the same reason. It’s just fantastic and one of the least listened to (or Esthero’s Breath From Another). I understand wot Mr. Gillen is saying and he’s prolly rigiht, but I think they should do a 3. I hope one day they do. It’s very sad to me to see it go. I still play them both.
Great dirge, loved the article, one of the best written about it. Hell, that’s the one that should be in Wiki…Cheers~
Dunwyche~
20/12/2009 at 05:28 Grykus says:
Well.. I think if System Shock 2 were to be remade. It would have to only be graphically. Just remake the models/textures to look more modern. Everything else is fine.
04/01/2010 at 04:08 Blobgi says:
The only thing that I can see as a sequel to not destroy SHODAN would to be SHODAN. Succeed and bring the humans to their knees. End of series.
24/03/2010 at 19:54 Someone says:
Awesome article!
I’ve never finished SS2. The claustrophobic atmosphere coupled with the permanent loneliness and the minimalistic aural environment is just too much for my nervous system. A modded version of SS2 remains zipped up on my hard disk though. You may never know when you need that adrenaline rush again…even despite me having already spoilt everything by reading a walkthrough and waithing many gameplay videos. *Cough*
I’ve developed a deep fascination with the whole universe ever since first reading about the game in a german gaming magazine anno 1999. The story and the way it develops, the dialogues and quotes from characters in the game and of course the atmosphere are very well forged but SHODAN remains the pivotal point of interest in both games. Her “character” and her way of communicating with the player (sh-sh-IFT-ing v-v-oi-cccccccccce pItCH) are among the most interesting ever thought up by writers. She draws you into a true love/hate relationship. You hate her for her motivations and arrogant, cold way, but on the other side you *want* to prove your value to her to make her reconsider. An awesome way to form an emotional bond by fulfilling the whole emotional spectrum and to imprint oneself into the “computer gaming” part of the player’s consciousness and memory.
SHODAN and the whole SS franchise was a truly great exception from the rule. Forget the, even back then, not really awesome graphics, they’re not as important as they may seem. They just provide a claustrophobic levels with all those narrow corridors. You don’t need up-to-date high-res UT3-Engine style models and textures for that. It’s the sound that makes SS1/2 live and breathe. Nothingness and distant humming as the fundamental element coupled with your footsteps and distant, transhuman breathing or droid noises are more than enough to forget all about missing HDR, bump mapping and whatever we’re used to now. Add being all on your own, a thoroughly hostile environment and a constant lack of ammo and you’ll have the horror trip of your life.
Would I need that remade with all those graphical bells and whistles? No, not really.
Let System Shock rest on the olymp of gaming and add an occasional nod to it to modern games (most recently Mass Effect 2) instead. Don’t remake it at all. I know, it’s hard to accept that SHODAN might never return to our PCs, but I’d rather live with fond memories of the few hours of SS2 I could enjoy than having everything ruined by a potentionally subpar remake.
P.S: A Shodan voicepack is *the* mandatory mod for UT2004 when I have it installed once in a while.
P.P.S: So far me and my gaming rig XERXES have neither been visited by a low-poly enhanced human nor was there any hacking attempt from space. :)
26/08/2010 at 16:46 Madis says:
“But, just for the record, if we had to choose which cybernetic jackboot pressed on the throat of existence for all time, we’d be perfectly unhappy with hers.”
If coexistence of any sort were at all possible, I wouldn’t mind. Would certainly be interesting.
01/12/2011 at 18:37 Shodan says:
Nah get it ? cause i am saying that ? no ? damm this joke v1 software