{"id":4836,"date":"2009-09-10T09:16:52","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T13:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=4836"},"modified":"2011-02-12T01:57:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T06:57:35","slug":"how-did-you-react-to-system-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=4836","title":{"rendered":"How did you react to System Shock?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my earlier post on art games<\/a>, Juni asked<\/a>, “Shamus… you don't have System Shock on your list?”<\/p>\n

I’m looking at the settings and I can’t find the option to enable trifiltering bump maps.<\/td><\/tr>
I’m looking at the settings and I can’t find the option to enable trifiltering bump maps.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>In my mind there are three games that encompass the great “thinking person’s shooters”: System Shock, Deus Ex, and Thief. Two of those came from Looking Glass Studios<\/a>. All three were designed or produced in some way by Warren Spector<\/a>. Other people might include Hitman or Max Payne in that category, but this is my list and these games have a sort of kinship with one another. <\/p>\n

My entire perception of the System Shock series is pretty warped, and I get the impression it didn’t resonate with other people the way it did for me. Thief and Deus Ex are worthy titles, but they pale in comparison to System Shock 2. But judging by comments people leave here (and the fact that Thief and Deus Ex live on) I’d guess that this relationship is inverted for most people. <\/p>\n

In 1994, these sloped surfaces BLEW MY MIND.<\/td><\/tr>
In 1994, these sloped surfaces BLEW MY MIND.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>And no, I don’t really see BioShock as System Shock 3. Max Payne was a great game, but I never would have accepted it as a sequel to Duke Nukem. This is actually another indication to me that the things I loved about the System Shock series were different from what everyone else loved. Anyone that can call BioShock a “spiritual successor” to System Shock has a radically different idea about what exactly was the “spirit” of the thing. For me the defining characteristics of System Shock were: Cyberpunk, RPG leveling, huge freeform non-linear gameworld, electronic soundtrack, pervasive solitude, and tightly controlled resource management. <\/p>\n

The original System Shock has not aged well at all. The interface is grotesque by modern standards, and its eccentricities really detract from the experience. The story appealed to me on some deep personal level, but was it really all that great? Rogue AI gets loose, kills everyone. Lone survivor must fight the evil AI. It was certainly the right story at the right time. It constructed so as to not need dialog trees, or in-game cutscenes, or any of the other things games did poorly (if at all) in 1994. But the story itself isn’t exactly radical. I’ve begun to suspect that the best parts of the plot were the bits I was filling in myself as I played. <\/p>\n

The ending cutscene \/ montage of the original game. This is your reward for 60 hours of death and struggle. Savor it.<\/td><\/tr>
The ending cutscene \/ montage of the original game. This is your reward for 60 hours of death and struggle. Savor it.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>System Shock 2 was far, far superior in terms of interface and gameplay, but the story suffered from a bad case of plot extension. The first game had wrapped things up and killed off the defining characters. The sequel tried to bring them back. It was a bit like how Fallout 3 kept waving old characters in our faces to establish its Fallout cred. The game dug up your nemesis, thus undoing your accomplishments in the first game. Then it let you kill her again. Then it undid your work again, leaving a cliffhanger that is never going to be resolved. <\/p>\n

The franchise is in perpetual legal limbo, and given the success of BioShock I don’t see why anyone would go to the expense and trouble of rounding up the rights to the thing and bringing it back. And even if someone did, the story would suffer even more as Shodan becomes the Jason Voorhees of software bugs. Plot contrivances would make her unstoppable in the most dull and predictable way: Sequel fiat. <\/p>\n

If the game did somehow emerge from the abyss, I’d hope for several things:<\/p>\n

1) Keep the depth of System Shock 2. Resident Evil 4 proved you could have decent space-driven inventory management on a console. People even liked it. Stop assuming console gamers are drooling morons. They’re pretty much like PC gamers, except they have less buttons. Keep the leveling, the looting, the researching of items. <\/p>\n

2) Reboot the story. Don’t cheapen the tale by gluing another extension onto System Shock 2. <\/p>\n

3) Show Citadel station pre-disaster. Much like the start of Half-Life 2, let the player wander around and get to know the world and the controls before the shooting starts. Make Hacker silent like Gordon Freeman, so that the player is free to fill in their character as they see fit. The original story calls for Hacker to be a prisoner at this point, so going where you’re told and not speaking are perfectly appropriate. During this time have the player meet five or six key characters, and get a glimpse of a few others. That way the messages they find will have meaning. It will be more shocking to see the station ruined if they have seen it whole. <\/p>\n

4) Big. Non-linear. Or don’t bother. <\/p>\n

I know it seems like I’m incapable of shutting up about this game. I am afraid this is probably true. Really, I’d still be playing System Shock 2 right now if I could get the sucker to run. <\/p>\n

Still, if you played the Great Three: Is System Shock the runt of the litter? Which one do you favor? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my earlier post on art games, Juni asked, “Shamus… you don't have System Shock on your list?” I’m looking at the settings and I can’t find the option to enable trifiltering bump maps.In my mind there are three games that encompass the great “thinking person’s shooters”: System Shock, Deus Ex, and Thief. Two of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}