Playing SS2 feels like reading a novel/short story by Philip K. Dick - by present perfect
present perfect on 1/12/2006 at 01:16
Anyone agree? The game just reminds me deeply of a genuine Philip K. Dick novel or short story.
The obvious thing, as I mentioned before in my other thread, the game has very strong philosophical themes interwoven within the story. Those apsects are very much like a Dick thing, who was pretty much a philosopher for the future with its exigencies of the fast paced technological change and how it affects us, he created some kind of cyber ethics with his work.
Mostly, the aspect of individuality vs. collective (Dick was very afraid of losing individuality), apart from that, the paranoid and stark isolated setting speaks very much for Dick (he was a very lonely, isolated person, paranoid of the government to spy on him). We all know, genius and insanity are at close quarters...
You sense that feeling within the game! Shodan is pretty much like the embodiment of our consistent fear that our technological creation is taking over and we loose control of it, it controls us instead, uses us as a puppet (one big theme within Dick's work) And, of course, the struggle between machine and nature, Shodan and the Many...
Also, I think Dick was very afraid of the big transnational corporations that will emerge in the future and rule the world (we experience the beginning of it right now), governments will become more and more powerless, corporations will take over not only on the social, but also on the political life.
This is also a subject in the System Shock series with Trioptimum.
But beside all that philosophical stuff, I also felt some kind of self-aware irony within the game that is consistent in Dick's books also. Dick was a genious not just because of his thought of philosophy and technical sci-fi world, but largely because he was able to combine it with refreshing and sublime irony.
This irony is overall recognizable within SS2. (the holobrothel, the cinema posters, quite a few audio-logs have some ironical edge to it). You can truly understand the dark tone better, if you have some brigther tones to laugh about. It speaks for a more complex and profound work if you are able to give some ironical edge to it...
All in all, I think the developers were deeply influenced by the work of Philip K. Dick, at least they are aware of his work and like it...
and that makes me love this game even more! You can tell I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan myself... :cheeky:
Singing Dancing Moose on 1/12/2006 at 01:26
so I'm hoping that english isn't your native language
Crion on 1/12/2006 at 07:46
Oh, be nice you.
present perfect on 1/12/2006 at 16:34
haha, that coming from a "Singing Dancing Moose"? :D
so I'm hoping you really get what I was talking about, nevertheless...or did it struck you? If you have some questions, please feel free to ask.
Well, I guess you aren't really interested though, just a little trouble maker.
THRESHIN on 2/12/2006 at 03:01
i'd somewhat agree...i can definitely see a lot of similarities. plus i'm about as big of a Philip k Dick fan as i am a system shock fan;) still i don't know if androids really do dream of electric sheep or not....
Bluegrime on 2/12/2006 at 04:23
I know rampant AI's do..
piano-sam on 2/12/2006 at 08:19
You just amplified my desperation to buy SS2 exponentially.
Kolya on 2/12/2006 at 13:27
It's interesting that you see so many PKD themes in it. I've only read a few of his stories so far but I like him too.
The genre of System Shock (1+2) is considered as Cyberpunk though and I've always seen it as being heavily influenced by William Gibson's books who created that genre. The mega corps, body augmentations and the villain being an AI, all point in that direction. I'm sure there could be made a valid point that PKD wrote about some of these themes before and prepared Cyberpunk which started shortly after his death.
Can you tell me which PKD story you mean that had mega corps? I plan to read more by him anyway, so I could maybe start with that one. Although I still have A Scanner Darkly lying around here. What did you think of the (
http://www.philipkdick.com/films_scanner.html) movie released this summer?
Bluegrime on 2/12/2006 at 23:00
The movie was pretty good.. Nifty roto-scoping effects.
