Ayearepee on 1/7/2007 at 00:27

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I've just had another go with System Shock 1. I played it back when it was new; I played it a few years later, when System Shock II was new; and I had the urge to play it recently, this time with Dosbox. It is a shame that there has never been a System Shock III. In the chronology of computer games, System Shock is the equivalent of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a classic from the early days of silent cinema, more written about than read. More that ten years on, I am still impressed with System Shock, with the 3D engine, the rudimentary physics, the sloping floors, the attention to detail, the shadows and flickering lights etc. All of these things were cutting edge in 1994. They were so advanced that they seemed unexceptional to me, in 1994, because I assumed that they would quickly be surpassed by the next big thing (which I suppose would have been Duke Nukem 3D's Build Engine, or Quake). Only after a few years had passed could I appreciate just how advanced System Shock was. I also understand why it did not set the world on fire back in 1994, and the things I found frustrating in 1994 I still find frustrating today, although this time I find them frustrating in 640x480. The baddies still look rubbish. I have never played Ultima Underworld; presumably that game deserves greater plaudits for being slightly more ahead of its time.

I still wonder how I would react if I ever met Terri Brosius in real life. I would not recognise her unless she spoke. Would I try to destroy her mobile phone, or would I betray my fellow humans and become her cybernetic disciple? She should do more voiceover work, perhaps for telephone systems, emergency broadcast networks and so forth. She could be the voice of the computer in fighter jets that says "pull up" and "bingo fuel", and "I have given you enhanced senses, armor, cybernetic mental enhancement, and you still fail to destroy insects much feebler than yourself".

Anyway, after finishing the game I decided to delve into its secrets. I noticed that Mira Stackhouse's head is not in the demo version of the game (the alcove in which you find it is not present). There is a forklift baddy in one of the game's data files. I remember System Shock II having several audio logs and plot elements in the resource files that were never used during the game. One of the subsites on TTLG has some unused SHODAN audio logs. I was also puzzled by part of the cybstrng.res file:

"WARNING: Bridge Separation Process Initiated. All unnecessary personnel clear the level.
WARNING: Bridge Separation Process Stage Two. Engines Charging for Firing. All personnel leave the area immediately.
WARNING: Bridge Separation Imminent. Atmospheric depressurization commencing.
Camera activating security door.
Program: security breaker installed.
This receptacle is for isolinear chipsets.
Aborting program.
SHODAN security system back online.
Welcome to the throne of God.
WARNING: rapidly falling air pressure.
Welcome to my death machine, interloper!"

Particularly the bit about "rapidly falling air pressure" puzzled me in particular, because I don't remember it from the game, or any part of the game in which there was a danger of depressurisation. It seemed an obvious thing for the game designers to include, particularly on the hangar level. If SHODAN had dropped the atmospheric force fields in the hangar bay, she would have had one less hacker to worry about. I was surprised that there wasn't at least one immobile shuttle in a hangar bay. Perhaps the "rapidly falling air pressure" message was used, but I did not notice it. Racking my brain, I wonder if it appears as you climb the ladder up to level nine (I don't have a save game at that point, so I can't check). If it was not used, where would it have gone?

"Welcome to the throne of God" is one of the unused audio logs. I imagine it would have been used when you enter the final room. I noticed that SHODAN seems to fade away from the plot during the last section. She interrupts one of Rebecca's messages at the beginning of Level 9 (perhaps the end of Level 8, I forget), but she keeps schtum thereafter. I was surprised that she did not have a final speech. "Damn you, insect", that kind of thing. I wonder what SHODAN's plan was, after you destroy the reactor; she counters each of your previous triumphs with a new threat, but once you have destroyed the bulk of the station she runs out of puff. In theory you could have hidden in a corner until rescue arrived. Perhaps the bridge area still has sufficient firepower to fend off shuttles. Perhaps it is flying off into deep space (judging by the v-mail you get, it jettisons with great force).

I haven't ever played the game with a time limit, and I don't know how this element works; does the game simply run for seven hours and then exit, or does it throw extra obstacles in your path?

My other observations are:
- David Honig must have been a huge fan of Roy Batty from Blade Runner. He could not look more like a stereotypical cyberpunk if he had "I am a cyberpunk" written across his forehead, with heat transference compound.
- Althea Grossman did not look like an impressive resistance fighter. The impression I get, throughout the game, is that the human resistance was made up of guitar-playing hippies, who inevitably died like dogs.
- I assume the people in the email pictures etc were all employees of Looking Glass, or friends of the employees, or people they dragged off the street.
- Quite near the beginning, SHODAN threatens to have you strapped to an "electrified interrogation bench", which made me grin, because some people pay good money for that kind of thing.
- Rebecca Lansing's accent - British, Canadian, or Transatlantic?
- Is D'Arcy's rampant bald patch a bald wig? It makes his head look pointed.
- The game begins on 06 November. The first mention of SHODAN charging up the laser is dated 20 October, and talks about this event in the past tense. It seems that the laser takes at least seventeen days to charge up. At this rate it will take SHODAN quite some time to wipe out the Earth's major cities, unless the laser can fire several times on one charge. It seems odd that a space station orbiting Saturn has a mining laser. Then again, one of the logs mentions that the station can move about, and of course the laser has the range to strike Earth, so perhaps it is used against Saturn's moons, or asteroids that Saturn has captured.
- System Shock is nonstandard, because it is old. In order to blow the reactor you have to make a list of six numbers from the CPU rooms, and the easiest way to do this is with a pencil and paper. That kind of thing doesn't happen in modern games; you are never expected to make notes. Adventure games are basically flowcharts; you have a list of tasks that you have to tick off in order to achieve an ulterior goal. Modern adventure games are like this. There is a screen that shows your tasks. The best adventure games make you forget that you are ticking boxes on a task list, and System Shock is very good in this respect. The designers went out of their way to disguise the flowchart, e.g. by making you go up and down the levels rather than just up. The tradeoff is that the game is often baffling, and I believe this is one of the reasons it was not a big success; people played the game at their friend's house, got bored smashing objects with the pipe, got stuck, got angry with the controls, with the juddery frame rate on a 486dx2/66, went back to Mechwarrior 2 and so forth. Games have become slicker since System Shock but I still have a soft spot for it.
- "Welcome to the throne of God" would be a good sound sample for a sample-playing toilet lid, if such a thing exists. The world is poorer without such a thing.
- SHODAN refers to you as an insect. If this is the case, the game must take place in an alternative universe; the hacker character in the introduction looks like a human being (an angular human being made of plastic). Human beings are of course mammals - they give birth to live young, which they suckle. Fire is not alive.
- Cyberspace has a strange beauty of its own. I wonder how the game determines which of the wall panels should light up. They interact with your shots. I was surprised that they were not animated more often, strobing, showing text in a grid pattern, etc.
- System Shock was clearly written by literate adults who put a lot of work and thought into the game, into the technical side of the game, the gameplay, the audio logs, etc. It must have been a hell of a lot of work. Just to write the descriptive text for each of the wall panels would have taken hours of testing. Anyone who has tried to create something substantial and complex understands that there is a lot of hard work. I am amazed that the people of 1994 were capable of making System Shock. 1994 was an alien world, pre-DVD, pre-MP3, pre-Amazon.co.uk. There was no Google in 1994. There was a thing called Star Trek, that was very popular. The global baddies were the Chinese. Money was soon to be made obsolete by internet money such as Beenz etc.

I'm going to hit preview now, and fix the mistakes that I spot.

ZylonBane on 2/7/2007 at 00:02

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And this, boys and girls, is why you don't drink and post.

ZylonBane on 2/7/2007 at 03:10

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Was there a reason it DIDN'T have to be performed on Citadel? The hacker was on Citadel anyway to hack SHODAN, and it's a highly illegal operation. Use some common sense, man.

Matthew on 2/7/2007 at 10:40

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Plus it meant that Diego could keep him under his thumb if he needed him again, in a place he believed himself to have total control over.

Edit: was the implant illegal at that time? I remember it being called 'military-grade', so I suppose it could have been illegal for civilians to possess.

cosmicnut on 2/7/2007 at 11:02

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The implant was a military grade rig. I think the idea was that it is illegal for non-military personnel to have that kind of rig.
It was done on citadel as it would be easier to do without the military / police finding out as Diego had total control of citadel and (he thought) SHODAN.
Also, if citadel could do it, why not get it done there and then!