Kisses, SHODAN!Īll of this adds up to an environment that gives an exceptional sense of scale, place, and presence. Love getting voice messages from my cyber-girlfriend about the destruction of humanity. I'm sorry, the game's main antagonist (I could gush for pages about SHODAN, but so many people have said so many better things than I could.

Oh, and the whole time, you're being mercilessly taunted by SHODAN, the game's main prota. From the moment the game begins, you are beset by a never-ending stream of various baddies that get progressively stronger and soak up your preciously limited ammunition. And in the midst of that, something goes wrong, and you find yourself having to drag your ass down to the maintenance levels to troubleshoot defective hardware.Īll the while, you're constantly under threat of attack. More than once throughout the game, you find yourself struggling to accomplish a goal like 'Disconnect this section of the station' or 'Energize the shields with a specific power source'. Like, I can't stress this enough: System Shock had a real and unfolding narrative that you had to navigate. It had a sense of cohesive presence, where instead of running from level to level and pushing an abstract level end button, you moved between functional locations in Citadel station to accomplish actual goals. At that time, the original System Shock had massive, sprawling environments that encompassed a huge orbital space station. Keep in mind, that makes this game contemporary with DOOM. The original System Shock was a game made for DOS in 1994 by Looking Glass Studios. I am not exaggerating when I say both of those things. The original System Shock is, arguably one of the single most ambitious, important, and influential games in all of PC gaming history. And I wanted to talk about it for one specific reason: Rather than talk about the remake (and honestly, the ruckus that surrounds the remake), I wanted to talk about the original. Let me just say: I loved every second of it. I can see why they would make that request. However, the devs have gently requested that backers not share screenshots, videos, spoilers, or otherwise about it. I wish I could get into a full blown review, detailing all of my feelings on the game. I backed the game years ago on kickstarter, and so have had access to the Backer Beta for the last few weeks. I just wrapped up playing the Remake of the Original System Shock.

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