A "Shock" Retrospective, Part 1

Today is a big day. A day of happiness and celebration. A day we all set aside to share with that special someone, and show them we really care. That’s right: today I make my triumphant return to blogging about video games, and you, dear reader, get to rejoice and show your devotion by reading about said video games.

Wait, that wasn’t quite right. Let me try again.

Today is a big day. A day for holding that which is most dear to us just a little bit closer than usual. A day for spending time (and money) on the most important thing in our lives. That’s right, video games! More specifically, System Shock 2 is finally available for digital purchase on gog.com! A stable version of SS2! One that runs perfectly on modern OSes! <insert_hallelujah_chorus.mp3>

Wait what? It’s Valentine’s Day? What the fuck is that? Oh…oh, that one. Ok yeah, that too.

Pictured: Me with my significant other

Well, I guess if you’re a fucking weirdo then you can take your romantic partner out to dinner or something. And you can spend the whole night wishing you were alone, in your room, reading my blog like all the cool kids are doing. As for the cool kids, well, you guys are in luck, because tonight I’m going to talk about System Shock, which is way better than sex as I understand it.

Why System Shock? Well, two reasons: 1) like I said, SS2 was finally re-released today on Good Old Games (we’ll get into why that’s actually kind of awesome later), and 2) with the release of Bioshock Infinite a little over a month away, I wanted to do a retrospective of sorts on what I am very tenuously calling the “Shock series.” Yes, I know Bioshock is technically a completely separate series from SS, but the fact that they share developers, themes, gameplay styles, design philosophies, the second word in their titles, and the makers of Bioshock even called it a direct spiritual successor to SS2 is enough of a connection for me. At the very least, it’s enough for me to arbitrarily tie in the almost definitely coincidental re-release of SS2 with Bioshock Infinite’s impending launch date, so I can ramble twice as much as I normally would. But you don’t want to hear me ramble about rambling. You’re here for the rambling. So without any further ado:

Part 1: Through The Looking Glass

Our story begins in March of 1992, when a little game development company called Blue Sky Productions released a little game called Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. Based on the Ultima series, which is generally considered to be the origin of the computer role-playing game as we know it, Underworld did a few things differently. Instead of settling for a typical turn-based RPG with a top-down perspective, the makers of Ultima Underworld sought to merge those role-playing and adventure sensibilities with elements of the first-person action genre, then still in its infancy. As series protagonist “the Avatar,” the player had to navigate a massive labyrinth filled with monsters. But that was only the tip of the iceberg—the Avatar had to eat, sleep, learn magic, level up abilities, and negotiate with the denizens of the Abyss, and the game presented the player with a wide variety of ways to reach the end.

Ultima Underworld, with complimentary DOSBox window

Games like this are a dime a dozen today, but Underworld was totally unique in its time, an almost insanely ambitious video game that, if successful, would change the landscape of gaming forever. Naturally, Ultima Underworld was not terribly successful, at least not initially, and began what would become a long-running trend for its developers: 1) attempt to revolutionize the industry by designing hugely innovative game, 2) release game around the same time as another, very popular game (Wolfenstein 3d in this case), 3) wonder why your earth-shattering, critically adored, genre-defying game didn’t sell. Fortunately, Underworld’s reputation spread by word of mouth in the following years, and the game gradually sold well enough for a sequel to be made.

After releasing Ultima Underworld II in 1993 to modest success, the visionaries at Blue Sky Productions, now called Looking Glass Studios, were struggling to decide what their next game would be. The development of UUII was an arduous and frustrating process, and the team wanted to try something new after the burnout they experienced on the Underworld series. Knowing that they wanted to continue making “immersive simulations,” and that they wanted to create their own universe, rather than remain shackled to an existing franchise, the team settled for a science fiction theme. Thus, System Shock was born.

The box art was not one of System
Shock's more remarkable innovations.

Now that the history lesson is over, I’m going to give you a list of games. Nothing special, just a short list. I’d venture to say you may have heard of some of these games, and maybe, just maybe, you’ve played one or two of them at some point:

• Bioshock
• Half Life
• Portal
• Deus Ex
• Elder Scrolls series
• Mass Effect
• Dead Space
• Halo
• Doom 3
• Batman: Arkham Asylum

Every single one of these games was influenced in some way by System Shock. Some of them even cribbed direct plot elements from it. A few of them probably wouldn’t even exist without it. And that list is just off the top of my head.

So if it's such a big deal, why haven’t you played the game, or possibly even heard of it? I’ll tell you why: Doom II. Well, ok, there might be a bit more to it than that. You see, once again Looking Glass managed to release their game at one of the worst possible times for any PC game to ever be released, i.e. late 1994, AKA smack dab in the middle of the Doom frenzy. While SS wasn’t a complete flop, it was a net loss for Looking Glass. But even if the game had been released in a less competitive environment for first-person shooters, it still would have simply been too far ahead of its time to be fully appreciated. Bottom line: System Shock was (and is) complex. Maybe too complex.

System Shock's gameplay.

Once again, I’m going to give you a list, this time of the game’s major innovations:

• One of the first truly 3-d first-person games
• A story told through audio logs scattered throughout the environment
• An omnipresent villain taunting, misdirecting, and generally fucking with you constantly
• A true hybrid of first-person shooters and adventure games
• An open world with a mission structure that promoted nonlinear exploration
• The ability to lean, crouch, climb up walls, and look up and down (seriously)
• Dynamic music changes based on environmental cues
• Dynamic lighting
• Fucking giant robot spider brain things with dangling human torsos
• A cyberspace hacking minigame that would probably be considered too ambitious even today

The point is, System Shock had some serious balls for its time. But there was one element above all else that made the game special, that cemented its place in gaming history. And if you know anything at all about the series, you already know what I’m going to say. Yes, the one aspect of System Shock that would haunt our nightmares forever, that became an indelible and unmistakable icon in gaming culture, was none other than those robot spider brain things. Seriously, those things are creepy as fuck. Look at them!

What did I tell you?
Creepy as fuck.

Oh, and there was a crazy computer or something, too.

What is there left to say about SHODAN? One of the most memorable and chilling antagonists in all of gaming, on the surface she’s basically just a dominatrix version of HAL from 2001. But as is always the case in fiction, it’s not so much what you say as how you say it. The idea behind SHODAN may not have been anything new, but it was the execution that elevated her to the legendary villain she is. She was quite literally everywhere on Citadel Station, an all-powerful machine god whose influence you couldn’t escape, who dogged you and toyed with you every step of the way. And you were just a hacker, a mere insect. What chance did you have? Every new floor you reached brought new abominations, each more wrong than the last, the twisted results of SHODAN’s experiments on the human residents of the station. And all the while, her voice was in your head—a stuttering, schizophrenic digital howl.

As brilliant as System Shock was, and as unforgettable as SHODAN was, the game was far from perfect. While SS was certainly a difficult game, the restoration chambers you found would revive you immediately upon dying. In effect, you could brute force your way through most of the game simply by wearing down enemies, dying, and then running right back to them to finish them off (this might come into play again in this retrospective, just maybe). In addition, the interface was somewhat clunky, even for its time. While SS had an absolute ton of information to feed the player, the HUD could have been far less cluttered. As it was, that HUD took up about half the screen, which kept the player somewhat distanced from the action itself, and the atmosphere suffered as a result.

Look at this fucking thing.

Finally, System Shock attempted a hacking minigame that was almost a full game in itself, similar to a space flight simulator. You would fly in fully 3-dimensional cyberspace and attempt to collect programs and destroy security. An interesting concept to be sure, but cyberspace itself, a psychedelic web of wire-frame rooms, was extremely disorienting. On top of that, the actual gunplay in cyberspace was poorly implemented, and you had to fight the final boss of the game there, which was a huge problem if you hadn’t been collecting all the (supposedly) optional upgrades.

Yeah, I have no idea.

For all its flaws, however, System Shock did so many more things right, and though exceedingly dated today, it still impresses for its sheer ambition and design alone. And it served as a perfect leaping off point for Irrational Games to follow it up five years later with one of the greatest games ever made. But now that I’ve got you all hot and bothered, you’ll just have to wait until part 2 to hear the rest. And no, seriously, it’s actually coming soon this time, I promise, for real, absolutely, without a doubt. Don’t you trust me? Relationships are built on trust, you know. Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day, I guess.