![]() This is your reward for 60 hours of death and struggle. The ending cutscene / montage of the original game. I’ve begun to suspect that the best parts of the plot were the bits I was filling in myself as I played. But the story itself isn’t exactly radical. 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. It was certainly the right story at the right time. The story appealed to me on some deep personal level, but was it really all that great? Rogue AI gets loose, kills everyone. The interface is grotesque by modern standards, and its eccentricities really detract from the experience. The original System Shock has not aged well at all. 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. 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. ![]() This is actually another indication to me that the things I loved about the System Shock series were different from what everyone else loved. Max Payne was a great game, but I never would have accepted it as a sequel to Duke Nukem. In 1994, these sloped surfaces BLEW MY MIND.Īnd no, I don’t really see BioShock as System Shock 3. 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. Thief and Deus Ex are worthy titles, but they pale in comparison to System Shock 2. 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. 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. All three were designed or produced in some way by Warren Spector. ![]() Two of those came from Looking Glass Studios. In my mind there are three games that encompass the great “thinking person’s shooters”: System Shock, Deus Ex, and Thief. I’m looking at the settings and I can’t find the option to enable trifiltering bump maps. ![]() In my earlier post on art games, Juni asked, “Shamus… you don't have System Shock on your list?” ![]()
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