Sneaking under crawl spaces and across the labyrinthine corridors, you'll hop to destroy SHODAN's cameras, find access cards, flip switches to unlock newer areas, and eventually make your way up and back down the station's various floors. Emphasis on the plural, SHODAN's a crafty one. After adjusting a few difficulty sliders for combat, puzzles, cyberspace, and more - as you did in the original - you start the trek through the Citadel's steely levels in an attempt to thwart SHODAN's humanity-cleansing schemes. The overall structure here is the same, though. Though it does mean that the classic's pleasures are now easier to enjoy than ever, made more approachable for a modern audience. That faithfulness means that System Shock (2023) doesn't quite stand up next to the many great games that System Shock (1994) inspired. Developer Nightdive's updated System Shock is a very faithful remake - sometimes shockingly so - recreating much of the Citadel's zig-zagging layout as it was three decades ago, but the original's somewhat intimidating quirks have been ironed out, replaced, or straight-up removed. I'm focusing on the introduction because I think it's emblematic of the entire remake. The remake blunts some of that energy in exchange for something more palatable.

The retro animation was kind of surreal, almost like it was straight out of a fever dream. The opening cutscene to the original System Shock has this noisy, head-bopping beat playing in the background. Exactly the same events take place, but they've been rejigged.

The System Shock remake begins in much the same way as 1994's original game. Months pass by and you've woken up, still on the Citadel, but this time the humans have turned into bloodthirsty mutants, killer robots and cyborgs attack with a vengeance, and my beloved SHODAN runs the whole bleak party. You get back your freedom plus a cool cybernetic implant, and the megacorp executive who's in charge of the operation gets to do evil things with the new ethically unconstrained station. As a captured hacker onboard the Citadel space station, you've been asked to remove the 'ethical constraints' from the station's artificial intelligence (that's SHODAN) in an obviously shady exchange.

A remake that closely follows the original classic, with a slightly different overall effect.Īs a newcomer to System Shock, I'd like to take a moment and declare my undying love for SHODAN, aka Sentient Hyper-Optimised Data Access Network, aka the murderous AI villain who engulfs the entire remake.

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