It’s this approach that makes the audio logs so integral to the experience, and in turn so superior to the way many developers use them today. Each one is a miniature horror story, detailing the final days of a population about to be decimated by a rogue AI, but they’re also the primary delivery method for clues to your next objective. Some tales are confined to a deck, while others span the entire length of the station. They provide a voice to the deceased, each one furthering the stories of a handful of recurring characters. It’s a narrative technique closely associated with BioShock, but System Shock pioneered it so successfully back in 1994 that the remake has barely had to alter them. It may not deliver a story with the immediacy of Rapture, but study its halls and you’ll see a clear purpose in each one.Ĭitadel Station’s entire crew is long gone by the time you arrive, and so the story is delivered primarily through audio logs. And while each level is made up of maze-like patterns of repeating architectural motifs that can make every floor feel confusingly identical, Citadel Station has an undeniable sense of place. Your mission to destroy SHODAN takes you through the multiple decks of Citadel Station, from the depths of its reactor to the heights of its bridge. Yet the world is still rich, and still revealed using the same fundamental methods as BioShock. System Shock comes from an era when games were largely led by mechanics rather than storytelling, and so the core narrative that runs through it is nowhere near as prominent and layered as BioShock’s. Just like BioShock Infinite and Levine’s upcoming Judas, System Shock is all about fixing what you broke.īioShock is perhaps best known for its masterful narrative work and the way its fallen art-deco city conveys new stories in every room. The kicker is that SHODAN’s rise to power is your fault. Like Andrew Ryan, she taunts you as you descend deeper into the station’s interconnected levels, seemingly amused at your pathetic attempts to foil her ascent to godhood. The station’s artificial intelligence, SHODAN, has taken over and has plans to decimate humanity. Like the worlds crafted by Irrational Games’ lead, Ken Levine, Citadel Station is a place gone to hell. If you’ve never explored the corridors of Citadel Station, I think you’ll be surprised at just how much of BioShock’s DNA was drawn directly from System Shock. But a handsome new remake from developer Nightdive Studios has demolished those ancient barriers and highlighted that System Shock, despite its age, was the origin point of so many of the ideas that made its spiritual successor so strong. One of history’s most important games, the original is almost unplayable by today’s standards thanks to a fiddy user interface and control scheme that’s practically prehistoric. These are all moments from System Shock, the game that began the Shock lineage back in 1994. If this nightmare sounds like a new BioShock game, then you’re only half wrong.
A pile of mangled remains, entangled in their own guts, look up with dead eyes at a graffiti mural that depicts the artificial intelligence that they worshipped like a god. A file from a woman tells of her final days as she succumbs to a spreading sickness.
Torn bodies lie inches away from an audio log recorded just moments before their final stand. They are silent, but each tells their own story. The quietly humming corridors of Citadel Station are littered with corpses.
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