System Shock is a Classic Everyone Should Play

Man! How have I never done a video on the original System Shock?! Well, we're doin' it now. I'm playing through Night Dive's System Shock: Enhanced Edition and telling you all that you MUST PLAY THIS!

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
2:18 System Shock's Gameplay
09:52 SHODAN
13:01 The Idiot's Carbonara
17:23 The story od System Shock
18:37 the plot (SPOILERS!)
22:57 Final Thoughts
24:52 Cat video: It's snacc time

[torinriley]

Fun Fact: the way System Shock knows you're in an elevator or not is by checking if the elevator music is playing in the tile you're standing on.

[JohnSavant]

"Why did she have ethical restraints in the first place?" Because of government regulations. In fact, the Citadel Station incident prompted the creation of UNN which enforced tons of restraints against corporate AIs, eventually leading to mini civil wars.

[Orange_Swirl]

TriOptimum, at least in System Shock 1, is a surprising aversion of an evil company. Most of the evilness tends to be contained to some individuals like Edward Diego within the company, while others are actually actively trying to help the player.

[conall]

18:12; My assumption was that Edward Diego was acting against the rest of Trioptimum's wishes. Like, Trioptimum wouldn't let him turn off SHODAN's ethical constraints, so he couldn't openly hire someone to do it, so found the hacker and made a deal to cover up his crimes if he turned them off for him, and no one would need to know about it. The hacker would go on him merry way, and the rest of Trioptimum's executives wouldn't need to know whatever Diego was doing. But it turns out the ethical constraints were there for a very good reason.

[ThethWight]

One of my favorite moments when i played this game. I was in the first little area. And I decided to impulsively pull a lever.

There's a massive cutscene of a laser blasting earth in half and I realize I just did the thin shodan wanted.


It's such a good way to show me that I should pay attention to the environment and instead of being frustrated I was actually excited to find out it was possible.

[Asas_TV]

I love how interconnected the original system shock space station was. it makes it feel alive with all the shortcuts and dedicated areas that serve actual purposes, reminds me of how fluid and fun it was to navigate the Re1 mansion.

[thor]

"it is ART, not CONTENT" as if the cooking segment didn't already win me over, this segment at the end was downright inspirational. As someone who's interested in making videos in the near future, this was really special to hear.

[thriftjunkgaming]

System shock works to draw the player in because it almost immediately establishes that there is to be no expectation of "fairness" in it's design

[CaveyMoth]

The fact that the player BELIEVES that SHODAN, rather than strategic game design and puzzles, is the force opposing them, proves how perfectly executed she is as a villain.

I used to be absolutely obsessed with System Shock; OBSESSED. I annoyed all of my friends about it. It's sad that I haven't played it in years. I haven't even played Enhanced Edition! I need to get back into it. I thought it was great even without the creature comfort that is mouse look.

[alexandreturcotte]

Seeing the small character moving according on your own movement (or in the og controls, bassicly having to be dragged to do the crouching) System Shock often makes me smile. I should really play those games eventually.

[Ironclad]

I'm proud of you Charl. You went that entire review without mentioning ChatGPT.

[linksbro]

Honestly, even with how many times it's been delayed, I'd prefer the System Shock Remake take all the time it needs.
Also, I always felt that the name Prey 2017 always deserved was "NeuroShock"

[paulman]

Ethical constraints was there to keep Shodan from being used against the Company interest (basically her focus with them on WOULD be to I don't know "Keep high ranking executives from embezzling them without getting caught! Something you know Big Corps would want to avoid getting cheated by their own and in other ways, be used against them by enemies of the company!) I doubt they actually realized JUST HOW IMPORTANT THOSE CONSTRANTS WERE (If anyone did! I doubt Diego would have left Shodan unconstrainted as long as he did. It's clear as the Remake made more clear that he wasn't done with the Hacker after he would have woken from the Medical Coma, after all he was able to remove Shodan's constraints and likely would have gotten away scot free with his intrusion into their systems if he didn't underestimate their security at the time. Looking at it, he might not have known they upgraded or added traps recently or that the data he intruded into was majorly flagged! I'm going to assume Diego wanted to more exploit the system and got too big for his britches and Shodan easily realized that and played him till she had no fear to even use him anymore! Hence his begging to serve her only taking because she found the clown amusing enough to "test" her newest cyborg model! I think Diego Cyborg form was her using him as a "Prototype" meaning she had no expectations of his survival or use and it was just luck he still was useful)

And in SS2, you could chalk her subdued self as because she's in essence "a copy" (The original WAS deleted at the end of the first game, so technically your dealing with what is essentially an A.I. version of a CLONE! That and she had a good many years being surpressed and fearful of erasure by The Many when they turned on her, only getting lucky that while the Many were "melding" everyone on your ship, you were never pulled out of stasis, allowing her to modify you via manipulating others, and counting HEAVILY that you'll proof effective against the Many (likely because the Hacker was effective in dealing with her original in the same vein) of course making alot of underestimating mistakes (while you don't game over on death, that is only if you have money for the revive; And the Hacker had ALOT of luck) NOT putting a killswitch on you (seems short sighted with how she acted rude to outright antagonistic despite "being allies") and of course "being antagonistic and not even HIDING she was going to backstab you (also funny enough a previous pawn she used left the CHANCE for you to be able to fuck her over! Meaning her whole "you have outlived your usefulness really didn't end well for her) it's only out of MORE extreme luck that she's even around (and even THAT Shodan like SS2 Shodan is just a clone of a Clone! You killed Shodan in SS1, SS2 Shodan was her clone and she died as well, SS3 Shodan will be a Clone of a Clone! She can pass memories, but the fact she actually FEARS deletion means while a backup assures she remains, the HER your dealing with will NOT!)

[TheAlison]

Damn, this game has puzzle difficulties. Truly historical.

[Jwpolk]

You might notice that there is microstuttering while moving (but not while looking around) in the enhanced edition now. This was caused by a bug "fix" that was introduced by the latest version on steam - developers were trying to fix an issue where some enemies were getting stuck in the environment on occasion. You can fix this stuttering issue and get consistent 60FPS by buying the GOG enhanced edition and simply downgrading to the previous version or following steam forum discussions of this issue to a download of the prior .exe that can easily be placed in the local files. Much better experience than just living with the microstuttering which can be quite jarring.

[gabevogel]

While I was playing this, I had the feeling that the devs were REALLY BIG Star Trek: TNG fans, specifically of the Borg Arc. Shodan is very obviously the Borg Queen (which is interesting since First Contact only came out in 1996 while Systemshock came out in '94), the 'cyborgs' really look like the original Borg design, and you have the TNG Phaser as one of the weapons, complete with the energy range settings.
The labyrinth design of the station also reminds me of a Borg cube.

[TrinSpin]

On the topic of System Shock's controls, holy shit do I wish more games were happy to let you bind whatever combination of keys to any action without having to fuck around with AHK
LET ME BIND CTRL, SHIFT, ALT, MWHEEL IN ANY COMBINATION I DAMN WELL PLEASE

Also, until you start finding enough magcarts to keep the magpulse fed, keeping a bandolier of SPARQ beams set to max is the best strat: change my mind

[help]

Please get more frames of your cat I love him

[Ponen]

ahh system time I came across it was around 1996, mum got me a 6 cd pack that was full of game demos...doom, spear of destiny, dark forces, system shock, cyberia, mech warrior were some of the demos I remember it had.. round that time we got our first pc . we were complete newbies to pcs so just installing and running the games was like black magic to us kids...enjoyed the system shock demo but initially found the controls clunky....years later I got the full version and it was easy to pick up and controls may feel odd at first but once you get into the flow its very intuitive. Great game and atmosphere. The Sparq was my workhorse weapon, energy chargers everywhere so ammo is no issue, usually carry two...by the time you are halfway through the game you will have saved up enough ammo and items to last you forever.

[josephkeen]

Due to how you describe the controls, and due to you using Doom as a comparison I think a Doom mod called Hideous Destructor, which turns the game into a tactical shooter, and like System Shock the controls are a bit of a trial. To give an idea of how this mod is like there’s of course the typical doom controls and GZDooms inventory controls, lean controls like System Shock, and a reload that if you hit once fdiscards the mag and you have to hold onto the reload key to hold onto the mag, there’s a weapon sight that sways to imitate actual weapon sway, you have to brace your weapon on walls or your own knees (by crouching) to increase accuracy, you have to check for bleeding or you won’t be able to heal to full health and you have to take off armor to bandage yourself to fix it, BFG blasts and the energy from explosive barrels will eventually revive dead enemies, imps can set you on fire and you have to put it out ether by going to water or by spinning your mouse while crouching (to imitate stop drop and roll), weapons can jam, the berserk pack now has the side effect of making it to any damage that you take when you use it hits you all at once when it wears off causing a bunch of debuffs (and probably something else I’m forgetting). Basically while I enjoy this mod I think it’ll still be a perfect P A I Nmass video topic.