System Shock Critique - After the Hack

System Shock's 2023 remake keeps the soul of the game and gives us a damn love letter to what it wanted to be in 1994. It's incredibly faithful, and while it looks fantastic and is more accessible, it retains a lot of the complexity and lack of compromise that I love in the original - and it does all of this without losing sight of the original game’s biggest thematic focus – transhumanism. So let's talk about it.

*LORE DUMP*

*Herman Faustus Art* by @SamanthaSaunderz - check out her channel!

Thumbnail by Zoltiboi

Massive thanks to OliveTreeMusings who pointed out some interesting things while I streamed the game! 👇

Making the System Shock Critique

ALAN WAKE CRITIQUE - BEYOND INSPIRATION

*MERCH*

*TWITTER*

*PATREON*

*TIMESTAMPS*

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:05:34 - Part 1: Cyberfunk
00:22:07 - Part 2: Perfection_Through_Genetics
00:36:31 - Part 3: SHODANs_Body
00:55:50 - Part 4: R0B0P0CALYPSE
01:12:07 - Part 5: Never_Judge_Your_Player
01:29:07 - Part 6: Biology_is_Immoral
01:41:14 - Part 7: God_in_a_Box

*Jedi: Survivor Critique - Balance in the Force*

*SOMA Critique - Anatomy of the Soul*

*Bioshock Critique - After the Shrug*

I usually like to keep all of my footage, references, and wider reading list in the youtube description but in this case I ran out of characters, so you can find them in the Google Doc below! 👇

*MUSIC (in order of use)*
Licenced by Artlist
1 - Gumo - Falling (Instrumental Version)
2 - Evgeny Bardyuzha - Lonely Astronaut
3 - Aquartos - Lost City
4 - Lance Conrad - The Future of Medicine
5 - We Dream of Eden - Candle of Consciousness
6 - Ian Post - Dusk (Instrumental Version)
7 - Jon Gegelman - Soft Awakening
8 - Eleven Tales - Vindur
9 - Linus Johnsson - Floating in Dreams
10 - Linus Johnsson - Home
11 - We Dream of Eden - Light Bending
12 - Yehezkel Raz - Interspacing
13 - We Dream of Eden - Outside In
14 - Gumo - Falling

#systemshockremake #systemshockcritique

[MontyZander]

Thanks for being here! We covered the Bioshock series on my podcast - Lore Dump: the show where we take someone who hasn’t played a game and walk them through the full story. It was fun! It got a little heated. Join us! 👇

[JacobYaw]

Nah, if Google cracks the code of de-ageing, they'll somehow make it entirely unappealing to the public and in 1 to 4 years will announce they're shelving the project.

[vergilsparda]

A lot of antagonistic AI are written with the purpose of expounding on how humanity will create something that will destroy itself. But most of them act so cold and dispassionate that it undermines the point by making them so unlike humanity. Shodans very human personality and motivations make her perhaps the first time I’ve genuinely believed that an evil AI was a deliberate creation of humanity, rather than an accident that went unchecked. That’s my two cents on the matter. Great video Monty!

[RaptieFeathers]

14:53 🤓: "Um, actually, BioShock was _also_ technically our fault, as is shown in the DLC, Buri—wait, why are you looking at me like that?"

[williamgregg]

About Arkham's riddler trophies: The Riddler doesn't do his own physical labor. He has henchmen for that. Some of them are lazy, thus leaving the trophies just on the ground. Meanwhile, the Riddler only has a board that lights up if the trophies are collected, not knowing that the henchmen just didn't put them where he wanted them to.

[MrAlienated]

I love how the colours change after the Shodan hack from blue to green

[Hyperion_Driver]

"Oxygen is not a human right" - what a lovely day on the Internet

[Shaathurray]

I think the best thong about Monty Critiques is how the themes and idea of the games are always interjected into reality to help us all really ground the games with concepts we are dealing with in everyday life, weather up close or at a distance.

It makes all his videos feel that much more important. And am very grateful that that is the case.

[HotDogTimeMachine]

"I can't believe you made corporations and law enforcement political" Your indepth reviews are really good, as always. And calling out horrid people doing bad stuff is always fun

[AdamSoucyDrums]

“We are ‘The Hacker’ middle name unknown”

MONTY GODDAMNIT

[RunawayDanish]

Ah Monty, love your stuff.

Comment directed at so-called transhumanism critique of Birth Control, around the 30 minute mark. I'm someone who's learned a lot about the female menstrual cycle as a consequence of abruptly developing one. Birth Control is a hormone modulator which influences, but not prevents, fluctuations in female sex hormones that influence the behavior of the Ovaries and the Uterus.

Endometriosis is a systemic disorder which causes inflammation and menses-like material to accumulate outside of the uterus, most commonly on the exteriors of the Ovaries and the Uterus. In severe cases, this can form rope-like bridges made of tissue that accumulates over the lifespan, forming tethers that tug on major organs like the Colon, Bladder, Kidneys, and small and large intestines. Near impossible to detect without Laparoscopy, the disorder is extremely debilitating and predominately affects women.

I'm a rare case of an Assigned Male At Birth (AMAB) intersex person who has developed a form of the disease. Presently the only interventions available to me to manage the disease and its painful, often bloody symptoms (such as the menses-like material accumulating inside of the bowel) are surgery and Birth Control. This seems on first blush as an edge case but Endometriosis is such a common condition amongst normal women in the U.S., any proto-fascistic dipshit who says Birth Control somehow is "not medicine" can cordially be invited to apply oral stimulation to my partially undifferentiated genitals.

[alicobosboi]

I can't thank you enough for your critiques Monty as I've listened to them in the background while I'm going through yet another work day. You've genuinely kept me entertained and I can't wait to see what system shock has to offer.

[Hakkai]

Man, finally is here, has been a very entertaining month monty. I hope we haven't given you many headaches in the mean time. I'm happy to have been there most of the process.

[beezuslabs]

Getting to peep into the process and interact with you a bit was incredible, and Im so excited the full project is out and done! Phenominal work Monty, thank you again for sharing your perspective and art with all of us🖤

[stanleyyelnats]

What a magnificent video! It was such a pleasure hanging around the streams while you worked on the video that I hope to be privileged with another series of streams. You're awesome Monty, and the critiques and commentaries are so wonderfully refreshing and grounded. I hope for many more to come!

[dgamer]

Hey Monty, even though I was only able to catch a few sparing moments of the last few editing streams, they were all a blast! I know that those were understandably the last streams because it makes the schedule more difficult, but thank you because I, and I’m sure a lot of others, are looking to break into similar formats of videos and it’s always helpful to be able to see the finer details. Also, thank you so much for always making such wonderful critiques that help loads of people in the day-to-day and in their darker times, cheers to a what I’m sure will be a blast to watch!

[atanamorell]

So happy to have been online to see much of this video being made. Thanks for sharing that with us and congrats again on 100K subscribers!

[RealhumanMaz]

This was a wonderful video! Thank you so much for making it and seeing the work we put into it.

[guyfromcollege]

Holy shit a video game analysis that actually has analysis instead of a plot summary.

[arcadia]

Was so much watching the making of this video streams! So happy to see the finishes product!