System Shock 2: begin

Technical problems out of the way, now I can begin.

I'm describing it as I go, so of course its all spoilers.

New game, normal difficulty. I notice in the intro video Shodan's many little background voices - something that would be expanded upon in Portal. So there's the stepping off the subway part, I mentioned that, and the parallel (purposeful or not) to Half-Life. Up the grav shaft to street level I notice you can cancel out one voice message with another if you move ahead to quickly; they don't overlap, so I need to be careful not to walk out of range of one message before hitting another.

The street level first impression is cool - I'm in a real live world with streets and stores and advertisements. But it turns out to be simulated culture, like Disneyland. I'm sure it was more impressive 12 years ago. It makes me wonder who was first to transition game environments from the abstract halls of Doom, to something vaguely resembling actual human environments? I think maybe it was Duke Nukem, with fighting on city streets. I wonder if anyone wrote this history of gaming, I'd love to read it. On to the training section.

I actually really appreciate these introductory segments in a game. Its expository as heck, and causes much stilted and awkward dialogue ("move your mouse" - what's that supposed to mean in this supposed real world?). But at least you can hit the ground running when you start the game. You have some idea of what you can and can't do, and what world you are in. So far I know we have FTL travel, artificial gravity, cyberspace link. And I know that grabbable objects have four glowing brackets around them.

OK, that's odd - I can't left-click on items in my inventory, and I know I should be able to because the game explicitly says so. OK, that didn't take long, just had to edit a line in the user binds.

Back to establishing what kind of world this is. Nanotechnology exists, but I can pick up messages that that are held on some kind of shiny disc. I think this is where retro-futurism comes from, mixing present and speculative metaphors, and then outliving them to the point where they're not mistakes anymore, they are now nostalgia.

Oh crap - voice messages can overlap. I've got a PDA message playing and then I walked to the next training station - audio trainwreck. Is there a way to quickly shut this thing off? OK, it can be bound, and is currently bound to the delete key. Now I can't play the test message. I wonder if that's on purpose, or another bug. Next training station.

Holy cow. Mantling. This is like discovering a 747 in stone age strata. For a long time in First Person Shooters you couldn't jump at all, then you could only jump a stock distance, and later there were various conditions for variable jumping, but in all these years never mantling. Of course you can't jump your own hight from a standing start, but plenty of people could reach up to something and pull themselves up, kick a leg over, and get up on top of something. This feels really fresh (well, I think it was in the original System Shock, but still), and its in a long gone game. Wow. I can see why its not common today, though, because it makes good map design even more challenging.

OK, now I'm having trouble using items while in inventory mode - it keeps discharging my firearm. I think these keyboard binds are not yet fixed; I'll try the mod tool.

Poking around in mods on systemshock.org, I should try the updated texture mod, but I want to keep things original for my first playthrough. OK, installed Mod Manager, went to Tools -> Fix Use-Mode... let's see if it does. Yes, great. OK, off to Technical Training.

Nanites and cybermodules (as well as FTL and gravitics)... what year is this supposed to be? 2048? Nanites and cyberanything will the be food pills and atomics of the The World of Tomorrow.

Oh boy, now I have to choose a career, Psi, Navy, or Marine. Guess I'll start with the simplest, and go marine. Nice little cutscene. Now I have to choose a posting? Ah, a way to convey bonuses to your stats, with a little backstory built in (it reminds me of Traveler's character creation). Nice. I'll take +2 to Agility; that's usually best for fighting. This is a more elaborate and interesting way to develop your starting character, than just hitting + and - buttons on a list.

Oh, and its the early 2100s, not 2048. That's more like it. Year 2. Next up I'll take +1 energy weapons +1 cyber. Why is there so much military out in the solar system? Who are we fighting? More shuttle cut scenes. Oh nice, a robot walker right out of Deus Ex (yeah, I know this came first). And a dancing robot. I didn't need to see that. Next up, modify, maintenance, or repair. First time through a game you never know what's going to be important, where the designers give the greatest reward. I guess maintenance. And another shuttle movie.

OK, game starts and the first thing thats emphasized is the importance of psionics. Oh well, maybe on some other playthrough (assuming).

Here's another mixed metaphor: in the distant future, computers will go back to being the size of PDP washing machines.

I've been given a small upgrade, but I don't know what to buy yet. I'll hold it. Reading over the list of psionic powers, there's so many that they may as well have introduced magic. There's even a magic wand (a psi amp) for you to hold to help you do magic. Its kind of crazy that it appears to be so common in this world, and it should somewhat challenge why this world looks the way it does.

On a lift button is the name of the corporation that made it. I love that kind of attention to detail. I wonder if the lift can damage you if you stand under it. Yep, it can, a lot. What kind of brave new world doesn't install some safeties in its simple little lift system? I haven't saved recently, so I have to backtrack all the way from training. I guess auto-save hasn't been invented yet. I'll stick with the same career choices, though.

I thought the game had started, but I'm still getting these exposition consoles to read (What is psionics, how your map works, etc.). This really should have been covered in the front end training.

Whoah, was that a ghost or a hologram? Freaky. I need an access card, I backtrack. I keep missing important items, even if they're on the floor or on top of a crate. They just seem to blend into the background. Aw, my first combat. And there's music! I love the sound these guys make, talking to themselves in the background. I found a log to listen to, but this music is so loud I might not hear it. OK, I can turn the music down, good.

Another exposition ghost, this time informing me about the state of the vending machine! Are these supposed to be my memories, which I learned were compromised during the intro scene to this level, where my memory restoration was interrupted?

OK, quick save and quick load are coming in really handy.

Hanging corpse - creepier than anything I can remember from Doom days.

The quantum entanglement booth, i.e. the ressurection booth is the craziest tech in the story so far, far crazier than even psionics. I know, its just a way to keep the game moving, but still. Why can't I start putting dead crew in there, and build a team? And why would the booth need samples from me or anyone - wouldn't that be standard procedure, to have your sample on file?

There's so much in this game that feels like a rough draft for what would become Deus Ex.

Voicework is, like System Shock, good for this time period, but average for a great game (much like Deus Ex). The primary story teller sounds like she was directed to sound like Captain Janeway. Also the little picture avatars for the various messages look like they are wearing Starfleet uniforms.

I don't know which is creepier, the hanged man or this monkey.

I found some object that looks like a heart. I can supposedly research it, but I don't have a skill point in it yet, so I'll just hold on to it.

What the... I was standing near a locked door, listening to the zombies on the other side, and one blips through the door and clobbers me! Hopefully that was just some weird clipping bug. Forget about this resurrection booth nonsense, I'm just reloading.

My first encounter with a security turret. It takes all of my energy weapon ammo to knock it down; trying armor-piercing rounds with the pistol. Now that's more like it - just 3 rounds to knock it down. With some trial and error, I can just peek out from behind some crates so as to take no damage myself.

Got some more cyber modules. Time to backtrack to the upgrade station and learn at least research. OK, that's kind of a cool yet implausibe way to introduce more information into the game. I'll drop the rest of my upgrade points into standard weapon.

A surgical unit, handy. OK, at least now the ghosts have been explained - a side effect of psionic equipment.

Irradiated monkies that shoot psionic blasts at you. Yep, another thing ported forward to Deus Ex.

Wow, my standard weapons skill, 2, is so low I can't operate a shotgun, yet I can operate a handgun at skill 1. What?

There's something annoying here - I meet two zombie grunts with shotguns, I kill both, and they yield up jammed weapons with no ammo, even though they could shoot at me until I killed them. I ran through it a few times and it came up the same each way. Final insult is that the encounter costs me the rest of my ammo, but I get nothing for it.