Let's talk about System Shock
I just wrapped up playing the Remake of the Original System Shock. Good heavens what a ride.
I backed the game years ago on kickstarter, and so have had access to the Backer Beta for the last few weeks. I wish I could get into a full blown review, detailing all of my feelings on the game. However, the devs have gently requested that backers not share screenshots, videos, spoilers, or otherwise about it. Which, honestly, I respect. I can see why they would make that request. Let me just say: I loved every second of it.
Rather than talk about the remake (and honestly, the ruckus that surrounds the remake), I wanted to talk about the original. And I wanted to talk about it for one specific reason:
The original System Shock is, arguably one of the single most ambitious, important, and influential games in all of PC gaming history.
It also sucks.
I am not exaggerating when I say both of those things.
The original System Shock was a game made for DOS in 1994 by Looking Glass Studios. Keep in mind, that makes this game contemporary with DOOM. At that time, the original System Shock had massive, sprawling environments that encompassed a huge orbital space station. It had a sense of cohesive presence, where instead of running from level to level and pushing an abstract level end button, you moved between functional locations in Citadel station to accomplish actual goals.
Like, I can't stress this enough: System Shock had a real and unfolding narrative that you had to navigate. More than once throughout the game, you find yourself struggling to accomplish a goal like "Disconnect this section of the station" or "Energize the shields with a specific power source". And in the midst of that, something goes wrong, and you find yourself having to drag your ass down to the maintenance levels to troubleshoot defective hardware.
All the while, you're constantly under threat of attack. From the moment the game begins, you are beset by a never-ending stream of various baddies that get progressively stronger and soak up your preciously limited ammunition. Oh, and the whole time, you're being mercilessly taunted by SHODAN, the game's main prota... I'm sorry, the game's main antagonist (I could gush for pages about SHODAN, but so many people have said so many better things than I could. Needless to say, she kicks ass).
Love getting voice messages from my cyber-girlfriend about the destruction of humanity. Kisses, SHODAN!
All of this adds up to an environment that gives an exceptional sense of scale, place, and presence. In 1994, System Shock really took you to Citadel station in a way that few other electronic games could take you anywhere.
And it didn't stop there - System shock innovated on almost every front. Again, in 1994, System Shock gave the player a literally unprecedented amount of control over their character. You could lean. You could crouch and lean. You could go prone. And honestly, all of these maneuvers, trivial as they sound, wind up being essential. The corner peak that is practically a mainstay of FPS games today got its start in System Shock.
Also, System Shock remains the only video game I've ever played that gives the player jet-powered rocket skates with jump-jets. Which is seriously flipping cool.
System Shock experimented heavily with UI elements, bringing the FPS genre closer to a simulation experience than a shooter experience - And doing this before shooters even got off the ground. Seriously, System Shock had UI elements for monitoring incoming messages, maps, inventory, and an EKG to monitor your health, stamina, and heart rate.
System shock had dynamic music. System shock had (eventually) fully voiced audio logs. Yes, System Shock is where those "snippets of voice lines from dead people" thing started, arguably!
When you play System Shock, you can see the groundwork - the foundation - upon which so many other games would eventually be built.
So why is it, then, that you don't really hear that much about the original System Shock? Particularly when compared to, say, the much more highly regarded sequel?
Because this game is jank as all hell, and I am not exaggerating when I say that.
Yes, System Shock had so many foundational elements that later wound up becoming industry standards. But, and I say this with love in my heart, it botched the execution so hard it fell flat on its face. It is not an exaggeration to call the original DOS release of System Shock monumentally unplayable.
Remember all that praise I was giving the game for the degree of control it bestowed upon the player character? Well, while it was supremely ambitious and innovative to let the character move in such a way, the manner of execution and the control scheme are complete horsecrap. To illustrate this, please consider this example:
System Shock was one of the first FPS games to use Mouselook as a control scheme - and did so at a time when other FPS games were exclusively using keyboard controls. That's right, the now standard default control scheme for all FPS games was (nominally) there in System Shock.
But to turn your view, instead of moving the mouse left and right, you had to click and drag.
It was incredibly cumbersome, and utterly alienating. It was only made worse by the fact that the original game did not allow you to remap the controls in some fundamental ways!! The game's control scheme was utterly baffling to figure out, and even when you thought you had your head wrapped around it, it still felt cumbersome and slow in situations where you needed it to be lightning quick. It felt like the controls hated the player.
Look at this UI. I mean, just look at it!! Look at how much is going on here!! And this is just a part of it!
And that's the story of the whole game. It seems to actively hate the player.
There are gotcha moments that will kill you dead without warning. There are times when you find yourself at the end of a long objective, only to have the rug pulled out from under you. And worst of all, this game is confusing as all hell.
There are no waypoints. There are no quest markers. There are no "current objective" lists. You remember those audio logs I talked about? Yeah, you'd better pay damned good attention to those - Because each one is telling you something important, and it gets a lot more abstract than "The door code is 0451". The only way you know you need to power the shields with isotope X-22, turn on the shields, and then fire the mining laser into the shields, is to parse that from multiple audio log fragments. Oh, and if you fire the laser too soon, you wipe out a significant portion of Earth's population. Oops.
Add on top of this that the sprawling, massive levels are absolutely hell to get lost in - just from a purely navigational perspective. You will find yourself turned around, lost, and generally disoriented quite often. Even with the use of a map! System Shock does not care that you can't figure it out on your own. There's literally nothing else it will give you.
I'm not saying this with an air of "Back in my day, video games didn't hold your hand". Goodness no! System Shock throws the player into the deep end, and then doesn't give a second thought to see them drown - And that makes for a miserable experience. This is not a badge of honor for the game. It's literally a strike against it.
But the sum total of System Shock boils down to "Incredibly Ambitious, Lacking in Execution". They were reaching so much further than they could reasonably hope to achieve with this game. In terms of dev knowledge, in terms of overall design, and hell, even in terms of hardware capabilities.
I think one tremendous example of System Shock being "Jank, but Ambitious Jank" has to be the soundtrack. The game's soundtrack was intended to be a dynamic experience, with each 'floor' of the space station having a basic theme that would get layered with additional instruments and rhythm sections based on the action on screen. So there would be a baseline song playing, and then it would get truly amped up when a fight started.
In practice, the poor DOS era sound cards and MIDI playback equipment had a really hard time keeping up with this idea. And on top of that, the instruments didn't always sound great. So you'd wind up getting a series of nearly incomprehensible bleeps and screeches layered atonally over one another.
Check out this track from the game, and keep in mind this is an ideal representation of the music mixed to sound as good as it can (Listen to the 0:42 mark to here where the 'fight' music kicks in and everything kind of falls apart).
It's a mess! A total mess.
And yet it's super endearing at the same time. While the Medical Level theme becomes dissonant and shrill at times, there are moments when the OST actually gets under your skin and makes the atmosphere tremendously more effective. The Maintenance Level's raw pulsing low tones are unsettling at a point in the game when your paranoia is already peaked, and it just adds so much to it.
And that's how I feel about System Shock. It's a bad game. But it's a bad game that I think is really good. I love every bit of it, despite the jagged edges it has. Even while I was playing the (far superior) remake, I found myself wanting to play the DOS version again sometime.
Just about everything about System Shock reached beyond what it could feasibly handle. Looking Glass would learn tremendously from this experience, though. System Shock 2 would be an improvement in nearly every single way, delivering one of the most highly regarded PC games ever made, and one well worthy of the praise.
As for System Shock itself, later in its life it would get a number of facelifts. Years down the line, community modding of the game would provide a desperately needed improvement to the control scheme. Later still would see the release of "System Shock: Enhanced Edition", which would make the game playable on modern systems at higher resolutions.
And that brings me back to the remake that's been in the pipe for the better part of a decade now. Having played through the entire thing at this point, I can say that for whatever minor quibbles I might be able to highlight, the remake is superb.
System Shock was a game that benefits uniquely from having a remake. Not only is the original game inaccessible and nearly hostile to play, but so many of the systems Looking Glass was trying to pioneer have been perfected by now. The game really gets to shine - And not just because of the Ray Tracing.
We should stop remaking good games, and remake more games that are utter Jank.
And for now, I leave you with this: Your moment of Zen.
