System Shock 2 (with Doug Lief - Nostalgium Arcanum)

Dave 00:45

Absolutely. Yeah. ah For longtime listeners, you may recognize Doug from the Secret of Monkey Island episode, which I think was in 2023 sometime. It was a little while ago now.

Doug 00:58

Yeah, and this is now the second game we've done together featuring mischievous monkeys.

Dave 01:03

That's true, yeah. are Arguable which game has more mischievous monkeys, but the monkeys in System Shock, that's true, yeah.

Doug 01:08

I killed a lot more of them.

Dave 01:11

I was gonna say the ones in System Shock 2 are up to no good, for sure. So um today we are gonna talk about System Shock 2, which is a first-person RPG developed by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games and published by Electronic Arts for PC in 1990. 99 System Shock 2 has a lead design credit to Ken Levine and that's a name that's going to come up many more times throughout the podcast, I'm pretty sure. So if this is your first time listening, first of all, thank you for stopping by. Thanks for checking out the show. Here's how spoilers work.

We are not going to spoil the story in System Shock 2 for a while. There are some big reveals. There are some ah philosophical musings to be done in the spoilers section in this episode. So we're going to save those spoilers for that section. Check down in the show notes. You'll see a timestamp for when spoilers begin. We will also warn you when they're upcoming. so ah Elevator pitch time. What is System Shock 2? My elevator pitch is, he is the organ donor for later favorites like Portal, Bioshock, Prey, Dead Space, and many more. ah Doug, what's the pitch from you?

Doug 02:26

um My pitch was, hey, you got a little dungeon crawler in my FPS.

Dave 02:30

Yeah.

Doug 02:30

Hey, you got a little FPS in my dungeon crawler.

Dave 02:35

Fantastic, yeah. um I played this on PC on Steam. It took me 15 hours to play. I don't remember if this was ever released on a console. I assume you played this on PC, right?

Doug 02:49

I did, yeah. And it also took me 15, 16 hours-ish.

Dave 02:50

Yeah. Right, yeah, I forgot to check that. I think it's only available on Steam right now, at least as far as modern consoles go. ah And as with most PC RPGs from the 90s, early 2000s era, a lot of people recommended I play with mods. There's a big community patch that makes a bunch of tiny little fixes. However, I didn't. I played this vanilla game. I had no issues as far as bugs or anything like that. but It is a thing when you play, especially PC RPGs from this time.

Do you play vanilla or did you mod it at all?

Doug 03:27

No, I played vanilla as well. Yeah.

Dave 03:29

Nice.

Doug 03:29

I was worried that if I tried to modify anything, I would just hose my system somehow.

Dave 03:35

Yeah, like and like the lie detector ah when Homer Simpson doesn't just explode in a poof of smoke.

Doug 03:35

I'm not the most technically minded. Pretty much.

Dave 03:42

ah whenever i' Exactly, me too, yeah.

Doug 03:42

That's been my experience with mods.

Dave 03:46

So um we always get started with our histories with the game here, and I remember that when I had kind of, I think I posted somewhere that like, Hey, I might be looking for a guest for System Shock 2. Uh, you jumped at the chance. So had you played this before, or were you looking forward to playing it? And if, if so, uh, what's the pitch, what's the draw for you?

Doug 04:06

So the answers to your question are no. And yes, I had never played this before, um but ah this, like you, this has been on my backlog for a long, long time.

Dave 04:11

Yeah.

Doug 04:16

I had heard about the game forever.

Dave 04:17

yeah

Doug 04:18

You know, that picture of Shodan, that promotional picture has basically been, you know, if you've ever walked into a Fry's Electronics post 1999, you will see that like it's everywhere. And I knew this game was highly influential. So it was one of those things where I thought like, oh, this is a great excuse to give this a shot.

Dave 04:36

Yeah, yeah, for sure. um And are you a fan of a lot of those other games I mentioned, like, of course, Bioshock being Ken Levine's subsequent games?

Doug 04:46

Yeah, the only ones of this series, if you can call it a series that I have played are Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, which are there.

Dave 04:53

Okay.

Doug 04:55

It's interesting to see the continuum ah that where this game sites, because those games are much, much simpler.

Dave 05:03

Yeah.

Doug 05:03

And it seems like they might have learned a lesson, ah you know, because this game is very complicated or there's a lot. You'd be shocked at how many systems there are. Like there's a lot of there's a lot of that.

Dave 05:14

Yeah.

Doug 05:15

So they are much more stripped down. So if you think like I came in thinking this is going to be more similar to Bioshock ah and it was not.

Dave 05:23

Yeah.

Doug 05:24

It was you know again, you could see the evolutionary line from one to the other, but they're very different games.

Dave 05:30

Yeah, and if you go back and look at the first System Shock game, which I haven't played, but I've, you know, I've seen a bunch of stuff on YouTube. That is an RPG-an RPG. So like you can see the the streamlining from System Shock to System Shock 2 and then Bioshock, which is like barely an RPG if at all. So yeah, for sure. um So like you, this is my first time playing this and I've always been like kind of interested in it because I am a fan of all of those games that I mentioned before. I call this the organ donor, ah kind of ah a gruesome metaphor, but you know, the System Shock series is basically dead. They remade the first game, but there's no,

new system shock. ah But all these parts got taken out and put into all of these games that I love, like Bioshock and Prey and ah Dead Space and Portal and things like that. And when I look back at like the history of the immersive sim genre, which is one of my all time favorite types of game to play, it's like Thief, System Shock 2, Deus Ex. Those are like the pillars of that genre. And I love Deus Ex. I haven't played Thief yet, but I want to. um But yeah, System Shock 2 is kind of iconic. You mentioned that the image of Shodan is everywhere. like I had seen that image for years without knowing what it was. And then when I saw the cover for System Shock 2 for the first time, I was like, oh, that's what that is. Okay, the the creepy, you know,

virtual world Medusa head, basically, that's System Shock 2, okay. ah But I didn't play this for a long time, despite being really interested because I thought it would be too scary. And I was very averse to playing horror games for a really long time. And as I got more and more comfortable, I started to be like, okay, System Shock 2, you look at some screenshots, it looks pretty well lit, I think I can handle that. And then sat in the backlog even longer. ah There's going to be an ah collaboration that I'll be announcing a while from now. I don't think I'm allowed to say anything yet. ah But that was the thing that finally was like a play system to talk to right now. So I did. And um I'm glad that I did. This is really good. Like, it's always kind of a

Not necessarily a crapshoot, but it's a bit of an adjustment, we'll say, going back to old PC RPGs. And like you said, there's a bunch of systems and it's the type of game where if you start out and you don't build your character well, you can fuck yourself over. and you might have to restart the entire game. like It's back in that era where that was a lot more common. But I really enjoyed this. And what kind of stuck out to me, which I didn't know before playing this, is it's not only a first-person shooter, it's not only an RPG, but it's also a really good survival horror game.

And there's a lot of the hallmark mechanics of survival horror that are really, really present and important in System Shock 2. So I really, really had a good time with this. It's a really difficult game, but I think that it does give you what you need to succeed if you ah if you think before you act, we'll say. So I'm glad I played this. This is one that I'm very happy to have off the backlog and into the old noggin and on the podcast.

Doug 08:54

Yeah, I think I'm a little more lukewarm on it than you are.

Dave 08:57

Okay.

Doug 08:58

I um that this I was thinking of others that quote by Mark Twain, a classic is something everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. And ah that kept coming to me where like there. So this game, as you mentioned, it's from 1999.

Dave 09:12

Yeah.

Doug 09:13

And you called it an organ donor. I think it's also an organ recipient. It's a little bit of a Frankenstein of different gameplay concepts and story concepts and sci-fi concepts all kind of blended together.

Dave 09:24

Yeah.

Doug 09:26

um There are some really wonderful cool things in this game. There's also a lot of friction in it.

Dave 09:33

Oh yeah.

Doug 09:33

And they were the particular types of friction that get under my personal skin. So when so ah your mileage may vary depending on how much you're willing to tolerate certain things and also how much you're willing to challenge yourself because as you said like probably you called it an immersive sim it's not as immersive simmy as you think there's not as much of that like Deus Ex really is an immersive sim like that's all yeah

Dave 09:43

Oh yeah. You know, you're not like, you're not like crawling through vents in System Shock 2. Like you got to fight stuff. You get to pick how you fight stuff, but that's, that's where the choice is really.

Doug 10:09

Yeah. And so the amount of challenge, how challenging you are kind of depends on how much time you want to spend interacting with the scrounging and crafting mechanics.

Dave 10:19

Mm-hmm.

Doug 10:20

Because if you spend the time, you can power yourself up pretty good by having a lot of resources and kind of did to uncouple the game from being a survival horror game to being an FPS if you're willing to spend the time to not deal with resource scarcity.

Dave 10:35

Yeah.

Doug 10:37

But Gathering all those resources is probably one of the weakest parts of the game.

Dave 10:39

Uh-huh.

Doug 10:42

So like it was sort of this feeling of like, do I want to be challenged or do I want to grind away at doing all of this stuff? And so that's where it kind of was a little frustrating for me and kind of like this. Damn it. I don't have to search any more bodies and crates. Like let's just go. So those things were, you know, again, there's a lot to love about this game.

Dave 10:58

Yeah.

Doug 11:01

It is a classic, but there are also drawbacks.

Dave 11:04

Yeah, 100%. And I guess the the other thing that I'll mention at the top of the show here before we really like get into it is I mentioned all of those places where the influence from System Shock 2 got scattered around the industry, around gaming, and especially around horror games, immersive sims, first-person RPGs, stuff like that. It was really interesting to me playing this and seeing things in System Shock 2 and not getting that feeling I get in a lot of other influential games where I'm like, oh, I see where this other game took inspiration from this classic. In System Shock 2, it was like, oh, this other game took this thing 100% and just copied it into their game. And that happened over and over again. Bioshock is the most, you know,

recognizable example in a couple of cases, but it's like, it's the same guy heading both games. So that makes sense. But there's like stuff in here where I was like, Oh, dead space did exactly the same thing. Like exactly. They just swapped the characters out. It's the same thing. ah Portal, another one of those prey, same type of stuff. So it was really interesting. And I'm like, I'm not mad about it, but it was cool to just be like, Oh, these other games review system shock to so highly that they're like,

We're just going to put the ending of System Shock 2 in our game, and we're just going to swap the characters out. And I thought that was really interesting from a historical perspective.

Doug 12:35

Yeah, I think that's where I got some of my greatest enjoyment out of the game, honestly, as I am always interested in any work of media that's kind of a missing link.

Dave 12:44

Uh-huh.

Doug 12:44

Sort of, you know, like, it's really interesting to see this evolutionary bridge between all of the things that are clearly influenced by influences for the designers of System Shock 2, and then to see how those things get reinterpreted by subsequent you know design teams and developers. like yeah The DNA that goes into this is like you know plain to see, but so is what comes out of it.

Dave 13:07

Yeah, 100%. So um we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. Let's put a pin in all these places. Let's listen to a bit of music from System Shock 2. Let's pump everybody up. And then when we come back, we'll set up the story for System Shock 2. The story in System Shock 2 was written by Ken Levine. Once again, it directly follows the events of the first System Shock game. um It's years in the future, but it is a continuation of the same story. So ah in the first game, you played as a hacker who ended up defeating the rogue AI supercomputer named Shodan. And at the end of that game, they launched Shodan and it created a virus that it made in that game out into space.

And then at the beginning of System Shock 2 here, there is a new ship. It's faster than a light ship. It's called the Von Braun and that's the place where the game mostly takes place. It is on its maiden voyage and it's accompanied by a military ship called the Rickenbacker. Both ships are out on the voyage, but they hear a distress call from a planet nearby. ah They go to investigate it, yada, yada, yada. An equipment malfunction wakes your character up out of cryo sleep. You play as a soldier, and at the beginning of the game, you get to pick like your soldier background, like you in the Navy, you in the Air Force, stuff like that, and that kind of sets your RPG stats, starts your build out in a way. ah So your character wakes up, you go out, the station is empty, it's populated by these zombie-esque monsters, they're called hybrids in the game, and you need to go out and just basically survive, see what's going on, see if you can fix it, and there's a fellow survivor ah that is guiding you over the comm system

to come and meet her ah so that you two can work together to you know fix it and hopefully survive. So um I think this game gets out to a you know a really interesting start. You're all by yourself. You're by yourself for most of the game. But this is the first of many places where we see the influence that this game had on later things. There's a lot of these games where you start out, you're alone, but there's someone on the radio with you all the time, giving you instructions, helping you through problems, telling you, oh, fuck, the engine's busted. You got to go over here and fix it. And then, you know, that'll open the door. They'll get you to the elevator and yeah you know,

You know how it goes in these, these sci-fi games. So, uh, this is a, um, it's a strong start. I enjoyed just kind of waking up, not knowing what the fuck was going on. Like, obviously I know that show Dan is in here. Show Dan's a really famous video game villain, but show Dan's not there at the beginning, really. Um, so you just kind of left to figure stuff out. What'd you think of the opening?

Doug 16:07

Yeah, I think it opens very strongly. ah This reminds me a little bit of a game I kept thinking of. Sorry, I'm a little under the weather, so you're gonna get some extra body horror today. um I have many inside me as well. i The game I kept thinking of ah most as I was kind of playing in terms of like tone and presentation was the original Half-Life.

Dave 16:30

Uh-huh.

Doug 16:30

And this has a fairly similar start in terms of pacing that has no RPG elements. That's a pure shooter. But ah other than that, like, yeah, the kind of things are OK until they're not. And all of a sudden it's like, OK, we're fully in like Alien or Event Horizon like that's what we're doing.

Dave 16:42

Yeah. Yep. A hundred percent. um So. Let's just talk about the way the story is delivered in here because this is a game where you're by yourself the whole time basically. So you get your story delivered by hearing Various people or forces talk to you through various means of communication as you're going around the ship, but also through audio logs that you pick up. If anyone's played Bioshock, guess what? It was in System Shock 2 before Bioshock. Go figure. And it's the type of audio log that you pick up. You can walk around the environment. You can do your business while listening to it. um I appreciate that I don't have to sit still and listen to these. ah So what did you think of the audio log delivery here?

Doug 17:38

No, this clearly, I mean, there's a reason so many games borrow this afterwards, not just Bioshock, but I mean, you know, i again, I could not help thinking of the bit in Stick of Truth where they make fun of this, but I mean, it's a great way to, you know,

Dave 17:42

Yeah. Uh huh.

Doug 17:54

If you're doing an FPS and you need to deliver story and you've decided we're going to go for the sci-fi isolated experience, if they want to deliver story to you, it's going to be either text, which you're going to have to stop and read, which they do some of, ah or these kind of more active audio logs where, like you said, you can keep running and gunning while you're listening to them.

Dave 18:08

Mm-hmm Yeah

Doug 18:15

And then beyond that, there's the I mean, people are constantly talking to you, you know, live as well. Like it, whether it's the villains or like other survivors, like your radio is not silent.

Dave 18:28

Yeah, so it's, you know, I mentioned this is a survival horror game, but it's not one where you're like, by yourself, ah the whole time, you're right, there's there's constantly something is talking to you, whether it's a ah bespoke, like someone calls in on the radio, because you cross through a certain threshold in the game, or if it's an audio log. um I also thought the voice acting in the audio logs was mostly pretty good. There's a couple that sound like they pulled somebody from accounting to go record a log, but ah especially when you know stuff starts really happening to the survivors in the story and you're getting like, let's say late stage audio logs, ah that voice acting and the effects that they put on the voices were really cool. I thought they're good.

Doug 19:12

Yeah, I would agree with that. There's definitely a few people that you're like, you know, late 90s, voice acting in games, you know, that's just what part of the price of admission.

Dave 19:23

Yeah.

Doug 19:23

But for the key characters that really count and especially for the many and for the show, Dan, they have to work and they do.

Dave 19:28

Yeah.

Doug 19:32

Those are the best performances in the game.

Dave 19:35

Yeah. Let's talk about Dan for a second. So show Dan is voiced by Terry brochures and show Dan is, uh, first of all, again, one of the other things I'll connect to a later game. Show Dan is basically GLaDOS from portal, but meaner and, uh, not, not, you know, making jokes basically.

Doug 19:57

Yeah, GLaDOS is the Douglas Adams to Checkers Guide to the Galaxy version of Shodan.

Dave 20:01

Uh-huh.

Doug 20:01

Like GLaDOS is pure comedy, um even when she's saying horrifying things.

Dave 20:04

Yeah.

Doug 20:06

Sometimes Shodan says things that are, you know, bleakly funny. Like she's not totally, you know, menacing.

Dave 20:09

Yeah.

Doug 20:11

um She's not saying, you know, Hal 9000. But the connection between those two characters is yeah obvious, although I guess every evil AI since 2001 owes a debt to Hal.

Dave 20:19

Right. That's right.

Doug 20:24

But she's a little more spunky than Hal is. And the effect on her voice that like Max Headroom bit that I did at the beginning, like it then never I thought it would wear thin after a while or that at some point like I don't think this is a spoiler but like the voice never like evens out where like oh that effect goes away like from beginning the first time you hear it to the last time like that effect is on there and it it's unsettling

Dave 20:45

Yeah. yeah the Yeah, the effect on the voice is unsettling. The way she talks to you is unsettling. Like you, especially if you played the first System Shock game, ah surprise, Shodan is back. Like they thought they destroyed Shodan in the first game. i You know, Star Wars somehow, Shodan returned. ah So now she's back and she's ah pissed. She hates humans. She thinks that they're so far beneath her and you kind of are. There's certain points in the game where Shodan will like just little do little stuff to like to fuck with you. And it just kind of reminds you every now and then like, oh, she is kind of in control here. um But there's ah an interesting subversion of this that I'll talk about in the spoiler section where like,

It's not you versus Shodan for the entire game in the way that it's kind of you versus GLaDOS in Portal.

Doug 21:44

Yeah, they do play with this. There's definitely an inversion to it, and it's sort of like, even though you know you can't trust her at all, um you know you kind of are forced to to work with her to a degree.

Dave 21:53

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug 21:58

um So you've got this sort of uneasy alliance with her, but she is 100% hateful. She will just constantly demean you and tell you, you know, you and humanity, you're all insects, you're all insignificant, I am a god.

Dave 22:04

yeah

Doug 22:12

you know, ah just cruel evil things to say.

Dave 22:16

Mm hmm. Yeah. So as a villain, you know, you see all these lists of like the best video game villains of all time. And show Dan is going to show up on most of those lists. And I think that she lived up to the hype, really. And I think part of it is the voice acting. Part of it's the effect they put on the voice. Part of it's the writing and what she says to you. And then just those little times along the way where she just like You know, maybe you just picked up a grenade launcher and you're feeling yourself like Shodan will do some stuff to just be like, Hey, you're, you're nothing really like I'm, I'm still in control here.

So yeah.

Doug 22:52

Yeah, she yeah, she is absolutely like one of the biggest successes in the game. I think that reputation for her as a villain is earned. This is absolutely one of the best things in the entire thing. And, you know, it's kind of a shame we didn't get a system shock there, because I think this character there's more to do with this character.

Dave 23:11

Yeah.

Doug 23:11

um You know, she's really interesting. And like, again, I expected it to be a little more one note than it turned out to be.

Dave 23:20

Yeah, it's quite good. The other kind of antagonistic force in the game is this parasitic hive mind that's slowly invading the ship. It's known as the many and we've referenced the many before. And the many, there's like less to the many, although the many does introduce some ah philosophical like debates that you can kind of think about and chew on as you're going through the story. like It also talks to you. um and It also has this you know combined superimposed voice effect over it too. like It's literally many voices talking to you at the same time, shifting between voices in the middle of lines and things like that.

so As a villain, it's less compelling, I think, than Shodan. But as an antagonistic force and just like a spooky, cool thing that's talking to you as you're playing, I also think that the many are pretty cool.

Doug 24:16

Yeah, I liked them a lot. This is one where I felt like the component parts of the many were a little more like I've seen that this is the Borg. I've seen this before, ah you know, like, ah you know, resistance is futile.

Dave 24:24

Oh, yeah.

Doug 24:27

You know, that's where we're going.

Dave 24:29

Mm hmm.

Doug 24:29

So there was a little bit of that like, OK, I've seen this, but it is well executed. Like it, it is a cool version of this hive minded idea. The other thing that took me out of it was entirely personal to me. And this is just this dumb bit I used to do with my kids.

Dave 24:42

Okay.

Doug 24:42

Um, so, uh, before they could talk, you know, when there were little babies, like, you know, as most parents do, you'll kind of like to voice for the kids so that they can speak for themselves.

Dave 24:48

Uh huh.

Doug 24:52

And so this weird bit eventually developed where I'm like, my kids would like to speak as if they were inhabited by a hive minded entity.

Dave 24:59

Oh yeah.

Doug 24:59

And so I was like, hello, I'm the council of Benjamin. We are a hive minded entity from the multiverse or whatever. Like this bit I would do just to annoy my wife. Um, and so like every time the many would speak at a little party, we would go like, oh yeah, they're, they're, they're hungry for neutrinos. Like my son is, you know?

Dave 25:14

Yeah.

Doug 25:15

Um, so, so that took me out, but that's again, not the game's fault, but no, the many are well executed.

Dave 25:19

Right. Yeah.

Doug 25:20

They're, they're cool and they are creepy and the way they kind of iterate.

Dave 25:24

Mm hmm.

Doug 25:25

on what the menu is, ah is actually kind of neat. Like the way it kind of builds and gets worse and grosser as the game goes on.

Dave 25:32

Yeah.

Doug 25:32

Again, like one of the most successful things in the whole thing.

Dave 25:35

Yeah, for sure. ah So from a story perspective, like there's a couple of things. So you're learning what happened to the ship. ah You're learning about these individual like crew member stories, and there are some like you know little short stories among you know spread out over several audio logs with familiar characters that you keep hearing from. ah So you're learning about what happened there.

You're learning about the nature of the many. You're learning about what Shodan wants. I thought all of that stuff was just really fun to uncover. And there are some like cool reveals along the way about those things. And of course, save those for the spoiler section. ah so As far as like the plot of System Shock 2, I thought it was a lot of fun to go along the ride for. And then we'll just say right now, the ending of System Shock 2 is infamous for a reason. It's one of the most baffling ending cutscenes I think I've ever seen.

Doug 26:34

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think I messaged you when I said I got to the end. I have thoughts. um Yeah, that ending is bonkers.

Dave 26:42

Yeah. Uh-huh.

Doug 26:44

ah But that's one of the things where I think people get real up in arms like, oh, the last 15 seconds of this thing I didn't like. But the other 99.9% was cool. It's like, well, then my review is a D plus. And you're like, well, no.

Dave 26:56

Yeah.

Doug 26:57

You had 99% of the things you enjoyed.

Dave 26:59

Yeah.

Doug 26:59

um Yeah, I think the plot here overall is good. It is well delivered. um It does something that I think a sci fi horror thing needs to do, which is building dread. um Like one of my all time favorite horror movies is the David Cronenberg remake of the fly.

Dave 27:08

Yep.

Doug 27:14

And like, that's, in a way, it's almost not a horror movie because there's not like a villain that stalks everybody. There's not a lot of jump scares or anything like that in it. It's literally just that feeling of like every time we cut back to Jeff Goldblum's apartment, your brain goes, Oh God, it's gonna be worse, isn't it? How much worse is it gonna be?

Dave 27:31

Yeah.

Doug 27:31

And that's what's going on here. It's like every time you go to a new deck, on the Von Braun, like you're like, okay, this that whatever situation I was in in the last deck, things have gotten worse by the time we get here. And they deliver on that, I think, pretty well.

Dave 27:45

Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then by the time you get to like the last two or three levels in the game, uh, everything is, everything is fucked and weird and like kind of cool, kind of. Some of it's kind of frustrating to actually play through, but from a story and presentation perspective, uh, very cool.

Doug 28:04

Right.

Dave 28:05

Yeah. um The other thing to just mention is there will be some like philosophical topics that we'll talk about in the spoiler section. I think that this is the Ken Levine special of like setting up an interesting philosophical debate But then making things too far on the extremes for you to actually identify with any part of that debate. So there are characters with motivations that want you to get on board with their motivations and their philosophy. But in my opinion, it's too extreme for you to ever think that it's an appealing choice, ah which is something that

you know, later Ken Levine, Bioshock games, also a pit that those fall into it as well, in my opinion. But we'll talk about it in the spoiler section. The kind of things that they're setting up are kind of interesting on their own to talk about. But I was never swayed by anyone's point of view in this game, we'll say.

Doug 29:05

he does this ah he does this a lot where it's kind of like there there are there's no one to root for in a way or like you you can refer yourself as like trying to survive this situation but the like the factions that are going on in the world it's like well do i root for the many the hive-minded like gross parasite monsters or shodan the ai that wants to kill all of humanity it's like

Dave 29:12

Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah.

Doug 29:28

Oh, that's, those are my two choices on the ballot this November. Okay. Uh, not good. So yeah, but that, but he likes that.

Dave 29:34

Right.

Doug 29:36

I, you know, there is a place for that. And I think maybe we're not, you obviously don't have to root for either of them. What you're, what you're rooting for is they both lose.

Dave 29:41

Right. Yeah, for sure. And ah we'll put a pin in that in particular, and we'll revisit that in the spoiler section when we can speak freely. But just to know, um you know, if you played the Bioshock series and haven't played System Shock 2, it's here as well. So ah let's listen to a bit of music and we'll come back and talk about the presentation. So you had mentioned just a little bit ago, you know talking about this sense of rising dread as you're going through the game. And I said in my ah like personal history with this that I didn't play it forever because I thought it would be too scary. And I had heard that this is a scary game. So did you find this to be a scary one?

Doug 30:27

I did and I didn't. um I was scared in terms of like, for gameplay reasons of like, if I turn a corner and there's a particularly tough enemy,

Dave 30:30

Mm-hmm.

Doug 30:37

I'm in trouble, but ah part of it is just the graphical fidelity of 1999.

Dave 30:38

Yeah.

Doug 30:42

This is not as scary as, say, you know, some games are better at this back then than others. So, like, I think, again, the original Half-Life, I think, is better at this kind of presentation of, like, a scary alien threat.

Dave 30:48

Yeah.

Doug 30:56

This is a little more primitive in terms of its visuals and that, for me, kind of made it less scary. That's again, hard to hold against it to say like, well, it should have been better for 1999. Like it was 1999. You know, um you know, there's limits. I think that's the kind of thing where like if someone were to remaster this game, if you were to put in like the lighting engine from say even for something like Doom 3, we'd be in for a much more terrifying ride.

Dave 31:18

yeah Yeah, that's the biggest. The one of the two biggest things is this is just a very well lit game. And so there's not going to be a lot of um I mean, there are jump scares and there are things that will surprise you, ah whether they're like bespoke jump scares or like you're hacking a machine and an enemy just wanders into the room ah and surprises you like stuff like that will happen. But I don't think this game is trying to scare you in the same way as when Silent Hill came out in 1999, the first game. And Silent Hill is full of like this just fucked sound design that's made to freak you out. And System Shock 2 just has less of that. And it's, again, very well lit. You can see very far, you know unlike Silent Hill, again.

Sound design is really effective though in some ways because like the hybrids will like talk to themselves as they're wandering the hallways and you can hear them before you see them most of the time and so like again I'm hacking a vending machine I'm trying to do this fucking hacking game it's terrible by the way so I'm probably not doing well at it And then I hear this you know voice in the background. I'm like, oh, fuck, there's something coming in here. Hurry up and get this hacking done, or else I forfeit the resources I put into it. So you're incentivized to keep doing it. And there's a bunch of situations like that. Because the enemies wander the levels, they're not just waiting for you to go into each room. You're never really in a safe place. like There's no safe rooms like Resident Evil has or something like that.

So there is a tension from that, for sure, but not a, it's dark, I can't see, and there's creepy sounds all over the place.

Doug 33:08

Yeah, there are some kind of scripted encounters, ah but to a large degree, right. They could be wandering any witch away and they and a lot of them respawn or they don't respawn, but like they just keep coming more, you know, endless supply of grunts to come at you.

Dave 33:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug 33:24

So you don't get the sense like, well, I could clear this out. And once I clear it out, then I can do the exploration that I want to do. But not necessarily um like the huge like real like, you know, juggernaut enemies will won't do that.

Dave 33:34

Yeah.

Doug 33:38

But there'll be enough of the grunts that you can never fully feel like I'm yeah like I said, you're safe to just do whatever you feel like in one of these rooms.

Dave 33:45

Yeah. And again, like you said, part of the fear aspect is just purely a gameplay thing. This is a difficult game, especially if there's multiple enemies. I don't want to waste a bunch of ammo. And if I die, I'm going to have to redo a section because it's a game that has like, you know, I think it has but like special places where you can save. No, you can save anywhere because I did a bunch of quick loading from time to time. yeah um so you You do have that pressure to check around each corner and not necessarily because I'm scared of what's going to be there. but because I wanna know what's there so I can tactically approach it because you do have limited ammo, ah your character is a little bit squishy. So like especially like some of the enemies, like we talked about the monkeys, the monkeys shoot fucking exploding fireballs at you and they do a ton of damage if they hit you. So you better know if there's a monkey around, you know?

Doug 34:47

And you'll hear it. I mean you'll hear monkey noises, you'll know.

Dave 34:48

Yeah. Oh, yeah. um The other part that I like takes away from this game being as scary as I think it could be is the music, which is not horror game music at all. ah It is like When there is music, there are some like ambient background tracks sometimes, but a lot of the levels, and especially when combat's going, ah you have this like pulse-pounding electronic like keyboard and drum type music. I mean, people have heard it at this point in the episode. ah It's cool music. I really like the songs, but they give this more of an action game feel than a horror game feel.

Doug 35:29

Yeah, and this is what I said. You know, this game is a little bit of a Frankenstein. Like some of that is in the tone where it's like, well, do you want to be ah event horizon in terms of like scars or, you know, do you want to be doom?

Dave 35:38

Yeah.

Doug 35:42

And it's going to be like, it's time for kicking ass. We and the music would suggest it wants to be doom or Duke Nukem or one of these kinds of classic shooters.

Dave 35:52

yeah

Doug 35:52

um The music is great. I mean, we'll talk about that in a minute. But like that. But totally, yeah, it's not it's not horror music.

Dave 35:59

Right, it also like, it kind of fits like a sci-fi tone, but it to me it doesn't really fit a, I'm exploring a fucked up space station type of tone. It's more like, like you said, like half-life in space music or something.

Doug 36:15

Well, even Half-Life has some of this music, but it's a little more scary or tense.

Dave 36:21

Mm-hmm.

Doug 36:22

This reminded me more than anything of the Daft Punk Tron music, which rocks, by the way, if you haven't heard that.

Dave 36:26

Yeah.

Doug 36:31

But it's more similar to that in tone. Again, I really enjoyed the music. But yeah, it was not going to make me feel on edge at all. It's the opposite. It's like, OK, Red Bull gives you wings. Go shoot.

Dave 36:44

Yeah, for sure.

Doug 36:45

yeah

Dave 36:46

Ah Real quick, the music credits are to Josh Randall, Eric Brosius, and Ramin Djawadi, whose last name there is the composer of the Game of Thrones theme song. So, um you know, pedigree all the way back to System Shock 2. And again, the music is really great. I just, you know, it's clear that they weren't all in on scaring you. And I think you're right, like, they are making a System Shock 2 enhanced edition, supposedly. And I have seen some like screenshots and like, you know, trailer footage of that. The lighting is definitely more modern, but I'm not sure what they're going to do with the music. So they're going to have to make that choice. Do we want to stick with this original thing or do we want to be more of a horror game? Because it is kind of both. um The other part of the presentation that gives it that horror game quality is environmental storytelling. And it's a thing that was kind of taken forward into Bioshock as well. Like Bioshock's really, really good at environmental storytelling. You find a dead body,

with a note or an audio log and a message on the wall, you know, painted in blood or whatever that System Shock 2 does that to. And then like, you know, the way the bodies are posed and, um you know, other things in the room might tell you the story of what happened in that room. And it's it's always fucked up in this game. And that lends a little bit to that back on that horror side of the atmosphere, I think.

Doug 38:16

Yeah, I don't know that it's 100% effective, but it feels like you know this is the first attempt at something like that that like later games would really nail.

Dave 38:23

Mm hmm.

Doug 38:26

um There are some times where they are a little more explicit about that. So we didn't talk about how the story is delivered through things like people talking at you or audio logs. The other way they convey things is through ghosts. um You will walk into a room and you will see the last moments of somebody before they die.

Dave 38:37

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Doug 38:42

ah you know or or some other like important events. It's almost like the seventh guest. like It's weird. um But like you'll walk in and sometimes you'll even see this figure like as they're going through whatever the scene is, they'll like lie the ghost will like lie down and or fall to the floor on top of the corpse that's lying there and you'll realize, okay, this was this guy's you know last moments that I just witnessed.

Dave 39:05

Yeah.

Doug 39:05

Sometimes they're a little more explicit about drawing those connections. but Other times, as you said, it's a little more traditional environmental storytelling where you you walk into a room and there's yeah, there's three corpses lying around something and you can, you know, look at you search their bodies, you read a note and you can kind of piece together what happened here. um Spoiler alert, it's never something good.

yes so

Dave 39:25

Yeah, nothing good has happened recently on the ship at all.

Doug 39:27

yeah

Dave 39:30

um So it is, um you know, I generally thought the presentation was cool in here. ah It just kind of has these conflicting tones of, you know, does it want to be scary? Does it want to get your blood pumping in an action game sort of way? ah But I generally thought like, you know, the pieces are cool at least. And again, part of that presentation is the voice acting if you are shown coming in and talking to you as you're walking through a creepy hallway, or the many talking to you as you're walking through a different creepy hallway or something like that. um That stuff is good.

Doug 40:06

Yeah, it's not perfect. There are times when I feel like the voiceover will sort of like I don't know what the software is doing in terms of how it decides when to chime in or not. Sometimes it interrupts the cool tone to be like, oh, now I'm taken out of it because you're yammering at me. um ah But I would say 80 to 90 percent of the time it does work. That's just again, this game is ah is like it's ah's somewhere in the middle of the evolutionary chain.

Like it's not perfect, but it's interesting to see that stuff working towards, I think but later games, like you said, prey or the original Bioshock do so much better.

Dave 40:33

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So ah let's, let's switch that tone. Let's listen to some of that, like a spooky ambient sound. And when we come back, we will talk about what it's like to play System Shock 2. All right, System Shock 2 begins, like I said, with a tutorial where you create a character, and this is a class-based RPG. ah So you pick what branch of the military, which determines your class, and then you pick what training exercises your character does, which gives you like some starter stat boosts. So you have, um I would say like three main builds, maybe four that you can do. You could do like an all melee build,

You can do like, you know, a traditional gun build. There's energy weapons. There is a magic system. So you can make psi abilities build. And then there are things later in the game called exotic weapons that have their own skill. And if you want to use those, ah there's like they have their own crafting system and stuff like that. ah So what ah what kind of build did you pick and go through the game as?

Doug 41:51

So I went for, I think they, what do they give you? The Navy, the Marines and like the OSI or something is the other one.

Dave 41:57

Mm. Something like that.

Doug 41:58

I picked that one because I'm like, well, I don't know what this is. That sounds interesting.

Dave 42:00

Yeah.

Doug 42:02

Uh, not realizing that was probably making this harder for myself, uh, because that leans more into the side powers, which are a little more finicky in terms of, you know, they're not as simple as point and shoot.

Dave 42:14

Yeah.

Doug 42:14

um But I ended up, by the end of the game, you can, as we'll talk about, you can adjust your stats by going to these little like kiosks that are all over and ah there just changing the numbers on your stats.

Dave 42:19

Yeah.

Doug 42:24

And so by the end of it, I, one, I figured out I was well served by having, ah you need hacking to be as good as possible to minimize the disruption from that.

Dave 42:24

yeah Yes.

Doug 42:33

Like that's a pro tip. Do not assume you can sidestep the hacking. um I put a lot of emphasis into having a strong melee build. because the wrench ah that you start out the game with ah never runs out of bullets. And if you can whack a bunch of scrubs with that and take them out in one hit, if you get decent at that, you're basically turning this game into Kingsfield ah in a way.

Dave 42:50

Right. Yeah.

Doug 42:58

um That's good to do, I found, because that saved me a lot of time and heartache of, you know, trying to worry about, am I going to run out of ammo? Do I need to interact with some of these other systems to keep my ammo supply going? um The weapons degrade over time, but the melee weapons don't.

Dave 43:11

Yeah. Right.

Doug 43:15

ah So you want a good solid melee weapon. I had some decent gun stuff and I had um there was a cryonic psi power.

Dave 43:20

Mm

Doug 43:23

that I found was really effective for like, um so there's these security cameras that are all over the ship. You're incentivized to take those out as soon as possible, especially from a distance. I found the cryonic side power was pretty good.

Dave 43:30

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Doug 43:38

um You would like to fire that off and take out the cameras that again, saves you a lot of heartache.

Dave 43:43

Yeah, nice.

Doug 43:43

So that was my build.

Dave 43:45

Yeah, I did a wrench for most of the game and then um standard guns and I carried an energy weapon just to shoot cameras ah because you can recharge those. You don't have anything like ammo, they have a battery. And so I use standard guns. I used hacking. Like whenever I play a game like this, hacking is always good. I didn't know that you basically needed hacking to finish the game in this. So I'm glad I picked hacking. So again, echoing that pro tip, like get hacking to like level three or four if you're going to play this game.

Like, please please just do it. Otherwise, you're going to have a bad time at the end of the game.

Doug 44:25

Yeah, hacking hacking is not fun in this game, unfortunately.

Dave 44:29

No, it's not the, the hacking mini game is probably the worst I can think of off the top of my head.

Doug 44:33

Yeah.

Dave 44:35

Like Bioshock is like the pipe dream hacking game and it's way better.

Doug 44:35

And yeah.

Dave 44:40

Even if you get tired of playing pipe dream, it's way better than it is in System Shock 2.

Doug 44:45

Yeah, to be perfectly honest, I never understood how this worked.

Dave 44:49

Nope.

Doug 44:49

It was mostly a matter of just trial and error clicking.

Dave 44:50

Uh,

Doug 44:51

So you want to up your hacking as much as possible. One, because as you said, surprise, you're going to need it at the end of the game. And two, like because this is one of the game's roughest edges, you want to sand that down as much as possible by pumping up that stat.

Dave 45:03

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, the hacking mini game, it puts a bunch of like nodes on the screen, and I think you're trying to make what seems like an arbitrary number of connections between the nodes. I don't understand how it works, and if you fuck it up, you'll set off an alarm. So I save scummed every hacking thing that I did because, um, I like I never understood how the hacking thing worked and the other part of that is if an alarm goes off this game has a Metal Gear Solid type alarm system where for multiple minutes you have a countdown that's going and these hybrid grunt enemies will just endlessly respawn and come find you so you could like stand in a doorway and just, you know, kill them all as they come. But it's gonna take like, I don't know, three, four minutes of real time just standing there waiting for this. Like, this isn't Metal Gear Solid, where you can go hide, they'll just come wherever you are. So ah that this was really bad. And it's the main reason I save scummed hacking.

Doug 46:17

Yeah, yeah. And like I said, you're incentivized to hack because you want to have as many resources as possible. And sometimes in those hackable things, ah there are story bits, there's plot things, ah some things you really kind of have to hack.

Dave 46:28

Yeah.

Doug 46:31

um If you want to jump the power curve, it's good to hack these things. And you do it a lot. And that's part of the the issues I have with this is that the friction points

Dave 46:38

Yep.

Doug 46:42

It's a lot like, you know, it's not that much friction, but when you have to do it a thousand times, it accumulates.

Dave 46:48

Yeah.

Doug 46:50

ah And it's sort of like you have to ask yourself like this game, I think really would have benefited from like just one more pass, like because there's so much stuff in it that's like like that, where it's like, you know, hey, do you want to go get some more resources resources? Great. Here, do some long division. Okay. you're like All right. I'll do something long. but Great. Here's your resources. Oh, wait, do it again. You're going to do this a lot.

Dave 47:11

Yeah.

Doug 47:12

And it's not any more fun than doing long division. This kind of gets into a general thing of mine, which is why I don't like crafting systems and stuff in games because generally it's like, hey, do you want this thing? Well, now instead of giving you this thing, it's instead of one step, it's three steps to do.

Dave 47:28

Yeah.

Doug 47:28

And if the and if the individual steps to do it aren't fun, you're just getting in the way of me having fun. I'm looking at you, Breath of the Wild, I don't like it. Don't tell me, Hey, do you like lasagna? Well here, here's a cow and some seeds go have fun. I'm like, no, fuck you.

Dave 47:44

Mm hmm.

Doug 47:44

Just give me the lasagna. Let's go. You know? Um, so I find that to be an issue with a lot of games and this game has that where it's like, okay. You have to find little components. things There's the chemicals you have to find and mix.

Dave 47:55

Yeah.

Doug 47:55

There's lots and lots and lots of these little friction points and you have to do them a lot. And so that kept like eroding the letter grade. I wanted to give the game, even though there's so much cool stuff in here that we're going to get to.

Dave 48:07

Yeah, the main annoyance for me was the hacking. But it's like you said, um like doing it once is kind of annoying. Doing it 300 times is terrible. So every time you do it, you like it less and less. And then I can think off the top of my head, there are two story points where you have to hack something. um And there's one story point where it forces you to hack a vending machine and then buy a secret item.

And I didn't have any money because I'd spent it all on ammo. And I had to use the console commands to spawn that item so I could literally, you know, not restart the entire game. So yeah.

Doug 48:48

Yeah, there's definitely things like that that you could, you know, um bad adventure game stuff. And this has some adventure game DNA in it, too. um And you can lock yourself out of things that way, which is frustrating um and like. The other thing you can hack, in it you can hack lots of different things. Some of those are just hacking boxes that give you resources.

Dave 49:11

Yeah.

Doug 49:11

Sometimes you're hacking doors that lead to rooms that give you resources. Other times you can hack, like you said, you hack the vending machines, which can give you access to essentially cheaper goods. And then the last thing you can hack sometimes are these like turrets. with, you know, highly useful to hack the turrets. So you, you want to be doing this a lot. And that's why I said like, it's a, it's a friction point.

It's not an enormous amount of friction per hack, but multiply by how many times you do it.

Dave 49:37

Right.

Doug 49:39

It is a problem.

Dave 49:41

Right, and then it compounds when you get into that alarm state, which is just not, like you don't have any interesting recourse if the alarm goes off. You gotta go stand somewhere and just kill like 25 dudes as they single file run into the room and try and get you. So ah that's not great. What I do think is great about this game, gameplay wise, is I think this is a really fun game to explore and find stuff because, like we said, resources are limited. So most resources that you find are going to be valuable and rewarding. um This game does the cool thing that Prey stole where you find skill points basically as treasures in the world for poking around in corners. They also give them to you as like You know you finished a main quest Someone will give you some Some skill point items, but you also find them and so like every time I was like that looks like you know I wonder what's down that that shaft I'll jump down there and you know crawl down there and see maybe I have to kill some stuff Maybe it's kind of inconvenient, but at the end of this you know offshoot

I found some really good treasure and I felt like I was pretty consistently rewarded with that. The only issue is there's a lot of stuff out in the world like those chemicals that I might want to take for later, but I can't because of the limited inventory. So I always felt like I was rewarded for going and finding places. Sometimes I had to leave stuff behind though, which never feels great.

Doug 51:16

Yeah, it is ah it's a fairly simplistic inventory management system. It's not like Resident Evil 4 where it's kind of a game unto itself. ah

Dave 51:24

It's kind of like that, but you can't rotate the items. So you're not really like making a puzzle that much out of it.

Doug 51:31

And certain items, you can, it's not like you have one of them. It's like you have like, you know, 28 units of whatever. And if you get more, and now you have 35 units of, what you know, but it takes up one slot.

Dave 51:39

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Doug 51:42

There's things like that. um But yeah, overall, I think exploration felt pretty good. um This definitely, you know, they learned their lesson from stuff like Wolfenstein and Doom, where it's like, part of the fun is poking at the edge of these of these levels and looking for, you know, doors or hidden places that you can get to. ah So I think overall that's pretty good. The only other thing I had about exploration that is a little frustrating was just that because of the low fidelity, I found myself getting lost a lot.

Dave 52:08

Uh-huh.

Doug 52:08

And the game requires some backtracking, especially towards the end, and I felt like you didn't need to make me backtrack.

Dave 52:11

Yeah.

Doug 52:14

You could have just sent me down another hallway to do more of the kind of plot things I'm doing.

Dave 52:17

Yeah.

Doug 52:18

um So I think that was a little bit frustrating as well. not not ah gigantic flaw, but definitely a little thing that like, like I watched the, I didn't watch the entire thing, but there was a long play of this that was maybe eight hours. And my play, our playthroughs were like 15 or 16. And I bet a lot, I think a lot of that was just literally, like I don't know where to go.

Dave 52:33

yeah

Doug 52:36

you know I gotta wander around.

Dave 52:37

Yep, there's quite a bit of it where like you know someone will tell you on the radio, like I need you to go to the med bay you know a surgical area and find this thing. And so, especially late in the game, Maybe I haven't been to the med bay in 10 hours. I don't remember where the med bay is. So I can scroll through all the levels in the map, or I can check a walkthrough or something like that.

Doug 52:57

Right.

Dave 53:03

But if I was going to try and find some of these places naturally, ah sometimes the spaces make sense in a way where like, I see a sign on the wall that says medbay this way. So I just follow the signs. Other times you don't get that. And it's a little bit more like, or they're saying like, you know, go find these six machines and insert this thing into each one of them. And fuck, I found four of them. Where are the other two? Who knows stuff like that.

Doug 53:29

Yeah, there's one of those near the end of the game that is pretty yeah pretty bad in terms of like, because it's 16 things, but war.

Dave 53:37

Yeah. Yes.

Doug 53:39

I mean, if you missed one, guess what? You got to go. Where's Waldo the ship to find it?

Dave 53:44

Mhmm.

Doug 53:44

ah So like this game, I think would have really benefited from having that classic kind of like. arrow that's at the top of the screen that points you where to go. For your main quest objective, I think that would have helped a lot to avoid some of that.

Dave 53:53

Mhmm.

Doug 53:57

But again, 1999 game, like I can't be mad for them not backporting in something that was more prevalent in the 2000s.

Dave 54:05

Yeah. So I did use an ah guide for especially some of those later levels. There's, um, a couple levels late in the game that don't make sense from a geometry perspective. We'll say that, uh, those are just a little bit harder to navigate. So I needed a little help to be like, what am I looking for here? Um, I feel like I'm going in circles. So yeah.

Doug 54:28

Yeah, some of them are kind of nondescript sci-fi hallways. But I think the more successful levels are the ones that have more personality and identity to them because they do try to like to their credit, they try to make the Von Braun and Rickenbacker feel like actual places.

Dave 54:44

Yeah.

Doug 54:44

They're not just endless corridors that have no real rhyme or reason to them. They're a little more laid out sensibly than that. But again, a lot of them still are like engineering versus you know, med bay or whatever, like they basically look the same. It's hard to know where I am at any given point, unless you're in the living quarter areas, which are really cool.

Dave 54:57

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's always fun in this type of game, you know, thinking about prey or something like that, where you get a chance to go through living quarters or, um, you know, recreation areas. Cause you're on like this big spaceship. This game does those places well, uh, to, to the, you know, level of fidelity that they could in 1999, but they did a good job of stuff like that for sure. Um, what did you think of the combat? So we talked about our builds. What did you think of like the actual act of fighting stuff?

Doug 55:33

I think it's okay. I think it's, you know, a par for the course for 1999 first person shooter mechanics. um The only thing that got in my way a little bit was like, sometimes, like you said, you're hacking and then all of a sudden you have to go into combat mode or you need to pull up your inventory. And because it's PC and mouse, like you hit that basically you hit the tab button, which pulls up your inventory, but now you're not really moving around at all. You can't do you can't do this on the fly.

Dave 55:59

Yeah.

Doug 56:01

So anytime you have to interact with your inventory in a combat situation, it's a real crisis because basically you can't, you've got to just run and until you can get far enough away to have the time to do this.

Dave 56:08

Yeah.

Doug 56:14

So again, I wonder if there was a smoother way they could have integrated that into the combat. But as far as actual moment to moment combat itself, I think it is a perfectly adequate shooter of this era.

Dave 56:29

Yep, agreed. Shooting guns is fine in this game. The only issue with combat I had is ah trying to hit things with the wrench was pretty hit and miss sometimes, especially if you're trying to hit ah small things like the monkeys or ah there are other, like there are these worm enemies that burst out of these little egg sacs and they poison you if they hit you and poisons bad. So ah you wanna take care of them quickly, inefficiently, and it's just like the hit detection trying to hit small things with the wrench is, is rough.

So yeah.

Doug 57:03

And you want to use your wrench on those worms. Yeah, like it's not worth wasting bullets on them because they're small and hard to shoot too.

Dave 57:07

Right.

Doug 57:08

So the wrench is your go to there.

Dave 57:10

Yep.

Doug 57:11

um I will say the grenade launcher. I was happy to use that. um Yeah, that's because there were some great moments where like, you know, these giant hulking enemies come into a room and you take them out with like three good shots of a grenade launcher.

Dave 57:14

Oh, it was good. Yeah. Good grenade launcher.

Doug 57:23

and you're like That felt that felt right. That was ah that was enjoyable.

Dave 57:25

Yep. Another cool thing about the combat is there are different types of ammo now that you mentioned the grenade launcher. So the grenade, ah there's like incendiary grenades, there's frag grenades, there's I think there's like an acid grenade or something. If I remember right, it might be a different game. um But for the guns also, there's armor piercing ammo, there's anti personnel ammo, there's regular ammo. And the type of ammo you're using makes a huge difference in the things you're fighting. Like if you're fighting a robot, using the armor piercing ammo will, you know, you'll kill it in two shots instead of eight. And in this game, that's a huge deal. So I really appreciated, like the kind of tactics to be like, I'm in a place that has a bunch of big organic enemies. So the grenade launcher I would use against the big robot enemies is not gonna work so well. I need to switch my ammo out. It does involve a bunch of menu fiddling, but that the tactics of how you approach different enemies was always appreciated. And the cool part too is enemies will drop little pieces of themselves.

Like you can pick up something like the monkey's brain or something and there's a research mechanic, it's a skill.

And if you research those pieces forever after that, because you learned about how these things are made up or whatever, you'll do bonus damage to them. And it will tell you like this type of ammo is best. So I didn't like to get super deep into research. I think I realized how good it was too late. ah But for what I did, that was really helpful. So like, you have not only like tactics in like, you know, I need to fight things one at a time, I need to shoot this versus wrench this, but you also have tactics in like, okay, I have the gun, what gun, what ammo, all that stuff.

Doug 59:22

Yeah, like I said, I think if the switching off between the ammo types was a little smoother in terms of how it mechanically happened, this would be great because there's a little bit of a rock paper scissors thing going on, as you said, between the different enemies. It's, you know, clouds used to fire on ice enemies' stuff.

Dave 59:39

Yeah.

Doug 59:40

ah But yeah, there's there's something really satisfying when you use the right ammo on the right enemy and they go down fast um and they play with this because from time to time you will have combat encounters where you've got you know basically you know enemies that you'll be well equipped to kill and enemies that you have the wrong ammo for it and you have to sort of like decide how you want to approach that do you want to like just take one out run away change your ammo out and come back are you willing to just spend the bullets and you know not bother with that and

Dave 59:59

Yeah.

Doug 1:00:09

Yeah. Again, overall, pretty good combat system, not not the best in the world, but it's functional. And I think, you know, they're there. Again, a lot of this game feels like they're on to something. I don't know if they nailed it with this draft, but they're on to something.

Dave 1:00:22

Yeah. If only, uh, if only they had done system shock three, which, you know, prey is basically system shock three. Uh, so if anyone out there has not played prey, this is yet another recommendation to go check that game out. It rules.

Doug 1:00:35

For 2016, we should say.

Dave 1:00:37

Right. Uh, 20. Yeah. 20.

Doug 1:00:39

16, the current, the newer one.

Dave 1:00:40

16, 17, can't remember. Yeah, the new one. um The old one looks cool too. I have it on the Xbox 360. I'll try it someday. um You use magic. So you mentioned the freeze magic ability. Did you do a bunch of others? Like was the magic system fun to mess with? Because I didn't do any magic.

Doug 1:00:59

See, i I tried it out a little bit and I found that I was good at that one thing, but because the switching off,

Dave 1:01:06

Uh-huh.

Doug 1:01:07

between weapon types was a little bit of a friction point. I was like, well, you know I could go full magic build here, but i I honestly didn't feel like I had a good mastery of how it all worked, but like I kind of figured out this one thing, so I'm gonna do that one thing and and just work on the guns and things that I know ah for the rest of it.

Dave 1:01:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug 1:01:24

So I didn't fully you know ah investigate what the system was like if I was to you know go whole hog on it, you know make that my whole build. um But there's some interesting ideas there. This clearly is what gives way to the plasmids in Bioshock, but that's basic, much more simplistic.

Dave 1:01:39

Yeah. Right.

Doug 1:01:42

That basically you have a type of gun in your right hand and a different kind of gun that we'll just call a plasmid in your, you know, it's a magic spell, but, you know, a different sparkly projectile in the other hand.

Dave 1:01:49

Right. Yeah.

Doug 1:01:54

This is like, yeah, it's drawing on a different resource pool. um And so it has some uses, but yeah I wish I could talk about it more intelligently because I did not really go that far down this rabbit hole.

Dave 1:02:06

Yeah, if I ever replayed System Shock 2, I would try like a side build and just see what it is because I read you know the threads and stuff like that from like the System Shock 2 pros. And it's one of those things where you read and they're like, yeah, if you're really good at magic, the game is a lot of fun to play in this totally different way. because the magic spells are not all just like fireball, ice beam, you know, electricity bolt. There's a lot of different weird looking ah spells that you can use. So it feels like a thing for a second playthrough for sure.

Doug 1:02:42

Yeah, there's some telekinetic stuff to it you can do. And I just wanted one of the things where I feel like I don't know if even the game is, you know, fully built around this idea.

Dave 1:02:45

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:02:52

I feel like again, with another pass at it, they could have integrated this more to where it was more of a viable build. um And I just don't know ah you know how much of this is like, let's put the system in there. And if it works, it works versus like we put a lot of stuff in there to make, you know, see from software like yeah we made this game workable for all these different styles.

Dave 1:03:13

Yeah, so all in all, um I think it's, you know, there's some rough edges to the gameplay experience but overall I thought it was a pretty fun and like ultimately like really engaging gameplay experience here you know moving slowly through the corridors scoping out rooms before you bust in because you know if there's a couple of turrets and a strong enemy in there you're dead like it's one of those games that you need to know what you're going up against ahead of time

um And there's different ways that you can approach things um like, again, it's not fully like Deus Ex level. How am I going to approach this entire level type stuff? But you know you can hack the security terminal to turn off the cameras in the turrets ah if you want to. You can hack the turrets if you want them to fight for you. ah Otherwise, you can just use your abilities. um exploration Exploration was really good. So again, um I had a good time with this despite you know there being some annoying stuff like you know

Every time you kill one of those shotgun enemies, you have to pick up its shotgun, take the bullet out, then drop the shotgun. Like I want shotgun ammo. So I'm going to do that. But it's like, it's a bunch of steps to get one shotgun, you know, shell. So there is annoyance.

Doug 1:04:32

Again, do long vision.

Dave 1:04:35

Yeah, exactly. There are annoyances along the way for sure.

Doug 1:04:36

Yeah.

Dave 1:04:38

But I think I would have expected that before starting, you know, an RPG from 1999. So I was, I was into this.

Doug 1:04:47

Yeah, I think if I had played this when I was 19, when this came out, I think I would have been way more willing to put up with some of these design issues we've been talking about than I am now. and I'm much more impatient of a gamer as I've gotten older.

Dave 1:05:01

Yeah, that's fair.

Doug 1:05:03

ah so ah So there is that. um so I would still recommend this game. I think there's a lot about it that's really interesting, even if you're just coming at it from a historical perspective and going like, I want to see this thing that is a building block of so many other games that were so inspirational to so many people. I think the things that are about it that are cool are still cool.

Dave 1:05:20

Yeah.

Doug 1:05:23

Like they still work, they are still really interesting, um but it is a qualified recommendation that you are going to be dealing with a certain amount of you know little annoyances and frustrations that build up. So that's going to be you know up to you as to how much that affects your experience.

Dave 1:05:40

Yeah, yeah, I would say that if you're up for, like if you've played an RPG of this era, like if you've played Deus Ex, Deus Ex is also not a perfect gameplay experience, but if you like Deus Ex and you can deal with, you know, one of these first person, you know, shooter RPG hybrid type games from this era, then I do think you're going to have a good time with System Shock 2. There are things about it like, um,

you know, the hacking, there's a little bit of like lack of direction at times and some wandering that goes on. ah But if you're okay with that, or if you're just okay with checking a walkthrough when you get lost, that'll take that away right away. And it's not like walkthroughs didn't exist in 1999 either, because I followed someone's game facts from ah like 2000. So um

Doug 1:06:29

Right.

Dave 1:06:30

I think that as a gameplay experience without that historical perspective, I still think this is a pretty competent ah gameplay experience and I enjoyed it. ah The story stuff holds up pretty well as well like we mentioned, but the main recommendation is for people like you said who love all of these later games that we've been name dropping like ah Bioshock series and prey and dead space and portal and stuff like that um Playing system shock 2 is gonna be a really eye-opening experience.

It's like this was like I Don't know how to make a good metaphor here, but it's like I played this What's that?

Doug 1:07:08

Rosetta Stone. It's the Rosetta Stone.

Dave 1:07:12

Yeah, I was gonna say, like I played this and suddenly everything made sense about what I would consider to be one of my favorite genres of games. And I think I'll feel the same way if I play Thief and like you know that final puzzle piece will be inserted and you know the knowledge of the gods will be unlocked or whatever. So ah that was cool too.

Doug 1:07:33

Yeah. Yeah, I was reminded of the discussion we had about Monkey Island, which is that the secret of the original Secret of Monkey Island is a good game.

Dave 1:07:39

Yeah.

Doug 1:07:42

It also has a lot of you know mechanical things that give rough edges. So the question there was like, well, if you want to play the historically important one, play Monkey Island one. If you want to play a point and click adventure game that might go down smoother, there are better choices than that. And I sort of feel the same way about this, which is like You know, historically important shooter slash RPG dungeon crawler. um If you want something more on the shooter side from this era, play Half-Life. If you want the immersive sim, play Deus Ex. This thing is sort of in the middle and none of them. And so it's really interesting. But again, like I said, a qualified recommendation.

Dave 1:08:22

Yeah, and it does do a bunch of cool stuff on its own. um I personally think that going through the story and seeing what show Dan is about is worth the price of admission as well. And you know you can play this on easy mode if you want to like there are difficult selectors. There are the insane people that play this on like the extreme difficulty and have fun with that. So there is that too. um I

Doug 1:08:46

And there's cheating.

Dave 1:08:47

Yeah, and yeah, there's cheats, there's console commands that you can type in to give yourself whatever item you want to raise your stats. If you really want to do that, if you just want to see the story, you know, create your own story mode as modern games have where you're basically invincible, you can do that.

Doug 1:09:03

Yeah.

Dave 1:09:04

So yeah, worth seeing. So ah Before we get into spoilers, let's do our plugs and housekeeping here. So at the top of the show, I mentioned that Doug is the host of the Nostalgium Arcanum podcast. ah It is a topic show ah with a bunch of different topics each week. So tell the people about Nostalgium Arcanum.

Doug 1:09:27

Yeah, so the the idea of the show is to bring a guest or guests on to talk about a topic that they are very nostalgic about, a piece of pop culture or a phenomenon that they are, you know, the kind of thing they still won't shut up about after 40 years, ah you know, that they they still love.

Dave 1:09:35

Mm hmm. Right.

Doug 1:09:40

And ah Dave, you've been kind enough to come on our show a few times to talk about, let's see, you did Pokemon, Happy Gilmore and South Park bigger, longer and uncut.

Dave 1:09:45

Yeah.

Doug 1:09:48

So if you're looking for places to start, those would be good.

Dave 1:09:49

Right.

Doug 1:09:51

But yeah, we'll do movies, TV shows, games, music, just kind of we've done some episodes on stand up comedians, like whatever whatever kind of person wants to talk about, like I'm down to explore. And yeah, pretty, I'm having a good time doing it. I hope people are enjoying listening to it.

Dave 1:10:09

Yeah, I'm having a good time listening. And if I can recommend a couple that don't involve me, um I would really recommend people check out the George Carlin episode. That was incredible. And the Calvin and Hobbes episode is probably my favorite episode of the show that you did.

Doug 1:10:20

Oh, thank you. Oh, that's.

Dave 1:10:26

Calvin and Hobbes is very special to me. And that was like a perfect nostalgia trip through it.

Doug 1:10:29

Oh, thank you. The other ones I would say that I'm personally would say like, oh, if you want to try something out, I'm very proud of our Blazing Saddles episode. I think that one was really cool.

Dave 1:10:37

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:10:39

ah So I would say that's another good place to start.

Dave 1:10:42

Nice. ah Yeah, so again, the recommendation for people to ah to check it out. I always have a good time going on that show. I get to talk about, like you said, I could talk about Happy Gilmore for an hour and a half or the South Park movie. So it's a lot of fun and I'll put links down in the show notes so that you can find it easily. And for this show, quick shout outs, ratings and reviews are really helpful. If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider as you're listening to the spoiler break music, consider going and leaving a review if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or podcast addict. That's a big help. It'll help people find the show.

You can also join the Discord server, which is a good community of people. And it's the place to be if you want to come in and talk about System Shock 2 this week. There's an invite link down in the show notes as well. You can listen to my other show called a top three podcast where we do top three lists. And if we did top three video game villains, maybe Shodan would be a new entry on my list. ah So that's a good show that we have a good time doing. And finally, if you want to support Patreon, you can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson, starting at $2 per month. And that's much appreciated for everybody who does. So a lot of talking. I'm going to catch my breath. We're going to listen to a bit of music. We'll do the Patreon shout outs there. And then when we come back, it's full spoiler time for System Shock 2.

All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for System Shock 2. And as always, this is not a linear walk through the story. So we're going to spoil the big reveal in like 30 seconds. So go away if you don't want to hear that, go play the game. Otherwise, enjoy the discussion coming up. So um maybe I should have seen this coming because I've played Bioshock like three times, but the Shodan reveal was a surprise. Did it get you?

Doug 1:13:29

It did, i mean, I like you, the alarm bells were kind of going off ah because again, it's unfortunate you know to play these out of sequence because once you've seen the reveal from Bioshock, you don't trust Ken Levine anymore not to do this.

Dave 1:13:38

Yeah.

Doug 1:13:43

ah So it is exactly the same plot beat. But yeah, as you go through the first, I don't know, fourth of the game, you're getting all of your instructions, go here, unlock this door, go get the three things that do the three things. You're getting all of that from this character, Polito, who you are led to believe is an officer on the ship.

Dave 1:14:00

yeah Yep.

Doug 1:14:05

And she was, ah but she is no longer alive.

Dave 1:14:07

yep

Doug 1:14:09

And the person who has been talking to you this entire time is revealed to be Shodan, the AI that is supposed to be dead. ah What I love about this is how it's executed.

Dave 1:14:16

Yep. Yeah. What about it? Um, like, did you really enjoy it as far as the execution goes?

Doug 1:14:26

So we should talk about what happens. You walk into a room and you find Polito's corpse just propped up in a chair.

Dave 1:14:29

Yeah. Yep.

Doug 1:14:34

And then reality starts bending. Like as Shodan, like, you know, like the the walls of the room fall away and you kind of have go into like a ah this ah psychedelic cyber lawnmower man type experience as she basically, you know, monologues about what she's been up to, which is I did this.

Dave 1:14:37

Yep.

Doug 1:14:54

um you know I've been leading you here. you're You're serving me. Polito's dead. You get it now, right? you You're mine.

Dave 1:15:02

Yeah.

Doug 1:15:02

And you know because of the limited graphical fidelity, I think this is pushing it to the max as far as what they could do. And I still think it's pretty effective as having the walls of reality fall away.

Dave 1:15:12

yeah Yeah, Shodan is like filling the screen up with her face. It's the first time you see that. I mean, it's on the cover of the game, but it's the first time you see it in a game of ah what Shodan supposedly looks, I don't know, like, I don't really understand this, but she's an AI so she can look however she wants to look. Maybe this is how she has chosen too. And I'm using her to show Dan, which I think is common for everybody. I don't remember if they do that in the game, but it's a female voice. So in ah the presentation of it too, but it's like this, you know, this screen filling like Medusa head with wires and cords for hair. And then like the attachments come up from the bottom onto like the cheeks and stuff like that. And it's filling the screen

talking about how it's in control. It's been manipulating you this whole time. um And I think like a lot of the wow factor of it, as opposed to you know what happens later, is it's very different presentation-wise from almost everything else in the game.

Doug 1:16:22

Yeah, and you know that show Dan's in play. I mean, you know, you play system shock one, you know, she's on the cover, you know, or you've heard of this, you know, that she's going to show up somewhere somehow.

Dave 1:16:25

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug 1:16:32

ah And throughout the game, you're dealing with a secondary AI Xerxes, who is the shipboard AI.

Dave 1:16:37

Right.

Doug 1:16:39

So I kept expecting that maybe Xerxes was shown in disguise.

Dave 1:16:43

Me too.

Doug 1:16:44

They were going to do something with those Xerxes.

Dave 1:16:44

Yeah.

Doug 1:16:46

Unfortunately, I feel like he's a little too dry, ah his voice actor. um I wanted him to be like David Warner or something. So, you know, or Malcolm McDowell, like one of these kinds of British character actors, would have really, you know, kicked it out. yeah Alan Rickman you kick it up a notch.

Dave 1:17:00

It really is ah the voice acting for Xerces really is like the most uptight British robot voice possible.

Doug 1:17:00

um It's kind of perfunctory. Yeah.

Dave 1:17:10

Yeah.

Doug 1:17:10

um So but you don't know if you can trust him either. um And you still don't really trust him, even though he's basically kind of bland throughout the story.

Dave 1:17:14

Right. Yeah.

Doug 1:17:19

But yeah, once you know that like, OK, show is what the great thing about finding out that it has been manipulating you is that she continues to manipulate you. while you're fully aware of what she's doing. And I think that's really clever because most games would like this to be the twist and there'd be like a third of the game left where you fight showdown and that's the end.

Dave 1:17:32

Yeah.

Doug 1:17:39

And instead they put the twist at the end of the first act and then they let you continue.

Dave 1:17:40

Yep.

Doug 1:17:44

she's telling you, you got to go debug whatever. You gotta turn this on. You got to turn that off. And you're like, I know I shouldn't be following your instructions, but you're telling me how to survive and to defeat the many.

Dave 1:17:54

Yeah.

Doug 1:17:56

So I have no wish. I have no choice but to accept these instructions.

Dave 1:18:01

Yeah, so that's the cool part. And that's like the subversion that I mentioned in the non-spoiler part is that ah it's not you versus Shodan after this moment, it's you and Shodan versus the many. But like like you said, along the way you're doing all these things that Shodan tells you to do, turning off these machines, ah you know hacking security stuff, giving control of like ship systems to Shodan, and the whole time you're like, this is helping what Shodan wants.

the many are taking over the ship like if we don't kill the many we're definitely losing so that's you know a very cool thing about it and then the reveal eventually because this is not presented this way at the beginning but the reveal that Shodan created the many in its like infancy and then it got out of her control which is also cool

Doug 1:18:56

Well, and then that's another subversion as well because she tells you that she tells you I created the many they are now you know, they've just like humanity created show Dan and she got out of their control.

Dave 1:19:08

Yeah.

Doug 1:19:09

This has happened to her now, which is an interesting idea of how her creation is turned on her. But because she's evil and she screwed you over through one and a half games, You don't know that she's telling you the truth about that. For all you know, what you're doing is helping the many and she is on their side.

Dave 1:19:24

Mm-hmm.

Doug 1:19:28

So that, you know, it's not until fairly late in the game that you have a sense of like, where does she actually stand versus the many and and what you're doing?

Dave 1:19:36

Yeah.

Doug 1:19:37

Like, and that's what I love about it is like all the stuff is hiding in plain sight. Like, like I'm telling you I'm evil and you shouldn't trust me and you still need to do what I say.

Dave 1:19:44

Yeah.

Doug 1:19:47

Like it's yeah that's actually very clever and good.

Dave 1:19:47

Yep. Yeah, so I mean, there is a lot of really cool stuff that goes on here. And it's just really cool as you're going through this, like, I don't know, from the point that Shodan is revealed, until you go into the men, the body of the many, and I and like everyone's cut off from you, like Shodan can't talk to you in there. um And she's like, giving you instructions, but she's also just talking crazy shit, like,

to you, just talking about how insignificant you are, how stupid you are, how you'll never compare to her. but you have to work with her. you have to Every time she gives you a reward, she's like, oh, that was fine, I suppose. Here, take some, ah I forget what they call them, cybernetic modules, and go unlock the next door that I need you to unlock, you little piece of shit.

Doug 1:20:41

Good dog.

Dave 1:20:42

Yeah, exactly. It is almost like giving you a little treat. ah okay Because I'm a shitty little gamer and I need a treat after I've done a boss fight or something.

Doug 1:20:53

Oh yeah, the passive aggressive voice for her is so good that like yeah at any time because I mean functionally what's happening is here we need to upgrade you some more for the next set of encounters.

Dave 1:21:02

Yeah.

Doug 1:21:02

But like that when she bestows these on you, she's always very condescending about doing it.

Dave 1:21:08

Yeah, it's great. ah So the reveal of Shodan and then like, you know, working with her along the, oh, and the other thing, I'll just like throw this out right now before I move away from talking about Shodan. There's a couple of times when you can disobey her. ah There's a point in the shuttle bays, I think there's a cargo bay that she tells you not to go into. And if you go in there, there's a dead body in there with an audio log that tells you basically about how Shodan betrayed their crew members. And like that's the, you know, like you said, you already know this, but now you're hearing it from somebody else who died because of it. And you pick up some modules when you're there. So you've got some skill points, you're like, fuck yeah. And then you leave and Shodan takes them away from you.

And you're like, Oh, fuck, she actually can do this. She's like, you disobeyed me. And you think you could just go in there and well, guess what? Taking your skill points away.

Doug 1:22:12

Yeah, and we should mention your character is supposed to have all of these cybernetic implants.

Dave 1:22:17

Yeah.

Doug 1:22:17

embed, which is how she's interacting with you. You know, you've got basically a radio antenna in your skull that she could talk to you.

Dave 1:22:23

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:22:23

um But that's how she can give you these modules, give you things, take them away, um which adds another layer to this idea of like, well, she's kind of, you know, she's hacked into my brain. So how much can I even trust what's happening around me?

Dave 1:22:34

Mm-hmm Right

Doug 1:22:36

That's how she was able to make the walls fall away. So during the reveal, it didn't actually happen at all. It only happens in your mind as she's making this presentation to you.

Dave 1:22:45

And this is part of her plan too, her plan stemming like this is how the virus came to be. Her plan is she's trying to make humans more um receptive to cybernetic enhancement ah because I guess I read this about the first game, but she's trying to rebuild humanity in her image. um So like as far as capabilities go, but also physically. So it's kind of what she's doing with your character too. like You want to get powerful so you can go to the next level because you're playing a video game and fight tougher enemies and use better guns, but you're kind of... on the path to being Shodan's super soldier as well. um if I mean, if she were to wrestle control away from you, which I guess you could assume that might happen at some point, or if you buy into the idea that anybody would willingly work with Shodan at some point in the game. But this is her plan.

Doug 1:23:46

Yeah, well, at least it seems to be her plan. I still feel like there's like how many layers of double crossers are there, you know, um because then you've got the many on the other side.

Dave 1:23:53

Yeah, that's true.

Doug 1:23:56

And what I love about the many is they're doing this very classic thing, you know, again, straight out of Ridley Scott's original alien, right? You get the distress signal, you land on the planet, a life form attaches to you and it gets on your ship and now it's out of control. um But they start out with these like they're just worms. They're just these little worm creatures.

Dave 1:24:14

Mhm.

Doug 1:24:14

And from that they continue to evolve and get bigger and get worse and grosser. And, you know, they're all like I said, but I love the voice acting as people are. You know, you can hear them when they start out as regular humans and then they have the bliss of joining the many kinds of takes over.

Dave 1:24:30

Yeah.

Doug 1:24:32

That stuff is all really well told.

Dave 1:24:34

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:24:35

And they did. They do it. ah This happens a bunch of times where you'll you'll you know get introduced to a character through their audio logs. And by the last few audio logs you hear their gibbering with much dialogue, you know, join us in the poetry of the flesh or whatever they say, you know, that kind of stuff.

Dave 1:24:47

Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. There was one audio log. I remember where the bad podcasting was, but I did not take notes about audio logs. But there's a couple that I remember where there's one where it's like a guy and it's like the his introduction to the corrupting force of the many but he's like a worm jumped up on my shoulder it told me how to build a hyperspeed drive or something like that i'm like what the fuck and he's like i'm gonna do it like this makes sense it basically you can hear him like explain thought process for joining the many while he's still lucid

And then later you have like those logs where the people are like, like you said, they're doing basically the many dialogue in their audio logs. um One cool thing I didn't mention before, uh, that's related to the many is all the hybrids that you fight. Um, their voice lines are really good. Um, so when they're walking around or like when they see you, they'll say stuff to you, like run away. Like they're telling you to run away from them. Um, or they are saying like, I think I wrote these down somewhere.

um Oh, yeah, they'll say run away or I'm sorry, as they like chasing after you. So like, the person is still in there to some degree. And then you find some of them where they're, they're a little further gone where the the voice line I remember the most from them is, um your song is not ours. and You're like, Okay, what does that mean? Join us.

Doug 1:26:30

Yeah, they talk about how the hive mind is so as if it was like a chorus. They use musical terms sometimes to describe what it's like, which I guess straight out of the board.

Dave 1:26:36

Yeah.

Doug 1:26:40

You know the board does that kind of stuff too, but like I said, it's affected and it reminds me a little if you've seen slither. It's a little like that where these things keep taking on more and more grotesque forms and you get the sense that it's not just that they're like worms. There's like this weird contagion to them that they like.

Dave 1:26:58

Yeah, it's a virus. It started as a virus.

Doug 1:27:00

It's a. right so they like so you bust open an egg you'll find these eggs that looked again literally Ridley Scott alien eggs you bust them open and instead of a face hugger like maybe one or two worms will come out of them and you have to whack them with your wrench like so most

Dave 1:27:07

Uh-huh. Or a fucking cloud of bees, dude. The bees in this game.

Doug 1:27:17

Yeah. Oh, you and Nicolas Cage saying it together.

Dave 1:27:21

Yes. ah Sorry.

Doug 1:27:22

ah Yeah. ah Yeah. Like the flying ones are gross. They'll talk about that. Like these things take on all kinds of forms. There's the big, like I said, the hulky scary ones that are just blobs of flesh, you know, with vaguely humanoid proportions, you know, all that stuff.

Dave 1:27:31

Mm-hmm.

Doug 1:27:37

And then you get into the cyborgs, too, as the human beings were infected by kind of both of these forces, they started going like, well, we can make the many and fuse them to like robot legs.

Dave 1:27:44

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:27:48

And, you know, so it's like full Cronenberg starting to happen.

Dave 1:27:49

Yeah. It's crazy how often you play and I'm not super familiar with the alien franchise to the level that you are, but it's crazy how often you'll play video games and just see things that's like this is not like aliens. It's just they just did it in their game.

Doug 1:28:11

Alien is one of my all time favorite movies too. It's a great horror movie, but it's one of those things. It's like it is the base building block. It is so simple.

Dave 1:28:19

Yeah.

Doug 1:28:19

You know, in terms of what it is, it's just really effectively done that it you know yeah continues to reverberate. And like this obviously owes a huge debt to alien legs at the site. All of the influences are there and all of the things that came afterwards that draw on this like the line is very, very clearly drawn.

Dave 1:28:36

Yeah. Really interesting evolutionary step for sure. Let's play music. So let's talk about this kind of debate, we'll say, the philosophy behind both of these forces that are kind of pulling at you in either direction here. So you have Shodan, who again um created the many, ah eventually they got, they grew out of her control and they, they formed their own consciousness at some point and then like it feels like the more join, the stronger this this consciousness gets to the point late in the game where the many is covering the Rickenbacker ship that you go on, which is a cool level by the just of a fun level that feels more intentionally designed in a lot of ways than the corridors of the main ship.

um the many want you to just assimilate and be one with the many um as, you know, just like, you know, letting go of your consciousness basically to just be part of this. And some of the, I think some of the crew logs describe like, this unknowable bliss that comes with giving yourself over to the many. um So there's that. That's one side. And the other side is ah Shodan. So Shodan wants you to join her and just be kind of like I don't know, it's like being her second in command or something like that. She offers you power, but that also like going along with Shodan would be to give away your individualism. So it's not quite that you have two forces with two opposing ideologies, really. They both want you to give up your individualism and assimilate with them. They're just very different

like ways of showing that in sci-fi horror terms, we'll say.

Doug 1:30:43

Yeah, it's a little bit better to reign in hell and serve in heaven, you know, kind of thing they um because yeah, serving showed and I know they're kind of going.

Dave 1:30:46

Yeah.

Doug 1:30:53

They use a lot of religious terms to talk about her or she or she uses to talk about herself as like a goddess, right?

Dave 1:30:59

yeah

Doug 1:30:59

She wants to be worshipped. She wants to be obeyed. So like going with shows and I think the game doesn't present you with a choice in this, this but.

Dave 1:31:06

Right. We'll get to that.

Doug 1:31:07

It's not like press X to decide to side with show them, but like You wouldn't really be her second in command. You would just be you know one of her better equipped slaves. right you know she doesn't She's made it very clear she hates your guts.

Dave 1:31:18

Right. Yeah. Yeah, she would not respect you. That's for sure. Yeah.

Doug 1:31:24

No, she tells you for hours in this game how awful she thinks you are.

Dave 1:31:27

But Yeah.

Doug 1:31:28

um Joining the many, maybe you would be equal in some way. um Again, the Borg, on Star Trek, they do this, too, where like Picard kind of Picard becomes part of the Borg for a very famous episode and then is rescued. And later on, he'll talk. of You find you find characters like Picard or others who were part of the Borg and then were extricated from that fate. they will talk about how they miss it.

Dave 1:31:54

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:31:56

Like they will talk about like there was like, it wasn't horror that they felt while they were part of the board collective, they felt ecstasy.

Dave 1:32:03

Right.

Doug 1:32:03

And that's exactly what they're doing here. It's that idea of like, the only way this would work, why anyone would join is if it felt really good.

Dave 1:32:12

Mm hmm. The difference here is that there would be no coming back for these people because their bodies are either horrifically mutated if they're still humanoid at all. Otherwise, they're just it's just a lump of flesh that yeah, so that's like

Doug 1:32:26

You're just absorbed. Yeah.

Dave 1:32:32

I think the game is not necessarily like setting you up to pick, like you said, but I did see a clip of an interview with Ken Levine and where he wants these to be attractive in some way. And like joining show Dan, not not attractive in the slightest, really. Shodan is the classic villain. The the draw, I guess, and like why a bunch of the crew members went over is maybe because it feels good to assimilate with the many and like you know just just free yourself of all worries, and that's one of the things they always talk about with these assimilating, you know, hive mind type things, free yourself of all the worries of your life or something like that. But from the audio logs, it really seems like all the crew were mind controlled into joining anyway, like it doesn't feel like they willingly made the choice to join the many either.

Doug 1:33:28

No, no, not at all. you know that Neither of these, it's interesting that Ken Levine would look at this as like, I wanted people to consider which one of these they would do. And it's like, you made them both horrendous. They're just different flavors of horrendous.

Dave 1:33:40

Right.

Doug 1:33:41

and I don't want either of them.

Dave 1:33:42

Yeah.

Doug 1:33:43

I'm there to kill both of them. And you put a gun in my hand and told me to do it, you know?

Dave 1:33:46

Yeah. Exactly. Both of them have to go. and So that's like.

Doug 1:33:50

Yeah.

Dave 1:33:51

If the goal of this is to make you ponder like, would I join Shodan or would I join the many or would I choose to live for myself? It's not really a choice in this game because like you said, both of them are so far on extreme horror in these different directions that none of them are good choices even for a second. ah So like they're they're really interesting as villains and like the way that they work and the backstory behind them all is really cool.

But as like a philosophical dilemma, there's no dilemma really. Like you, it's, we'll talk about it, but you can almost understand why your character has the reaction at the end that he does.

Doug 1:34:33

Yeah, it's just not tonally set up for that. And we'll get to that in a minute as the bonkers ending.

Dave 1:34:38

Right. For sure.

Doug 1:34:41

um But in the run up to that ending, you know there's this last few levels where things start to get weird.

Dave 1:34:41

Yeah. Yes.

Doug 1:34:48

And I do appreciate that. Like, so like, you know, some of the cooler levels on the Von Braun, like I said, there's like the living quarters. You can go. There's like, what, a movie theater, you know, the shipboard, like, you know, ah things, that the creature comforts that they had.

Dave 1:34:57

Yeah.

Doug 1:35:00

um You can explore. But by the time you get stuff in the Rickenbacker, there's a whole portion of the ship you go through that's upside down, which is really cool.

Dave 1:35:06

Yep.

Doug 1:35:07

You're on the ceiling like a church. um I like that stuff.

Dave 1:35:09

Yep.

Doug 1:35:10

And then, as you said, you go inside the many for ah Basically a 3D Contra level where it's just all meat and giant elevators that are teeth It's a little disorienting to play that I wasn't sure what's crazy about that level from a play perspective But from a like a conceptual kind of point of view, I kind of liked it

Dave 1:35:19

yep Yeah, 100%. It's very cool. As like if you write down what happens in the story and you look at it and things like that. It's super cool. You go into the body of the many and you go through these hallways made of flesh and there's this gross water and there's you know these pustules and things on the walls and stuff. and like It's like ah in Jabu Jabu's belly in Ocarina of Time where like if you hit a switch to open a door, that's organic material that's making the switch that you hit and the door. like There's an inherent grossness to that. So like That's cool for sure.

Doug 1:36:06

yeah This is way more towards ah ah colonoscopy than Jabu Jabu's belly is. This is meant to be pretty icky.

Dave 1:36:11

Yeah. ah The other cool part about the many is because the many is like engulfing the Rickenbacker. I believe it's the Rickenbacker. Inside the body of the many, you'll find just random rooms of the ship. ah You'll find like, I remember finding a locker room at the end of a hallway made of flesh and it's just a section of a locker room. um You'll find dead crew members in like bodies of water in there.

So like, that stuff's really cool.

Doug 1:36:44

Yeah, no, I like that too.

Dave 1:36:45

The only, yeah. The only issue with that section is it's hard to navigate because it's not modeled after a real space in the slightest. And ah the end of that section is absolute dog shit from a gameplay perspective.

Doug 1:37:01

Yeah, the boss they have you kill, which is I guess meant to be some kind of centralized nervous system of the many.

Dave 1:37:07

Yeah.

Doug 1:37:08

um While you're trying to shoot at this thing, they're harrying you with these big burly enemy types that respond endlessly.

Dave 1:37:14

You're just an endless supply of the hardest enemy in the game.

Doug 1:37:18

Yeah.

Dave 1:37:18

There's respawn after respawn after respawn. I save scum the fuck out of this final encounter. like if i made If I made decent progress, like they have the these ah like these jets that will help you jump high distances.

Doug 1:37:25

Yep. to

Dave 1:37:33

like If I made a good jump, save. If I made it, because you have to go around and kill these little brain things around the room, which will then make the center thing vulnerable. So if I killed a brain thing, save. Kill the second one, save, you know?

Doug 1:37:49

Yeah, it's extremely basic ah boss design from that perspective. It's, you know, yeah, kill the things to make the shield go down to then attack the thing.

Dave 1:37:57

Yeah.

Doug 1:37:56

um It's just that which would be, I guess, OK, it's not not great, but doesn't have to be terrible. But hiring you with those. ah Those giant ogre enemies are it's just like a bridge too far because it's like this is already annoying enough Now I have to deal with you guys Especially if you made the mistake as I did I'm trying to kill them all thinking well if I clear out these guys Then I can take care of the other thing.

Dave 1:38:18

Right.

Doug 1:38:20

Nope. That's that's not you just have to run

Dave 1:38:23

Yep. Yep, it's rough. um so ah And like, I think, if I remember right, the only two boss fights in the game are this one with the many and then when you fight Shodan. This doesn't have a bunch of traditional boss fights.

Doug 1:38:39

There's this squid guy who used to be. I forget what human he used to be, but like you can fight him. It's not like a full on boss fight, but he's there and somewhere on the phone.

Dave 1:38:46

Hmm. Yeah, these are like the, you know, traditional boss fights and like the, you know, you got to go do this thing three times or whatever, you know, so.

Doug 1:38:56

Yeah. Hit the glowing red spot.

Dave 1:38:57

ah Right, right. ah So there's that. And then um you go down this like you kill the central, you know, nerve cluster or whatever of the um the many and you go down this tube that deposits you back into the Rickenbacker and then you go to Shodan's final area. So this final area is very cool. Visually it's like Shodan is like Part of the story is Shodan is using faster than light technology to try to merge the digital and physical world, and that's what this looks like. It looks like you're walking through cyberspace and it's modeled after, um and I didn't know this because I didn't play System Shock 1, but it's modeled after the first level in System Shock 1, which is cool.

Doug 1:39:49

Yeah, I again, I haven't played system shock one either. But when I got to this, I assumed that's exactly what it was, which I looked it up and like, yes, because it looks visually, it looks even more primitive than just like, oh, it's almost a deliberate choice.

Dave 1:39:58

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug 1:40:04

And there's like, floating like Euclidean shapes just like wandering through. um It's a cool idea. I just wish like the whole thing about, I'm going to use a faster than light drive to merge cyberspace with reality. and like That just came out of nowhere. um That wasn't set up in any way. And I think the shorter walk would have just been to say, like right, she's in your head. She's in your cybernetic implants, just like she did that first time when she revealed herself.

Now you're playing in her world, even though it's not necessarily happening in the physical world. but that That would have been, I think, to me, a cleaner way of doing this. But regardless, it is a cool idea that she's going to bring you into play in the world of System Shock 1 for a little bit.

Dave 1:40:39

Yeah.

Doug 1:40:42

ah But then you have to do the boss fight against her, which involves a lot of hacking. And that is no way to.

Dave 1:40:46

Yep. Yep. The boss fights dog shit. Um, uh, again, I guess the only setup for the, like, show Dan's plan, we'll say with the faster than light drive is the fact that the ship that you're on is faster than light technology has just been invented. And so like show Dan commandeered this and figured out something she wants to do with it or something, but it would have been cool to just be like, yeah, she's in your head. Like you said, like the reveal section all over again, except now she's building spaces that you're going through.

So yeah.

Doug 1:41:21

Yeah. And if she defeats you, then she'll take the ship and she'll bring it to Earth and then wreak havoc. So simpler, cleaner thing. Again, like the whole game, if you just did one quick pass on it, there's a few little things that would fix it. But anyway, forget Monday morning quarterbacking. um Yeah, the boss fight.

Dave 1:41:36

Yeah, the boss fight.

Doug 1:41:37

Oof.

Dave 1:41:39

ah So what happens if anyone didn't play it is there are three hacking stations around you need to hack these things to remove this like protection from show Dan and all the while the floor is lava and show Dan is spawning in ah Copies of herself that come in and hit you while you're hacking So you need to kill a couple of them try to hack really quickly run over to the next thing do the same process like If you didn't spec into hacking, I don't know how you do this fight.

Like, I don't know if it's literally possible or not.

Doug 1:42:15

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you like this. Like you said, and this would be a bad place to lock yourself out of the game. Give me the final boss fight.

Dave 1:42:21

Yeah.

Doug 1:42:23

um So yeah, it's hard. And also the game just as we talked about, like the hacking mini game isn't fun in and of itself. And then you can't do anything else while you're hacking. You can't like to fight and hack at the same time.

Dave 1:42:35

Yeah.

Doug 1:42:37

So you're it just like this. These two flavors of gameplay don't mix at all.

Dave 1:42:44

No, there's like, if there was a logic, like imagine in Bioshock, if you had to do pipe dream as fast as you can, because you're in the middle of a boss fight. I'm sure that happens in Bioshock. It's been a minute, but at least with pipe dream, you know how the puzzle works. It's an intuitive system for a puzzle. And in System Shock 2, like we both said, we got to the end of the game, we both hacked hundreds of things. We have no idea how this thing works. So it's just click, click, click, click, click, click, oh fuck, that didn't work. Let me try again, I guess.

um all the while the floor is lava and there are enemy spawns coming in to attack you. But you do it, you beat Shodan, and then you get one of two ending cutscenes, not optional, like they're one after the other.

Doug 1:43:27

Right.

Dave 1:43:37

So ah the first one is the infamous one where you Again, you're like talking to I don't know how this works at all, but you're talking to a screen of show Dan. And she, um she's basically just talking shit to you. She says you were never meant to be important. She doesn't understand how you can defeat her. She's mad that she calls you an insect, a wretched bag of flesh. Again, you're nothing compared to me. You're the shit on the bottom of my shoe type of stuff. And she tries to tempt you with this offer to join for unlimited power. She can transform you into something more efficient and rule the galaxy together.

ah this So there's two parts to why this is so weird. First of all, it shows your character for the first time. This is a first-person game. You have never seen how your character looks. um I don't even know if mirrors work in this game. I don't remember.

Doug 1:44:31

I don't believe so, no.

Dave 1:44:32

this This was the first time that I had seen my character, and the design of your character is so fucking goofy. like You're a soldier, and your character has this just this weird like you know, gray shirt, he has a bowl cut and these goofy ass goggles on. And it's just a baffling character design choice.

Doug 1:44:54

Yeah, it's got he's kind of got troll doll energy. I know like There's something weird about the face, and then yeah the goggles don't help.

Dave 1:44:57

ah Yeah.

Doug 1:45:02

That makes things look weirder. And again, we've never seen this design before. We've never seen other characters with the same design, like other soldiers like us.

Dave 1:45:10

Right.

Doug 1:45:11

So we're seeing it for the first time. it's you know um It's pre-rendered in 1999 style. I think you know that Stuff in FF7 looks better than this, the original.

Dave 1:45:19

Yeah. Oh,

Doug 1:45:23

ah it's very It's very weird looking. And you know I don't know if you're going to cut in the audio of this, but if you're not, go.

Dave 1:45:30

I have to.

Doug 1:45:32

go Yeah. Otherwise, yeah. Go do yourself a favor and find it on YouTube. If you're not going to play the game, you owe it to yourself to at least see this thing because his response after show Dan's, you know, big monologue to just go.

Dave 1:45:36

Yeah.

Doug 1:45:44

Yeah. And then shoot her in the face.

Dave 1:45:46

Yep.

Doug 1:45:47

It's like, again, totally like from a tone that the game has never trafficked in.

Dave 1:45:53

Yeah, it's so this was like a very serious game for the entire runtime up until there is like very little comic relief in this game at all. Maybe the monkeys are kind of funny. They're probably the funniest thing in this game up until this point. And then suddenly you're playing like this. sarcastic, you know, cool guy character all of a sudden who just goes, nah, and then shoots the screen that shows Dan is on and that apparently kills showed it. I don't know how that works. It's just a screen. She's an AI inhabiting the entire ship.

But this is enough to defeat Chodan. And you get this very weird, ah you know, early 3D, like, warping of the face in this super cheesy, like, no, death yell. And ah like, Chodan, like, warps out of existence and goes away. And that's that cutscene. That's like before the credits.

Doug 1:46:52

Yeah, again, lawnmower man stuff ah in terms of the visuals, but like very weird and that even the nah is not great. Like it's very poochy to me. Like there's a little like if he was just like, no show, Dan, that's wiggity wack.

Dave 1:47:04

Yeah.

Doug 1:47:06

And then shot her like it's ah it's off that level. It's very you have to hear it and see it.

Dave 1:47:12

it yeah it's um there's there's yeah There's no way that we could just possibly describe it with words, but it is like it is like your character is the coolest person who's ever lived all of a sudden. And it's the way that the coolest person, whoever lived would have talked in 1999 pop culture, you know?

Doug 1:47:33

Yeah, although, you know, we were both alive in 1999. I don't know.

Dave 1:47:36

Yeah, but like yeah, so it was like, right.

Doug 1:47:37

He's not Neo from The Matrix, you know, he's.

Dave 1:47:40

I mean like the too cool for school type character, you know?

Doug 1:47:43

Yeah, like I said, rostify him up by 10 percent, you know, Poochy.

Dave 1:47:44

Nah. Yeah, so very fucking weird.

Doug 1:47:49

Very it's super fucking weird. And then you get the credits and then you get weird scene number two.

Dave 1:47:55

Yeah, you get the scene where there, so there were two people who left the ship on an escape pod, Tommy and Rebecca, and so they were able to get out, they're fine. um They, after you kill Shodan, your character sends out a distress call, and they hear it, and they decide we're gonna go back and pick up your character, or we're gonna go back and, you know, the ship is fine, we're gonna go, fixed it. I don't know what their plan was, but they're going back. um Tommy says that he's worried that Rebecca is acting strange. And then it cuts to this shot where Tommy's at the front of the pod, and Rebecca's at the back and the camera's behind Rebecca.

Doug 1:48:31

in silhouette.

Dave 1:48:32

And yeah, the silhouette and it just shows the weird Medusa hair on Rebecca. And her voice kind of shifts and she says, what's the matter lover? Don't you like my new look? And then doesn't even laugh. And that's the end of System Shock 2. So that's the System Shock 3 bait. Shodan's obviously still around in some way. um But it's a weird just a weird way to present this too, I feel like.

Doug 1:49:02

Yeah, it's also like, again, so many horror movies, right? You need to have the one last scare. It's you know literally ah Michael Jackson at the end of the thriller video having the cat eyes.

Dave 1:49:08

Yeah.

Doug 1:49:13

You know, it's kind of that, um but they've never given you any explanations like could show Dan somehow download her consciousness into a flesh body. And Are they implying that that's what the many were to enable?

Dave 1:49:23

Yeah.

Doug 1:49:26

But why would Dan want to be flesh? She hates flesh and it would make her weaker than she was . We're trying to make sense of this as a fool's errand.

Dave 1:49:29

Yeah.

Doug 1:49:35

Like it just doesn't make sense

Dave 1:49:37

Yeah. It's like, so if Rebecca has cybernetic implants, maybe show Dan could hack in there, but how does it change her physical appearance? That doesn't, you know, again, it's, it's not going to make sense. So stop trying to make it make sense. It's just a like, Oh fuck. Show Dan still around. Can't wait for system shock three. I bet it will come out in a couple of years, you know?

Doug 1:50:01

Or maybe, you know, we're now 25 years on from this game. So, you know, better late than never.

Dave 1:50:05

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and this was yeah a lot of stuff late in system shock to, uh, dead space, just took it and put it in dead space. Um, and there's something basically that's this late in dead space, which is cool. Uh, but, um, you know, it was like one last thing where I was like, Oh yeah, something late, it's something from a later game, but, um, it's, it's really weird.

Doug 1:50:21

Yeah.

Dave 1:50:30

So like. I don't know how I would have preferred it to end, but the game shifts tones into like a, I don't like a Duke Nukem, like cool guy shooter type of game when it has not been that for the entire game until literally the second to last cutscene. And that's the end of the game. It's a very weird way to just end this game. Like with this, you you watch this, You hear the audio that I cut into the episode and and you're like, was this their idea the whole time for how this game was going to end?

Doug 1:51:07

Yeah, I don't know. um I know this game went through some, there were some kind of iterations of it.

Dave 1:51:08

It's baffling.

Doug 1:51:13

It wasn't originally going to be a sequel to System Shock. It was going to be something else. And it was entirely. And then they said, well, let's make it a System Shock sequel. And then they, but they laid, so that there were so many good things in this story that we, hi you know, highlighted as we talked about it.

Dave 1:51:20

Yeah.

Doug 1:51:26

um It is a weird way to send it off. um And they again, drag we won't we can't make sense of it.

Dave 1:51:30

Yeah.

Doug 1:51:33

We just will that we never will um We could just talk about like yeah, this is this is kind of one of the most infamous baffling endings in games

Dave 1:51:35

Like, yeah, it's to me, the only way it makes sense in my head is if at the end, your character is making this choice. Again, it's not a difficult choice, but you're making the choice to stay an individual With all the things that are associated with being an individual on this fucked up ship that you're on, your character's making that choice and they wanted to make him seem cool, I think. And this is what they came up with to represent your character being cool. That's the only way it makes sense to me.

Doug 1:52:11

Yeah. If I had the time and energy and know how I would love to make a series of YouTube videos of just, uh, taking other famous endings of games and redoing them this way, you know, kind of mist and the actresses there. And all of a sudden, you know, puts on his Bermuda shorts and he's like, surf's up. And that's the end of this, you know, that I wouldn't do that.

Dave 1:52:30

Yeah. I thought you were going to say ah take the ending of System Shock 2 and just cut in other cool, like actual cool video game characters like Leon from Resident Evil 4 doing like ah one of his one-liners or something like that at the end and then you know shoot the screen or whatever. but um Yeah, that's ah that's System Shock 2, a really fun game to discuss. um There's a lot of aspects about this that made it fun, you know the talking about the influence on later games, talking about the two antagonistic forces, which I think are both very cool again.

um And then you know the ending might be weird and cheesy and bad, but it's fun to talk about. So yeah, this has been a good time.

Doug 1:53:17

Yeah, it's a really meaty game. um There is a lot of stuff in here.

Dave 1:53:20

Yeah.

Doug 1:53:22

There's a lot of things that make this notable ah from an archaeological perspective. um There's a lot of things that make it cool from a sci fi storytelling perspective. And so, yeah, there's a certain number of frustrating things about the gameplay again. And the wheels come off a little bit at the end, both in gameplay and story. um But you know on balance, I think this thing still holds up pretty well as something that is worthwhile.

you know Should you play this? I think on balancing answers, yes. um you know And I'm glad I finally got around to playing it.

Dave 1:53:50

Yeah.

Doug 1:53:52

Even if it wasn't my favorite game in the world, I had a whole lot of fun thinking about it and analyzing it.

Dave 1:53:55

Mm hmm.

Doug 1:53:57

So ah that that is also of great value.

Dave 1:54:01

Yeah, for sure. And you know a podcast or you know an analysis of this game that's going into more detail than we did. There's a lot of cool, like we said, like short stories across audio logs that characters go through, characters that we didn't mention. um it it would I just didn't want it to be the photo like the focus of the spoiler section here ah to go through and like write down what every audio log was about and connect them together.

But that stuff is cool. And, you know, learning about the character stories and, you know, picking up an audio log late in the game, remembering something that that character was up to in a previous audio log and be like, oh, this character is fucked now. Like that stuff is cool, too. So there is more meat on the bone. If anyone, you know, is listening all the way to the end of this thinking like, you know, I might play System Shock, too. Like there's a lot more detail that we didn't even touch on really at all.

Doug 1:54:57

Yeah, there's tons of story there that we just don't have the time to get to. And as you said, a lot of it is told through those logs where, ah you know, yeah, some of them are short, some of them are longer. There are characters that kind of have whole arcs through long swaths of the game that are worthwhile and interesting and they intersect with other characters' audio logs. So, you know,

Dave 1:55:16

Yep.

Doug 1:55:17

a little bit of a problem if you don't find all of them but like you'll get enough of the beat of like okay this person was you know had you know high hopes and then was infected by the many and you know think things went were wrong and you know yes that that general thing repeats over and over again but then the ways in which it happens or plays out those are all really cool little sci-fi short stories think of like fallout like those kinds of things where you know half of the fun is just hearing about these experiences the the poor crew members of these ships had

Dave 1:55:29

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And even if you don't connect them or follow them that closely, if you just treat them as flavor for what the many does or what show Dan did to some people or, you know, interpersonal conflict too, between crew members as well, if you just treat it as flavor, it's good flavor. So there's a lot here, but, uh, we have reached the end of the episode.

Doug 1:56:03

Yeah.

Dave 1:56:07

So, uh, Doug, thanks for taking the time and coming on. It's always a pleasure, uh, podcasting with you. And, uh, again, a fun game to discuss. I think we did a good job here.

Doug 1:56:16

ah Thanks so much for having me. This was a blast.

Dave 1:56:20

And I'll give another recommendation at the end of the show for everybody to check out Nostalgium Arcanum. There's been a lot of episodes about how many episodes are there by now? Do you know?

Doug 1:56:29

Uh, well, as we're recording this, uh, gosh, I've got, I think 116 or so edited and then there's a few more on the way.

Dave 1:56:35

Yeah, there's a lot.

Doug 1:56:37

So yeah, by the time, I don't know when this comes out, but you'll, you'll have probably 120, 125 episodes to choose from.

Dave 1:56:44

Yeah, I was just going to say, like, there's a ton of episodes in there. So you can surely look through something that you're nostalgic about that has been discussed on the show. ah So again, there's a link down in the show notes for a nostalgia Mark Cannon, please check it out. And if you've listened all the way to the end, you're my hero. And please tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.