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SYSTEM SHOCK 2

this replay (on impossible at gruel's suggestion) solidified my longstanding feeling that its retreat to the restrictive kinds of tabletop-isms that system shock had been trying to elude in the aftermath of ultima underworld was a significant backslide. with its emphasis on bureaucratic statsheets and skillchecks this is the moment where the "immersive sim" scuttled back to splash in the primordial gygaxian ooze. if you squint hard enough you can even see the warrior/mage/thief archetypes peering out thru their ragged sci-fi costuming

along with deus ex it perhaps best belongs to the (alleged) genre's second wave -- a group of hybrids that took much of the tactile, systems-driven immediacy of system shock and thief but simultaneously (re)introduced a multitude of abstractions and contingencies that created a layer of distance between your character and the world. a charitable way to phrase it would be that the crpg augmented the experience, but due to the nature of statistical governance the impact was closer to that of being swallowed whole

skip ahead twenty-five years and d20s are now fetish objects and any sense of a ground-up reappraisal of what computer roleplaying can and should be is all but vanished. right this second you're about a single click away from finding dozens and dozens of bozos claiming that a) "immersive sim" still means something, and b) that system shock(1) isn't one of them. the dream is dead. pack it up

now, to be clear, i don't hold looking glass or ion storm responsible; experimenting with form is how we'd end up with a mode of roleplaying that suits the medium instead of the fucking Edgar Suit we have now. the pen-and-paper bits weren't inherently malignant, nor were they even a total failure -- ultima underworld and deus ex are fabulous; this is a perfectly fine way to expand on things. the problem here specifically is that this alternative mode quickly became the only mode and system shock 2 isn't exactly deus ex

almost none of your options have any appreciable impact on playstyle or expression, which is exacerbated further by both the inflexibility of the levels and encounters as well as the incredible imbalance between those options. aside from some vestigial light/sound based stealth carried over thru thief's dark engine, this is primarily a shooter where most of your choices are Optimal Shooting, Suboptimal Shooting, or Suboptimal Shooting (Magic) and all three feel like a step back from the previous game

outside of challenge runs or extensive metagaming (recycle/vending abuse) there's almost no reason to avoid skills like hacking/maintenance/repair or to invest more than a couple value points in exotic or psi. this causes the rpg systems to feel more like arbitrary gates than anything else, and the obvious approach is simply to unlock the ones that matter and ignore the ones that don't. as enticing as it might seem to play full psi, the reality isn't a new way of approaching the game, it's just worse. everyone wants to avoid using "standard" weapons in their cyberhorror thing until they realize that the game doesn't actually have a backup plan in the event that they do

but despite everything, there's a lot here that works remarkably well. system shock's anxious mazejumper energy's been slowed down dramatically and all its coils and knots have been carefully untangled and laid out flat, reconfigured toward strobing tension and some the best and most verisimilar environmental design looking glass ever managed to put together

while cashing in on shodan's treats for being a good dog doesn't move me, and choosing between the assault rifle or some alien shit that doesn't work on half the enemies also doesn't move me, having to take out a bunch of mechs with 5 standard bullets, half a tank of psi, and a wrench certainly does. the way resource management and limited inventory space are constantly stressed by respawns, scarcity, and durability works like a charm, and this pressure quickly proves to be its greatest mechanical success by a longshot. they even found a way to make restoration bays undesirable by having cyborg assassins spawn camp you until you're softlocked or choose to reload. this is the type of shit i'm looking for from a VideoGame

and to its credit there are still a few weird options and interactions possible, even if they did strip out all the coolest stuff like the rollerblades, jetpack, skullcamera, and prone stance. i'm not in love with the augments being +1STR stat amulets, but i'll never say no to being able to sequence break and go out-of-bounds with psi's quantum relocation and metacreative barrier. never used the worm launcher, but with a name like that it has to be pretty sick too(?)

really tho, this is carried by the combined effort of its detailing. by pounding million bpm drum-n-bass, terri brosius and stephen russell's beautiful voice work, and all the von braun's discrete little dollhouse segments with perfect plausibility and unbelievable attention to detail. by an almost cronenbergian fascination with the relationship between strange meats and future metals, playing on your little gameboy, researching alien organs, and slamming SpeedBoost hypos until you kill yourself running into a wall too fast

it feels like a cop out to say it's better than the sum of its parts, but it really is. when the upside down rickenbacker hits i do Not care that this game has the shittiest balance known to man. when The Many speak in ominous overdubbed graveyard psalms i don't care that they didn't even try to make a diegetic UI or lean into the livewire propulsion of the first game. when xerxes reminds me that if i work extra hours during the holiday season i'll be able to afford to make this christmas Extra Special i think "well, i guess this is the best game ever made"

so while i'm unflinching in my belief that this is the weakest of the Five Big Dogs (SS1/T1/SS2/T2/DE) i'm pretty sure i like it more than arkane's combined ludography. i think of eidos boiling down the formula to [Stealth Path | Kill Path] and cooking up "AUG LIVES MATTER" and consider deleting any and all criticism altogether. sorry.. i was wrong. i made a mistake. there's nothing to see here... just a stone cold classic..

we could have had it better tho